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THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO - DALLAS
ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO
MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED
LONDON · BOMBAY . CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.
TORONTO
• THE
HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
BY
E: WASHBURN HOPKINS, Ph.D., LL.D,
Professor of Sanskrit and Comparative Philology,
Yale University
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1918
All rights reserved
OOPYRIGHT, 1918
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
Set up and electrotyped. Published November, 1918.
PREFACE
In the language of one of the savage races mentioned
in this volume the word religion means the sacred tree.
Although innocent of allegory, yet, as in many other regards,
in this definition the savage has suggested a profound
truth. For religion is, as it were, a tree. Its roots lie
deep in the darkness of primeval earth; its growth must
precede its sheltering foliage; and its unripened fruits are
not pleasant. Yet, watered by a living spring, it has risen
out of a soil black and even gruesome, since blood too has
fertilized it, but risen nevertheless it has, slowly exalting
itself heavenward; and under it sits nearly all mankind.
In the course of this volume we shall study the roots and
the higher growth of this tree, which through its age-
long development, as any tree changes its earth-drawn
sustenance into something more ethereal, has transmuted
terror into reverent awe, hunger into hope, lust into love.
We shall trace the slow progress of such roots of religion
as bear today the names taboo, fetishism, totemism; see
how taboo invested with spiritual power the moral com-
mand, insured the home, and made for civilization; how
fetishism confirmed the thought that man depends on a
spiritual something, gave faith in a power that helped, and
iriade that power the judge of right and wrong; how
totemism linked man in communion with the divine and
iri conjunction with seasonal nature-worship founded ritual
in the recurrent form necessary to religious stability. We
shall see in short that the higher not only is above the
lower but that it has ascended out of the lower. Savagery
did not give place to civilization but developed into it, was
already civilization in the germ.
PREFACE
So Egypt merely intensified the idea of communion when
it made the soul the Osiris and burgeoned into the mys-
ticism which became the mystery of human brotherhood
in divine sonship. All these ideas remained conserved in
the higher growth, and others as well; the belief that the
single member might be cut off for the good of the whole,
that evil like good had assumed a personal form, that law was
established on divine will, and even that the moral was
more important than the ritual law: “ There are the forty-
nine rites to be practised but to be pure of heart is better,"
said one who lived some centuries before our era.
Naturally, therefore, the question arises: If religion
- be all one tree, and even the acorn an embryonic oak, is
there anything essential that makes the limb which shel-
ters us different from others, such as the noble, if narrow,
branch called Mohammedanism; the broad bough of
Vishnuism, with its devotion to a personal Lord and its
belief that this Lord once lived on earth as man; or
Buddhism, with its gentle yet exalted faith; or Zoroastrian-
ism, which gave the world its virgin-born saviour, archan-
gels, Ahriman, and an eschatology still potent under another
name? That a sacred tree may have one Golden Bough
is another truth adumbrated by savagery, and such a bough
is surely different from others. The inquiry then is not
futile, though it can here be answered only by pointing out
salient distinctions. Nowhere in Zoroastrianism is there
escape from the round of ceremonies and iteration of creed.
Mohammedanism sufficed for its time and place, but its
fruit never ripened in the sun. Vishnuism freed itself
from form; but its chief fruit, which was loving faith,
either became rotten with erotic mysticism, a form of decay
which once threatened the fruit of the Golden Bough also,
or shrivelled into a dry husk: the sinner dies forgiven who
expires ejaculating Rania's Name. As the fruit of our
bough is different from this, so it is not that of its nearest
spiritual neighbour, Buddhism, either in the primitive
atheistic form or in the nihilistic idealism whose crowning
i
PREFACE
fruit is the Void. For, as this is no real fruit but its nega-
tion, Buddhism is left with nothing but the barren leaves
of rites and the thornless twigs of its passive doctrine, not
to injure others.
But the fruit of the Golden Bough is active love not
passive pity; its very dogma is that dogma is insufficient;
its pure religion and undefiled is this, to serve others; and
no bough can be broader: “In every nation he that fears
God and works righteousness is accepted of Him.” In a
word, historically the essence of the difference lies here:
All higher religions are a complex of early and late
growths; they all are either intense or broad as compared
with their origins. But one religion is more intense and
broader than any other. Other religions have been liberal,
not only Vishnuism but Zoroastrianism; others have been
intense, vital, like Mohammedanism; but only one has con-
centrated itself upon love of God in man and defined every
man as a brother. Christianity came not to destroy, but
to fulfil, to change Buddha's negative kindness into actual
devotion; to enlarge as well as to intensify the vision of
ages. Virile as Mohammedanism, gentle as Hinduism, cath-
olic as Greek mysticism, ethical as Hebraism; it differs, shall
we say, in surpassing; or is that to prejudge the case ?
Yet this Preface sums up, rather than prejudges. But
in the chapters which really lead to it, the writer has sought
to present each religion impartially and objectively. His
purpose has been to sketch religions not controversially but
historically, to set before his readers, who are presumed
to be already fairly well informed but not special stu-
dents, the main outlines of religious phenomena, as they
have' appeared and still appear in the world. As such
readers will see, he has been cramped by lack of space
as well as by personal limitations. Despite the generosity
of the publishers, who have permitted this book to outgrow
its projected stature, it has been difficult to compress so
great a matter into so small a compass. The author him-
self feels how curtly he has dismissed many phases on
3
PREFACE
which he would gladly have enlarged. He has indeed
suppressed almost as much as he has published and had
he not been assured that there was need of a manual of
this sort he would not have ventured to crowd so many
problems into one volume. The need was a practical one.
The weighty manual of Chantepie de la Saussaye, Lehrbuch
der Religionsgeschichte, not only is a two-volume encyclo-
pedia but it shares the disadvantage (together, it must be
admitted, with the advantage) of all encyclopedic works
in being written by various hands without correlation, so
that what is affirmed here is denied there and what is said
there is repeated here. Nevertheless, this will be a stand-
ard treatise for such students as can read German or may
prefer a French translation. Unhappily it has not yet been
done into English. Other manuals, some of them admir-
able, have been published, but the authors have generally
confined themselves to the higher aspects of religion. Of
these the writer would mention particularly the masterly
exposition of the great religions by Professor George F.
Moore, whose History of Religions, in two volumes, one
of which has already appeared, should be in the hands of
all advanced students, and Professor George A. Barton's
excellent synopsis of Classical and Oriental religions, called
the Religions of the World, which appeared after most of
the present volume was written.
The skeleton bibliographies appended to the chapters of
this History are intended chiefly to introduce the reader
to the literature and put him on the track of other books.
No attempt has been made to display titles, only to men-
tion a few important works, arranged withal neither alpha-
betically nor chronologically, but, in general, according to
the precedent reading matter of each chapter or in the
order in which the few volumes mentioned may most
advantageously be read. These books themselves cite
others and are often provided with more extensive bibliog-
raphies.
In regard to the rendering of words in the writer's own
PREFACE
special field, it has been his experience that in works of
this kind transliteration without diacritical marks is prefer-
able to that meticulous precision which attempts to render
foreign sounds through the inadequate medium of distorted
English letters. This attempt becomes really absurd when
to dot a nasal conceals the fact that the English nasal itself
is practically indistinguishable from the lingual nasal of
the original. If any letters are marked, they should be
the dentals, which in Sanskrit are really dental and are
pronounced quite differently from ours. No English
tongue without a special training will ever pronounce
Buddha correctly. In respect of the length of Sanskrit
vowels, the matter is somewhat other; but on the whole the
author prefers the modern Hindu and classical practice of
ignoring vowel-lengths in printing. If Demeter (not
Dêmêtêr), why Umâ? But for those really anxious to
know the length of Sanskrit vowels, hints have been given
in the index.
In conclusion, the writer desires to acknowledge his
indebtedness to several of his colleagues, without indeed
implicating them in any responsibility for what he has per-
haps inadequately set forth. The general editor of this
series, Professor E. Hershey Sneath, has given the writer
various useful suggestions and references, especially in
the province of European philosophy. The view that
Arabia did not belch forth Semites at intervals of half-mil-
lenniums is of course (as Semitic scholars will know)
that of Professor Albert T. Clay. A lecture on Hebrew
mysticism by Professor Frank C. Porter suggested the
distinction made between classes of Hebrew prophets.
Professor Benj. W. Bacon has kindly revised the notes on
the dates of New Testament writings. From his book,
mentioned but not explicitly as the source, was taken the
phrase which points the distinction between the doctrine
of Jesus and the doctrine about Jesus. An unintended
reticence, noticed too late, as to the names of two distin-
guished scholars may be rectified here. The “excellent
PREFACE
authority” cited on page 371 is the writer's friend and
colleague, Professor A. V. W. Jackson. The other eminent
scholar, to whom reference is made on page 550, is the
well-known writer on Roman institutions, Dr. W. Warde
Fowler.
New Haven,
September 8, 1918.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
PAGB
I DEFINITIONS, SOURCES, CLASSIFICATIONS OF RE-
LIGIONS · · · · · · · · · · · · I
II GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF PRIMITIVE RELI-
GIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
III AFRICAN RELIGIONS -- I, SPIRIT-LORE . . . . 24
2, FETISH AND IDOL . . . . . . . . ..
IV RELIGION OF THE AINUS AND SHAMANS. . . .
V POLYNESIAN RELIGIONS -I, SPIRITS, MYTHS. . 59
2, MANA AND TABOO . . . . . . . . . 67
VI RELIGIONS OF NORTH AMERICA ......-75
VII RELIGIONS OF Mexico, CENTRAL AND SOUTH
AMERICA . . . . . . . . . . 94
VIII RELIGION OF THE CELTS . . . . . . . . 120
IX RELIGION OF THE SLAVIC PEOPLES . . . . . 138
X RELIGION OF THE TEUTONS . . . . . . . 149
XI RELIGIONS OF INDIA. FROM THE VEDAS TO
BUDDHA . . . . . . . . . . . 170
XII BUDDHISM . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
XIII HINDU SECTARIAN RELIGIONS . . . . . . 205
.- XIV RELIGIONS OF CHINA. PRE-CONFUCIAN RELIGION 224
XV CONFUCIUS, LAO-TSE, TAOISM . . . . . . 249
*XVI RELIGIONS OF JAPAN, SHINTOISM AND BUDDHISM 275
XVII THE RELIGION OF EGYPT . . . . . . . . 309
XVIII BABYLONIAN AND ASSYRIAN RELIGION . . . . 344
XIX ZOROASTRIANISM . . . . . . · · 371
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
PAGE
XX THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL . . . . . . . . 414
XXI THE RELIGION OF MOHAMMED . . . . . . 452
XXII GREEK RELIGION . . . . . . . . . . 483
XXIII THE RELIGION OF THE ROMANS . . . . . . 516
XXIV THE RELIGION OF CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY . . 552
$
EDITOR'S PROSPECTUS
One of the notable developments of modern scholarship is
an increasing interest in the scientific study of religion. It
is safe to say that never before has religion been made the
subject of such careful and extended investigation as during
the last three decades. History, anthropology, psychology,
archaeology, comparative religion, and sociology have been
drawn upon to aid in tñe" determination and interpretation
of the facts of religious experience; — each of them mak-
ing a substantial contribution toward this important end.
Indeed! during this period a new science, the psychology of
religion, has come into being, and already a comparatively
large literature on this subject has been developed. Philos-
ophy, also, has felt the impulse of this interest, and, in the
more speculative fields of religious scholarship, a philosophy
of religion is rapidly supplanting dogmatic theology in the
effort to furnish an ultimate interpretation of the phenomena
of religious consciousness. Furthermore, application of the
historical method to the study of Old and New Testament
Literature has contributed toward a much better under-
standing of the Bible, and to a more intelligent appreciation,
and a higher valuation, of the Christian religion.
Further interest in religion is manifest in the widespread
movement in behalf of systematic religious education. Bi-
ology, genetic and child psychology, the psychology of ado-
lescence, and experimental pedagogy, are rendering valu-
able aid in the organization and application of curricula in
this important field. Thus far elementary and secondary
religious education has received more attention than reli-
gious education in the college. The time seems ripe for
more adequate education along these lines in colleges and
universities. For this purpose a special literature in the
history, psychology and philosophy of religion, and in Old
and New Testament Interpretation is necessary. The “Re-
EDITOR'S PROSPECTUS
ligious Science and Literature Series" is specially designed
to meet this need. Each book of the Series is written by a
well-known specialist, and is prepared with reference to
class-room work. The Series includes the following vol-
umes:
THE HISTORY OF RELIGION
(Ready)
E. Washburn Hopkins, Ph.D., LL.D.,
Professor of Sanskrit and Comparative Philology, Yale Uni-
versity
PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION
(In preparation)
Luther A. Weigle, Ph.D.,
Professor of Christian Nurture, Yale University
PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION
(In preparation)
Douglas Clyde Macintosh, Ph.D.,
Professor of Systematic Theology, Yale University
HISTORY AND LITERATURE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT (In preparation)
Charles Cutler Torrey, Ph.D., D.D.,
Professor of Semitic Languages, Yale University
HISTORY OF THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL
(Ready)
George A. Barton, Ph.D.,
Professor of Biblical Literature and Semitic Languages, Bryn
Mawr College
HISTORY AND LITERATURE OF THE NEW TESTAMENT (In preparation)
Henry Thatcher Fowler, Ph.D.,
Professor of Biblical Literature and History, Brown University :
LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS
(In preparation)
Edward Increase Bosworth, D.D.,
Professor of New Testament Language and Literature, and Dean
of Oberlin Seminary
A BOOK ABOUT THE ENGLISH BIBLE
(In press)
Josiah H. Penniman, Ph.D., LL.D.,
Professor of English Literature and Vice-provost of the Uni-
versity of Pennsylvania
HISTORY OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION
(In preparation)
John Winthrop Platner, D.D.,
Professor of Ecclesiastical History, Andover Theological Semi-
nary
E. HERSHEY SNEATH.
Yale University.
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
CHAPTER ONE
DEFINITIONS, SOURCES AND CLASSIFICATIONS OF RELIGIONS
A CERTAIN Professor of Rhetoric at Milan, Augustine by
name, seeking to define time, said: “ Ask me, and I do
not know; ask me not, and I know." Every one knows
time, feels conscious of it, recognizes that man exists in
time. Yet who can define it properly, or say that it ever
began or never began? So it is with religion. We are
conscious of it, we feel that it exists and that we exist as
religious beings; and each of us may know what his own
religion is. Yet who can say of religion in general that it
is this or that, and who would venture to assert that his
own religion is the only religion? To take a concrete ex-
ample, what shall we say of a moral atheist and of an
immoral theist, are they religious or irreligious ?
*Nevertheless, we must, as students of religion, attempt
some definition of what we are to study, and for the pur-
poses of religious history this definition must exclude par-
ticulars and include what is common to all the religions we
are to investigate. Now what is conimon to all religions is
belief in a superhuman power and an adjustment of human
activities to the requirements of that power, such an adjust-
ment as may enable the individual believer to exist more
happily. As physical life must be adjusted to its environ-
ment, so mental life must be adjusted, and this adjustment
is expressed by the activities exercised in view of the re-
ligious belief. Our definition then must imply belief, but it
should also emphasize the activity, mental and physical,
which results from that belief,
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
spirilu in our det produce thatmate religia
On the other hand, we ought not to intrude into the defi-
nition any implication or expression of the answer to the
query whether man has an innate religious faculty or merely
impressions that produce that faculty, and we may not even
imply in our definition that religion necessitates a belief in
spiritual powers, because such belief is not essential. To
put into the definition what cannot be omitted and to omit
what ought not to be put in: Religion is Squaring human
life with superhuman life. In the effort to adjust oneself
to superhuman life, belief is assumed, but the definition
rather stresses that adjustment without which religion be-
comes pretence or hypocrisy. As to belief in a superhuman
power, even Positivism, with its “veneration for the power.
which exercises a dominant influence over life” (Frederic
Harrison's definition of religion), really reveres a non-
material, if not spiritual power, inasmuch as the power vene-
rated cannot be explained in terms of matter or material
force and is beyond the control of humanity, while directing
it. And so too Buddhism, which has been a thorn in the
flesh of those who have tried to make it fit into their more
elaborate definitions of religion, is included as a real re-
ligion in this definition, for Karma is a superhuman power
which lies outside of sense-experience.1
It may perhaps be objected that such a definition as has
been proposed is too cold or too vague and does not cor-
respond to what we feel religion should be; it ought to
contain something which implies a belief in the immortality
of the soul, in God, and in our feeling of dependence on
him. But this is exactly what has destroyed the value of
many famous definitions of religion, which have substituted
what men think ought to be the hall-mark of religion for
that which is actually found to be essential. For in adopt-
1 Although Buddha was an atheist, Tiele represents Buddhism as
having "Buddha for its God," simply because Tiele's definition re-
quires a belief in God as the base of religion. And Sir Monier-
Williams, confronted with the same problem as to the status of
Buddhism, boldly declared that Buddhism is no religion at all!
DEFINITIONS
ing any such definition we drop back into the attitude of
those who make a distinction between the false and the true,
as they understand it, the test of real religion; who say, or
think, that what they themselves believe is religion and what
they do not believe is superstition.
Yet the definitions of religion furnished by others are of
value to the student, who ought not to be without such
historical background and to whom it is important to know
what other investigators of religion mean when they use
that word. Even to glance at the interpretation of religion
conveyed by philology is not a waste of time.
To begin with some of these unconscious revelations given
by man's crystallized thought, the Greek sebas and the Latin
reverentia imply a theory of religious origins still taught in
our schools. Sebas is "shrinking" and reverentia is “ti-
midity," and before reverentia became piety or sebas had
formed its child eusebeia, these were the earliest verbal
equivalents of religion. The word religion itself was de-
fined by the later Romans as justitia adversus deos. Cicero
derived it from relego, implying a careful knowledge of the
needs of the gods -- religentem esse oportet religiosum nefas
(be religious but not superstitious). Others connected
the word with lex, law, and religo, implying an obligation.
Earlier still is the notion of religion furnished by Plato in
the mocking challenge of the Euthyphro: "Is not religion
perhaps merely a science of begging and getting ?" This
last explanation of religion takes us direct to the modern
theory of Lyall,1 who regards the principle of do ut des as
the “foundation of natural religion.” Andrew Lang has
remarked that this is virtually the definition of Frazer, who
makes religion “a propitiation or conciliation of powers su-
perior to man.” 2
The definition of Seneca, who says that “to know God
and imitate him” is religion, brings us to the practical diffi-
1 Sir A. C. Lyall, Asiatic Studies, London, 1899, ii, p. 172.
2 Andrew Lang, Magic and Religion, London, 1901, D. 59.
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
culty alreadyan a definitioth definitions wonscienc
S relie; then exas civili
culty already discussed. This admirable definition is rather
a. precept than a definition; it is not what religion is but.
what it should be. So with definitions which make religion
imply the love of God, the command of conscience, the feel-
ing of trust in God, etc. From the point of view of our
study, Schleiermacher's “consciousness of contact between
the soul and the universe,” though a noble definition of re-
ligion, is too noble; it does not apply to the religion of
savages. Bishop Butler's famous definition, “Religion is
the belief in one God or Creator and Moral Governor of
the world and in a future state of retribution,” would today
exclude a host of religious civilized people of his own
church, as it even then excluded hosts who were not be-
lievers in his religion. The same may be said of James
Martineau's “Religion is a belief in an everlasting God,
that is, a divine mind and will ruling the universe and hold-
ing moral relations with mankind.” Noticeable is it that
these theologians regard religion as wholly an intellectual
conviction, with not a word to imply that man does anything
as part of his religion. On the other hand, we have to be on
guard just as carefully against those who do not regard
intelligence but feeling as the one and only thing in reli-
gion. “The mark of real religion,” says Pfleiderer, “is
sentiment.” Tiele, a professed student of religion but more
a theologian, agrees with Pfleiderer; while Réville goes so
far as to make this sentiment love; but it is clear that here
also “real religion” is merely the author's religion. Tiele,
however, resolves religion into “words and deeds," and that
is an advance on the definition given by the philosophers
and theologians cited above.1
So, to define religion as the “ determination of human life
by the sentiment of a bond uniting the human mind to that
mysterious mind whose domination of the world and of
itself it recognizes and to whom it delights in feeling itself
1 Tiele, Elements of Religion, London, 1877, makes words and
deeds the expression of conceptions and emotions, but he takes
emotion as the starting-point.
f
DEFINITIONS
united” (Réville) is much more than can be said of many
religions, and the same fault vitiates Max Müller's other-
wise defective definition of religion as “a longing after the
infinite” and “a mental faculty which enables man to ap-
prehend the infinite," the latter being only a little more
incredible than the former, as was felt by the author him-
self.1
From the philosophers we do indeed get one definition
that might answer for every phase of belief. This is Ed-
ward Caird's, as given in a popular article, when he says
that “a man's religion is the expression of his summed up
meaning and the purport of his whole consciousness of
things ” ; but this implies merely a mental state and attitude
toward life and does not imply the recognition of anything
entiating it from philosophy, which may or may not recog-
nize a superhuman element. One may of course arbitrarily
define religion as being devoid of such an element, just as a
painter may say that art is his religion or Heine that blaue
Augen are his heaven; but he is simply using a well-known
conception in an extraordinary manner. Virtually equiva-
lent to Réville's definition is a recent attempt to define re-
ligion psychologically as “the endeavour to secure the recog-
that are believed to evoke some agency different from the
ordinary ego of the individual, or from other merely human
beings, and that imply a feeling of dependence upon this
agency." 3
On the whole, the anthropologists have defined religion in
better terms than have the students of comparative religion.
They at least know that the Andaman Islander does not ap-
prehend the infinite or feel himself delightfully united to a
1 In his Gifford Lectures of 1891, Müller attempted to explain
away the definition given in those of 1880.
2 Metaphysical Magazine, June, 1902.
3 See W. K. Wright in the American Journal of Theology, July,
1912, p. 385f.
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
mysterious mind. But the trouble with the definitions of
the anthropologists is that each reflects a one-sided theory.
This is the case with E. B. Tylor's “belief in spiritual be-
ings," while as a definition it ignores activities set in motion
by belief. Mere belief is not religion. One may believe
in the moon without having religious relations with the
moon, and so one may believe in spirits without their mak-
ing part of one's religion. On the other hand, when
Saussaye defines religion as the "belief in superhuman
powers and worship of them," there is a vitiating error in
the assumption that religion implies worship, for there may
be no worship and yet a change of conduct may be religious,
be, in fact, the sole outer activity resulting from the reli-
gious belief.1 Finally it may be said of Arnold's memorable
dictum (religion is "morality touched with emotion ") that
from an historical or comparative point of view it is mean-
ingless. Some religions are immoral, as Arnold would de-
fine morality, while some are unmoral, or have no obvious
connection with morality.
Thus the history of religion is simply the story of how
different communities have succeeded in adjusting their
lives to what they have believed to be a living power, not
identical with their own power but superhuman, even if
they themselves may expect eventually, when they too have
become more than human, to obtain a similar power or
become identified with it. They may even expect as human
beings to control this power, but it is not a power they
themselves possess in the same degree as does the religious
object. We make here, provisionally, no distinction between
magic and religion, for, as will be seen, the two are not abso-
lutely separate. They are, in fact, closely inter-related.
Both at least respect a superhuman power. It is, moreover,
a living power. The heathen in his blindness bows down to
wood and stone, but to him they are not mere wood and stone.
1 This is ignored by the French sociologists. Thus M. Durkheim
defines religious phenomena as croyances obligatoires connexes de
pratigues définies (i.e., of taboo, etc.), and religion as a unified sys-
tem of beliefs and practices (see below).
SOURCES
SOURCES AND NATURE OF THE EVIDENCE
Our present knowledge of religious phenomena is based
upon various bodies of evidence, none of them unimpeach-
able. Since it is quite as important to know the value of
the evidence as to be acquainted with the source and the
matter itself, it will be well to range the sources in an
ascending scale according to their comparative worth.
First. The linguistic evidence. Although, as in the ex-
ample given from the Greek sebas, linguistic evidence may
occasionally be of considerable value, yet it is more likely
to lead astray than to lead aright. It is not evidence that
can be accepted, even on the authority of an expert, without
great reserve. Especially is etymological evidence of ques-
tionable validity. It is liable to be overthrown at any time
and is never much more than learned guesswork. Theories
based on the identity of Yahweh with a word meaning
"hurrah," or on the common origin of god-names in differ-
ent branches even of the same race may be true, but they
are often as lacking in truth as they are commonly full of
ingenuity. Many of them are like a certain theory of the
identity of the Aryan and Semitic races, based on the self-
evident fact that Abraham is “a Brahman."
Another point in . regard to linguistic evidence is often
overlooked. This is that even when the derivation of a
word is fairly certain, the etymology itself may mislead us,
because words change from their etymological meaning and
the concept of a divinity which appears to be revealed by a
true derivation may not be at all the concept of the divinity
as it was when the particular word was applied as a name
to the divinity. For example, deus in Latin no more means
“shining” than god in English means “invoked," although
the etymology of deus and of god point to these conceptions,
respectively, as the meaning back of the historical words.
The past meaning is not often the present meaning and the
two must be carefully distinguished. Further, the concept
of any divinity, however named, is from its inception condi-
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
tioned by the mental and social status of the community. A
day called Thursday means the day of Thor and thor is
thunder, but for all that we do not recognize a “day of
Thor" or a " day of thunder," and no more did the historic
Germans worship a god thunder. In fact, far from being
a mere noise in the sky, Thor was a heavenly man with a
decent family of his own and with intimate relations with
his clan on earth. To interpret him in any historical period
as mere sound would be an unsound interpretation (to put
an old pun to a new use), and so, generally, the names of
gods do not really reflect the nature of gods at any historical
period, and they may never have done so. For back of
the time we know the god there is only the word; but how
it was applied we cannot tell, whether to designate a god,
a devil, or a sound per se (in the case of Thor), for we
know nothing as to the worship of this now unknown
being.
Second. Archaeological evidence. Testimony of the
monuments of (a) the neolithic age, and (b) of later times.
Meagre and uncertain is the earliest evidence of religion.
We learn that skulls were trepanned and because savages now
trepan in order to let out the soul, therefore (it is argued)
the men of neolithic times believed in soul. For the same
reason they are thought to have believed in a future life.
A nascent fetishism has also been predicated of neolithic
man because of the objects found buried with his remains,
which to others seem proof of a belief in a future life.
The testimony, such as it is, is the more uncertain because of
the uncertainty when the bronze age, as compared with the
neolithic age, begins. But it is not of moment when the ani-
mal man began to be religious, especially since we can trace
the religious elements as far back as the bronze age. The
objects buried with the corpse may show that at this period
men believed in a happy future life of eating and drinking,
when children would need their playthings and men their
weapons and customary implements. The cave-pictures of
France may point to a prehistoric magical use of ancient
SOURCES
rs who desen religions. Om of own religilere we
figures. Prehistoric stone circles may be of religious sig-
nificance, but they may be without religious bearing.
Third. The testimony of ancient writers. Here we
must distinguish between descriptions of own religions and
appraisals of foreign religions. Owing to the fact that
the writers who described the religions of others were gen-
erally ignorant of them or prejudiced and as a rule got all
their information at second hand, the value of this testimony
is extremely variable; often it is most valuable when the
author is not trying to describe religion at all but, by acci-
dent, as it were, lets out a secret of religion known not even,
to himself. The most obvious fault in this class of evi-
dence, whether furnished by native or foreigner, is its de-
ficiency. Whole chapters of religion remain unnoticed,
either because the author is ignorant or because he chooses
to ignore certain features. Homer, though a Greek, gives
but a restricted view of Greek religion; therefore a Greek
religion of the Homeric age based only on Homer is incor-
rect. Tacitus gives a foreigner's appraisement of the reli-
gion of the ancient Germans; but it is by no means to be
taken as exhaustive or even correct as far as it goes. The
testimony of literature anyway, it must be remembered, is
only the testimony of those who were able to compose, to
leave essays of lasting worth. Thus almost all the testimony
of this sort comes from the upper intellectual stratum and
gives a one-sided impression. In all such testimony we
learn more about the higher side of religion, less about the
lower; more of gods, less of goblins. Homer shows us the
court-beauties of heaven. The poets of the Rig Veda are
concerned less with demonology than with the worship of
the great gods. But all the time, both in Greece and in
India, the lower cult was there; only it is not recorded by
the poets.
Fourth. Ethnography. From the study of race-pecul-
iarities by trained modern observers is to be obtained the
most valuable evidence in regard to religious phenomena
in our own day. But, ideal as this testimony might be, much
Io
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
of it is vitiated by the fact that the observer is not trained;
much, by the fact that he is trained to see everything
through a theory of religious origins, which influences his
testimony. It does not make a real difference whether one
be an untrained missionary or a prejudiced scientist. All
this testimony has to be sifted with great care and even
then some of it is entirely worthless. Taken as a whole,
however, of course the body of material is of inestimable
worth. Fortunately we do not have to depend on isolated
or individual observation and generally the reports are mu-
tually corrective. It is only necessary to warn the student
against trusting too entirely the word of any one authority,
however honest and learned he may be. This source con-
tains all the data collected by comparative ethnography, in-
cluding folk-lore and the translations of original hymns and
legends.
CLASSIFICATION OF RELIGIONS
· Attempts to classify religions have all failed, because
there are no clear lines of demarcation between them.
Classifications suggested are, for example, natural and re-
demptive, natural and moral, tribal, national, and univer-
sal. But natural and ethical religions cannot be sharply
sundered, and the traits of one race reappear in another.
Unsatisfactory is even the minuteness of De la Grasserie,
who has made twenty-two divisions of religions. The clas-
sification of Réville, into polytheistic, monotheistic, national,
and nomistic religions, indicates, at best, striking points of
difference between important groups. Of all the distinc-
tions suggested, those between egoistic and altruistic and
natural and ethical are perhaps the worst, yet even national
and nomistic are terms largely exchangeable. We shall con-
sider religions solely as expressions of various stages of
culture found among various races.
Yet even in the loosest grouping we must guard against
one error, the implication of an assumed order of progres-
1 Compare Jastrow, Study of Religion, New York, 1901, p. 95.
1
CLASSIFICATION
II
ght have was worshat if, thoun indicates ound that
sion. For example, if animism be discussed before natur-
ism, the implication is that the former is more primitive.
Again, retrogression in religion must be reckoned with. A
religion may have fallen from its former estate and appear
as mere devil-worship, whereas in fact it is only a higher
religion that has become decadent. Also chance evidence
may lead to error. For example, animism has been predi-
cated as the “ earliest form” of religion on the ground that
the trepanned skull of prehistoric man indicates a belief
in soul or spirit. But what if, though improbable, the
earliest religion was worship of the sun or moon? No
trace might have been left of this belief, whereas the skull
has remained,
One of the oldest classifications of religions is that which
separates them all into orthodox and heterodox. But a
little study will show that no religion is altogether hetero-
dox. Yet to realize this the study is necessary and it must
be pursued with the Buddhist’s “open mind.” If we take
up the superstitions that have grouped themselves about the
practice of taboo, for instance, only to find them risible or
disgusting, we shall lose their ethical and religious bearing.
Difficult as it is, we must endeavour rather to put ourselves
in the position of the taboo-fearing savage and see what
this brother intended and accomplished. God gave him no
Moses, but he evolved some of the ten commandments; his
taboos were his tables of the law.
Especially is this attitude desirable in the study of higher
religions, where heterodoxy almost blends with orthodoxy.
We must examine not with hostility but with sympathetic
interest the reason why the Hindu is almost but not quite
persuaded. And as with religions, so with theories of re-
ligion. Here care and candor are needed. It is careless
to assert that there is no race without religion before defin-
ing religion and examining all races. It is careless to in-
duce from the data of one field that the Semitic theory of
sacrifice explains all sacrifice. Candor here, too, implies
toleration, to listen hopeful of gain to all theories, to dub
12
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
3
no school or scholar “all wrong." All schools see some
truth; no sober scholar is all wrong. Animist and naturist
may learn much from each other; worshippers of the Year-
demon may reap a harvest from the devotees of ghosts;
even the mythologist and the anthropologist, not to speak
of the sociologist, might conceivably lie down together, not
only in safety but to their mutual advantage.
Theories in regard to religious phenomena are very old.
Six or seven hundred years before Christ, the Hindus were
already arguing whether their chief devil had been an actual
person or was merely a natural phenomenon. A few cen-
turies later a Hindu materialist defended the opinion (main-
tained two thousand years later by Toland),1 that religion
was the creation of selfish priests. Others argued that it
was a gift of God. But neither with such theories nor with
others has the history of religions to do, except as they
involve or ignore important data. It has not to establish
any theory of the origin of religion but to exhibit the facts
oñ which different theories have been built. Thus we shall
not discuss as theories Mannhardt's hypothesis of religion
originating in the cult of vegetation-spirits, nor Robertson
Smith's view that sacrifice begins as a communion-feast, nor
Usener's idea that all gods are at first functional powers,
nor Sir J. G. Frazer's ever-changing interpretation of totem-
ism and his contention that redemption begins with the
regicide, though we shall have occasion to refer to them all.
For the same reason it will be unnecessary to examine the
theory of Messrs. Durkheim and Mauss that the collective
rather than the individual mind originates religion, a theory
which practically maintains that it is impossible to under-
stand any religion other than that of the human group in
which each is born; which group has a consciousness so
unique that no outsider can do more than register its ob-
jective phenomena. Hence modern French sociologists dis-
approve of all attempts to appreciate sympathetically any
1 John Toland, Christianity not Mysterious, London, 1696;
Jastrow, op. cit., p. 15.
· CLASSIFICATION
religion, more particularly those “pre-logical,” remote in
time, but also those remote in place. They believe with
the Hindu that only a snake can see a snake's legs and they
are not altogether wrong. Man is the product of his group's
experience. Nevertheless, it will not be a loss if the stu-
dent begins by trying to understand the feeling as well as
the formal ritual of the other man; and it is still question-
able whether one man is not more like another because of
his humanity than unlike because of his social group;
whether, in short, pre-logical and logical are proper substi-
tutes for primitive and civilized.
Finally, a word as to the utility of our study. It is with
religions as with languages, “he who knows one knows
none"; that is, he who knows only his own does not know
it well. A man may be a good Buddhist without knowing
Christianity, but through knowing Christianity he will be a
better Buddhist; for he will learn what the two religions
have in common and thus realize that what is common can-
not be unique. So, knowing better his own, he will become
a better Buddhist, since not to know is to be circumscribed,
which leads to the misunderstanding of relative values,
even, at times, to the acceptance, in evaluating one's own
religion, of the adventitious for the essential, the packing
for the package, the myth for the spirit.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Morris Jastrow, Jr., The Study of Religion, New York, 1901.
C. H. Toy, Introduction to the History of Religion, Boston,
1913.
Andrew Láng, The Making of Religion, London, 1900.
C. C. J. Webb, Group Theories of Religion and the Individual,
New York, 1916.
CHAPTER TWO
GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF PRIMITIVE RELIGIONS
In using the word primitive of early undeveloped forms of
religion it must be understood that primitive is not synony-
mous with primordial. The word is applied exactly as it
is commonly applied to primitive art, to connote art found
among peoples at a low stage today or in ancient times,
With some exceptions the simpler form is the more primi-
tive form of thought, whether in art or religion, rather
more so in fact in religion than in art, as when the Roman
advanced industrially to the iron age and yet used a stone
knife for sacrifice, and the Teuton used a stone hammer in
the religious rite of settling a boundary, and the Australian,
to whom even stone art is modern, still uses a sharpened
stick for the rite of circumcision. But there are two as-
pects of religion, creed and cult. They advance unequally.
Creed always outstrips cult. What is no longer believed is
still practised; the rite preserves as myth the older creed.
That religions may all be traced back to one primordial
religion is not wholly a narrow “orthodox” view. In this
form, however, it is still held by both the Hindu and the
Christian of very conservative type. For example, about
two thousand years ago Manu, the Hindu law-giver, de-
clared, what is still believed by orthodox Brahmans, that
one true religion was revealed to man in the beginning and
that all later types of religion have been vain divergencies
from this divine model, and Dr. Nassau, in his useful book
on fetishism, says: “ All religions had but one source and
that a pure one. From it have grown perversions varying
.
14
GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS
15
in their proportions of truth and error," almost as if he were
translating Manu.?
But, with less universal scope and with no implication of
divine origin, other modern writers have maintained that
religion has spread out from one centre and infected or
affected the whole known world, or, more conservatively, a
great part of the world. Thus the Akkadian theory of Mr.
J. F. Hewitt 2 attempts to explain the religions of France
and Mexico as due to the Akkadians of 15000 B. C. in an
ingenious but not very judicious flood of speculation. An-
other theory, somewhat like it but sober enough to have been
adopted by some scientists, is the theory of adaptionism
advocated by O. Gruppe. Starting with a study of Greek
Cults in relation to Oriental religions, the author has tried
to show that religion originated in the deification of intoxi-
cants in western Asia and thence extended itself in all di-
rections. Such anthropologists as have been influenced by
this theory accordingly hold that northern Europe, orig-
inally irreligious, received religion from Asia Minor after
the glacial period and this they think is the reason why the
remains of corpses are found in the kitchenmiddens, lack
of burial proving lack of religion. But perhaps friends
were buried in the sea and foes were left unburied. It is
at any rate a slender proof of irreligion.
The latest theory of this sort is that of Professor Grafton
E. Smith, who, rejecting the idea that the human mind
works out in the same way in different localities, has sought
to prove 3 that mummification, megalithic architecture, and
idol-making, with the subsidiary factors of sun-worship,
serpent-worship, and circumcision, first arose c.3000 B. C.
in Egypt and spread thence all over Asia, Polynesia, and
South America. How the religious migration took place
Mr. Smith promises to explain in a future voluine. His
1
1s
1 R. H. Nassau, Fetichisın in West Africa, New York, 1904, p. 23.
2 History and Chronology of the Myth-Making Age, London and
New York, 1901.
8 The Migrations of Early Culture, New York, 1916.
16
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
hes. Detween probabil
theory has an advantage over the others mentioned in that
it does not attempt to prove more than that certain religious
features have migrated.
It is indeed probable that there has been religious inter-
course between European and Asiatic races from very early
times. But we do not know the extent of Sumerian influ-
ence upon the Semite, Semitic upon the Egyptian, Finnish
upon the Teuton; still less do we know how much Chinese
religion was affected by the West or in how far early Ro-
man religion borrowed from the East; least of all, whether
Asia influenced America. In the narrower field of Mediter-
ranean cults, it is not so much a question of race as of
tradition. There are racial characteristics which affect re-
ligion but there is no general Semitic as opposed to a gen-
eral Aryan religion. Fundamentally, primitive religious
characteristics are human not racial.
These characteristics are not only human in the sense of
universal, but, what is more important, they are human in
the sense that the religious attitude is not a peculiar atti-
tude, but it is the attitude assumed toward other humans.
There has been a prolonged discussion on the idle question
whether magic or religion is the “child." The argument
in favour of magic as prior to religion was that religion is
public, magic is private; religion propitiates, magic coerces;
and when man found that he could not get what he wanted
by coercion he tried propitiation. It is assumed further
that a being coerced is inimical, a being propitiated is be-
nevolent, and spirits are first regarded as inimical. On the
other hand, it is granted that there is a form of magic which-
is practised without regard to a superhuman power. This
has been called "primitive science." Like makes like;
sticking thorns into an image, or melting it, produces a simi-
1 That all cultural ideas arose but once and have spread by loan
to one race after another and that there is no common human psy-
chology, this is the basis of the Methode der Ethnologie of F.
Graebner, Heidelburg, 1911.
2 See Darmesteter, Selected Essays, Boston, 1895, p. 155.
GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS
17
lar effect on the one imaged; pouring out water produces
rain.
But the primitive savage, apart from his primitive sci-
ence, treats his spirits exactly as he treats his human neigh-
bours. When he wants a thing, he gets it either by coercion
or by propitiation, as seems best. His spirits are just like
his neighbours, neither beneficent nor inimical, but good or
bad on occasion. Even in magical ceremonies the savage
adopts the “religious attitude."
The Australians are said to be without religion; at any
rate they are chiefly concerned with magical ceremonies to
produce increase of crops. To do this they recite charms.
But prayer and propitiation are the outstanding features of
this magic. They "sing the horn,” for example, and their
song is a charm, but, like charm from carmen, the song
invokes a power which has volition. When the Australian
invokes lightning, he invokes what is to him a conscious
being having a will to respond or not. He imagines volition
even in a member of the body or in dust, because he cannot
do otherwise, not yet having reached the point where he
can think of matter in any other way. Especially anything
lively enough to move is alive, and what is alive is, like him-
self, a being with a will. But, even without apparent sign
of life, any instrument is to him a will-possessing being.
Thus, to punish a man who has stolen his wife, the Aus-
tralian savage makes an instrument like a knife and “kneel-
ing before it," a religious not coercive attitude, sings to
it a request to kill the injurer. As Messrs. Spencer and
Gillen say, “ the magic (both the influence and the charmed
object are called 'magic') is regarded as an evil spirit.” 1
In this “land without religion," eclipse is caused by an
"evil spirit,” a' term not plainly defined but wavering be-
tween a personal and impersonal power.
There can be no clear understanding of the foundation
of religion without the recognition of the fact that man has
In this are called magic churer
1 The Native Tribes of Central Australia, London, 1899, p. 549.
18
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
passed through a stage where he still fails to discriminate
between matter and spirit. Before a belief in freed spirits
is possible, man must be able to abstract spirit from body.
But, in the thought of the lowest savage, matter and spiritual
power are so interrelated that there is no body without
conscious power and no spirit without body. Even in com-
paratively high religions, such as that of the Vedic poets
of India, plough and drum are conscious volitive powers,
as much so as the sun and other phenomena expressing
active life and will. Samoyeds and Finns worship objects
without recognition of spirit detached from a natural basis.
Some Africans today are unable to distinguish between mat-
ter and spirit.
In view of these various considerations, we must start
with the rejection of any theory that presupposes the pri-
ority of either religion or magic; that is, we must reject both
the animism of Spencer, Tylor, Réville, and Jevons and the
naturism of Pfleiderer and Menzies. The history of reli-
gion cannot be traced back to a more complex psychosis
than that of today's savage. But that savage shows that he
cannot imagine in other phenomena what he does not recog-
nize in himself. What he recognizes, the lowest savage, is
a life-power or potency so diffused that all parts of the
body possess their different “souls.” His mind cannot dis-
tinguish between soul and body or between subjective and
objective. The object to which his vague mumblings of
hope and fear are directed is neither god nor devil nor a
power of any sort as a person; it is rather the potency called
mana or orenda.
But it is not (and here even so clever a writer as Jane
Harrison has failed to understand the matter) a special de-
posit in an individual of any universal power. There is no
such primitive fore-shadowing of pantheism. The savage
thinks concretely; he does not generalize; above all he has
never thought of orenda or mana as one universal power of
which he and his rival and his object of devotion have each
a part. His mana is his own; that of the chief or of the
GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS
19
is etnon et there, nd prop
animal is theirs; just as his physical strength and theirs are
not the same strength.
The Junglemen of Chota Nagpur are about as low intel-
lectually as any savages. Their religious sense has been
well summed up by a trained observer in these words:
“ The indefinite something which they fear and attempt to
propitiate is not a person. The idea which lies at the root
of their religion is that of power or rather of many powers,
the shifting and shadowy company of unknown powers or
influences making for evil rather than for good, which re-
sides in the primeval forest, in the crumbling hills, in the
rushing river, in the spreading tree; which gives its spring
to the tiger, its venom to the snake, which generates jungle
fever, and walks abroad in the terrible guise of cholera,
smallpox, or murrain. Closer than this he does not define
the object to which he offers his victim, or whose symbol
hę daubs with red at the appointed season. Some sort of
power is there and that is enough for him.” 1
So in fetishism and witchcraft there is not that antago-
nism between fearing the inimical and propitiating the
beneficent power which the theory of magic upholds; nor
is the object sharply defined. But there is this in favour of
the animistic theory, that whereas the mysterious object of
religious regard in natural phenomena remains part of the
indiscrete material-immaterial, in the case of soul in man or
animal the savage argues from his own experience in
dreams and hence believes in ghosts material but invisible,
not visible-invisible as, for example, the waterfall-power.
But it is of interest to see that even in the magical stage,
where the power or potency is scarcely defined, the religious
apparatus is already at work. At Seville one finds a ca-
thedral where the altar in time past served as a refuge, in-
violable because hedged with divinity, for the criminal; un-
approachable save to the initiate. There, too, to this day
the priests still dance the recessional, unconsciously imitating
savage precedents in both regards, and religious drama has
1 Risley in Census for India, 1901, Part I, 352f.
20
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
been enacted in mystery plays, as religious processions still
reflect similar mysteries. That the participants believe in
ghosts and spirits, in a future life, and a being above, is
but another reflection from an immemorial past.
For these traits are those characteristic of many primi-
tive religions; they may be said to be the religious basis
of the world. For first, as to the spiritual belief, even the
Pygmies of Africa, who seem to have no other religious re-
spect, believe in a life after death in the form of serpent-
reincarnation and for three days weep and sing over their
dead, though they have no fetishes, idols, or totems, and
dance only for sport. Then the savages of Queensland,
and the same is true of those of New Holland, believe in
evil spirits, though they make no sacrifices and have no idols.
In Tierra del Fuego the natives have scarcely a religious
belief save in a sort of giant or man-god, who knows men's
words and acts and influences the weather. Ordinarily a
higher spirit, when recognized at all, is an inactive being, as
among the Patagonians, who believe in evil spirits and a
passive higher spirit, having apparently no other creed ex-
cept the expectation of living after death in a pleasant
grove. This expectation, however, is not by any means
universal. Often it is found in regard to a few elect souls,
but not for all. Elsewhere there is rank disbelief. Thus
the Aru Islanders believe in spiritual powers, scarcely in
spirits, but say pessimistically, mati mati sudah, “ dead when
dead (and that is) the end (of you). Compare the old
Roman epitaphs with their non sum non curo. But usually
there is a vague expectation of existence after death or the
“expectation of a vague existence," such as that attributed
to the Head-hunters of Borneo.1
The formal side of a religion which is still undeveloped
is surprisingly illustrated in the case of the Australians.
Here a people“ without religion” in their magic ritual wear
1 These savages change their religion according to their economic
condition, those that have become agricultural adopting new spirits
to suit their new way of living.
GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS
21
masks to represent ancestral totems, as in some higher real
religions, and act out what is virtually a religious drama or
the prototype of drama. Then the cloistered implements
of their ceremonies make the place where they are hidden
a sort of holy ground, within which no slaughter may take
place and from which the profane are barred. The ances-
tors from whom they believe themselves descended are half-
beașt creatures, like the ancestor of the Athenians, Kekrops,
who had a serpent-tail. They are said to believe in a pas-
sive Big Man called Cutter-out or Maker (compare touets,
a patristic title of the Creator), though it is not certain that
he is their own invention. They believe in a double soul
and in transmigration. Each man has a soul destined after
death to pass into another body of man or beast of the
same totem. This soul is duly mourned (the mourning
rites also have analogues in higher religions) and is then
driven away lest it annoy the survivors, a trait found in
many other cases. But besides this soul there is another
which is never incorporated. It accompanies the first in all
its transmigrations, but is itself an undying soul. Another
belief should be noticed in this regard. We think of totems
as animal and vegetable, but the Australian totem-objects
spiritized as powers include natural phenomena, such as sun
and lightning. In the invocation to lightning, therefore,
these savages stand on a plane uniting totemism and na-
ture-worship.
The more one studies religion the inore natural it seems
both in its origin and in its expression. There are innumer-
able complex expressions of religion, but they are not mys-
terious, though they appear to be so because they are inter-
twined in a confusing way. But the savage with whom re-
ligion begins is a simple fellow and as logical as one could
expect. He sees himself face to face with mysterious pow-
ers which (whom) he meets every day. Above all he faces
two great mysteries, life and death. To these also, as to his
1 Pace the school of the pre-logical savage, based on the idea that
all mystery is pre-logical.
22
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
daily objects of doubt or fear, he tries for safety's sake to
adjust himself. Hence the almost universal element of the
dance. For life comes through birth and the impulse to
bring birth, be it of children, or of animals, or of grain, must,
he thinks, be furthered by the same sensuous motions which
he experiences in person and sees expressed even in animals.
Peacocks, for example, in a suitable clime bring the mat-
ing-dance before him. Hence the dance for productivity
which marks even the lowest savages. Thus the Aleuts,
between Kamchatka and Alaska, have scarcely any reli-
gious expression besides dancing naked on the snow with
masks to prevent the ghosts from being seen. They bridge
the birth-dance and the death-dance, for the latter is in
honour of the ghosts, who incited thereby will bring pro-
ductivity. Hence the dance at the grave as well as the
dance for birth. But there is also another element in the
dance. It intoxicates if pursued madly enough, and this
intoxication, like that of liquor, makes the savage imagine
himself possessed of a supernatural power. Hence, when
the ghosts are to be ejected, they are best confronted by
some one thus possessed, even if, as in Shamanism, the
supernatural power is itself a ghostly power acquired by a
ghost-controller. All the many secret societies of the savage
have to do with natural mysteries interwoven with the tribal
traditions. On the question of primitive ethics as religious
we shall speak later.
Another characteristic of primitive religions is the out-
ward expression of reverence by means of memorial stones.
They are the prototypes of churches. But, unless the cause
is known, errors are apt to be made in interpreting such
stones. A Stonehenge may be the monument of sun-wor-
shippers, but there are other stone circles which are like
those of Stonehenge and yet have nothing to do with the
sun. For example, there is a miniature stonehenge in Bur-
mah, but it merely commemorates human activities. It is,
too, a common practice among the Fiji Islanders to set up a
stone in memory of every man eaten by oneself. One such
GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS
23
cannibal has a record of nine hundred stones, which, set in
a circle, might lead to the notion that it commemorated
something quite different.
In this chapter we have considered some general charac-
teristics of primitive religions, man's attitude toward the
spiritual world, the expression of that attitude through fear,
entreaty, by means of dance and spell, and the primitive
monument of religious significance, not only because we
shall find them recurring again and again, but also because
they show how the higher religions rest upon savage founda-
tions; not to belittle the higher, but on the contrary to let
it be seen at the outset how these higher religions, though
they rest upon the lower, have yet raised themselves far
above their original level, and, conversely, how even in the
lowest religions there is already, as if inherent in man's
nature, the hope of something beyond this life and the faith
in something higher than man.
We turn now to the study of individual religions.
pr
BIBLIOGRAPHY
E. B. Tylor, Primitive Culture, New York, 1874–1894.
Sir J. G. Frazer, The Golden Bough, London, 1907–1915.
C. P. Tiele, Outlines of the History of Religions, London,
1877.
Irving King, Development of Religion, New York, 1910.
Andrew Lang, Myth, Ritual, and Religion, London, 1899.
R. R. Marett, The Threshold of Religion, London, 1914.
W. M. Wundt, Mythus und Religion, part of the Völkerpsy-
chologie, Leipzig, 1906.
Hutton Webster, Primitive Secret Societies, New York, 1908.
Baldwin Spencer and F. J. Gillen, The Native Tribes of Central
Australia, London, 1899.
Lord Avebury, Marriage, Totemism, and Religion, London,
1911.
CHAPTER THREE
AFRICAN RELIGIONS. I. SPIRIT-LORE
AFRICA contains besides its Negroid population sundry dis-
tinct races, the Pygmies and Bushmen, and mixed races,
such as the partly Semitic Somalis, the partly Caucasian
Nilotic tribes, and the Mongolian-Malay-Negro Malagasi
or Hovas of Madagascar. Negroes more or less pure are
the southern Bantus, the equatorial tribes, and those of the
Gold and Slave Coasts on the west. The Hottentots are a
mixture of Bushmen and Negro elements.
Clearly influenced by foreigners are the Abyssinian
Gallas. They worship trees and serpents, have a spring
festival, and take omens from entrails. Somali ordeals, of
boiling water and hot iron, may also be borrowed. In the
West, the Yoruba-speaking Negroes, who may have Malay
blood, have been in close contact with Semites, and their
caste-gods, trade-gods, sacred fire, and cult of a sky- or
lightning-god cannot be regarded as indubitably native.
Their rest-day is the first day of the week because it is un-
lucky, and since this is a native notion it may be original,
as their local “souls” (of the head, stomach, toe, etc.) and
some of their gods of phenomena are genuinely Negro. Of
these, Olokun, sea-god, has a wife, Elusa, scaled from
breasts to hips, like the fish-formed Polynesian sea-god and
his Semitic counterparts. Their Orisha Oko is a love-god,
whose messengers are bees, like those of the Hindu love-
god; but he is also a phallic garden-god of productivity,
with a Yam festival of orgiastic character, in shape a
veritable Priapus.
So strong in some cases is the likeness between Negro
and alien cults that borrowing is probable. The Nilotic
24
AFRICAN SPIRIT LORE
25
* and mythology worskata
Masai have even been regarded 1 as “primitive Semitic”;
but scholars have not generally accepted this conclusion.
The southern Bushmen show the bond between culture
and religion. They draw and paint well, are fond of song
and dance, and have quite a mythology with higher poly-
theistic traits, though they remain fetish-worshippers, and
at the best are of low intelligence. They regard sun and
moon as spirits and for the significant reason that “they
move, so they have life." It was a Bushman who, on see-
ing a cart for the first time, worshipped it as a living thing
and regarded the trailing smaller cart as the child of the
larger one. They have been credited with an unaided belief
in a “ Master of Life” as a Creator, but this god 'Kaang re-
ceives a licentious blood-dance as worship and is probably
only a god of productivity. They dance and sing or shout,
to scare away disease and other demons, and believe
enough in a hereafter to place a spear in a warrior's grave
and to mutilate themselves, amputating a finger-joint, to
insure happiness in the next world. Like all Negroes, they
wear talismans to keep off evil. They act out dramas with
animal-head masks, which Stow calls Satyric, thus appear-
ing like Egyptian gods.
The Bantus include the Zulus who are more advanced.
They revere the eagle but not as a totem. Their belief in
soul is real but vague. The soul may be left about any-
where. The shadow is a follow-soul. But ancestral souls
are revered and even thanked for blessings and feared as
illness-bringers. Souls may enter animals, and separate
spirits of places exist. Feasts and dances are for joy and
thanksgiving; silence and abstention from food guard
against evil spirits. The Ekoi (Bantus) are said to have
but two deities, sky and earth, but hosts of demons of trees,
rivers, lakes, and hills. The Matabili (Zulu type) kill vic-
tims for the use of the dead. Among the Wagiryama
1 M. Merker, Die Masai, Berlin, 1904.
2 Compare Macdonald, Journal Anth. Inst., vol. xx, on Zului super-
stitions.
26
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
.
Bantus there is a temple-prototype, not only a men's en-
closure, sacred to them, but also a tree surrounded by a
tabooed fetish-belt. The Ishogo Bantus of the French
Congo have a taboo hut beside a sacred tree, which the
Wapokomo Bantus make into a veritable bethel or god-
house. The West African Bantus have the earth-mystery
system of fetishism (see below) and a vague belief in a
great spirit has arisen among the agricultural? Wakamba
Bantus. Poison-ordeals and phallic cults are also known
to them and they tattoo, but only decoratively.
Birth-rites, rites of purification, and the worship of both
ghosts and nature-spirits are characteristic of all these Ne-
groes. The mixed Hottentot, perhaps partly Bantu, add
a few features, moral fables of ghosts and animals, and the
economic and religious superiority of women. Their
women follow a pastoral life while men only hunt; the re-
sult is that the women own the house and practically rule
the men; among our Iroquois also the high position of
women was due to their economic importance. Owing to
pastoral conditions there is here closer and longer family-
intercourse. Hence has come a higher development of
moral qualities; and from this, the attribution of such quali-
ties to spirits. Thus the conception of kind spirits, to whom
man should be grateful, is much more pronounced among
the Hottentots than among Bushmen and pure Bantus.
They have real gods as well as spirits, such as Tsuni-goam,
a benevolent god, unfortunately of uncertain origin. He
may be an ancestral ghost; such ancestors are almost house-
1 Agricultural life is apt thus to develop greater spiritual figures.
The Western Bantus have secret societies, mysteries supported by
temple priests, an esoteric language, initiation, etc., of an erotic
character; but, like their totemism, these are less religious than
social. The dance, which imitates a crane yet is performed by
actors striped like zebras, shows how such a performance can arise
without religious meaning.
? Hahn interprets this “supreme god" as Dawn, which is doubt-
ful. To Toosib, a sort of Neptune, are made prayers and offering's.
Heitsi-eibib is supposed by some to be the moon. He was “born
of a virgin," who conceived him by sucking a stalk.
AFRICAN SPIRIT LORE
27
hold gods. But there are also clear nature-gods of storm
and thunder; and bad demons, some certainly ghosts, and
one supreme devil, against whom wizards and necromancers
are employed.
The seat of life among the equatorial Negroes is the
liver, as blood from the liver of a goat seals blood-brother-
hood. Here posts carved as rude figures mark graves, also
marked by cairns, where cups are left, indicating belief
in a future life. Cannibalism and fetishism occur, but are
more pronounced among the western Negroes, to whom we
shall turn immediately. First, however, we must inquire
whether the Negro really has the conception of God, in dis-
tinction from spirits and gods of local power.
Among the pure western tribes called Ewé-speaking Ne-
groes, the highest god is Mawu, the coverer, a god of rain
or sky, with whom the Greek Ouranos and Indic Varuna
have of course been compared. German missionaries found
him and made him over into a supreme god, creator of all
things, God; whereas the natives held him as only one but
the highest (physically) among many gods. Their “high-
est” was simply topmost. Mawu was the upper god.
They said he was too far away to care for sacrifice and
seldom paid any attention to him, praying to him only when
they wanted rain. He was so indifferent to'man that he
never punished; hence he was "good.” The African al-
ways recognizes a being behind action, but he does not re-
gard this being as naturally interested in man; thus the low
Basutos of the south-east never of themselves imagined that
earth and sky might be the work of an invisible being.
But Negroes are receptive and the idea once suggested is
assimilated by them. No ancestor ever creates the world;
he creates or begets only the family or clan. As we shall see
in Polynesian religion, the savage regards the world rather
as evolved than created and a “creator" is either a fertility- :
spirit or a clan-ancestor. The “chief above” of Negroes,
prior to the advent of missionaries, was either such a clan-
ancestor or an active storm-spirit or rain-god. As a Zulu
IL
28
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
Negro once said to Bishop Callaway (in the words of the
Rig Veda, and of Horace: coelo tonantem credidimus Jovem
regnare), “ We know him because he thunder's." But he
did not think of this god as a spirit outside its own
limited domain. He said to the Bishop: “ We do not
know him or his laws; we know only that he strikes when
man offends. We worship only tribe-spirits.” In general, this
is true, the ancestor or tribe-spirit is the chief African god.
Some tribes of Nyassa acknowledge each its own rain-
maker, here the ancestral spirit. The Hereras of Damara-
land recognize no higher spirit than this. Their apparent
“ tree-sacrifice” is made not to the tree but, through
twigs taken from a tree sacred to ancestors and hung
up at the place of sacrifice, to their highest ghost-spirit.
It is invariably due to the missionary when an ancestor-
spirit is taken as a creative sky-spirit. The sky-spirit,
usually lightning, never creates; he only destroys. The
great Unkulunkulu (or Munku-Unkulu) of the Zulus was
originally an androgynous ancestor and was converted into
“God” about 1835 by Captain Gardiner. The Hottentots
too had no notion of God, and “there is no God in the
Kongo" (Bentley ap. Keane). On this whole topic Bishop
Callaway is still inuch more authoritative than the later
writers who visited the natives after missionaries had in-
doctrinated them. He says (in his Unkulunkulu, P. 105):
"Nothing is more easy than to enquire of heathen savages
the character of their creed and during the conversation to
impart to them great truths and ideas which they never
heard before, and presently to have these come back again.
as articles of their own original faith.”
We take up now the closely related cults of the Negroes
of the West Coast, where also this God-idea has been predi-
cated of the Ashantis, who, however, are less advanced than
the Dahomians, as these in turn are less advanced than the
Yoruba-speaking Negroes. But the Dahomy cult is the first
to offer even slight ground for such a belief, and that has
been influenced by missionaries, as has been the cult of
AFRICAN SPIRIT LORE
a close abundantory that
!
Nzambi, the mother-spirit, confused now with that of the
Virgin.
Herbert Spencer's theory that nature-gods come from
ghosts has been abundantly disproved as a universal propo-
sition by a close examination of the religion of Ashanti and
Dahomy. As Ellis says, “it is a theory not warranted by
the evidence" (Yorubas, p. 282). But Ellis himself is in
error because, though he rejects one system, he follows an-
other, that of animism. Not ghosts but confined spirits are
his fetish. So he regards the worship of a tree as neces-
sarily implying the cult of a tree-spirit “put into it by
priests.” But in discussing the western Negroes, we must
distinguish the Guinea (Tshi-speaking) Negroes from the
Dahomians. The Fanti and Ashanti of the Gold Coast and
Slave Coast, respectively, with other Ashantis living inland
as one state under a king (whereas the Fanti live in severed
communities without political union), make the so-called
Tshi-speakers; while east of the Fanti and Ashanti and
north of the Slave Coast live the Ewé-speaking Dahomians,1
who have a still more developed centralized government.
The Guinea Negroes are all characterized by totem-wor-
ship, religious cannibalism, moon-cult, and fetishism. The
last is by far the most important and hence is treated below
in a separate section. The segregated Fanti have both vege-
table and animal totems; their highest objects of devotion
are the vegetable silk-cotton tree and the python. They
have one real god. But the Dahomians, who have a royal
house and realm-idea, have developed further the idea of
gods or spirits of a higher and more comprehensive order.
In the Fanti villages, each community has its own separate
power or spirit; in Dahomy these similar powers or spirits
of the separate communities have coalesced into one, withal
one having power and dignity commensurate with his
1 Col. Ellis (see the Bibliography) calls these groups Tshi, Ewe
(pronounced efé) speakers as contrasted with the Yoruba-speak-
ers. It will be simpler to remember the groups as Guinea and
Dahomy Negroes, the former again as (kingly) Ashantis and
(quasi democratic) Fantis.
*
1
30
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
physical expansion. In Dahomy, too, were brought the
greater sacrifices, of thousands of human captives slaugh-
tered and eaten, either in thanksgiving for victory or to
give a suitable retinue to warriors who had died. One sees
how intimate is the connection here between religion and
the social group. The bigger the state, the bigger the god,
compounded of various gods; the bigger the god's province,
the less local, confined, his activity. His comprehensive-
ness tends to make him more abstract. Again, the bigger
the state and its god, the bigger the sacrifice, just as the
Amazons of Dahomy represent what is found elsewhere
on a small scale but is here exaggerated into a female army.
It was from the West Coast (Dahomy) Negroes that
Voodoo came to America and the Obeah or Wanga cult to
Hayti. Wanga is not necessarily "tied to the snake," and
is less informal; Voodoo requires a priest, a priestess, and
a snake, or it is no real Voodoo, a word meaning fearful.
Red Voodoo requires human victims; white Voodoo is con-
tent with a cock or goat; while Wanga does not "show
blood” but acts through poison.
The primitive Guinea powers or spirits of the Fanti and
Ashanti are generally malignant; worship is due to fear
but also to hope of advantage. The kinds of “spirits" are
quite clearly sundered and as these are perhaps the most
primitive native or untouched classes of spiritual powers,
they are of special interest and importance. First, there is
the indifferent "tribal spirit "; second, the local or group-
spirit bearing the significant name Boshum, “evil-doer”;
third, the family-spirit; and fourth, the Suhman or spirit
revered only by one individual. This may be a fetish or Kra
1 The Grand Custom slays personal attendants at a king's death;
the Annual Custom slays others to renew the retinue. They are
celebrated with music and dance. The Dahomians also “convey a
message” through a man slaughtered for this purpose, who will tell
the ancestors the news, a trait of Shamanism.
2 The difference is explained by Miss Kingsley, West African
Studies, pp. 139, 219. Two religious customs, like those of the
Hindu, one of suttee called leniba, and one of infant marriage, an
Igalwa, West African, custom, are possibly not of native origin.
1 The Grandustom slaysa dance. The P this
AFRICAN SPIRIT LORE
31
(see below). To the local power, of river, hill, or water,
children are sacrificed, to make it beneficent. Offerings are
also made to the family-spirit, which, though kind, may
cause disease, sterility, and death. In so far as these are
nature-forms they seem to act as such, not as confining a
spirit. There is thus a general, once local, southern thun-
der-spirit of rain, called Bobowissi; but he is less a spirit
than thunder-and-rain. His northern counterpart Tando,
however, is a real spirit (Ashanti “hater") and has a wife,
a river-spirit, to whom the crocodile is sacred. Seven men
and seven women are slaughtered to Tando amid ritual
carousing. There is also a Guinea “ ogre of blood, red earth
and earth-quake," and a female monster, namely the malig-
nant silk-cotton tree, Srahmatin. To Ellis these are all
“ spirits,” but it is questionable whether the powers are not
rather inherent in the matter than separate from it. An
interesting development has taken place in the case of Bobo-
wissi. This intangible power above has been virtually sup-
planted by Brahfo, his adjutant, who now lives on earth in
a grove, where the priests can handle him. . He is the only
general Gold Coast god.
In Dahomy, the Fanti and Ashanti powers, each sepa-
rate, have been united into one power of each class. Not
this stream-power and that stream-power are individually
recognized, but a water-spirit or god of water, etc. This is
due to the greater state-idea aided by an organized priest-
hood, for on the Gold Coast there are only separate priests
of each village. But the most interesting Gold Coast novelty
is the Kra. When a man dies, his ghost, Srahman, goes to
ghost-land, where it lives in a ghost-forest with ghost-sheep,
etc. There all is as on earth, only pale and shadowy:
“One day on earth is better than a year in Srahman-dazi”
(ghost-land), says a Tshi-speaker proverb. But while the
Srahman goes thither, the man's Kra or independent spirit
goes abroad as a Sisa, wandering free, or at once seeks
another man's body. If it tries to enter a man already pos-
sessed by a Kra, the man has a fit. Once in, if it tries to
32
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
1
get out, the man sneezes; hence, “good health” is said
then. Everything, man, sheep, tree, has this double soul,
not to speak of the shadow, which is also a soul, perhaps
man's first follower, and the soul which is located in an
animal while belonging to a man, that is, the bush-soul.
: The cult of souls is sharply sundered from that of nature-
powers or spirits, which are generally malevolent, while
soul-spirits are friendly neighbours placated only as being
naturally ready to help their own family. In Dahomy, the
dead are “watch-family” spirits, usually of amiable char-
acter.
The sacrificial scale was originally man, bullock, sheep,
and fowl. When drink is offered, evaporation “shows that
the spirit has taken the offering.” In the case of neat, the
spirits take only the “ spiritual part." Rum, oil, eggs, and
fowl are the food of the lesser spirits that dwell in objects
placed among taboo trees. The gods mentioned above,
Bobowissi and Tando, were originally local malignant spir-
its demanding great bloodshed, and sacrifice to them is
typical; it is always apotropaic. The great god is here
never confused with the great dead chief, though the lat-
ter may become a genius loci. Only in Dahomy are the
bones of the dead collected, invoked, and preserved. Here,
as the indwelling spirit of this or that stream becomes a
general water-god, so there is also a general love-god, a
general lightning-god who, as in America, is represented
as a thunder-bird. He even has wives, hierodoulai, who
care for his shrine. To Legba, the love-god, are sacrificed
goats, dogs, and cocks, and circumcision is a rite in his
honour, while obscene mysteries are performed in his name.
Rainbow,1 Fire, Water, etc., are here real gods. Trances
1 The Rainbow, as serpent, is also the underground snake that
drinks 11p the water on earth. The python-snake gives wisdom,
but he is also a god of treasure and of sensuality, his "wives"
being especially debauched. It is impossible here even to mention
the names of all the Dahomy gods. The Sun marries the Moon;
stars are their children. There is a war-god, a wind-god, etc.
Small-pox is a malignant fiend. Four kings of Dahony have lately
AFRICAN SPIRIT LORE
33
e the neare . Usual
are entered into by priests to influence ancestral ghosts to
help their descendants, also a shamanistic cult. Priestesses
of these gods are called their wives.
Few gods are personified enough to have other wives than
priestesses. There is little morality in divinity; the tendency
is to revere more the more evil or harmful spirits, on the
principle of the Yezedis, who worship the Devil because
only Satan would injure them.
Some of the Negroes, instead of burying, float their dead
on a stream; but it is not clear that they have the common
idea of one wide river to cross, which appears in American
eschatology, Redskin and Mexican, and has a Malay variant,
also American, according to which the soul flounders in
a swamp till it perishes or finds egress. Usually corpses are
buried. Anong the Bongos, men are buried facing north,
women facing south; while the Niam-niam lay the man with
the head eastward; the woman, westward. The Fans and
Westerners eat their dead; but few tribes do so regularly as
food. Cannibalism here begins as a religious rite.
Of minor religious importance are the following Guinea
practices. After birth, fowls are sacrificed to the head-soul,
seven days after for a girl, nine for a boy, and both mother
and child are baptized with water which has stood before
the gods, while the priest repeats the child's name three
times, for three and seven are religious numbers. Real, not
hired, mourners may not wash for three days. On the
third day after death the dead man is three times asked to
depart. The groping Srahman soul of the Ashanti is guided
by a sacrificed fowl to ghost-land. No washing or hair-
cutting is allowed till the third day, when the head is shaved.
This is to keep the ghost away. There is a general rite for
the dead once a year, at which the dead of the past three
years are all lamented and asked to protect the tribe. Red
been “ deified,” two for their goodness and two for their cruelty.
The chief facts are that real gods anyway are found only in Dahomy
and nature-gods are not confused with ancestors, who have differ-
ent abodes, etc.
34
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
is for mourning; white for rejoicing. Cross-roads harbour
evil spirits. The spirit-voice is “bird-like," an incompre-
hensible twitter. The Tshi-speaking priest is called a
" dancer.” He is carefully trained to show inspiration,
“ eye rolling and mouth foaming." Each god has a special
hymn and dance (compare the Salii). Music among the
Wanik “ draws the spirit”; but it is also a means of exor-
cism. The Gold Coast prophetess is inspired from the grave
near which she dwells. There are two forms of "mother”
worship, one of the snake-mother of mankind and one of a
productivity-spirit called Mother, whom the Gallas call
Atatie, perhaps an earth-spirit. The earth-spirit is some-
times represented by a log-image. On the West Coast,
Odudua is the “nursing earth,” wife of Obatala, an Olarun
demi-urge converted into “God” by the missionaries, who
did not know that his wife was the representative of sensu-
ality. These “life” spirits are usually celebrated with
sexual orgies. In connexion with the mysteries of the same
sort is practised circumcision, practically a tribe-initiation
ceremony. Rites for girls show, however, that the spirit-
element is as strong as the social.
Ordeals of fire show no special traits ; 2 as usual, they
test chastity. Well represented is the local “soul” idea.
That is, a special life-power resides in each part of the
body, such as hair or nails, and especially in blood and
spittle. Among the Jagga, for example, because spittle is
such a soul-holder, the polite host spits on his departing
guest, as who should say, “I present you with a little
1 Circumcision is also practised in British East Africa, where the
rite is usually performed at the age of sixteen, though the boy may
be younger and is sometimes two or three years older. In all these
cases the rite itself is a tribal initiation-ceremony, religious in so
far as the youth is thus infused with the spirit-power of the tribe.
This is indicated also by the “new birth," which often is drastically
represented, and which reappears in higher religions as regenera-
tion. So in India one becomes “reborn" on entering the caste-
order.
2 Compare on the fire-ordeal, Ellis, The Tshi-speaking Peoples of
the Gold Coast of West Africa, London, 1887, p. 138.
FETISHISM
35
power." So spittle is mingled with a goat's blood for sacri-
fice and is curative. Bone, blood, and grave-dust commin-
gled make “medicine” to harm a foe and is buried under
his threshold. Toe-nails and bones of European saints still
conserve a similar power, but not quite the same; for the
saint's mana was a general power, not sub-divided into souls
as separate powers.
S
AFRICAN RELIGION. II. FETISH AND IDOL
Fetishism is not a religion but the expression of a mental
attitude. Fear and hope sway man. Taboo is the religious
expression of fear; fetishism, of hope. Applied originally
to the talismans of Portuguese sailors, the word fetish 1
means a charm to bring luck. Many writers use the word
loosely to indicate any material object from which, like a
mascot, the savage expects good luck; but properly a fetish
is portable and it is unlike a mascot in that it possesses power
and will to bless. Hence it is coddled, abused, prayed to
and stormed at, exactly as one would treat a recalcitrant
spirit who may or may not aid.
But at this point there is a very general error to be cor-
rected. All the scholars of the animistic school say that a
fetish contains a spirit. On the contrary, the primitive
fetish is itself a quasi-personified power or potency. It is
a spiritual power; it does not contain a spirit. The object
itself, even when a collection of objects, has, as a whole,
volition. It is almost impossible for the savage not to im-
part will to anything which appears to be an entity. Even
his monda, which is apparently an unconscious object, is
treated, like the grisgris, joujou, mokissos, as a conscious
volitive power.
Even when the fetish will not work and is abandoned, it
4
1 Literally factitious, feitico (fetish) was the sailor's own amulet,
and by him transferred to the similar charms he saw the Negro
wcar. The word fétichisme was used by Bosman in his Description
of Guinea in 1705 and was popularized by De Brosses in his Du
Culte des Dieux fétiches in 1760.
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
often retains sanctity enough to be preserved in god-boxes.
In Siberia (for fetishes are found everywhere) a metal
plate is worn as a fetish on the ground that it is old and
" therefore knows more." A natural divinity is often
treated exactly like a fetish. Thus Xerxes first beat the
Hellespont and then rewarded it with gifts, as Herodotus
(vii, 35 f.) tells us.
But even in West Africa, where fetishism is at its best,
excellent West African Studies, divides the local fetishism
into "schools.” One of these stresses the art of maintain-
ing life, a sort of medical school; the second is chiefly con-
cerned with the future life, a sort of divinity school; the
third is devoted to material prosperity, a business college;
and the fourth is academic, a school of philosophy, “ mainly
concerned with the worship of the mystery of the power of
Earth. These schools are not tribal divisions, nor secret
societies, Poorah, which are a manifestation of fetish law-
form.
But when she speaks of fetish-schools, Miss Kingsley
means the different forms which religion takes in its prac-
tical application to life, for she calls all religious phenomena
“fetish.” Thus religious activity in the Tshi and Ewé
school is hygienic; in the Calabar school at Oil Rivers the
chief object of interest is reincarnation; the Mpongwe school
looks out for worldly prosperity; and the Fjort or Nkissi
school is philosophic. But all these schools are more or less
occupied with the interest of each. There is no sharp divi-
sion between them; the “school” distinction is largely hypo-
thetical and in any case there is nothing to be gained by call-
ing all religion fetishism.
In West Africa fetishism is the dominating religious fac-
tor.. Despite all spirit-phenomena, the fetishes “almost
monopolize religious thought,” as Dr. Nassau expresses it.
The love-philter or the charm for fishing is moreover not
only the chief object of invocation; it is per se a potency.
As the same writer also says, the idea of a spirit in the
FETISHISM
37
fetish as the efficient agent is a later development. Count-
less examples prove this assertion.
Thus in employing a war-fetish made of bark, not a spirit
but the tree itself is addressed: “Thou tree, let not the
bullets hit me." The fisherman says, to his fetish-mess,
“ let me catch fish.” In the same way a lost girdle, though
not a fetish, is directly addressed as a sentient being :
“Girdle, come back.” The animistic explanation adopted
by Dr. E. B. Tylor has led him to define fetishism as “the
doctrine of spirits embodied in, or attached to, or conveying
influence through, certain material objects.” 1 Yet the same
author's previous discussion brought out clearly the fact
that many fetishes are not controlled by spirits. Indeed,
Dr. Tylor himself admits that he has "selected" his exam-
ples to illustrate his definition. Of course there may be
a fetish not one with the object. Thus the Eskimo kills a
baby or an animal and carries its dried skin, that the mana
inherent in the animal, and still working in the skin, may
help him to game. This might be regarded as a spirit, more
properly power, in the fetish; it is the animal power in a re-
duced form. But the usual fetish, a pebble, a bit of bark,
or a combination of natural objects, is regarded as in itself
potent and conscious.
The natural, not the artificial, object is the primitive fetish.
Ellis's opinion, that the fetish was originally a deified power
of nature and that all tangible fetishes are priestly impos-
tures, is impossible to accept. Römer in 1769 recorded a
typical case that had come under his own observation. It
is worth more than all modern theories: A Negro went out
in the morning intent on effecting escape from danger. He
stumbled on a stone, picked it up, and escaped safely. From
that stone he never parted, but kept it as his helper and
saviour. What has preceded good luck is (post hoc propter
hoc) the cause of good-luck. If thereafter it fails to act,
it may be placated or forced to behave itself. This too,
1 Primitive Culture, New York, 1874, II. 145f.
38
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
7n
though denied by Ellis, is indisputable. It is exactly the
attitude taken by Egyptians and Greeks toward their gods.
Even the later Romans destroyed the temples to punish the
gods on the death of Germanicus. So also in the seven-
teenth century a crew of becalmed Portuguese sailors tied
their patron St. Anthony to the bowsprit till he sent a
breeze. A Spanish captain once tied the Virgin to the mast
with the same intent. There is, however, another element
to be considered, which looks somewhat like simple abuse,
but it is not. Thus St. Peter's image was once immersed, in
the sixteenth century, to cure a drought in France. This
may have been a case of sympathetic magic, wetting the saint
to cause him to wet the earth. But there are cases enough to
show that abuse is reckoned a proper way to control a spir-
itual power. Russian peasants beat their holy pictures with
no other idea. So, as narrated in Kotzebue's Reise nach
Rom, the Neapolitans abused San Gennaro, because he failed
to stop the lava flowing toward the city. They even called
him vecchio ladrone, birbone, and beat him.
The highest religions become fetishistic when a power is
supposed to inhere in a material object, though will-power
is no longer imagined in it. Thus a piece of the cross or
Koran invested with miraculous power for good is practi-
cally a fetish. This fetish-idea of a material power bring-
ing luck survives when the southern American Negro car-
ries a rabbit-foot, or the farmer's boy a potato or chestnut,
or when one nails up a horseshoe, the iron and circular form
making the last named a powerful fetish. In all these cases
the original thought has been lost; what remains is simply
the fetish-idea, the apparently ineradicable idea that man is
dependent upon some power not his own for blessings, in
the hope of attaining which he worships or treasures the
luck-giver.
As a completed complex system in the hands of a priest-
hood, African fetishism is rank with evil. The priest, who
1 For these and similar cases, compare Roskoff, p. 140, and Schultze
Pp. 130, 175 (see Bibliography).
FETISHISM
39
is a witch-hunter, uses the belief in fetish to acquire wealth
and power, intimidating and convicting of murder at will
through fetish-oracles which he controls. One fetish set
against another is an element in political advancement. A
great chief controls many fetishes and therewith assumes
many obligations. For, as rain-maker, for example, he is
responsible for rain, and if his fetish will not work, the
people are liable to punish him, as he would punish the
fetish. Hence intrigues, indictments, slaughters. The
private fetish aids its owner in finding a foe as well as a
fish, and “smells out " the injurer, the thief, the adulterer.
But where fetishism is systematized in priestly hands, this
power is no longer in the hands of the simple savage indi-
vidual, but in those of the crafty Negro priest, who makes
the fetish act as detective, judge, and executioner. A good
example of this is the cassia fetish, or bitter water, familiar
to us from the Mosaic law, where, however, it acts as agent
of a higher power. In Africa it acts for itself, or, in fact,
for the priests. But the victim and the ordinary savage
do not know that the priest is exploiting them. To them, the
cassia is a sentient moral power pursuing a criminal and
giving judgment from which there is no appeal. The Si-
berian peasants beside Lake Baikal have a holy mountain
which acts in the same way. If a man is suspected of per-
jury, he has to climb the holy hill. No spirit of the hill
hurts him, but if guilty he dies on the spot, the hill itself
being a moral sentient power punishing the perjurer.
There is then a marked ethical content in fetishism. In
Africa every law is put under the protection of a fetish,
which guards the law as another fetish guards an individual
or a village. The fetish (in theory at least, for we here
ignore priestly craft) guards law and righteousness till, in
the course of development, a higher power directs “the bit-
ter water that causeth the curse" (Numbers v. 18). So, too,
in witchcraft-trials the Lord was thought to cause the witch
to float or sink; but in simpler belief the pure water itself
rejects or casts up the guilty. If then the fetish does not
40
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
injure the innocent, if it defends the right, if to it untruth,
murder, and adultery are, as it were, abhorrent, then it is
clear that fetishism may be regarded as an initial stage to-
ward a belief in a benevolent and moral power. As a mat-
ter of fact, the priest-controlled fetish does injure the inno-
cent; but even higher religions swerve from rectitude when
priests use them for their own ends. Fear, too, and not love
influences the fetish-worshipper. But that also is a second-
ary stage. For it is not fear which first inspires the sav-
age's belief in the fetish. It is the hope of attaining a de-
sired aim and the idea that the fetish will bring him to it.
One of these aims is to kill the injurer. Then the injurer,
who shares the belief, is filled with fear. In a word, fetish-
ism recognizes an ethical power which it is hoped will lead to
the establishment of truth among other aims. The fetish is,
so to speak, the agent of morality in detecting sin; it never
detects virtues.
A form of so-called fetishisın gives purification. Sav-
ages have never distinguished between ill and evil. Purga-.
tive waters cleanse, hence purify; that is, they renew the
weakened virtue or power of a man. Water thus becomes,
as a fetish-object in a broader sense, a national purifier,
often a “war-fetish” before battle, when virtue or power
is most needed, or again an annual purifier, to cleanse and
renew after a year's waste. Our Creeks had such a national
annual purgation; in Africa the water-fetish serves as war-
medicine. But fetish is not really the word to use here.
Fetishes are not usually specialized. They help in vari-
ous ways, but sometimes are used in one shape for one pur-
pose. The Jamaica Obeah still gives both oracles and im-
munity from wounds. But the Hayti Chemi, little figures,
a sort of teraphim, are mainly oracular though also gener-
ally preservative. Obeah and Chemi both came first from
Africa. The “ fetish of faithlessness," buried under the
Dahomy threshold, causes faithless wives to suffer exactly
as described in the Mosaic “law of jealousy”; but the same
fetish has other uses. There is another religious element
FETISH AND IDOL
41
or to which his parents have bound him as a child. The
saints of our church never were more particular in fasting
and self-castigation than is the African fetish-worshipper.
At birth he is pledged to do or not to do certain trivial
things, like stepping over a stream, wearing long hair, spar-
ing some animal, not eating some food; or he takes such
vows upon himself. But in either case nothing will induce
him to break the obligation. The vows seem to have no
connection with morality (most of them are silly), yet they
themselves are moral, since the idea of renunciation and of
fidelity to a vow is there. The poor Negro “binds him-
self”; he has a bond, a religion in the sense of obligation.
It is ethical misconduct to repudiate his vow.1
The distinction between a fetish and an idol is formal.
At the extremes there is a difference, but there is a point
where idol and fetish coalesce. Behind the fairest Greek
statue lies the idol, behind that the carved log. The Damara
ancestral fetish is a bough from a tree sacred to the ances-
tor; while in Korea we find a log with a rounded top, proto-
type again of the true idol. Earlier than this may be the
sacred ground, such as that where the Australian Churinga
are stored, though as in Lappland and Africa it may be the
fetish that makes the ground holy. Fetishes sprinkled with
oil, rum, or blood are treated as idols are treated. Gener-
ally, however, the idol works for the group while the fetish
works for its owner alone. But the fetish may operate for
the group, as in Polynesia, where, once a year, the fetish-
1 Ames, Psychology of Religious Experience, Boston, 1910, p.
131, holds that primarily "the only misconduct was breach of
custom.” This is according to the taboo-interpretation of religion
and ignores the individual as he should not be ignored. So sacrifice
is not merely a redintegration of the group and valuable only in
consolidating the social union. The single fetish-worshipper has his
private purgation and sacrifice which seem to be as primitive as the
tribal rites.
42
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
stone works like a national god 1 through the king for the
people. Also the Thugs' pickax in India is a tribal fetish.
Phallic stones in India are true fetishes, but they become
idols when carved to represent the god himself. Phallic ele-
ments were in the American “medicine" and probably in
the Roman bulla. They imparted power.
Many savages have no idols, Bushmen, Patagonians,
Veddas, Andamanese, and Australians, for example; but
Saussaye is wrong in saying that in the lowest stage of sav-
agery idolatry is “altogether lacking.” The savage of the
lower Amazon has carved figures on his canoe and, as we
have seen, some of the lowest Africans have rude post-
idols. In the "banana zone" idols are common, represent-
ing men and animals caricatured, often without arms or legs.
Apotropaic pictures and figures of the gods adorn the huts
or boats of Redskin and Polynesian. Even the prehistoric
art in the caves of France may, as Reinach has suggested, be
for magical purposes. Yet not necessarily so, for primitive
art may exist without such intent. The Eskimos during the
winter make pictures, but not idols, nor are their pic-
tures religious. Eventually higher religions usually adopt
idols. Thus idols abound in India after the sixth century
B. C., and perhaps before; there are possible allusions to
idols in the earliest literature. Greece had idols before
Homer, and Homer's statue of the goddess, though unique,
is prayed to as an idol.2 But the highest religions again dis-
card idols and pictures as objects of worship, to which even
some Greeks objected. Mohammed discarded both; while
the Roman Church has expressly forbidden (since 787 A. D.)
the worship of images. Ancestors and saints in pictured or
imaged form are found in India and China and probably
the Roman funeral masks represent ancestors. Ancient
Egypt and modern New Zealand prefer images of ances-
1 Like a god, too, it is kept wrapped up, except on the annual
occasion of manifestation.
2 For non-idolatrous races, see D'Alviella, Des origines de
l'idolatrie in the Revile de l'histoire des religioils, xii. 2.
FETISH AND IDOL
A3
tors; China prefers pictures. India painted and carved, in-
differently, gods, men, horses, and dogs and worshipped
every image it saw. Abbé Dubois could not determine
whether his Hindus worshipped the “actual substance" or
the divinity in the idol. It is merely a matter of intelli-
gence. Louis XI. worships the lead doll on his hat, as the
Hindu peasants adore any carved figure. Only an intelligent
person distinguishes between symbol and symbolized. The
foreigner may make a mistake here. The Roman thought
the Quadi worshipped their swords; in reality they wor-
shipped the divinity carved thereon. So a Punjabi today has
puja (worship)1 apparently of a sword though really of the
goddess embossed on it. So, too, the ancient sword-dance
was in Tiu's honour, not an idle exhibition of skill.
A fetish, like a god, may be no more than the means of a
meal and worshipped as such, for hunger is a powerful stim-
ulator of religious feeling. But it is not hypocrisy when
the Hindu clerk today bows to his pen in the morning as
his means of livelihood. He worships it as the farmer wor-
ships his plough and as the Toda worships his buffaloes;
the implement of a living is a means of life and that is di-
vine. Habakkuk remarked on this long ago (i. 16): “He
sacrificeth unto his net and burneth incense unto his drag,
because by them his portion is fat and his meat plenteous."
The unimportant question as to whether fetish-figures or
idols were originally stone or wood, must be settled for
every place separately. The important question whether
1 Puja indicates both veneratio (doulia) and latrio. A superior
man or a god receives it. The missionary might compromise on
it as a sign of respect, not necessarily "worship," yet actually wor-
ship when applied to a god, a most convenient word.
2 See especially the chapters on Greece and India and America.
Here need be mentioned only the Lappland Saidas, made indiffer-
ently of stone or wood. When such a Saida, image, is of wood it
is a sort of inverted xoanon, that is, it is a tree-trunk placed
upside down, so that the roots represent head and hair. The stone
Saida is a veritable herm, rudely outlined, standing in the open,
which then is holy ground. Saussaye says “only by consecration
does the inanimate image receive divine power"; but he forgets the
44
OF RELIGIONS
TTT
THE HISTORY the fetish-log and idol are originally apotropaic images
i. e., spiritual scarecrows, must be raised but cannot be an-
swered categorically. The Hindu Rajput sometinies wears,
or carries, an image of his ancestor, which originally he wor-
shipped as the image of a beneficent ghost; but now-
adays this image is regarded merely as an amulet to keep
off ghosts and evil spirits. This is an historical exam-
ple of the way a ghost may become a defender; it needs
only a step to make him as defender rather a fearful or
scarecrow type, as described by Horace (Sat. i. 8): Olim
truncus eram ficulus ... deus inde furum aviuinque
Maxima formido. The connection, however, is close be-
tween the saint or Greek god who guards his state, and the
images of the Aru Islanders, who " preserve the house from
evil spirits by figures of snakes, lizards, crocodiles, and
human forms, on a post, and an image of wood rudely
formed.” 2 Such guardians are the Assyrian Shedu who
keep the way to the palace; possibly also the Lagash cones
(so Heuzey); but these have also been interpreted as votive
offerings, conventionalized figurines of deities (Jastrow).
Terminal stones appear at times to have been of this nature,
demoniac forms to frighten, rather than protecting gods.
But as a general theory of the origin of idols the apotropaic
explanation will not suffice. For in the ante-idol stage of
the African fetish-log, the primary notion is not that of a
frightful form. In fact, when it is smeared with oil and
blood, the chief purpose of such a graven log is to attract
benevolent spirits, who come to lick the blood and oil and re-
main, taking up their abode in so attractive an object.
Saida, which is not consecrated and is divine, though not per se,
since its power is that of the Saivos or gods.
1 Sir John Malcolin, Central India, London, 1823, i. p. 144.
2 D. H. Kolff, Voyages of the Dutch Brig of War Dourga, Lon-
don, 1840.
FETISH AND IDOL
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Mary H. Kingsley, West African Studies, London, 1897;
Travels in West Africa, 1899.
G. W. Stow, The Native Races of South Africa, New York,
1905.
Col. Á. B. Ellis, The Tshi-speaking Peoples of the Gold Coast
of West Africa, London, 1887; The Ewe-speaking Peoples
of the Slave Coast, London, 1890; The Yoruba-speaking
Peoples of the Slave Coast, London, 1894.
R. H. Nassau, Fetichism in West Africa, New York, 1904.
Fritz Schultze, Der Fetischismus, Leipzig, 1871.
R. E. Dennett, Notes on the Folklore of the Fjort, London,
1898.
A. H. Keane, Man Past and Present, Cambridge, 1899.
F. Ratzel, The History of Mankind, London, 1896–1898.
Gustav Roskoff, Das Religionswesen der rohesten Naturvölker,
Leipzig, 1880.
Goblet d'Alviella, Hibbert Lectures for 1891, London, 1892.
Jerome Dowd, The Negro Race, New York, 1907.
CHAPTER FOUR
RELIGIONS OF AINUS AND SHAMANS
NATURISM AND ANIMISM
1
THUS far we have seen that savage belief in superhuman
powers is expressed either by the worship of a free spirit,
which may be a ghost, or by the worship of a material but
supposedly sentient willing object. It is often difficult to
decide which, for one or both of two reasons. The savage
is wont to express himself vaguely. His attitude, again, is
interpreted according to a preconceived opinion. In Africa
there are certainly both those who worship ghosts, and these
seem to be in the majority, and those who worship natural
and artificial objects as if they were spiritual beings; but
the two attitudes do not seem to be mutually exclusive and
sometimes they are confused. We shall therefore devote
this chapter to two types which set the matter before us
more clearly. In our interpretation, we may safely be
guided by the fact that actions speak louder than words, that
is, the rite speaks more clearly of past belief than does the
uttered creed of today.
THE RELIGION OF THE AINUS
The savages found in Japan and called by themselves
Ainu, that is, the “men” (or people) but mocked by the
Japanese as “dogs," aino, were hairy-skinned aborigines,
who afterwards sought safety in Yezo. Some are now in
Saghalin. These Ainus were obviously influenced to some
extent by the Japanese (they still revere a Japanese hero
Yoshitsune) before they were visited, in the last century,
by the missionary who came to Yezo before the arrival, in
46
AINUS AND NATURISM
47
1878, of Miss Isabella Bird. Though with them but a few
weeks, Miss Bird lived on terms of intimacy with them,
found them very gentle, won their confidence, and drew
from them apparently honest replies to questions of a re-
ligious nature. Ten years afterwards, Rev. Mr. Batchelor
arrived in Yezo and discovered in their religion those higher
ideas and precise notions which Miss Bird had denied them.
Mr. Batchelor accounts for the discrepancy by supposing
that the savages were intentionally reticent until he came.
But Miss Bird says they were eager to tell her all they
knew. When she asked about a future life their reply that
they had no distinct ideas on the subject was evidently not
intended to guard a sacred mystery. On the other hand,
Mr. Batchelor etymologizes the word Kamui (Japanese
Kami), though it is a general word, applied to any“ spirit,”
good or bad, as “ he who covers ”; argues from this that
the Ainus originally knew God as Heaven or Coverer, and
finally, as having known God, credits them with having
been monotheists, though they are now degraded "poly-
theists."
Apart from this quaint interpretation of Ainuism, Mr.
Batchelor has, however, done excellent work in adding to
what Miss Bird and others had observed. He has also
given us some valuable legends which, though he has not
noticed it, confirm the account of Miss Bird.
The Ainus take little interest in the ghost. Food is not
placed in or by the grave and only women have anything
to say to the dead, whom they fear but do not worship.
They have no very definite belief as to a future life. The
dead go into animals, or go under ground, and are supposed
to take with them implements broken, hence as dead, for use
in the world of the grave. Mr. Batchelor opines that the
Ainus think“ heaven” and “hell” await respectively the vir-
tuous and the wicked; but he adds somewhat naïvely: “ To
hear the people talk, one might be tempted to believe that
the Ainus think heaven itself to be in Hades.” To hear
the people talk was Miss Bird's way of understanding them,
1
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
and her conclusion was that the Ainus vaguely believed in
a vague future in a vague place.
The chief interest of the Ainus is in this life, not in the
next, and the powers they recognize are not God and gods,
but nature-powers, usually translated spirits, but in reality
intelligent powers expressed in phenomena, either natural,
sun, sea, river, cloud, tree, rock, sand, disease; or artificial,
hut, pot, knife, etc. Every one of these has, or rather is,
an intelligent power, not always good or bad, but usually
to be made good or bad by human influence exerted through
offerings. Good is what does man good; evil is what harms
him. Some, such, for example, as diseases, are always evil;
others are always good. A great body like the sea or a tree
has various good and bad expressions, the more vivid the
more personal. One such power-expression of the sea is
almost a spirit who drowns a man; another saves him. Less
vivid, a tree has a thousand powers or souls; that is, every
limb and twig is its own soul-endued power. Expressed too
animistically, a thousand or so “spirits” are in every tree.
Many of the so-called spirits are not free spirits. Each is
bound not only to its own environment, a purely local
power, but bound up with its material. There is no sun-
spirit, only a spiritized sun; no cooking-pot spirit, only an
intelligent cooking pot. It is not the “spirit” of the dead
bear that is addressed but the bear himself, and it is not
his “spirit” that is sent away, but the bear.1
The savage is a practical man. His religion consists
largely in making the best of his unavoidable neighbours.
The Ainu honours most the most useful, sea, fire, and the
bear, each as a spiritual potency. He dislikes most the old
female of the marsh, whom he does not worship but calls
ancestress or aunt, and who inflicts him with hideous dis-
eases. This is a functional Potency. His ritual is scarcely
1 Stories of free “spirits ”_ abound in the collections made by
Batchelor and Chamberlain. They are called “gods” as well. Such
spirits may exist, though it is questionable, in the Ainu's unaided
imagination, but the non-free potency, not recognized at all by these
authors, is the instructive element in this religion.
AINUS AND NATURISM
49
TY
more than pouring libations of saké, the use of (Japanese)
“god-sticks,” and the "worship" of the useful food he
eats. In sympathetic magic, images called inoka are used
as elsewhere and call for no special remark. One buries the
image to bury the foe.
But the process of “ eating the god,” though it is scarcely
that, deserves serious attention. Millet is the chief cereal.
Like every other phenomenon it is alive, intelligent. As an
animal is killed, so the millet is cooked. Then the cooked
millet is addressed with these words: “O Millet, thou hast
grown well for us; we thank thee; we eat thee.” This is as
near worship as the Ainu comes; but in this simple ritual
there is a distinct recognition of the cereal as a beneficent
power.
Mythology requires imagination. It is not well devel-
oped among these savages. Millet does not become Deme-
ter. In fact there is little real mythology. Serpents come
from a sky-serpent, probably lightning as a serpent. Ants
come from a. putrified dragon. The peeled wand or god-
stick is cut into six shavings and six are the worlds ; or there
are six above and six below. An eclipse is caused by an evil
power, but to avert the eclipse the Ainus fling up water, re-
garding the sun as fainting and needing revival. The fire-
spirit can cure sickness.
In mourning, hands are washed to clean off the death-
infection and hair is shaved or dishevelled to escape notice.
Graves are avoided. Women may not know incantations
and may not utter their husbands' names, lest they acquire
power over the name-hypostasis of the person. Evil spirits
are driven off by swinging knives; as when a man is drown-
ing, the spirit being the water-evil. The couvade is prac-
tised and tattooing, but no reason for it is known.
Ordeals, of hot water, hot stone, drinking medicated
water, are like those elsewhere. Only one is peculiar. A
1 To guard against evil or wild beasts the skulls of bears and
foxes are placed upon poles in a sort of sacred hedge. The fox-
skull is also used as an oracle, its jaw pointing to a thief, etc.
50
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
cup flung over the shoulder must land right side up or the
thrower is guilty. Important is the fact that in all ordeals
the sentient object decides the case; it is not acting as an
agent for a higher power. Among ordeals the most reli-
gious is that of the fire-ordeal, because Fire per se has be-
come almost a goddess. She is the witness to a promise,
as of marriage, and is especially invoked with a little
ritual: “We drink saké to thee; we give thee the lees;
keep evil from us; send us good.” To make sure that the
Fire understands, a messenger is sent to her in the shape
of a burnt stick. The whole content of a Vedic Fire-hymn
is virtually contained in the simple address. This message-
motif also is note-worthy. So, as will be seen, the dead bear
is really sent as a messenger to the bear-ancestor.
In the case of all these spirits we should use the word
power rather than spirit. The "water-cap spirit," for ex-
ample, is really only the potency-filled cloud itself. Very
clear is this in the case of the “vegetation-demons," which
even Mr. Batchelor recognizes as vague potencies rising
like mist from the ground and conceived as male and fe-
male powers of productivity. Air-spirits, potencies, are
clearer because more visible in effect. As the Ainus say,
“they give much trouble" (storm, hail, etc.). Fuji, the
Fire, is inseparable from her material self, but as a vivid
friend is more personified. She is even given a husband,
namely the house-guardian, represented by a stick placed
in the corner of the hut where heirlooms lie, not inaptly
compared by Mr. Batchelor with Penates, and possibly, as
he suggests, ancestral in character, though this remains
doubtful. Evil spirits, to use this word, as a class are
called nitne, "oppressive,” that is, troublesome; or, as Mr.
Batchelor puts it, “ Satan and all his angels are called nitne
kamui.”
It is doubtful whether the Ainus have any totemism at
all. The individual totem is riot a totem but a fetish made
of a willow-stick cut to look like a backbone, and supposed
to preserve the owner's soul, like other such soul-recepta-
AINUS AND NATURISM
51
cles. The mystery of the soul and backbone is widespread.
In Greece, for example, the soul is in the backbone, and the
buried backbone is revived as a snake; hence the close con-
nexion between the two in Greek mythology.
Mr. Batchelor says a boy once vaunted himself to be the
descendant of an eagle and offers this as a possible example
of a family-totem. But apparently only one boy ever
thought of such a thing and, in any case, descent from an ani-
mal does not show totemism. No animal or vegetable clans
exist. There remains the “national totemism” shown by
the most celebrated item of Ainu religion, the bear-cult.
This is not totemic, for the bear is not a clan-brother and
his blood is drunk only incidentally, and then not always, by
a few people; more to get vigour than to renew clan-life.
The bear is called divine and is worshipped; but any ani-
mal is “divine " enough to be called so to its face. Never-
theless, in that the bear is slain by the people, and his
body is shared by all, the ritual certainly smacks of totem-
ism.
In brief, the ceremony is as follows: A cub is raised with
care, well fed, and then at the stated time addressed by its
slayers thus: “O divine cub, who art come into the world
to be hunted by us, we pray to thee. We have nourished
thee well, because we love thee, and now we are sending thee
to thy father and mother. Do thou speak well of us to
them. Tell them how well we have nourished thee and then,
next season, come back to us and we will slay thee again."
Then women dance about him, and men slay him, careful
not to let the blood touch the ground, and, cutting off his
head, they place some of his own body before it with other
edibles, that the bear himself may share the feast, while they
pass around the “cup of boiled bear” (brains and saké),
which all must at least taste. Then Bruin is sent away by
having his head placed on the “sending pole,” around which
men and women dance. The name of the whole ceremony is
the “sending away.” It is almost identical with that of the
Lillooet, in British Columbia, who mourn the bear they kill
52
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
and raise his head on a pole, invoking him to send more bear-
food; likewise a non-totemic clan-rite.
The Ainu feast is also one of invigoration and productivity
rather than of blood-communion. Nothing in the ritual sug:
gests clan-brotherhood with the cub except the cup-cere-
mony, but even then nothing is said to indicate this. Fos.
ter-kinship with the bear is due to the fact that the cub is
always suckled by one of the women. The whole objeci
of the feast is to get vigour from the bear for now and to
secure more bear hereafter. Hence the “sending away."
But, if not totemistic, this rite approaches closely the Cau-
casus type of totemism, in which the clan regularly kill the
totem for food yet on special occasions sacrifice and eat one
member of the animal totem-clan. This again differs from
the Egyptian and Toda type, in which the totem has become
more holy than wholesome and is not used as food.
The Ainus have neither gods, priests, nor temples. Ac-
cording to Rev. Mr. Batchelor, however," they see the hand
of God in everything. The world, indeed, is His temple,
Nature His Book, every man His priest, and each chief His
high priest," and not only this but they possess "a belief
in one Supreme God and a doctrine of mediation.” As was
pointed out in the last chapter, it is of interest to find the
prototype of higher religion in the lower, but it is not neces-
sary to impute the technicalities of theology to the savage.
What Mr. Batchelor means is that the bear is sent away to
its mother with a message, and the burnt stick thrust into the
fire acts as messenger to the fire; ergo, these savages have a
“ doctrine of mediation.” 1
Thus the vital facts in primitive Ainu religion are that
these savages, whether or not they believe in spirits not phe-
nomenal, do worship phenomena; that they treat their grain
1 Professor Chamberlain and Mr. Howard have followed Mr.
Batchelor's interpretation, though their Ainus are not the same.
Mr. Howard's are in Saghalin and his understanding of them was
quite different till Mr. Batchelor showed him how to interpret.
A similar attempt has been made to interpret the Ainus as
“ Aryans” in race and language; but this also has failed.
SHAMANISM
53
as a sentient being; that they give food and drink to fire as
to a person, to propitiate it; that they “send away” not a
spirit but the bear, to propitiate the bear-people and get more
bear to eat; and that they have no cult of ghosts. Of sec-
indary importance is it that from the Japanese and from
Christians they have absorbed some religious paraphernalia
and some higher ideas, vaguely understood and retained, just
Is the Negroes have seized and held the idea of God given
them by others.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Miss Isabella Bird (Mrs. Bishop), Unbeaten Tracks in Japan,
London, 1878–1881.
H. Von Siebold, Ethnologische Studen über die Aino, Berlin,
1881.
B. Scheube, Der Bärencultus, contained in Romyn Hitchkock's
Ainos of Yezo, Japan, Report of the National Museum,
1890.
Rev. John Batchelor, The Ainu of Japan, New York, 1895.
B. Douglas Howard, Life with the Trans-Siberian Savages, of
Saghalin, London, 1893.
A. W. S. Landor, Alone with the Hairy Ainu, London, 1893.
SHAMANISM
Under this name is understood a certain religious attitude
conspicuous among sundry Mongolian tribes but found in
many parts of the earth. The word shaman is in fact
loosely used of almost any savage witch-doctor who becomes
frenzied and has communication with spirits. In its orig-
inal forin it appears to be a corruption of the Sanskrit
Shramana, which, indicating a disciple of Buddha, among
the Mongolians became synonymous with magician. Sha-
manism today is the name properly applied to the religion of
certain Ural-Altaic peoples, Finns, Hungarians, Turks, Mon-
golians, Tunguse, but chiefly those in the eastern part of
northern Asia. Christianity, Buddhism, and Mohammedism
have affected the purity of their beliefs and at present Sha-
manism is best represented by the Tunguse, who with the
exception of the Manchus are all Shamanists. All Shaman-
54
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
ists have substantially the same view of the world. Accord-
ing to it, heaven, earth, and the place under the surface
of the earth make a three-fold spiritual realm. On and
above earth live good spirits; below or within earth live evil
spirits, presided over by Erlik, originally a super-terrestrial
man condemned to hell because he wished to be equal to the
Creator, Kaira Kan, who is father and mother of mankind
and lives in the highest of the seventeen realms of light.
These are opposed to the realms of hell, seven or nine in
number. With Kaira, in the upper world, live the great
Kans (lords), gods, good spirits, and blessed ghosts. Below
earth live evil demons, kobalds, goblins, gnomes, swan-
maidens, and unblessed ghosts. After Erlik's fall, Kaira
created earth-men, the nine ancestors of the nine races.
Gods emanating from Kaira are those living below him, for
example, Bai Yulgen, in the sixteenth heaven, Kysagan, in
the ninth, and Mergen, who with the (mother) sun lives in
the seventh heaven, while the (father) noon lives in the fifth
heaven. There is a demiurge creator in the fifth and Bai
Yulgen's two sons are in the third heaven. In this third
heaven live also the souls of the blessed, and there are the
“sea of milk," or the spring of all life, and the mountains of
the gods. Earth itself is Jersu, a community of spirits as
an animate whole, at whose navel lives Jo Kan, a spirit
whose power is almost equal to that of Kaira, besides whom
there are other high lords, seventeen in number, like the
seventeen mountains and seventeen seas. Where the seven-
teen seas unite, lives the Ocean Kan. There is also an Altai
Kan or folk-god. Only seven of these lords have the same
names everywhere; the other ten, perhaps later growths,
are named differently by different tribes. They, like the
heavenly lords, are helpers of men and creative powers; but
only the earth-lords can be approached directly by ordinary
men, who offer them gifts or revere them by casting a stone
on a pile or sing them a song of praise. To honour these
kindly Jersui, earth-powers, there is no need of an inter-
mediary priest.
SHAMANISM
55
1
Far different is it with the great lords of the realms above
and within earth. These can be approached only through
the mediating spirits of the dead. Thus the good gods
above must be approached through the Somno, the nine an-
cestors that guard men. But, and herein lies the key of
Shamanism, only certain families can control the Somo and
other spirits. The power, however, is not inherited but
inherent in certain families. That is, the power is not
passed on from father to son, but each son of the favoured
family is in turn seized with an ecstasy and becomes in-
spired, till in this state he is able to act in the capacity of
an intermediary between man and the spirits. These are the
Shamans. In producing rain, they sometimes call on Kaira
Kan to open the sky, but always at the same time they call
on the forefather. In other words, Kaira Kan may be
omitted, but never the ghost. Shamanism is therefore pri-
marily a cult of spirits, conceived as ancestral ghosts.
Despite the theory of gods and the lofty cosmogony, which
may be due in part to Buddhistic influence, the spirits in-
voked are not generally of the upper but of the lower world.
Erlik himself, the prince of evil and of death, is called
Father Erlik, because though a foe of man, “all men belong
to him and he at last takes their lives.” To Erlik are at-
tributed all misfortunes, from poverty to death, and because
of this power man honours him, calls him father, and makes
offerings to him. Although the spirits of light are more
powerful than those of darkness, the former need little at-
tention, because they are good and kind; whereas evil spirits,
if not appeased, would constantly do injury. In consequence,
the shamanistic cult consists for the most part in placating
evil spirits. In this it resembles the cults of Akkadians and
Dravidians; but its special feature lies in the close connex-
ion between man and his ancestors through the ecstatic
Shaman. The Shaman's power is not his own but that of
the Manes infused into him. He is not possessed by the
devil but by the spirit of his ancestor. When thus possessed
he ascends to heaven or descends to hell (ancestral spirits
56
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
being in both spheres) and influences the powers as he will.
The Shaman also arranges the sacrifice, purifies the house of
death by driving forth the ghost, and acts also as physician,
weather-prophet, and soothsayer. All these offices belong
to his kamlanie or shamanizing (kam, Turkish for Shaman).
His indispensable instrument is a drum with which to coerce
spirits; but too he is usually adorned with bits of iron and
other apotropaic tags and bobs, perhaps of fetish character.
Though rather feared than liked, he is looked upon as a ne-
cessity, since apart from obtaining good things from the
spirits, man's happiness depends upon the Shaman's ability
to satisfy spirits of both classes, for the following reason.
When a man is born, Bai Yulgen sends a good spirit, first
to draw his life from the sea of milk and then to guard and
guide him. But at the same time Erlik sends a devil to
mislead him. After death both spirits accompany the soul
to the judgment-hall below and as one has followed the sug-
gestions of either spirit one joins the blessed or damned.
But virtue is not enough to give happiness, which consists
in possessing good things, for both in heaven and hell the
spirits, as in Egypt, are envious and desire his goods, which
they may steal from him if not placated by means of a
Shaman.
A sacrifice to Erlik can be made anywhere, but one to
Bai Yulgen must be made with more or less secrecy in a
grove. The ceremony lasts three nights. On the first, a
horse is slain, without bloodshed; 2 on the second the
Shaman ascends or descends to the spirit-world by mystic
ceremonies, in which the Shaman rides the pura (soul) of
the slaughtered horse. At various stages he utters prophe-
TT
1 They do not seem to be used as real fetishes, however, but as
ghost-scarers simply.
2 So the Ainu bear in strangled, and the Hindu horse in the old
Vedic sacrifice. In none of these cases, however, is the ground
made taboo by the blood. Possibly, as with the Ainus, where it is
wiped off very carefully, the ground would be so taboo that it is
safer to regard it as not touched if the blood is immediately
erased.
SHAMANISM
57
cies in an ecstatic condition till he reaches the abode of the
spirit sought, whom he beseeches to ward off evil or grant
some good. The third night is devoted to carousing with
the offering of libations. It is a matter of indifference to
the Shaman whether he go up to heaven or down to hell.
Shamanism therefore is not purely diabolical, a devil-wor-
ship, as it is often considered, but a cult of spirits; though
the office of ghost-scarer, who purifies the house, is as im-
portant as any and one most frequently exercised. To bless,
to offer homage to the Jersui, even to prophesy and make
rain are in the capacity of others, but only a Shaman can
make sacrifice to the great gods and devils and purify a
house. Yet, unless the influence of unlucky stars must be
averted, the Shaman has no part in ceremonies of birth,
marriage, or death. There is practically no worship of ma-
terial objects. It is clear that most of the cosmogony and
ranks of gods are secondary. Shamanism is at bottom
ghost-worship, a cult of ghosts or ancestral spirits as funda-
mental as is the nature-power-cult of Ainuism. To be no-
ticed also is the prominence of the evil spirit and the neces-
sary extasis of the mediating priest, who works only through
spirit-possession, the spirit being always ancestral, never a
nature-spirit.
If we strip off the Buddhistic accumulation, which from
the name of the Shaman to the role of the Evil One are
secondary elements, we get to the foundation fact, which is
that the ancestral spirit is a friendly creature, who watches
over his family and communicates with them by means of
an inspired mediator. Now if we take a still purer case of
Shamanism, among an utterly simple people, we find this
result abundantly confirmed. Such a case is to be found
among the Veddas of Ceylon in their most uncorrupted
state. Here the religious instinct expresses itself in an un-
questioning belief that the father when dead still lives,
guards, and guides his family in the hunt; and that he is
communicated with through a common meal and the medi-
ation of an ecstatic Shaman, whose dervish dance by auto-
58
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
:
ST
intoxication makes this actor imagine that he is really
speaking as possessed by the dead Yaku (ghost). Likewise
in the arrow-dance, the aid of the ancestor is sought by the
same means. Here also it is assumed that the ancestor is
well-disposed. Only contact with the outer world has
taught the Veddas that the country is full of inimical Yaku."
LITERATURE
W. Radloff, Aus Siberien, 2d ed., Leipzig, 1893.
Mikhailovski, Shamanism, Journ. Anthrop. Inst., xxiv., pp. 69f.,
1895.
C. G. Seligmann, The Veddas, Cambridge, 1911.
1 Several features deserve more than the allusion permitted by
space, such as the importance of hair-vigour in the Shaman, the
instruction given to the “fit” pupil, and the gradual exaltation
in Vedda belief of one greatest spirit to godhead. The sacrificial
communal meal becomes so charged with spirit-power that the
remnant is even rubbed upon the noses of the hunting-dogs, not to
speak of the persons of the family, to heighten their ability (compare
the Hindu ucchishta, the potent remnant of sacrifice). The original
belief as to the dead seems to have been that only the stronger
spirits survive to an indefinite period; others fade out, probably
after a few generations. The etymology of Shaman given above is
11ot certain, though probable.
CHAPTER FIVE
POLYNESIAN RELIGIONS
1. SPIRITS, MYTHS, AND CHARMS
The spirits, generally malevolent, of the Polynesians are
strongly anthropomorphic. So romantic, and at the same
time realistic, is the conception of these spirits that Poly-
nesian mythology reminds one of the heroic tales of Greek
beautifies the ugliness of the inner belief in treacherous,
filthy, cowardly gods. We enter here a different plane from
that of the Negro's religion, one reflecting the higher intel-
lectuality of the Ocean race.
The Polynesian spirits are somewhat confused with ghosts,
yet they are formally distinguished from them and in fact
are generally nature-spirits, not usually natural objects wor-
shipped as such, but objects manifesting free spirits con-
ceived as almost human in form and character. To them
as malignant beings are ascribed not only disease, death,
and great misfortune, but even the slightest untoward acci-
dent. This, too, is Greek. In the account of the funeral
games in the Iliad, every hero whose chariot upsets or who
has a fall due to his own lack of skill, lays it to the inter-
ference of some malicious spirit (goddess). The Tahitians
Maori gods are great devils, who appear in lightning and
storm but differ only in size from the little devils in noxious
insects and reptiles : “thick as mosquitoes the devils sur-
round us." But some do good at times or are merely ca-
pricious. In general, Polynesian spirits, though fickle, are
by predilection malign. Some undoubtedly are now ghosts
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
that were originally nature-powers; for, like the Finns, who
have euhemerized their gods, the Polynesians show a tend-
ency to adopt into the family some non-ghostly spirits.
There are even traces of the actual worship of natural
objects. Prayers and offerings are addressed to reptiles, to
rocks, to rivers, and to trees, quite directly, and trees are
adorned with red ochre and cloths as signs of worship; while
the word religion is said to mean “sacred tree.” 1
On the other hand, the secret societies indicate a cult of
ghosts. The ancestors were imagined as reptilian troglo-
dytes and both they and their descendants as ghosts give
fertility. The ghost-form is almost exclusively the object
of the Melanesian Tamate (society), but the Melanesians
are not so primitive as the Polynesians. Yet the usual idol,
a stick adorned with a carved head, and put in the ground
as a tutelary power to mark property-lines, is said to repre-
sent gods not ghosts. Totemism, also, is weakly represented,
perhaps in genuine form only in Samoa. Papuans and Sol-
omon Islanders are related to animals but not totemistically.
So the common worship of eels is not a sign of totemism.
Animals appear as incarnations of both ghosts and gods.
Thus the lizard is a spirit or god, not a ghost-spirit. There
is also a pronounced litholatry with some phallic cult, which
may also be reflected in the Putete circumcision-ceremony
of New Zealand and the corresponding Fiji rite.
Gods in any case have a divinity synonymous with devilry.
Thus the Atua (god) is a spirit of disease, plague, and
thievery; atua ika are fish-gods or reptiles; and a sea-mon-
ster, he ika, was regarded as a dead chief famed for cruelty
in life and regarded as still more malignant in death. De-
partmental gods are found here, spirits presiding over pains
in the head, in the breast, child-birth, etc., and Maru is at
once a god of war and a disease-demon, whose priests are
fat because, though insatiable, he, like an African god,
leaves the gross part of the sacrifice to them. It is imma-
terial whether one calls these spirits gods or devils.
1 Compare Taylor, Te Ika a Maui, London, 1870, p. 104.
POLYNESIAN SPIRITS AND CHARMS
бу
The root-idea of divinity is expressed by “pith," that is,
power. That is the reason why there is no distinction be-
tween god and devil; a spirit has pith or power, whether
good or bad. Moreover it is only a question of degree
whether man is not divine. A man losing heart is said to
“ lose his pith” (his spirit), the same word translated " di-
vinity." In the poetic cosmogony the gods are creative
spirits. Before heaven was uplifted from earth, there
were only “Night and dark gods”; they were succeeded by
Rangi, Heaven, and Papa, Earth, the parents of men. For
Rangi created man in his own image by kneading clay with
his own blood (life).1 But other gods were makers (cre-
ators); Tawiri, of storms; Tane, of trees (he is also the
general male principle of generation) ; 2 Tangaroa, of fish,
but also of day. This last god has one sacred grove and, by
some scholars, is regarded as the chief god, because most
widely recognized. Other tales ascribe to Ra the origin
of other gods and of men and mountains. On the other
hand, Turi is a demi-god ancestor and Maui a culture-hero.
An indigenous worship of stars is referred to the effort of
one native “founder" of a special religion. Ordinarily,
stars, like clouds, are souls of heroes; the more foes they
have slain the brighter they are. Stars, moon, sun, etc.,
are denizens of ten heavens.
Opposed to Night (chaos) of the underworld, the chief
gods are those of day and light, Motoro, light and love; Ra,
the sun; Vatea, another "father of gods and men,” half
fish and half human, without grove or idol or sacrifice, be-
cause he represents what to the Polynesian is illimitable
majesty, Ocean. Probably different clan- or district-gods
account for the variety of creators of the same things. To
turn to the lower mythology, there are small white fairies,
spirits of hill and mist (quite Celtic), who seize women;
1 Taylor, op. cit, p. 117. Rangi is creator; Rongo is war-god.
2 This important principle is complemented by the female prin-
ciple, regarded as destructive, like the Chinese sex-opposites.
Compare also the destructive female power in the Hindu Kali,
“wife” of the god of life and destruction.
hill ant myth of cre
62
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
and giants, not ghosts, of the caves and mountains, some-
times represented as dragons, who cause land-slides. To
the dark spirit Night the Polynesians pay as much reverence
as to the light-gods. Another spirit, elsewhere poetical,
here real, is Echo, who has a cult. Meteors are souls;
eclipse, a demon; the gods, like men, carry clubs and fight,
light against dark. The dark half of the month is sacred
to Iro, god of murderers and thieves, who has a charm-song:
“Let deep sleep overcome this house; sleep on, owner of
the house; threshold, sleep on; insects of the house, sleep
on," etc., much like one of the Vedic Hymns (Rig Veda, vii.
55).1
Many Polynesian myths resemble those of other lands.
Eneene seeks below earth the beloved wife who has died
and brings her back; the moon-goddess has intercourse with
her human lover; Tawaki stamps a hole through the stone
(sky) and lets out the waters above, causing a deluge; then,
killed by his brothers, he is resurrected and ascends to
heaven again.?
No lofty sentiment inspires the blessed who sit in heaven.
Their chief delight is to mock and drop filth on those below
in hell and watch them in their struggles to get out. Ngaru
was a hero who overcame the “demon of the sky," pre-
venting him from further destruction of men, for whom
he used to angle. Most of man's tormentors, however,
came out of an opening on earth, till fair Tiki stopped it
with her own (sacrificed) body, “for love of mankind."
This opening leads to Avaiki, where base men's souls are
cooked and eaten by the fiend Miru. Originally Avaiki was
“ down" west (sun-down). Until it acquired the mean-
ing of down below (earth), all shades went to Avaiki; the
feet of the buried still lie westward. Later only nobles or
braves went thither, “ following the sun” to heaven; com-
mon men went to the world below, to be “ eaten by gods."
1 Gill, Myths and Songs from the South Pacific, London, 1876,
p. 150.
2 Taylor, op. cit., D. 101.
POLYNESIAN SPIRITS AND CHARMS
63
Annihilation awaits all but the brave. But some still
think the soul lingers by the body and offerings are placed
in the grave. The Fiji Islanders, perhaps Papuans, believe
that the soul has the same body after death. It passes over
a " path of shades," drinking the fount of forgetfulness, a
Lethe which causes even the mourners to forget their grief.
They affectionately strangle their parents while still strong,
lest senile decay make their life unpleasant hereafter. In
New Guinea the Papuans make an image for the dead man's
soul to live in, not from affection but to keep it out of
mischief.
The “leaping place" of the dead is where, when a suffi-
cient number have collected, after the sun goes down, the
leap to heaven is made. By means of a narrow bridge the
souls first pass the river Waioratane, but here the bridge-
keeper may send a soul back (explanation of resuscitation).
Then they individually leap up and so become stars or clouds.
The only moral content lies in the fact that the brave alone
ever get as far as the bridge. There must have been a con-
current belief in metempsychosis, for many of the gods are
ancient heroes and also take animal forms. But such a
belief is now held very vaguely. Some think a man's spirit
is reborn in his son.?
The burial rite was elaborate, for it required eighteen
Karakias (spells) and, after the first burial, was completed
by cleaning and painting the bones, which were then pre-
served. The head was often embalmed. There was no
rite for marriage, the girl becoming taboo, sacred, for her
husband at the wedding-feast, without any spell, probably
because she was usually stolen. Tribal relations, however,
1 Basil Thomas, in Journ. Anthrop. Inst. 1895, p. 349f. In regard
to the chiefs, it is to be noticed that the priests called "mouth-pieces
of Rongo," the war-god, were distinct from the military chiefs
and might neither fight nor be tattoed (Tahiti, tatu, “mark," a
decorative not religious sign, according to Gill, p. 95 and Taylor,
p. 394).
2 Taylor, pp. 233, 299. In the East Indian Archipelago, the good
native hopes when he dies to become a crocodile.
-
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
were so loose among the Maoris that sometimes the groom
renounced his tribe and lived with his father-in-law, fight-
ing against his own tribe or horde. Death-dances at
funerals resemble those in Mexico, but do not prove con-
nexion.
The Polynesian priesthood was graded, though no priest
was more than a wizard. Yet Tohungas were lower than
Ariki, who were high-priests of divine power defied only
by the strongest chiefs. But even a woman-chief has been
known to counter-taboo a tabooing Ariki and overcome him.
Tahiti had a graded priest-corporation, and the lower grades,
Areois, were strolling players who acted religious scenes in
the life of the gods, under the patronage of the god Oro,
to whom were given the first-fruits of harvest. Songs and
dances received priestly recognition as part of the “play.”
It is uncertain whether the harvest-spirits active in these
performances were nature-spirits or ghosts.
The cult is conspicuous for cannibalistic human sacri-
fice; it is offered to most of the gods, especially to Rongo.
Remains of the victims were distributed to chiefs as title
of land-ownership. The priest's power was enormous; who-
ever interfered with his prerogatives was afflicted with
hydrocele or other diseases, which, however, might be cured
by a Karakia, a kind of incantation used to avert all trou-
bles and bring all blessings, for the individual and for the
state, on occasion of harvest, hunting, battle, etc. The
Karakia is often only a hymn of indefinite thanks. Thus
for hunting: “Give thanks above and below, give thanks
to the Mother” (goddess). These Karakia were counted
by stalks, the rosary-idea, and the gods entered images to
1 Such connexion has also been based on the fact that a South
American paddle is “Melanesian" in appearance or that lo means
a spade in Mexico and in New Zealand. More important are the
idols and temple-ruins found in New Zealand, which indicate
either foreign influence or great decadence. According to Mr. Best
(Man, 1914), New Zealand was settled about 900 years ago by
eastern Polynesians who combined with the native lower type of
Fiji-like savages. The Maori could have learned fortification-build-
ing, building-sacrifice, and cannibalism from these (Maruiwi).
TIN
POLYNESIAN SPIRITS AND CHARMS
65
reply to them. The priest played the Shaman, as medium
between men and gods. With writhing body and rolling
eye, insensible to the world, he spoke the oracle. Move-
ments of limbs, birds, and dreams were also oracular.
Not only before war but at its close was a Karakia nec-
essary. Especially to lift the war-taboo against wives,
which was entrusted to a special god, Tu. In war all a
man's strength is required; hence the soft delights of home
were formally tabooed by Karakia, till it was over; then
a second Karakia lifted it. Another parallel to foreign
usage is that of the scape-goat. Over one man was sung
a Karakia, which bound on him by proxy all the sins of
the tribe, which he carried in a stalk of fern. This he let
float down the river, carrying away the people's sins. An-
other Karakia is pronounced at baptism, when a child is
eight days old and a name is given him. The boy is sub-
sequently “confirmed ” (Dr. Taylor's expression), that is,
dedicated before battle to the war-god with a Karakia
exhorting him to be virtuous (brave). With a girl the
name is given under this formula: “ Give her a name!
What is this little girl? She is a living breath, the breath
of a great chief coming from heaven; for lo! the sky has
breathed forth” (to make her soul); an interesting coun-
terpart to the Hebrew idea of soul as the breath of God.
In regard to the name, a man has several. One is given
purely for personal reasons. For example, one man was
called Mawai (cucumber) because he could creep so craftily
upon the ground. In India a similar name meaning gourd
has been taken to prove“ vegetable totemism”!
To sum up the externals of Polynesian religion, there is
no doubt that these savages worshipped ghosts as ancestors,
or that they also worshipped natural phenomena, nor much
doubt that they so confused the two classes that neither
they nor we in many instances can say to which class the
object worshipped belongs. Some scholars even regard all
the spirits as ghosts. As to the philosophic pantheism
1 Taylor, op. cit., p. 183.
66
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
attributed to these savages by Taylor and Gill, it is partly
due to the idea of mana and partly to a natural read-
ing-in of higher ideas. According to Taylor, the Maori
believed that the world came from swelling, which made
thought, which produced memory, desire, spirit, and mat-
ter. At first all was darkness and nought; till from noth-
ing came swelling (conception), increase, and then breath
(spirit), which made air, atmosphere, and then the eyes
of heaven, that is, sun and moon, out of which came sky and
land united, till Ra (sun) nade gods and men; “and Turi
was the first man to come from Hawaiki” (to New Zea-
land). This seems to be a double account. The sixth crea-
tion is formally stated to be gods and men, as if the original
series had been thought, breath, darkness-world, light, sky-
earth, gods-men, but at best it is a philosophy doubtless more
or less “interpreted," though it remains a fair parallel to
Rig Veda x. 129, which has a somewhat similar series.
What is most interesting, however, is the fact that here, as
often, savages explain the world by natural evolution. Our
California Indians do the same.
In the religious thought of the Polynesians, death is an
extreme form of sickness. The line is drawn not between
life and death but between strength and weakness. A Fiji
Islander stands in a tree-top when a member of the family
has died and calls to it, “ Come back, come back," as if it
might return. Elsewhere death is a sleep. To kill is to
"put to sleep”; an extinguished fire "sleeps.” 1
Totemism of a peculiar sort is found in Fiji, where a
man's father's plants and animals are the man's totems, of
1 See Dr. W. H. R. Rivers in the Hibbert Journal, 1912, p. 393;
and A. M. Hocart in Man, 1915, No. 5. It is perhaps questionable,
however, exactly how the phenomena here should be interpreted.
The Chinese also call "come back," and putting to sleep is a Hindu
euphemism for killing. The general belief that death is only
extreme weakness is an illustration of a common savage idea.
Conversely, old men are called "ghosts” by some Polynesians, as
having already become pure spirit. Yet only as lacking strengtla,
not as a Buddhist or Yogi becomes, while still alive, a spiritual
power.
MANA AND TABOO
which he may thus have a number. This is evidently a
property-taboo passing into a form of totemism.1
II. MANA AND TABOO
Mana (both vowels are short) is inherent power, some-
times spiritual, a Polynesian synonym of our Indian Wakan,
Orenda, etc., and a savage equivalent of the Hindu Brahma
(power). Taboo (Samoan tapu, Hawaiian kapu) is a tab
or mark indicating that a thing is not noa or common, but set
apart for private use. A woman is noa till married, then
she becomes taboo for (sacred to) her husband; if you
steal her, you break taboo. Taboo connotes Greek ayos
and dylos, Latin sacer, holy or accursed because awesome.
Its sign, a red rag, is virtually a Noli me tangere.
The failure to distinguish between holy and devilish, or
accursed, lingers long. In Luke xxi. 5, the temple is
adorned with anathēmas, only a vowel's length from
anathěmas, both indicating something “set up," as de-
voted, to God or to the Devil, holy or accursed. The Jews
say “the Holy Scriptures defile the hands," render them
liable to cleansing from the awesome touch. So with spirits.
What is ghostly is ghastly.
But the notion of taboo is so general and the word itself
so thoroughly anglicized that we need only notice some
Polynesian exaggerations of taboo and some European ex-
aggeration of the taboo-theory. Although taboo is found
everywhere, it is systematically over-stressed in Polynesia.
Nowhere else is man so taboo-ridden. Here it can be
studied with greatest ease. Let us imagine ourselves think-
ing à la Polynesia.
All things have power; often concealed. Of spirits it is
unnecessary to speak; they and theirs are all naturally awe-
some, sacred, taboo. Even the priests, who serve spirits,
are so filled with spiritual power that they may not be
touched, nor their food tasted; they must wipe their hands
on their own hair or on their own dogs. Not so much lest
2 See A. M. Hocart in Man, 1915, No. 3.
1
68
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
+
they injure others, but lest their power be captured hy
others, who might use it against them. Whoever shows
great strength has inward power, mana. Whoever pos-
sesses power naturally rules; his mana is extremely danger-
ous. Whatever is not understood is dangerous. Many
animals are dangerous; all mysterious things are dangerous,
especially the mysteries of life and death and the spiritual
world. It is best not to meddle with them, but to taboo
them. So thinks the savage. That mana is often virility-
power is probable; its complement is the female power.
The best defence against magic is a drastic gesture imply-
ing that one casts his virility against the magician.
But there is no universal system of taboo, no one way of
thinking about it. Scholars who have gone on the theory
that there is a world-wide taboo-system have gone wrong.
They cannot understand how savages in one part of the
world can contradict their system. Why should one savage
wash and one refrain from washing after a burial? Why
should one savage allow a girl who has reached adult age
to mingle freely with people and another shut her up? They
suggest absurd theories to account for such discrepancies.
The simple truth is that the same situation strikes one sav-
age in one way and another in another way. The girl, for
example, has a sudden access of “power”; she may be dan-
gerous, and is confined, so some Polynesians think. Other
savages, like the African Warundi, argue that her power
adds to the family or tribal power and should be spread
abroad, and she is led about to "bless” the community.
A second common error is the one already exposed. It is
that mana is an universal, almost pantheistic, spiritual power,
of which every individual has a share. No unaided savage
ever generalized thus. Each individual has a power, not a
share of a world-power. There is a tree, a rock, a man, each
with power, not a general tree-power, etc.; still less a general
tree-rock-man-god power.
1 See Man, 1914, No. 66, and compare the oath by the thigh in
Hebrew law.
MANA AND TABOO
69
A third error is that all taboos are religious. But wher-
ever priests and kings are, there religious motives are apt
to become political. So it is with taboo. Originally a har-
vest is tabooed till the first fruits are religiously gathered:
The taboo thus becomes a sign to prevent permature har-
vesting. But, at the same time, the sign of taboo itself, a
red rag or something of the sort, is utilized to scare rob-
bers. The private individual acts on this discovery and
how much more the priest and the king ? They taboo, for
their own convenience and for wealth, whatever they wish
to keep to themselves. So in the taboo-system we must
recognize that same intermixture of religion and cunning
which has exalted other priests and kings. The augur
winks at his fellow in Polynesia as well as in Rome.1
A fourth error is that taboo always implies the fear of a
spirit. Waitz, Schultze, and other writers of the last cen-
tury have made this error and Wundt still acts upon it, to
the great detriment of his work. In its most primitive
manifestations taboo is either spiritual, atua tabu, or non-
spiritual, mana tabu. In New Zealand these two classes
are formally recognized. The spirit or god has a power
tabooed; or a man, garden, tree, river, has each in itself a
power against which one must guard. In Mikronesia, where
primitive taboo has been developed far beyond its original
simplicity, taboo is generally one against spirits.
The aim of religious purity to a savage is to keep his
own power or spirit, either by guarding against its loss or
its weakness, caused by adverse influences. Food-taboos
1 The exaggeration of this truth leads to the error of Taylor,
Te Ika a Mani, that all taboo is due to priestly craft.
2 Wundt, deriving taboo from totemism, explains all morality as
due to a fear of the ancestral ghost (in vermin as well as in ani-
mals). His work is a good example of taboo extravagance.
Wundt teaches for example, that the reason civilized man avoids
reptiles and vermin is that he has an inherited dread of his an-
cestral ghost (located in the vermin). Compare Wundt, Völkerpsy-
chologie, Mythus und Religion, Leipzig, 1906, ii. 308. Other
modern writers occasionally err in making mana always a spirit-
power (so in Man, 1916, No. 46).
70
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
are very minute for this reason, but it is not only an atua,
which might slip in and injure, that one guards against.
There is also danger in the food-power, the same power that
inheres in nails, hair, blood, etc. Mana is as contagious as
small-pox and to be guarded against in the same way.
Pure taboo is quite limited; most of the cases cited are
really secondary, like using a rag solely to establish owner-
ship. In pure taboo it is usually a question of life and
death. Thus blood is life and ground where blood is shed
is taboo. Food is life; hence a harvest-taboo. But when
a chief taboos his people with the sole object of making
the lazy fellows work, that is secondary. Wine was taboo
in Egypt because it was blood-like. But the African yam-
taboo, like that of some animals in Australia, is purely hy-
gienic and secondary. Indigestion may be a devil, but when
the old Australian may not eat pork and his son, of middle
age, may eat, it is because one cannot, and one can, digest
it. But in taboos of blood, birth, and death there is a real
if vague dread of a mysterious potency.
Many simple taboos are due to the twisted logic of the
savage mind. A knot is difficult. Hence knots and things
like knots, crossed legs or arms, are capable of restrictive
influence. Therefore there is a taboo on all such things
when there is labour or an illness especially dangerous. Ill-
ness is itself a knot and in Scotland one prays to the Devil to
loosen the knots of sickness, just as in India one prays to
Varuna to "loosen the knots.” But a knot is not neces-
sarily evil, since restriction, of excessive rain-fall, etc., may
be useful. Such a knot-taboo is more logical than religious;
its interpretation is rather magical than spiritual. Name-
taboos involve the person; whose name is part of himself.
Hence innumerable taboos, either to prevent a person from
controlling another whose name is used, or to prevent a
person from appearing. In South India, a wife will not
1 In higher religions, if the pig is associated with the underworld,
it becomes taboo from a new association of ideas, with under-world
potencies.
MANA AND TABOO
. 71
name her husband; most Hindus today will not divulge their
real names. In Africa this is called the hlonipa," taboo of
naming oneself.” In Australia there is a secret name, for
safety. To prevent sudden appearance, tigers are not called
tigers in India, and the Devil is called Old Nick in Scotland.
This is not religious in itself; but it may easily have a re-
ligious application. Thus in Polynesia the common people
were not permitted to know the real name of the great
Maori god Io (compare the Hebrew parallel), for the same
reason that forbids an African to name his king. It is prac-
tically equivalent to boasting that one controls him. In
Australia the dead are not named, “Lest they hear them-
selves called and return," or, as our Indians more courte-
ously say, “ No one would stop them on their heavenward
way." From name-taboo many common words used as
names may become taboo, without any other religious
reason.
Marriage taboos are manifold but not all are religious.
Brother and sister must marry, in Egypt and Peru, for eco-
nomic reasons; endogamy often precedes exogamy and
marriages are arranged which, to us, seem incestuous; or are
prohibited which to us are allowable. Food-taboos, too, are
often due merely to food-vows. A kingly taboo cannot be
established merely because of Homer's ίερον μένος, for ίερος,
before meaning “ divine," meant strong, in itself a good ex-
ample of how power is interpreted as holy. Dr. Frazer mis-
takenly concludes that sentinels were " sacred,” because this
iepos is applied to them.
1 But it does not follow that linguistic gaps prove taboo. Meringer
thus thinks to "prove" taboo, and hence totemism, for the Indo-
Europeans, because they have in part lost the word for bear; Ind.
Forsch. xxi. 296f.
2 For Frazer's theory that incest is thought to disturb nature
(a doubtful conclusion), see his Psyche's Task (2 ed. 1913).
3 Or to other secondary taboo reasons. Thus the Navajo fish-
taboo is due to the belief that the Navajo is descended from a fish,
not to an original fish-taboo. The Bengal fish-taboo comes from
a local rain-god who was once a Mohammedan saint! The Eskimo
fish-taboo is purely economic.
72
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
Many guesses have been converted into positive assertions
in the domain of ancient religions. How much real taboo
there was in Nazarite and Essene religion it is now impos-
sible to know. But there is more than enough guess-work
in regard to modern religions. Thus we are told that the
dirty savage would never wash himself but for taboo, that a
new-born baby is washed for taboo, that care for the dead
is all taboo-work. But many savages in hot climes bathe
for pleasure; so do animals, as they clean themselves. The
Sankrit word for cat means a cleanser, and even a cow licks
clean its baby; while decaying bodies are repulsive, and in
warni climates the third day after death makes a corpse an
object to be got rid of, taboo or no taboo. The savage
must be given credit for some sense, if not for decency; also
for some human nature. Scholars who ascribe to taboo all
caste-systems, self-adornment, and even umbrellas, should
study man and history. Castes come from dividing politi-
cal entities and from different occupations. In both cases
taboo arises after, not before, the caste. Every savage and
even some animals affect shiny things. No savage but
loves a silk hat. Umbrellas in India were not carried till
late in the historical period and then for the purpose of pro-
tecting a king from the sun. Anthropologists find savages
whose priests flatter their king by saying he carries an um-
brella to protect the sun from His Majesty, and the
anthropologist, who is often as guiltless of history as the
savage, believes this.
As a matter of form some taboos are temporary, some
permanent, as well as primary and secondary. Temporary
taboo may be a mere matter of precaution. If a stranger
arrives, he is temporarily tabooed till the visited tribe see if
he be spiritually dangerous, a temporary quarantine against
unknown mana. Of this sort are public taboos set on a
river or wood for special reasons for a limited time and then
removed by Karakia. Permanent taboo is that, for exam-
1 This is the usual time-limit. Forty days may elapse in a cold
climate, as with the Scythians.
MANA AND TABOO
73
ple, of a priest or a king's house. Many taboos arise from
conservatism and the principle that what is custom is holy.
Taboos surrounding old Irish kings are simply ancient cus-
tonis sacro-sanct because of inimemorable antiquity, not
because they reflect original taboo. It is taboo to break
the custom; but that is another matter. The Hindu king
was told by law when to go to bed; but being an Aryan he
never obeyed the rule enough to have a taboo created. On
the other hand, the Egyptian king so regularly went to bed
when he was told that his twenty-fifth descendant regarded
it as a divine law and had a bed-hour taboo which he feared
to break.
More important are moral origins reverting to taboo.
The taboo becomes a categorical imperative. Theft as
breaking taboo becomes legally sinful. Yet here also the
anthropologist has exaggerated. He professes to derive all
moral laws from taboo. Adultery, murder, theft are not
(he says) sins per se; they are sinful only as violations of
taboo. But does a dog recognize taboo ? Does he not
punish the dog that steals his bone? Is not murder, the
slaying of a member of the group, avenged from self-pro-
tection or sentiment (the tigress slays the murderer of her
young) more than from taboo ? Does only a taboo-fearer
kill the man who takes his wife? Such taboos, against
theft, murder, and adultery, exist, but because the act is an
injury, that is, a wrong.1
Dread and dislike begin in the lowest organisms. When
such an organism in the biological laboratory shifts its po-
sition from blue light to red, the foundation for taboo is
laid. Higher up, man shifts from what he dislikes or fears,
blood or death, imagining in it some mysterious potency.
Then he begins to create spirit in things and avoids those
1 A missionary once asked a savage to explain 'wrong.' He
explained: “When another man steals my wife.” “Excellent,"
said the missionary, “and now explain right."" He explained :
“When I steal another man's wife.” Morality's basis is personal
advantage; only a wider outlook can widen the concepts right
and wrong.
74
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
he dislikes, namely the unknown or uncanny. Even before
the organism invents the idea of spirit, it shies at the un-
known, as a horse shies at loose paper, instinctively avoid-
ing all ill, which later becomes evil. Battle-blood alarms no
savage; but blood appearing in consequence of processes
not understood calls for taboo, which at bottom is an ex-
pression of dislike (often merely because unlike leads to
dislike) or of fear. It may or may not be religious.
Medhatithi, an old Hindu commentator on divine law, shows
his sanity when, in explaining taboos against going to bed
with wet feet and swimming a river, he remarks, "not of
religious moment.”. That is, taboo is practical and may be
religious. Taboo did not originate ethics, as Dr. Jevons has
tried to persuade us, but it has legalized and strengthened
morality. It has done this, as man has risen from fear of
a mysterious power to fear of a more defined spirit-power,
by eventually putting the fear of God into the sinner.
A
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Richard Taylor, Te Ika a Maui (New Zealand, Maori, etc.),
London, 1870.
William W. Gilí, Myths and Songs from the South Pacific, Lon-
don, 1876.
Theodore Waitz (-Gerland), Anthropologie der Naturvölker,
Part iii, Leipzig, 1872.
Edward Shortland, Maori Religion and Mythology, London,
1882.
William Ellis, Polynesian Researches (Society and Sandwich
Islands), 2d ed., London, 1831–32.
F. B. Jevons, An Introduction to the History of Religion, 2d ed.,
London, 1902; An Introduction to the Study of Compara-
tive Religion, New York, 1908,
CHAPTER SIX
RELIGIONS OF NORTH AMERICA
THE ESKIMOS. CENTRAL TRIBES. CULT-HEROES.
TOTEMISM. RITUAL OF SOUTHERN TRIBES
In America the highest culture was attained midway be-
tween North and South; in the North the closest approach
to civilization was made by the much-encircled Iroquois,
who had an especial aptitude for political and ethical de-
velopment, resulting in the Confederacy of Nations and a
superior moral code. The mental friction produced by all-
round antagonism often seems to engender intellectual fire,
of which a clearer religion is a manifestation. The mis-
sionaries asserted that theft and lying were practically un-
known vices among the Iroquois. Their political supe-
riority is unquestioned. If they had not been interfered
with by Europeans they would probably have established
an Aztec-like hegemony over Eastern America. Conversely,
the outlying parts of the country, represented by Eskimos
and Athapascans or, in South America, by Fuegians and
Patagonians, present the lowest extreme of intellectual
and religious savagery. There seenis to be no racial differ-
ence to account for this, as the whole country since the
Stone Age has been occupied by intermingled long-heads
and round-heads. Some have fancied that aboriginal tribes
used Atlantic stepping-stones and came from Europe. More
probable is the theory that the country was settled from
Asia by the North West passage. But wherever the peo-
ple came from, there is no certainty as to the provenance
1 Compare the intellectual superiority of mid-placed groups, such
as those of Athens and Saxony, in their respective periods.
75
76
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
of their religions. We must accept then as American till
stronger evidence for foreign extraction has been shown
than the landing of a Japanese junk in Mexico (in 1845),
the resemblance of totem-poles to Malay idols, and the
similarity between Peruvian and Egyptian monuments and
heliolatry. Parallels are always pleasing but they often
delude.
To begin with the outer circle. The Eskimos appear to
have reached Greenland as emigrants from Alaska by the
way of Hudson's Bay, or, as some think, they came from the
latter locality. These lowest Americans, allied to the Aleuts,
are about on the religious level of the Fuegians, somewhat
higher than the Andamanese and Australians, somewhat
lower than the Siberian Shamanists. They have no idols,
no God, and no theory of creation; only the Greenlanders
say that woman was created from man's thumb. There is
no real worship of sun, moon, stars, or any animal. Ban-
croft, speaking of the Westerners, says, “ Their whole re-
ligion may be summed up as a vague fear, finding its ex-
pression in witchcraft.” 1 Our name for the Eskimos means
omophagous, an Algonkin epithet; they call themselves In-
nuit, the “people” (compare Ainu, etc.). Brinton thinks
they were the omophagous people who lived about 1300 in
what is now Rhode Island and Virginia.
Witchcraft is at least characteristic of the Eskimos.
Their witch-doctor, Angakok (Tungak) chiefly detected
wrong-doers; but he was not respected nor feared like his
African brother; nor was he a religious agent of the people.
He acquired power by the help of animals seen in dreams or
of spirits, but he could not control vital forces. In Green-
land, women also acted as Shamans, but in general these
proto-priests were men. Evil spirits expelled at the end of
winter are the objects of their special regard. Women go
from house to house and stab these demons (Tuña), as
Greeks routed demons. The spirits escape through a hole
1 Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific States, San Francisco,
1882, iii. 151.
RELIGIONS OF NORTH AMERICA
77
other
harges brush th aucli
and are then corralled near a fire, around which sit men,
who hear the charges against them and shoot them into the
fire. The men then brush the infection off and rest easy
till next year. Spirits are audible when ice-floes crack
(noise-spirits), a crude form of phenomenal gods.
But ghosts also disturb the Eskimos. They seek to enter
warm houses when winter begins, as in Teutonic myth, and
he whom they catch dies. Human ghosts chase men; canine
ghosts chase dogs. They bring all sorts of ills. There are
also rock-spirits, hill-spirits, etc. A sort of animal-mythol-
ogy has grown up in some parts of the North and the Cen-
tral Eskimos have a Sedna, a spirit of ocean who controls
seals, etc., which are her amputated fingers. Some Northern
Eskimos believe in Tornassuk, a spirit who rules all spirits.
Sedna is a sort of goddess. She supplies seals and, if they
do not come, the wizard must find out who has offended her.
She rises from the ground and is thought of as mistress of
Adlivan, the underworld. To her and to her father go the
dead. Yet, like any other demon, she is expelled when she
comes from her place below; a festival celebrates her re-
treat. But, as she is liable to rise again at any time, the
Eskimos wear amulets to protect themselves from her. All
spirits are propitiated by gifts of food and clothes. This is
the only sacrifice, except that an atonement, introduced by a
confession, is made to Sedna, when a no-work taboo has
been violated. She is thus far a moral spirit.
The brave go to a happy world and so do unfortunate
women — a reward of valour and a compensation. Reli-
gious motives and beginnings are thus not unknown; but
magic predominates, while sympathetic magic is important.
Ducks and ptarmigans, represented by youths born in sum-
mer and winter, respectively, have a tug of war and the
victory decides the coming season, whether mild or severe.
Labrador Eskimos recognize the great evil Death as a
spirit. Each individual, man or animal, has an owner-
spirit and a ghost-spirit, which, when Death seizes him,
enters another body; but also a third spirit which may go
78
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
.
of the bere the m
ain to Welief of
to another world or be annihilated. Each body-part has its
own “soul.” There are no really ethical spirits; they are all
bad or liable to become bad (hurtful) when offended. The
souls of the brave, dancing as northern lights, are seen in
the sky, where the moon hunts, but is not worshipped.
Some Eskimos ascribe rain to urine from a “sky-woman."
But there is no uniformity in belief or reports, since some
are said to regard the sky as a cold place and the underworld
as warm and comfortable, more desirable than the sky as a
future residence. In the East, guardian spirits give the
wizards power to mediate between men and spirits (a faint
approach to Shamanism). The dead are buried anywhere;
disregard of dress and hair and ceremonial idleness are the
mourning-rites. Song is common but not religious. Dan-
ish, Moravian, and Russian missionaries have destroyed or
modified primitive belief among the Eskimos of Greenland,
Labrador, and Alaska. The beliefs explained above, unless
otherwise specified, are those of a more general character.
Totemism has been found among them in a restricted area.
The primitive animism and undeveloped Shamanism of
these Eskimos are the underlying religious characteristics
of most of the North American tribes. In the West, the
Athapascan tribes have a crude belief in evil spirits; south-
ward they borrowed a higher culture. These tribes, notably
the Navajo and the allied, not parent, stem of Apaches, set-
tled in New Mexico in the fourteenth century, and in the
seventeenth over-ran the Pueblos, from whom they took
some cultural elements. Other northern tribes believe in
sacred animals. Thus from the Columbia Thlinkits the cult
of the Raven as master of life (or creator) has spread to
the Plains. The Pueblos, Zunis, and Hopi, related to Cliff-
dwellers and Mound-builders, belong to the Shoshoneans,
as do the Diggers and Comanches, and are connected through
the western tribes with the Nahuans-Aztecs, with whom
they have in common an advanced zoolatry and nature-
worship. An inner zone is made by the Siouan tribes
(southern Atlantic states to the Mississippi, Crows and Da-
RELIGIONS OF NORTH AMERICA
79
kotas), broken into by the Apalachians or Muskhogean
Creeks, Seminoles, and Chocktaws of the South and by the
Louisiana Natchez. Within this zone again, all was Algon-
kin from beyond the Canadian line to Tennessee and from
Montana to Maine, except as the Algonkins themselves en-
closed the Iroquois, whose earliest settlements extended
along the basin of the St. Lawrence. The Algonkins in-
cluded the northern Chippeways (not Athapascan), the
western Cheyenne and Blackfeet, the Sacs, Foxes, Dela-
ware Leni Lenape, and Shawnee, besides New England
tribes, and are represented in history by Black Hawk, Poco-
hontas (Powhatan), and King Philip. The Iroquois in-
cluded the southern Cherokees, western Hurons, Susque-
hannocks, and lesser tribes besides the Five Nations 1 of the
Confederacy, the Mohawks, Oneidas, Cayugas, Onondagas,
and Senecas. They occupied New York, Pennsylvania,
Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, and shared with the Siouans
the Carolinas and Virginia.
The ruder savages, both North and South, have in com-
mon a vague conception of souls, a belief in ghosts and in
animal-spirits and in the same nature-spirits recognized by
the Greenlanders. Gods of higher phenomena are generally
lacking in the outer circle, or are borrowed, but demons of
wind, rain, and sea, for example, are recognized by the
Caribs, and in Cuba the Tainos even had a sun-cult. The
Floridas and Iroquois also revered the sun. The Siouan
tribes, within the savage zone of Apaches and Comanches,
have a primitive fire-cult, religious ritual, and perhaps phal-
licism;? while the still more advanced Algonkins have an
elaborate culture-myth, and prayers for mercy and for for-
giveness. Reasoning and talking beasts, lycanthropy, an-
thropopathic vegetables, rocks, and rivers, belong in common
to all the Northern tribes, the higher culture retaining the
1 Afterwards six, as the Tuscaroras of Carolina joined the Con-
federacy in 1712–15. The Wyandots (Huron-Eries) were first
opposed and then subject to the Iroquois or "Iroquoians."
2 The medicine-bags contained phallic material; but the phallus
is not the object of a special cult.
80
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
lower. Tutelary spirits as protecting gods were recognized
by the higher tribes, not as always kind but as amiably dis-
posed if not thwarted, to whom thanksgiving was made.
But there was no fixed pantheon.
The Caribs, from whose name comes the word cannibal,
were only one of many bands of American cannibals. Can-
nibalism here, however, was not religious. Like the sav-
ages of the Amazon and of Fuego, the lowest races ate their
friends and foes as an incidental food. In Darien men
even ate their wives and children, and bred children to be
eaten. There is here no “religious” thought of preserving
individual or tribal strength; human beings were eaten as
animals would be eaten. In the North, however, sacrifices
were made of human victims, and after a war foes were
eaten by the Iroquois and Algonkins, not merely as a food-
supply, but from a magical motive, with a distinct idea of
absorbing power. Thus the Pottawottomies, as late as 1812,
cut up and distributed an Englishman to be eaten by the
tribes as a magical sustenance. At the same time it is clear
that even the Iroquois were on occasion mere irreligious can-
nibals. The name Mohawk implies as much.
Idolatry appears at its highest in the huge idols of the
Aztecs (below); but it is not unknown among the Amazons,
and in the Antilles there were grotesque but real parallels
to the ancestral figures or tablets of the Chinese. Some of
the northern tribes have a cult of tree-trunks resembling a
are eidola of supposed ancestors. Some of the Plains In-
dians had “ dolls” (idols) and painted the evil spirit on one
side of the wigwam and the good spirit on the other, to be
safe on all sides.
Totemism in America is of secondary character and offers
no solution of the problem of its origin. This perhaps lies
1 Francis Parkman, The Conspiracy of Pontiac, Boston, 1879, p.
315. In expressing thanks there is a (pluti) prolongation of the
cry, with resolved first vowel.
2 Compare Réville, Religion1.s des peuples non civilisés, Paris,
1883, and Catlin's North Ainerican Indian, London, 1845.
RELIGIONS OF NORTH AMERICA
81
temism. Aminals (the doctomies ate then
in the animal as food-supply, hence regarded as parent and
a divinity; at first eaten, then sanctified. The word is said
to mean "token.” Properly it indicates a relationship be-
tween a human and an animal group. The individual ani-
mal is the helpful brother of the man and is of superhuman
ability, often regarded as from the same ancestor, who is
revered, but hardly as a god. Yet the animal may be
revered without being a totem and the totem may be a mere
badge. Magic ceremonies for procuring food among the
Plains Indians are not totemistic. The great Iroquois and
Algonkin tribes show no sure examples of totemism. The
Algonkin Foxes had seven totems, but did not descend from
any of them. The Cherokee killed his totem freely, though
with a show of ceremony. The Pottawottomies ate their
totem. Domestication of animals (the dog and bison) did:
not result in totemism. Among the Navajo and Apache
tribes there are only faint traces of the practice. In gen-
eral, in better organized communities and where food was
easily obtained, there is less trace of totemism. What takes
its place in the North West and among the Siouan tribes
is the animal as a personal guardian. A young man selects
an animal, guided to his selection by fasting and prayer, and
after killing it regards the species as a totemic animal.
But there is no natural relationship. So the Yukon Eskimo
boy has a private guardian spirit-beast, as the Peruvian has
a “brother” beast-image. The Siouan religious societies
bear animal names, but their Dakotas and Omahas show
only a possible survival of real totemism in tracing descent
from certain animals. Vegetable totems occur in the Mid-
dle West and East, but they are not “relatives ” of the
clans. About the only tribes having a cult of the dead as
tutelary spirits are the Californians, Dakotas, and Zunis.
A clan-ancestor may be an animal, mythological, not real
with preposterous attributes and he may be pleased to see
1 In the lowest totemism the totem is eaten regularly; then it is
eaten ceremonially; then not eaten at all. See above, p. 52; also a
paper by the writer in the Jour. Am. Or. Soc., 38, p. 145f, 1918.
82
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
.
his descendants dance in skins like his, but this is an honour
paid to a grandparent, not a general “ ancestor-worship."
The Redskin dead as a class are not worshipped with such a
dance. So in South America there may be an ancestral
clan-god, an animal or star, who is “ danced” while ances-
tors in general are ignored. Neither fear of ghosts nor a
decent regard for the lately deceased is ancestor-worship;
nor is general ancestor-worship proved by skin-clad or
masked dancers.
Totems favoured in Alaska are bear, wolf, whale, and
frog. To the east all sorts of animals become totems but
are also revered without being totems, such as the vulture, a
California totem, raven, crane, owl, as lord of the dead,
wolf, hare, and snake. Serpents, like pigeons, represent
souls of the dead and Hurons and Algonkins regard the
rattler or other “grandfather ” snakes as their kin.
Mound-serpents in the south-west represent tutelary earth-
snakes. The Creek earth-snake, which was adopted by the
Hurons, wore a gem on its head and its “horns" were big
medicine. Conspicuous is the rain-serpent (lightning) as a
fertility-demon associated with the thunder-bird, which Al-
gonkin and Iroquois made into thunder-folk. Dogs were
sacrificed to the Lake-serpent. Mythical birds make the
wind.
Oneida means the place of the holy stone. Sleeping giants
and profile rocks created historical myths, but, apart from
these, there were potent stones just as rivers, waterfalls, etc.,
had each its potency and were revered with food and tobacco
offerings, presented to the unknown power called Oki, Wa-
kanda, or Orenda. To this class belongs the Manito, which
in the East was sometimes a spirit but was generally syn-
onymous with the vaguer Dakota Wakanda.
There is in the North no philosophical religion till, anong
the Zuni, Awonawilona "evolves from himself the uni-
verse," and he is probably not wholly a native god. The
powers spiritual were controlled largely by medicine-men,
who assisted the chiefs at the festivals of moon and maize,
O
RELIGIONS OF NORTH AMERICA
83
and at dances for war, crops, and hunting. Even the ad-
vanced Hopi, who were related to the Zuni and revered sun,
moon, fire, rain, and mother Earth, had no Supreme Spirit.
Still less did the northern tribes have this idea.
It is a common belief that the Algonkins and Iroquois
revered a Great Spirit as God. But what happened in
Africa happened in America. The good missionaries took
Tantum and Squantum as “good and evil” spirits. But
Tantum is merely“ a great spirit,” Manit, and Squantum is
an angry spirit. Among the Passamaquoddies this “ dual-
ism” expressed itself in the formn of an Evil Wolf and a
“good-natured Liar," a clownish spirit who deceived his
foes like Ulysses and like him got a reputation for it. Yet
this Liar, Kuloskap, has also been enlisted as a proof that
the natural Indian had a God. Natural Indian, because the
Indian of today, especially when he is a college-graduate,
is no more a natural expression of Redskin belief than Mr.
Batchelor's Ainu expresses that savage's original concep-
tion of spirit. The Redskin, it is said, “sought the soli-
tude and there communed with God.” When an Indian
sought the solitude for spiritual aid it was to get a vision
of some animal that would serve as a totem or to consult
with the Great Hare, or some other culture-hero, or to
drum up weather. This Kuloskap, for example, was
father and model of the “ drummers” (wizards), who
could govern the weather, cast spells, sink below earth's
surface, become serpents, and in this guise approach women.
The eastern Algonkins believed in any number of small
spirits; they saw a spirit in every tree and waterfall, but, till
the missionaries discovered him, they never conceived of
God.1
In general, real gods are few in the North. One tribe
usually has four or five, the Four Winds and an animal-
1 The two Algonkin spirits called Mechee and Gechee, who live
respectively in a cave-hell and a solar-boat heaven, and the Two
Brothers, whose son guides souls to hell and is the divine son of
a “woman from heaven" are a mixture of native and missionary
ideas.
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
spirit regarded as the ancestral hero.1 Totemism, zoolatry,
and Shamanism characterize the cult; polytheism and ad-
vanced solar worship belong to the South. Real ancestor-
worship is not a marked American trait. The cult of a
Michabo or Hiawatha has long enough been mistaken for
the "worship of a Supreme Spirit of Light." .
These two beings are typical. Michabo was not a light-
god but an idealized animal; while Hiawatha (Iroquoian)
was possibly a real man, though also idealized. Creator-
animals, however, are sometimes more than one, even in the
same tribe. Thus the Mohegans had three, bear, deer, and
wolf. Michabo of the Algonkins resembles the culture-god
of Mexico, snake, sun, and hero all in one. Stories of cre-
ation result in many myths of origin, several deluge-tales,
and a general theory of troglodyte ancestors, which last may
contain historical truth. The Shawnees are the only In-
dians who think they came from another land, led across a
flood by the Turtle. Myths of creation led to many reli-
gious spectacles of dramatic form. Direct descent from a
dog was claimed by the Digger Indians. Similar origins are
ascribed to various tribes, but the totem, as already ex-
plained, is not identical with the ancestor.
In matrilinear tribes certain deities belong to women,
who have the charge of sundry rites, as aniong the Iro-
quois. Tutelary powers are opposed to those who use
their Orenda for an evil purpose, that is, disadvantageous
to the individual or tribe. Sacrifice thus becomes an at-
tempt to secure power; communion with the deity is an
occult rite for the same end.
The priesthood of the Indians ranged from medicine-man
1 For example, Michabo. It is this spirit that Dr. Brinton re-
garded as “god of light” and on the strength of which he postu-
lated moral dualism.
2 The Iroquois were especially regardful of women; property
was inherited through them; they had charge of rites in connexion
with the earth-power and the “wise women," as in Germany, were
consulted by the chiefs. The inurder of a woman cost twice that
of a inan.
RELIGIONS OF NORTH AMERICA
.85
to chief pontiff, according to the general culture of the
tribe. Among the ruder northern tribes there was no regu-
lar corporation of priests, only irregular jugglers and medi-
cine-men. The Nez Percé among the Shahaptians had he-
reditary priests, but these Indians were more cultivated than
the surrounding Chinooks, although without agriculture and
living in communal houses like the Chinooks. Among the
Pueblos, on the other hand, there was a war-chief and a
peace-chief or priest, the latter being assisted by magicians,
and cult-societies having mythic traditions and a religious
pharmacopia. Among the Muskhogeans, the Choktaws
had a priesthood handed down from father to son without
restriction, whereas the Nez Percé priests were both male
and female and the priesthood was limited to priests who
gave favourable prognostications. The war-chief was os-
tensibly the master of the medicine-man; but in times of
religious activity he never did anything without the latter's
consent. The Algonkin Shawnees kept the priesthood in
one family or totem clan, as did the Iroquois Cherokees, till
the insolence of one family, the Nicotani, thus honoured,
became so great that the tribe slaughtered every member
of the family and handed over the priesthood to another.
The Chippeway (Algonkins) had a college of elders, but it
was more a historical society than a religious priesthood,
though it contained priests. The nearest approach to a
departmental priesthood in the North was the distinction
made by the Algonkins between the conjurer, Meda, the
prophet, Jossakid, and the ordinary medicine-man, Wau-
beno; and the distinction made by the Iroquois between
men and women as priests or medicine-men of spirits in
general and priestesses of earth-powers.
In the cult, the most universal elements were prayer,
smoke, sacrifice, fast, bath, and dance. Prayer accompa-
nied initiations and was exercised on ordinary occasions,
when offerings were made or wishes were directed to the
gods. It was often no more than a series of ejaculations,
sometimes a silent meditation. The simplest sacrifice was
86
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
the daily offering of smoke, which lent also a religious force
to the peace-pipe. The Indian offered four puffs to the
Four Winds or Directions, which, with the national Hare,
were the only real gods recognized by the eastern Algonkins
in 1626. The god of war was worshipped by the Iroquois
with human victims (as were the ghosts) and such a god
was recognized also by the Pueblos.1 Ordinary sacrifices
were those of food or dogs and other animals. .
Cult and mythology are influenced by the number four,
which represents the cardinal points or four winds as benefi-
cent spirits of the sky in antithesis to earth. A Siouan boy
is placed upon a stone representing earth and then the priest
prays to each of these Four Gods of Weal in his behalf.
Four is a holy number with the Sioux, Algonkins, etc.
Clan-divisions and religious dances are found among the
Northern Indians in fours and eights; four or eight ances-
tral beings are named by the Navajos, Shawnees, Iroquois,
etc.
The fast and bath often went together, purgation, some-
times medicinal, by fasting being followed by a ceremonial
bath, either in the form of a sweat-bath for the individual
or a bath in a lake or river by a tribe at certain seasons.
This religious exercise, to expel demons, was also medici-
nal. Disease and evil went away on the water. After
burial, infection was washed away by the Navajo. The
Cherokees, like the Aztecs, Mayas, and Peruvians, had a
form of baptism, when the name was given. Baptismal
sprinkling, that the child might be " born again," horrified
early missionaries. Water-cult, apart from the bath, is uni-
versal (worship of stream, waterfall, etc.). But one aspect
of water, the Fountain of Youth, was not indigenous; only
healing springs were known.
1 The Pueblos were influenced by Spanish and perhaps by Mexican
culture and their religion is probably not all native. They wor-
shipped a god of light, of war, earth-gods, sky-gods, a goddess of
love (Mexican?), and master of life, as a group of great gods
ranged over countless lesser spirits of nature (as well as ghosts).
RELIGIONS OF NORTH AMERICA
87
The fast also introduced the dance, producing an ec-
static state. The dance was of universal religious appli-
cation; it was accompanied by song, the latter occasionally
recognized as praise of a god, but usually of historical char-
acter, when not a mere ululation. Religious dances, known
in the North on all festive and warlike occasions, were elab-
orated in the South, but even in the North they led to dra-.
matic shows, such as Penn describes as “antics," that is,
round dances with song and pantomime. The Pueblo Ca-
chinas were regular dramatic dances, representing creation
and other serious mysteries, performed by masked act-
ors (priests) with a public chorus. Exorcising, conjuring,
and dancing all went together among the Algonkins,
whose tribal hero Michabo was adept at all these perform-
ances.
The cult as a whole is apotropaic but, at the same time,
propitiatory and largely for the purpose of gain. As pro-
pitiatory is to be regarded the simple prayer or offering
with which the Indian reacts to the supposed presence of a
possibly inimical power, on sight of a new phenomenon of
impressive character. For gain, prayer and sacrifice are
offered to tutelary powers not naturally inimical. In fast-
ing and prayer together there is also the feeling of entering
into communion with the spirit, especially a totem-spirit.
It is difficult to determine whether religious expression is
ethical; thanksgiving appears only in the highest forms of
native religion. Some certain expression thereof is attrib-
uted to the Iroquois, but the ruder sayages, those on the
western coast, do not know what it is to be thankful even
to man, much less to spirits. Probably the highest expres-
sion is the prayer for mercy and help, e. g. of the Algonkin;
or, as do ut des, of the Iroquois Huron: "Spirit of this
place, we give thee tobacco; so help us, save us from the
enemy, bring us wealth, bring us back safely."
Anierican eschatology ranges all the way from agnosticism
to the joyous certainty of the Sioux, who believe in three
souls and a heaven
1
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
Where game is always plentiful
And winter knows no cold,
Where trees will bear perennial fruit,
And squaws will never scold.
athi,"
a third
tempore returnat if ag
Occasionally there is found a tribe without notion of
future life. Thus an Oregon tribe (Pend d'Oreilles) be-
lieves in the guardian spirit and in a divine old woman,
the cause of all their woes (also a belief of India and
Yezo), but has no word for soul and no conception of a
future life. The soul to most Indians is “shadow" or
“breath,” but vital forces or souls were often multiplied.
The Siouan “third soul” either went to the heaven de-
scribed above or to a temporary hell or purgatory, where
trees bear only icicles. Thence returning, however, it came
to earth and received a new chance, but, if again wicked, re-
turned to hell. The more civilized Algonkins and Iroquois
believed in two souls, one remaining at the grave and one
going to the (Huron) Happy Hunting Ground, unless it
was a weak, evil soul, when it failed to get anywhere.
Some Oregon tribes had a soul in every part of the body
and the island Caribs likewise imagined a soul in every
pulsation.
The spirit took four days to reach its goal and was lighted
thither by torches, lit by the mourners, which also served
to terrify evil spirits (like our corpse candles). Bones were
collected with a view to resurrection. Buried articles were
broken, to“ kill” them, as in India. The passage to the next
world among the Hopi was by the underground Colorado
cañon, out of which the tribe originally emerged. Often
there is a log to cross over a swamp and automatically the
coward (sinner) falls into the mud and disappears for ever,
while the brave goes to glory. The parted way was marked
for some Algonkins by a lightning-flash and by the appear-
ance of a spirit to lead the good to bliss (cf. the Persian
Bridge). In the West, the Athapascans suspended the dead
on poles ; the Chilcoots buried, and the Babines cremated the
corpse. Some of the Plains Indians also placed the dead on
011? by the COIPSE
Bur
RELIGIONS OF NORTH AMERICA
89
toff by scalpingxt life. If meatable to cowa
trees or a staging. The Algonkins burned the great, know-
ing that they would go to heaven; but doubtful or ordinary
people were buried, that they might come back after staying
with the shades and, finding their growth-soul ghost amid.
their bones, be reincarnated in human form. It was this
growth-soul that was eaten by foes for nutrition of soul in
themselves. The soul-strength in the hair was thus carried
off by scalping; the scalped brave being the slave of the
scalper in the next life. If mean shades were not drowned
in mud they led the life suitable to cowards and dis-
eased people. The Huron's bridge to the next world was
guarded by a dog; a common notion, based on the obvious
fact that dogs eat the dead. Algonkins and Dakotas
(Siouan) believed in a snake-bridge to heaven, perhaps the
Milky Way. Coast-dwelling Athapascans thought a boat
conveyed souls. Animal metempsychosis after death was
not usually recognized, though always possible; in life a
medicine-man could become an animal (were-wolf). The
Siouan Dakotas believed that, to become a first-class wizard,
one must have been reincarnated four times in the same
body,“ dreaming of gods between times," when borne about
by winds, and thus learning occult secrets. In this way
they also imbibed the sacred language of the spirits.?
The general marks of mourning were mutilations, break-
ing of finger-joints, gnashing, discarding of ornaments,
blackening the face, sacrifice of property, and putting clay
upon the head. The hair was unbound, sometimes cut off
and thrown into the grave. Hair-cult is a marked feature.1
1 All the way from Algonkin to Aztec the wizard affects a secret
language described as “affected.” Probably it was like the Hindu
“god-language” (old dialect), but also it was enunciated in a "bird-
voice," an unintelligible murinur. Generally, a divine voice is a low
confused sound, not like the voice of gods in India, who shout
with a deafening noise, unless they are disguised, probably because
they are still natural phenomena.
2 Hair is an index of vigour, vitality, ability. Hence the Mandan
(Siouan) with the longest hair became chief. Horse-hairs were
sometimes utilized to lengthen a man's own hair and aid him in
securing leadership.
90
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
To insure life it was buried in deep vegetation or hung upon
trees. Widows mourned by cutting off their hair, eating
little, and screaming a good deal. Some tribes slaughtered
dogs and slaves at the grave.
It will be advantageous in conclusion to turn from the
general or universal characteristics of American religion to
a more special consideration of some higher groups. As we
have seen, in the case of the Iroquois, to gain Orenda
(spirit-power) is the object of sacrifice. Tutelary powers
are thus implicitly opposed to spirits using Orenda for evil.
The festivals of light and of maize first drive away sin
(evil) and then induce weal. The sacrifice with a dog is
for the purpose of revitalizing the powers of life; hence too
the old fire is renovated. The god of life is at the same time
the god of vegetation and in Iroquois religion he stands op-
posed to the god of winter and death. A number of gods
are solely nature-powers, Wind, Dawn, Fire-dragon, etc.
From such a religion we can draw but one conclusion, that
nature as exhibited in phenomena is deified by savages, who
do actually feel themselves encompassed and protected by
nature-spirits, with whom man may become allied and with
whom he may commune. The Cherokees (Iroquois) may
be described as polytheistic zoolatrists, perhaps totemic,
who, while they recognized an antithesis of good and evil
powers, knew nothing of an Evil Spirit as opposed to a Su-
preme Spirit, till taught otherwise by the whites. They
had no idea of God, Devil, Heaven, or Hell as ethical con-
ceptions. They had tribal gods living above the visible sky,
but these were neither good nor evil. They connect closely
with the Aztecs in believing in animal types as divinities
and interpreting nature in animal terms, the lightning being
a horned serpent, the hawk, dog, and spider as divinities
being archetypical types of the corresponding actual ani-
mals, and the rabbit being an ideal spirit. Further,
they resemble the Aztecs in worshipping elemental gods,
sun, fire, water, etc., and natural objects such as stones,
and in ascribing divine nature to a plant (ginseng), while
RELIGIONS OF NORTH AMERICA
91
they regarded as a Red Man the phenomenon of lightning-
thunder.
Of the Algonkins sufficient has been said in general; but
some traits of the Cheyenne may be noticed, as the sun-
dance here gives a vivid picture of that mixture of prayer
and magic which is found in most fertility rites. It also
shows that the cult of the sun in this form is a cult of phe
nomena, not of ghosts. The rite unites war and fertility
The sun-dance is to reanimate nature, vegetal and animal.
This is and always has been the chief religious rite of the
Indians; it may be called Nature's renascence. The rite
of the Cheyenne is not, like that of the Siouans, a tribal,
but an individual act, a vow fulfilled in return for a dan-
ger escaped. Its ceremonial constituents are the pipe, dance,
song, and sweat-bath, aided by the rattle, drum, and paint.
The rite is one of sympathetic magic but is united with a call
for divine assistance. Thus, at the Fifth Paint, the priest
spreads the sacrificial straw, or sage-brush bunches, in four
heaps around the altar and in one for the sun. The four
are of course for the direction-spirits. On these dances
-the patron (maker of the New Lodge of Life), praying to
the Four and to the sun, while others sing and offerings are
made; in conclusion they give thanks (to the gods). The
same spirit infuses the general dance of the people, who
dance through sundry songs till they are reeling and stag-
gering in an effort to attain to the Four Gods of direction.
They break the fast with purification by purgation and a
sweat-bath, and with the ritual pipe. Painted lines on the
body represent sun, moon, and stars and are “roads of
prayer" to the heart. Torture by suspension is now prac-
tised in a modified form by the Cheyenne; formerly it was
undoubtedly the custom to swing with the sun; the object of
the whole rite being to perpetuate the life of the tribe, as a
dramatic representation of creation or rather re-creation,
1 Their religious-medicinal "literature” was reduced to writing
by a native, “Sequoyah," in 1821. These Cherokees are southern
Iroquois of Virginia (now removed).
92
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
to renew life in answer to the prayer of him who has vowed
the rite in the name of the tribe. It is the Great (Medicine)
Spirit that answers this prayer. The rite was taught them
of old by their culture hero.
As we approach Mexico we come nearer to the cult and
belief of the tribes of Central and Southern America.
Among the ceremonies of the Hopi are to be observed the
rites at the winter solstice: maize, chewed first (saliva as
strength), is put into a bowl containing heart-powder and
other ingredients; meal is cast into the air, like smoke, for
an offering to deities; asperging, smoke, fast, song, dance,
and prayer make the rite. The dance is here widdershins,
against the sun, because the dancer heads to the place of de-
parted spirits. Masks with frog-figures for fertility are
worn by men dramatically suggesting human fertility scenes ;
the god of generation appears decked with corn and rain-
and sun-signs with actual vegetables attached, around whom
dance the group. Drums, whistles, rattles, and crook entice
rain; willow-wands with feathers are fastened to or placed
near animals and trees “ for increase.” The four direction-
spirits are represented by colours, North, yellow; West,
green; South, red; East, white; but“ above" and " below”
are here added (black and variegated). Corn and rain-
rites here prevail, not ghost-rites, of which there is scarcely
a trace, except food placed at the grave. Symbolism re-
mains from magic (smoke as a cloud, drenching with
water). Like Mexican belief is that in the Plumed Serpent,
the male counterpart of Mother Earth, a god of the under-
world; and that in the ancestral culture hero. Peculiar and
interesting is the phenomenon of paired gods, each male
having its female form or being androgynous, rarely two
males; but, as in Mexico, there are two brother suns. Such
a pair, as ancestors of the race, is worshipped; but the cult
1 Thus in the preparation of the Peruvian intoxicant acca, the
maize is first chewed by women, then boiled and fermented (the
saliva is “medicinal"). Markham, Incas of Peru, London, 1911,
P. 127.
RELIGIONS OF NORTH AMERICA
93
of an originating pair of this sort by no means implies a
general “worship of the souls of the dead," as Fewkes
thinks.1 Noticeable too is the Hopi idea of the sky as a
bird-man or bird-snake. Sacrifice is made mainly to deities,
as in Mexico, and Southern also is the form of ritual puri-
fication. These elements unite or bridge the religions of
North and South, as the Algonkin sun-rite of torture and
the Siouan swing-rite, to strengthen the sun, lead to Aztec
heliolatry.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
H. J. Rink, The Eskimo Tribes, Copenhagen, 1887; Tales and
Traditions of the Eskimo, London, 1875.
Franz Boas, in Proceedings and Transactions of the Royal So-
ciety of Canada; The Central Eskimo, 1888; notes on
Indians also in The Mind of Primitive Man, New York,
1911.
L. M. Turner, Bureau of Ethnology, Washington, Sixth, 1888,
and Eleventh, 1894, Reports.
Knud Rasmussen, People of the Polar North, London, 1908.
D. G. Brinton, The Myths of the New World, Philadelphia,
1896.
G. A. Dorsey, in Field Columbian Publications, 1901, on the
sun-dance, etc.; also Reports of the Bureau of Ethnology,
1894-95, 1897–98, on the Hopi and other tribes.
Alice C. Fletcher, Indian Ceremonies, Washington, 1883, and
The Import of the Totem, 1897.
J. G. Müller, Geschichte der Amerikanischen Urreligionen,
Basel, 1855-1907.
F. T. Waitz, Anthropologie der Naturvölker, iii and iv, Leip-
zig, 1862.
H. H. Bancroft, The Native Races of the Pacific States, San
Francisco, 1882–83.
H. R. Schoolcraft, The American Indians, Buffalo, 1851; The
Myth of Hiawatha, Philadelphia, 1856.
Relations des Jésuits, en la nouvelle France, Quebec, 1858;
invaluable reports of the missionaries from 1611-1645.
George Catlin, Illustrations of the Manners ... of the North
American Indians, London, 1845. A vivid narrative val-
uable for its record of religious customs.
'A. A. Goldenweiser, Totemism, An Analytical Study, Journ.
Am. Folklore, xxiii, 1910.
1 Journal of Am. Folklore, xi. 194.
CHAPTER SEVEN
RELIGIONS OF MEXICO, CENTRAL AND SOUTH AMERICA
CULTURAL centres are found in Mexico, Yucatan, Guate-
mala, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru; their interrelation is
not certain. An opinion widely disseminated is that they
were originally independent growths and that later some of
them united to form a new syncretistic religion. Others
imagine external influence imported across the ocean. A
third opinion is that each of these local religions has been
more or less influenced by immigration from the north, af-
fected by, and in turn affecting, the native local religion.
The Guatemala Quichés were related to the Yucatan Mayas,
who seem in turn to be remotely connected with the Indians
of the Antilles and the Louisiana Natchez, as the Bahama
Indians are related to the littoral Brazilians and Vene-
zuelans. The Mayas had old settlements about Vera Cruz
and elsewhere in Mexico. On the western coast, a branch
of the Shoshoneans appears to have drifted south in suc-
cessive waves of immigration, until, ascending the Mexican
table-lands, they pressed back the anterior Mayan culture.
These savage invaders were the Nahuans, a branch of whom
is represented later by the Aztecs. They absorbed more or
less of the older culture called Toltec, either Nahuan or
that of the Maya (Totonac or Huaxtecan on the eastern
coast) and their advent may be referred to about the sixth
century A.D. But the ruder Nahuans (Chichimec) were
absorbed by the Aztec confederacy in the fifteenth century.
In the western part of Mexico the Zapotec, like the Mixtec,
represent a pre-Aztec civilization (Nahuan or Mayan).
From this western coast it is possible that emigrants by sea
affected the culture of the coast of Ecuador and Peru.
94
RELIGION OF CENTRAL AMERICA
95
Maya (Quiché) civilization can be traced back to 400,
possibly 200 A. D.1 and is represented by the culture of Vera
Cruz, Copan in Honduras, Quiriga in Guatemala, and Maya-
pan in Yucatan. It here includes the allied Quiché culture.
Thus the same god appears with different names. Tohil is
a Quiché culture-god appearing as a thunder-god but cor-
responding to the Votan of Tabasco and to the Yucatan
Kukulkan, who in turn is the literal equivalent of the Aztec
Quetzalcoatl, the "feathered serpent,” a culture-hero dei-
fied and identified with the god of peaceful civilization. In
Maya tradition, Kukulkan was a wise man who led his peo-
ple and finally departed from Mayapan in Yucatan in a
western direction, that is, to Mexico. He is said to have
come to Chichen Itza and then to have founded a new town
(Mayapan) and built a great temple (Chakanputan), after
framing laws and making the wonderful calendar, which
still remains as a monument of Mayan intelligence. His
symbols, bird and serpent, unite the ideas of air and water
(the serpent as water and fertilizing power) into one con-
ception of light and life, as a bird alone regularly represents
the Yucatan sun-god and a snake the water-god.
Even more important is the Mayan “ father of gods and
men," who came from the East and appears as a god of
healing as well as of creating. This was Itzamna, whose
spouse was Ixchel, the Rainbow, goddess of birth and medi-
cine. Itzamna was later identified with the Eastern Sun
and represented life and knowledge. He was the arch-
priest and inventor of writing and books. Next in impor-
tance stand the gods of agriculture. There was a maize-
deity, from whose head sprouted corn, and four giants or
gods of agriculture supported the sky. The agricultural
deities were more important than in Mexico, though of kin-
dred sort. They were the great Chac and several subordi-
nate little Chacs. Like Tlaloc in Mexico, Chac was first of
all a thunder-god. Another fertility god of the Mayas
19. G. Morley, Bureau of American Ethnology, 1915, thinks
that Mayan civilization was “fairly on its feet” by 200 A.D.
96
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
steals maize, as does Tlaloc, and like Tlaloc the Maya gods
of this class carry axes, symbol of thunder-gods, and are
associated with the (also Northern) rain-serpent.
A marked feature of Mayan religion is the number of
goddesses, who, as in Celtic religion, appear as patronesses
of arts, as of jade-culture, of fabric-colouring, etc., as well
as patronesses of hunting and even of suicide, a death that
was estimable and led to heaven. Animals were revered
and even vegetables were supposed to be animate and con-
sequently worthy of religious consideration. But, to get
increase, all animals had to be sacrificed by proxy, that is,
one of each species was killed at a great spring celebration.
With the same object, there was a celebration at which once
a year objects were renewed; as the fire was also extin-
guished and renewed. Although by far not so blood-lusty
as the Aztecs, the Mayas with their typical incense-offering
had many animal sacrifices, in which the heart of the vic-
tim was seized and burned. A dog here usually, as in the
North, takes the place of the Aztec human victim, espe-
cially as an offering to the fire-god. Several Mexican
customs were eventually adopted by the Mayas, such as the
use of the bow in battle, the shooting, as a sacrifice, of war-
captives, and probably even the custom of offering human
victims. Each department of industry had its peculiar god
and the general affairs of men had each its own divinity.
Thus the god of travellers was the North Star; hunters and
fishers of Yucatan had special gods; while disease-gods
were generally venerated. A number of gods presided over
evil and death. With the great death-god, called Skull and
Bones, were associated sundry war-gods, who presided not
only over war but also over sacrifice.
The Mayans, like the Vedic Aryans, looked upon heaven
as a restful place under a sacred tree; hell to them was a
cold subterranean place past the four rivers (directions)
of four colours, where lived lords forever tormenting earth-
growths above them. This place in Quiché is called Xibalba,
but another Mayan name is Mitnal, ruled by its like-named
RELIGION OF CENTRAL AMERICA
97
god, the same with the Aztec Mictlan and its special ruler.
Owls and bats were the special birds of hell and served as
ghostly messengers.
Noticeable is the fact that the high priest was originally
the ruler; and that the war-chief, elected for a term of four
years, was revered like a god; also, that war-god feasts are
virtually fertility-sacrifices, the canine victim's heart being
then magically treated for the express purpose of securing
rain. The dance, with which for five days the fertility-fes-
tival concluded, was without application to ghost-cult. The
canine victim appears at all sorts of sacrifices, even at that
to Hobnil, god of bee-hives. Blood-spilling, except at sac-
rifice, was regarded as displeasing to the gods, and a pro-
pitiatory bloodless offering was made by hunters to offset
their necessary disregard of this fact.
Festivals were marked by singing and dancing and at
times, as at a feast for luck in war, by the drunken orgies
which characterize those of Peru. The year was well filled
with festivals, especially at its beginning and in the spring.
Like the Aztecs and South Americans, the Mayans had tra-
ditions of creation and deluge. Kukulkan, who was cele-
brated with dancing and song, was one of the creators and
the Quiché Hurakan was another.1 Men were made after
animals, of clay; but they were so unintelligent that the gods
drowned them in a deluge. They that escaped became mon-
keys. A second creation then made men of maize; the gen-
eral tradition is that men were eventually compounded of
maize and blood.
Fasting for thirteen days, with a new fire, marked the
beginning of the year, in July, when incense and other means
of purification were employed in the temples. The object
tecs and Slly at its beoi The yea
1 Peculiar is a religious dance on stilts in honour of Itzamna, to
avert disease and other evils. From a related West-Indian form of
Hurakan (god of stor17 and fertility) is derived English hurricane.
2 The temples of stone still show the marks of derivation from
wooden structures. Wooden idols were regarded as holier than
stone, probably because earlier, and they too were purified for the
new year in an elaborate rite.
98
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
of all Mayan rites was to avert divine wrath and gain“ food,
health, and long life" from the spirits. In general, the
Mayan religion resembles that of Peru rather than that of
Mexico; its temples and its predominatingly agricultural
aspects are more like those of the Peruvian Chimus than
those of the Nahuan Aztecs. On the other hand, Mayan
religion is in close touch historically with that of the Aztecs
and has a similar mythology, especially in regard to its cul-
ture-gods.
Exactly what was the connection between these different
groups only specialists may say, and they disagree. Prob-
ably the pre-Aztec Nahuan was nearer to the Mayan than
was the Aztec. The Nahuans were originally nomads op-
posed to the sedentary agriculturists they overcame, but as
so often happens they were culturally overcome themselves
by the conquered. The Aztecs, however, retained much of
their own savagery, for instance the practice of shooting
war-captives as sacrificial victims. Their religion thus con-
sists of two early elements, worship of nomadic and of
agricultural deities, to which is later added the cult of
priestly creations, mystic deities.
The earliest Mexican cult, of springs, lakes, etc., has left
a few traces. A“salt goddess " was celebrated in summer;
cave-temples, some oracular, and human sacrifices were
known to the Mixtec and Zapotec tribes. Agricultural dei-
ties were generally female or androgynous, sometimes asso-
ciated with, perhaps later, male deities, whose wives or
sisters they have become. So the original Maize goddess,
Chicome Coatl, is reckoned a sister of Tlaloc, whose victims
were flayed. Centeoti, primarily a female, became "son"
of Tozi. She held in her arms her daughter, Young
Corn (Xilonen), in whose honour were performed rain-
dances in June. On the west coast, Cueravahperi was a
1 Centeotl was called Lady Serpent and Mother (“grand-
mother”). Her victinis were first made to scatter naize; then they
were flayed and the pieces of their bodies were used as fertility-
charms. Flaying, for sacrifice, began in the eleventh century.
Human sacrifice was already “Toltec” (very ancient). With
RELIGION OF MEXICO
99
fertility-goddess, whose victims' hearts brought rain. Char-
acteristic of these cruel females is the flaying of their human
victims, whose skins were then worn by their dancing
priests, an inchoate vegetation drama, analogous to the duck-
ptarmigan contest of the Eskimos and the similar but veiled
performances in higher religions. Here at least there is
no question of ghosts. The last-named fertility-goddess
offers an illuininating example of divine expansion. As fe-
male spirit of fertility, she became the deity of maize and
other plants, including medicinal herbs; hence patroness of
physicians and midwives and of the hot bath; while as food-
mother she was exalted as mother of the gods, and clothed in
serpents as fertility-signs. At the maize festival, the maize
itself was first decapitated and then the victims, represent-
ing maize, were also decapitated; after which their hearts
were cast into hot springs, to produce rain-clouds. Her
festivals were in March and April, but also later, as if to
renew her waning strength.
The oldest Nahuan human sacrifice merely had the vic-
tims' blood enhance vegetation by falling on the ground as
they were shot. Fertility in a wider sense had two repre-
sentatives, a love-goddess called Xochi-quetzal, wife of
Tlaloc and stolen by the Nahuan god Tezcatlipoca, and the
Huaxtec goddess Tlazolteotl. The former was a corn or
earth-spirit, and patroness of love, flowers, and embroidery.
The latter represented an odd combination, being goddess of
sensuality, confession, and penitence; she may have had
lunar associations. The moon, son of Tlaloc, was a birth-
god associated with the special Rabbit-gods of fertility.
Gods and goddesses, connected both with moon and harvest,
also represented the octli (agave, aloe) and other intoxicat-
ing plants. They are expressly called countless because
“there are countless ways of getting drunk.” 1 The reli-
Xilonen, compare the Greek Kore; compare also the Greek custom
of the adoption of agricultural female spirits by the later gods,
Hera by Zeus, etc.
1 Literally “four hundred rabbits," i.e., countless fertility-spirits.
IOO
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
=
gious importance of intoxication lies in its giving com-
munion with the deity by ecstasy, in contrast to communion
by eating the god. The Totonac custom of eating dough
images of the god implied the latter communion; which was
more drastically effected also by eating the victim offered to
and hence identified with, the deity; whereas the tobacco-
communion (in Tarascan) was a form of drunkenness-ec-
stasy. Ordinary drunkenness was not approved. Even a
god, in Tarascan, was thrown out of heaven because of his
drunken habits. As with Hephaistus, the fall made him
lame.
All these fertility-demons, the octli-demons and higher
spirits, were under Tlaloc, the greatest god of the early
period, to whom were sacrificed a man, representing the
male serpent-god, and four women, representing Mayauel,
Xochi-quetzal, and other fertility-goddesses. He is the god
of the Eastern Paradise (Tlalocan), where warriors go,
and, as rain-god, presides over the dropsical and drowned;
but also, as thunder- and lightning-god, he has a mountain
dance-festival. He has but one eye and his victim's heart
is cast into a lake; that is, his water-nature was perhaps
originally part of his general sky-nature (sun as eye?). A
pre-Aztec god, he was worshipped, over all Mexico and be-
yond it, as a god especially connected with serpents and fer-
tility. His assistants, the Tlaloque, emptied celestial vases,
smiting them with noisy rods (compare the Vedic Parjanya;
rain and thunder). When it is said that, despite his general
beneficence, he “stole the maize," we may assume that he
One of these, Mayauel, wife of Patecati, was worshipped by the
Huaztecs, notorious drunkards, as having four hundred breasts.
This was the form of the maize-mother Centeoti and seems to
show that Mayauel also was originally a general fertility-goddess,
later restricted to an octli-deity. Like Ayopechtli, the birth-goddess,
she rides a tortoise. Xochi-quetzal (above) as a male (Xochipilli)
deity is god of flowers, dance, song, and games, and becomes a
sun-god.
1 Women who die in childbirth go to the Western Paradise. In
Borneo the two classes, of heroes and such heroines, go to one
paradise and marry!
WY
RELIGION OF MEXICO
IOI
stole it from a precedent deity. At his May festival, his
priests might steal from any one; they quacked like frogs.
His wife bears him cloud-children. He alone has five of the
annual twenty-five festivals. Before his image his wor-
shippers, clad in animal-skins, danced a ceremonial dance
once in eight years; while before the god stood a tank full
of snakes and frogs, caught in the mouth by Mazatec (dis-
trict) men, who then, like the Pueblos, danced, holding
these reptiles in the mouth. His later wife was Running
Water; small figures called Tepictoton, representing moun-
tains, were sacred to him.? His first wife, Earth, was stolen
by the Aztec god (above). His inost pitiable victims were
troops of little children who (first in 1018) were made to
weep when driven to be sacrificed, that their tears might
make more rain in the February ritual. In the later Aztec
myth of ages, Tlaloc is allotted first place after the two
Aztec gods, as "third sun” (era), which shows that before
Aztec dominion he was really the first.
The myth of the Five Ages was pre-Aztec and originally
portrayed ages of Earth, Fire, Air, and Water, leading to
the present fifth age. When the Aztec gods were all con-
verted into forms of the sun, Tlaloc was also so converted,
the ages were then termed “suns," and the second and third
ages were inverted, perhaps to give precedence to the fa-
voured culture-god. The ages, as finally arranged, were
first, that of Tezcatlipoca (as sun), which ends with the
destruction of giants and men through jaguars; second, that
of Quetzal-coatl, when men became monkeys and a hurri-
cane ended all; third, that of Tlaloc, when men were de-
stroyed by a rain of fire; fourth, that of Chalchiutlicue,
when the deluge came and men became fishes; and fifth, the
present age, which will end with an earthquake.
| Eight years seems a long interval for this ceremony. It is
probably astronomical. Compare the Charila (Delphi) eight-year
fertility or earth-mother festival, and the paper by W. S. Fox,
Am. Philolog. Assoc., 1916, p. xviii. Joyce, Mexican Archaeology,
London, 1914, p. 74, has compared the Pueblo rite.
2 These are not “Lares and Penates," as Réville explained them,
102
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
The Aztecs, like their northern relatives, held the sun as
a god, and this god they found revered also by the agricul-
tural peoples whom they conquered, though the latter also
worshipped earth-goddesses. The Aztecs then adopted the
goddesses, as wives of their gods, and made the gods forms
of their sun-god, who measured their year, and by whom,
and earth, was taken the primitive Mexican oath (touching
and eating earth as one swore). The general signs of the
sun-god are quetzal-feathers, disc, yellow, and east; he
was the god, teotl. As in Chibcha belief, his lady was the
moon; he is sometimes represented as “son of Quetzal-
coatl.” For him, when born, all other gods sacrificed them-
selves, in order to feed him. Hence now men are sacrificed
to feed him, not in his own but only in other forms. It is
remarkable that Tonatiuh, the sun per se, is thus without a
temple and sacrifice, though prayers are offered to him
four times a day and night. He is identified with the Aztec
gods, who absorb all the sacrifice of the sun.
But older than these sun-forms are the primitive Xiute-
cutli, called Ue-ue, the “old, old” god of Fire, portrayed
as black-green-yellow and having a golden mirror, who was
revered in the domestic cult of the Tarascans and by the
Nahuan Tepanec in the form of a papaloti (butterfly), or
as a man with a snake. He received a daily libation and
offerings and a yearly sacrifice. At the end of every year,
and again at the close of the fifty-two year cycle, a fresh
fire was kindled, on the bare breast of a prisoner, “to make
the sun rise." As a male god, Fire dwells in water (like
Agni), but as a female this god received human victims, who
were first half burned and, before death, were pulled out of
the fire, that their still beating hearts might be extracted
for sacrifice; locks of their hair being preserved as talis-
mans. Besides these human victims, Fire was also revered,
in the last month of the year, with animals burned alive.
To these pre-Aztec deities must be added the culture-god
Quetzal-coatl, the feathered-serpent, who represents pre-
Aztec or Toltec civilization. Though the teacher of arts,
111
RELIGION OF MEXICO
103
lulling to set of course game of two or th
as of agriculture, for he found the corn afterwards stolen by
Tlaloc, he was outwitted and driven out by the Aztec god.
But his Messianic return from the East was long looked for,
till the Spaniard appeared as his reincarnation. Coiled up
as a serpent he sleeps, as represented in stone, till he wakes
to bring a new era; or, as a man with a bird's head and ex-
tended tongue, he is identified with the Wind, Ehecati, or
Whisperer, Tohil, or breeze from the east, which brings
spring. He is averse to human sacrifice, except as his priests
draw for him their own blood. His temple is not a pyra-
mid but roofed and domed, with a simulated serpent's
mouth as entrance. His priests wear white and teach the
arts, a race apart from the black-robed Aztec priests. His
image is kept covered, like a medicine-bundle. As wind
lulling to sleep, he is also invoked by thieves !
The Aztecs of course gave precedence to their own great
gods. Out of the pantheon of two or three hundred gods,
there were some fifteen in human form and seven or eight in
animal form who were chief; of these, two were pre-emi-
nent, namely Uitzilopochtli and Tezcatlipoca, the monstrous
“brother" gods of the great ziggurat of the City of Mexico.
The former was the Humming-bird, called also “hair
of the Sun," for he was mysteriously, born of the Sun
and of Coatlicue, the vegetation-goddess as earth-serpent,
whose other sons are both the “unnumbered stars " and
the pre-Aztec hunting-god and cloud-serpent, Mixcoatl.
With Coatlicue, after slaying her unfilial sons, the Hum-
ming-bird at last ascended to heaven. He was, as Mextli,
also the warrior-god of the Aztecs. His small image was
borne before fighters by his black-robed priests," whose hair
was never shorn and who were ordained to his service by be-
ing smeared with a child's blood. The servants of this god
were the chief priests of the Aztecs and his service as war-
1 So in Peru, the Chancas carried into battle the image of their
founder, Uscovilca, and in Colombia the Chibchas carried mumınies
of famous warriors, to inspire courage and bring victory. Com-
pare the use of the tabernacle in battle.
104
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
and-sun-god demanded an unceasing flow of human blood.
His festivals, in May, August, and December, commemorate
him as the god of the spring and summer; he had a flower-
feast in August without victims. At his December feast,
his image in dough was eaten in communion by his wor-
shippers, after many victims had been slain.
Tezcatlipoca was the god of the smoking mirror. He has
been interpreted as the winter-sun who drives away vege-
tation; at all events, a cold and gloomy god, black and red
in colour, who gives hard laws and punishes offenders with
disease and death; a god who, like the Vedic Varuna, spies
on man. He wanders through the city by night, needing
seats placed there for him. He is identified with Mixcoatl
as inventor of fire and is connected with Tlazol-teotl as a
god of sin and confession. He also appears as the sun and
has a sacrifice in order to the reviving of the sun. It must
be as sun and not as law-giver that he is ever young and
the god of banquets. His colours and his mirror make him
appear as a special form of Fire (above). His image also
has serpent associations, though not fundamental, for he has
a face “like a bear.” He is the embodiment of law and
harsh justice, nor is it quite obvious that, as Réville thinks,
he represents any natural phenomenon. His statue has a
gold ear into which pour smoke-clouds of sacrifice repre-
senting prayers.
Centeotl (above) as maize-god, but because of his colour
turned into the goldsmiths' god, to whom were offered flayed
captives as victims, their skins being carried a month by
the captors. He is also a war-and-fertility god." The
planet Venus was a war-deity in the west. Travellers and
merchants had as god of their class Yucatecutli, to whom,
represented by their staves, the merchants prayed for suc-
cess.
1 In March there were gladiatorial fights in honour of Xipe, the
captive victims' hearts being torn out; sometimes they were shot
to death. The heart and blood were fertility-charms.
RELIGION OF MEXICO
105
who eventually idwith whom tlive, and hem were rati
Besides such gods, the Aztecs worshipped creator-gods
of the eighth heaven, who, like Brahman, were rationalized
beings, not supposed to be active, and hence were not much
worshipped, and with whom the national god, Uitzilopochili,
was eventually identified; or they served as medicinal gods,
who sent and cured diseases, like Apollo; though there was
a special “healer” god. Also female demons, like the
Hindu Mothers around Shiva, were generally supposed to
send children's diseases. Such demons were usually the
souls of women who had died in childbirth; they served the
war-god and, since war-gods are associated with lightning,
they appeared as lightning-flashes.
The death-god, Mictlan-tecuti, like the Hindu Yama, was
placed underground (but in the north), where he and his
spouse devour those who die of old age and disease; the
lords of this place being fiends who torment earth. The
passage to it is across deserts, through crashing hills, winds
that cut like knives, and it lies beyond four (sometimes
nine) streams, coloured yellow, red, blue, and white.
Tlaloc (above) has an eastern paradise, though he is in the
south, and this (Tulan East) is at the source of four rivers.
As already explained, warriors and those who die of water-
diseases (dropsy, etc.) or lightning go to him. Warriors
go also to the Sun-heaven, descending afterwards to earth
as humming-birds. The soul or “shadow-breath” going to
Mictlan is escorted by a red dog; in Peru by a black dog.
At death the dead man is clothed in the robes of his god
and is guarded by paper amulets, as in Egypt. Some souls
go to Tulan West, where the sun goes down, as in North
America. There are thus various places for the dead; but,
except for the fact that disease brings its own fate and
bravery a better, there is no ethical content in the conception
of the hereafter. The gods were not regarded as immortal.
. 1 The Aztecs, like the Hindus, had an annual (September) "re-
turn of the gods," indicated by a foot-print on maize, when a
drunken orgy ensued called “washing the gods' feet," and slaves
were burned alive. But it was always a question whether the gods
would live longer than the Cycle.
106
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
by eatinge practised: were pyragurmoun
The religious shambles called a church was presided over
by an organization of priests, monks, and nuns, who lived
in convents. The priests made sacrifice, but also taught
school. Baptism, absolution on confession, and communion
by eating the god's image of dough, or, by proxy, the vic-
tim, were practised. The cross was the Four-fold Tree of
Life. The teocalli were pyramidal, ascended by outside
steps, five to nine stories high, surmounted by altars. That
in Mexico City was eighty feet high; on its altars burned sac-
rificial fires almost perennial. In the city were six hundred
altars. Thousands of priests devoted themselves to secur-
ing victims. They taxed the community for their services
as diviners (by means of snakes, arrows, seeds, water, etc.)
and as butchers of men. Tarascan had its hereditary priests
and two high priests served Centeotl among the Totonac.
The Zapotec high priest was so charged with spiritual power
as to be dangerous to touch and he was kept secluded, to
commune with the sun and give out prophecies. The Aztec
priest sometimes served as a soldier and originally the mili-
tary and religious chiefs were one. But the priest also
appeared as a scholar, an ascetic, under rigid discipline, a
teacher of youth, inventor of a calendar, often a celibate.
The idea of a Supreme God, lacking among the Aztecs,
occurred to a Nahuan, king of Tezcuco, who died in 1472.
In his grief he cried, it is said, “ There must be some god to
console me ”; but not finding one he invented the “Un-
known god," to whom, as “cause of causes,” he built a
nine-story temple representing the ninth heaven of his Un-
known, to whom he “sacrificed” only incense and flowers.
Perhaps this tale is true. A philosophic interpretation of
divinity may well be granted to the inheritors of Toltec cul-
ture. But anyway this reformation no more replaced the
old gods than did the earlier Egyptian reform. It may not
1 The Aztec calendar was ruder than that of the Mayas, but it
counted 365 days of the year, of which the last five were un-
lucky and ominous. Boys in college, girls in convents, were
taught till the age of fifteen. Some of these priests were vege-
tarian monks, Quaquacuiltin.
RELIGION OF MEXICO
107
0
have been intended to oust them. Bloody sacrifice and life-
communion with gods never ceased. Even the gentle
Quetzalcoatl, who was opposed to human sacrifice, had his
priests offer him their own blood. The resulting idea of the
cult remained: the gods need human blood.
The basis of this Mexican religion coincides in many par-
ticulars with that of the northern savage. Thus the Four
Directions or Winds of the North are still preserved in the
serpent-cross, In Mexico, as in Peru, the intoxicating
plant, like Soma, has become divine and intoxication to be
moral must be religious. The wizard of the North and
rarer priest had become a priest indeed in Mexico, but not
yet with an hereditary priesthood, as in Colombia, where the
priests evolved a caste-system, like that in India. The
tabooed Zapotec high-priest (above), became, among these
Chibchas, a secret ruler, secluded as a Lama. All the other
priests formed a caste, who acted as Shamans, judges, and
executioners. A second caste was that of warriors; a third,
that of traders, agriculturists, and craftsmen; the fourth
being tributary nomads. Perhaps the greatest advance
among the Aztecs is in the prayer-formula. This prayer at
the inauguration of an Aztec king is cited: “O god, may
this king use the wisdom thou hast given him, not for his
own good, but for the good of his people, and do thou keep
him from oppressing us.” Another Aztec prayer runs :
“May thy chastisement, o god, be that of a father or
mother; not from anger, but to the end that we may be
freed from folly and vice." One never knows, however,
how much the European renderers of these prayers are
drawing on real material.2
1 In Yucatan the Roman Church has converted the Four into
church-spirits, dominating wind and weather. The red god of the
East is St. Dominic; the white god of the North is St. Gabriel; the
black god of the West is St. James; and the yellow god of the
South is Mary Magdalene. In cross-form the four are united in
the Svastika Tree of Life, or Weal, to whom a bird, called a cock,
was offered, as in Greece to the healer Aesculapius.
2 Compare Garcilasso's Peruvian prayer: “O thou who hast
existed for ever and shalt exist for ever, who hast by thy fiat cre-
108
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
The religions of South America include the lowest ani-
mism and the high worship of a Cause of causes, as man
passes from the savagery of cannibal tribes living in tree-
tops to the culture of Peruvian Amautas, “professors," and
inventors of the mnemonic quipu, dramatists, architects, and
statesmen. On the whole, civilization is here confined to
narrow limits rather closely connected geographically and in
touch with the western coast, where legend says that there
was immigration from abroad. Similarity of artistic work
and other indications may support the legend that the west-
ern littoral received its first culture from early northern
sources. The religious type of the higher culture resem-
bles that of the Mayas rather than that of the Nahuans, as
the people are agricultural and pastoral rather than no-
madic. But it may be an independent civilization alto-
gether, as it was certainly higher. The Mexicans never
conceived the state founded by the Incas. Aztec political
power was that of a central tribe extracting forced tribute
from outsiders, not that of a great state civilizing its neigh-
bours.
Most real to the South American is nature-worship, not
in an exalted sense but in the sense that his fears or hopes
are attached to natural phenomena by a belief in their will
to work him ill or good. The Yurupari noise-demon, heard
in the forest and deprecated, is an example. The Brazilian ,
Tupan, whom the missionaries called their “God,” is an-
other; he is merely the lightning-spirit. To the Patagonian,
stars are spirits; to the Araucanians, they are ancestors.
In Brazil, the Botocudos keep away evil spirits with fire and
shoot the storm- (or eclipse-) demon with arrows. They ·
ated man, be thou in sky or earth or cloud or depth, our saviour,
grant us life everlasting.” Garcilasso was intent on showing the
Peruvians at their best and one cannot avoid thinking that lie per-
haps bettered that best. But he may have been scrupulously cor-
rect. Peruvian culture was certainly extraordinary.
1 Joyce cites the use of turquoise, obtainable only from New
Mexico. See T. A. Joyce, South American Archaeology, London,
1912, pp. 188, 207. Yet this source was not necessary, since tur-
quoise is found in Chile. See Mar, 1914, No. 21.
RELIGION OF PERU
109
lives of God and the saveas unded the cand ac
believe that the moon sends them evil, but the sun sends
good. Good and evil spirits are worshipped by the Arau-
canians also, who too have a thunder-spirit, like the thun-
der-people of the North, and a volcano-spirit, as well as
animal gods.
A higher culture is found among the Colombians. The
Quimbayans of this region are indeed very primitive, having
neither a cult of animals or of plants, nor temples nor idols.
But the Chibchas or Muiscans, of the same region, like the
natives of northern Argentina, sacrificed children to the sun
and rain-god and had religious masks, marked with tear-
lines, like those of the savages of Jamaica, which suggests
that “the fundamental ideas underlying the religions of a
great part of South America and the early population of
the Antilles were closely akin.” i They had a cult of stones,
lakes, trees, and perhaps of ancestors; but their earliest gods,
as greater spirits, were Sun and Thunder. A primitive
recognition of a Creator has been asserted for them and
for other South Americans; but it is not clear that this is
another god than the tribal progenitor, who is often a beast
or a material object (star or sun). The Chibchas recog-
nize a culture-hero.called Bochica, whose rules were so strict
that a cult-heroine, Huitaca, who may be the Moon, taught
in opposition a religion of joy and dancing, till the Creator,
who rarely interferes in human affairs, turned her into an
owl. But she was still potent enough to help the Bogota
god Chibchachum to cause a deluge, till Bochica appeared
on a rainbow (the Rainbow being otherwise the goddess of
women) and opened a path for the waters with his golden
rod. Then the Creator turned the Bogota god into the
giant who supports earth, and whose uneasy movements
cause earthquakes. The inhabitants of Colombia and of
Ecuador also worship stones and snakes; the snake as light-
ning appears here as in the North. The Chibchas had a
god of agriculture, whose idol was wrought gold, a god of
1 Joyce, op. cit., p. 189.
ΙΙΟ
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
boundaries, and one of trade, who together with Sun, Moon,
Mountain, and Lake, received sacrifice. Jewels, men, in-
cense, and fire were offered to the Sun, but chiefly children,
as in Mexico. Mexican also was their shooting-sacrifice,
but here of slaves or of talking parrots, the victims repre-
senting the god, so that his blood fertilized the land. Idols
and fetishes were used and pilgrimages to the sacred lake
caused enmity between tribes to cease, while intoxication
en route was regarded as a religious rite. So in Ecuador
we find a worship of Sun and Moon as chief gods, along
with that of a war-god; while serpent-worship is connected
with both lake-cult and hero-cult. In general, cultural
phases were religiously represented. The mass worshipped
whatever could reasonably be feared or revered, from stone
to star. Inland, because most useful, the Sun was chief
god; on the littoral, the Sea was the great god, with the
Moon to share his honours. “Sun-worship probably was
not practised on the coast before the Inca conquest.” i Hu-
man sacrifice was universal till the Incas stopped it. On the
coast the victims were flayed, as in Mexico.
The priests of the savage tribes were generally men, but
in Patagonia generally women. At the worst they were
Shamans exorcising disease by noise, as in the extreme south.
The higher sort divined (by twitching of fingers, dreams,
cries, etc.) and interceded with gods by fasting on hill-tops
and making offerings to the Sun of hair, etc. Some priests
were not allowed to touch earth or be seen, so dangerous
was their mystic power. Anong Chibchas, women had
great influence (they might even beat their husbands), which
may account for their cult-heroine. In northern Colom-
bia, Antioquia, there was also a similar cult-heroine, Dabe-
ciba. A combination of agriculture, women, and snakes has
1 Joyce, op. cit. p. 66.
2 Here again thể hair is connected with the sun. Like the Aztec
priests the Incas wore their hair long (this was their prerogative).
8 Compare the Zapotec priest mentioned above and the Inca, who
went out only in a litter, ostensibly because he was the incarnate
sun who is carried through the sky.
RELIGION OF PERU
III
been noticed among the Iroquois. The Chibcha chiefs were
themselves divine and appointed the priests to the snake and
water-cults.
The sketch just given resolves half the mystery that used
to surround the religion of the Incas of Peru, which was
once regarded as unique, whereas it really rested upon sup-
ports common to the religions of neighbouring provinces
and got its strength not from novelty but because it was
racial. Both to the north and to the west, on the coast,
there were already temples, idols, established priesthoods,
rituals, pilgrimages, and especially lake-worship and the cult
of sun (or sea) and moon, as supreme powers. There was
also an acknowledgment of Creator-gods superior to evil
spirits, not to speak of that substratum of religion found all
over the continent, belief in the mystic power of stones, trees,
vegetables, snakes, animals, and fertilizing gods of rain, as
well as that material culture best seen in Colombia and
Ecuador, that is, inland and on the coast, where arts and
trades flourished before the Incas came to Cuzco.
As the Incas cannot be traced back of circa 1000 A. D.
and as the Nahuans had overthrown and partly absorbed
“Toltec " civilization four hundred years before that, and
as the oldest civilization is on the coast, it is not improbable
that Mayan immigration started the culture known as Inca,
which it closely resembles. Even the solar origin of the
Incas was not new. Tunja in Colombia was ruled by a king
who was “son of the Sun” and married his sister, just like
the Inca. The Inca derived from the Sun through the
Mighty Man, Manco Capac, who suddenly emerged from
the cave of Lake Titicaca with the golden bough planted
later at Cuzco, and from his sister, the Moon, called Mama
Ocllo as a human being, wife and sister of the Sun and
1 The theocracy of the Incas merely intensifies traits found else-
where. It was in fact an aristocracy. Only an Inca might be
high-priest, be a polygamist, or even be educated (exceptions occur
with permission of the Inca). Only Incas were exempt from
capital punishment. Divine prestige came from the idea that the
army was the army of the (Sun) Lord. Cf. Réville, op. cit., p. 124.
II2
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
Wors propitiate and aloe form one key Maizes
patroness of the arts.1 Except (Venus) Chasca, who was
a long-haired male page of the Sun, all the stars (planets)
were servants of the Moon, while Rainbow was the servant
of both gods. Earth and food-producing powers were es-
pecially revered by the Peruvians.? Maize was a divinity
inland, fish on the littoral (one key to totemism). Maize
was worshipped in the form of a figure made of the plant,
as was coca, and adored as “Mother.” The Earth-deity
was propitiated with llama-idols containing food and was
worshipped in caves. The people believed in the Sun-god
before the Incas came, but also in Conopas and Huacas,
material forms of vegetation-demons, divine animals, spirit-
stones, etc., as in Mexico. Especially prominent in this cult
is that of stones, truncated pyramids by preference, repre-
senting ancestors perhaps, but probably of wider bearing 3
Any stone, even if struck by accident, was placated with
offerings.
Dances were performed to the Sun-god at Rimac in June,
when the dancers appeared to be “out of their senses." A
girl was sacrificed and the “renewal of fire” performed.
Apparently there is no trace of ghost-worship in this great-
est event of the year. The dances were not ghost-dances.
To this agricultural religion, mainly a cult of earth-powers
and reproduction-rites, the invading Incas added the cult of
themselves as sons of the Sun, at whose temple, as that of the
greatest god, were performed sun-rites and others not solar.
Thus in September there was an apotropaic rite, namely a
public race in all directions ending with a washing-off of
evils. Those not in the public race assisted by driving off
evils with torches and dance, a night-rite, which yet took
place at the Sun-temple.
1 The two are also interpreted as primeval male and cosmic egg.
2 The serpent-cult is strongly marked. There is an underground
snake-god of concealed treasure. The Inca emblem is two entwined
snakes. Compare the serpent-mother of the Nahuans and the ser-
pent-cults of North America.
3 The Conopas were fetishes called "brothers," images of animals
and plants as personal guardians but also used as fertility-charms,
especially in llama form.
RELIGION OF PERU
113
To conciliate religious parties, the Incas accepted the most
popular previous forms of tribal cult, the Collas' lake-cult
and the Quichua sea-cult on the littoral. Lake Titicaca in
Peru was as popular a divinity as Lake Guatabita in Co-
lombia, where a political centre resulted from religious pil-
grimages to the lake. In Peru there was a local lake
or water divinity (“ be thou male or be thou female," says
an old hymn) called Viracocha, probably the greatest god
before the Incas came to Cuzco. With her - or him —
was identified a local western god Iraya, who, like a North
American culture-hero, went disguised as an animal. Simi-
larly, on the coast, at Rimac (Lima) and Pachacamac, there
was the sea-god of fishes, and he too was adopted by the
Incas as soon as their power reached the sea, though even
at Pachacamac the Incas built a sun-temple above the town,
to show that the Sun surpassed the Sea (a legend tells of
the earlier enmity). Each to his own people these gods
were the best; the synthesis was partly political, partly in-
evitable. It resulted in the god being no longer a mere fish-
god, a mere lake-god, a mere sun-god, but a god represent-
ing lake, sea, and sun, called Viracocha (of the lake),
Pachacamac (of the sea), and the Sun (of the Incas), but
often called by two or all of these names, Viracocha Pacha-
camac.1 The Lady of the Lake was of course the wife of
Viracocha (probably his own original form, cocha as lake).
Her temple is now a chapel of the Virgin Mary.
It is tradition that the Inca Yupanqui, in 1440, A. D., rea-
soned out God as a necessarily Supreme Being, who dis-
patched the sun on his path, daily “sent like a servant,"
1 As Pacha-mama is earth-mother so Pacha-camac is earth-mover
or shaker (ocean), not "all-mover as soul of all,” as Joyce thinks.
2 Hymns to iracocha are given by Brinton, Myths of the New
World, Philadelphia, 1896, p. 155, and Markham, Incas of Peru,
London, 1911, p. 199. Réville, op. cit., p. 186, correctly interpreted
Viracocha as water-god in 1884. It may be he who “shatters the
water-jar" of the sky. Later writers have seen both in him and in
Pacha-camac original Creators. An euhemeristic legend represents
litholatry as superseded by the cults of water and sun in turn, It
has a basis of truth,
I14
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
were vice-ger power rested romulgated such."
or, as if without will, “ shot like an arrow." No Inca in
his senses would have promulgated such political folly,
for the Inca power rested entirely on the belief that Incas
were vice-gerents of the highest god, the Sun. It may have
been philosophically discussed whether the sun-god was
under the orders of another god who was to be “worshipped
only with the mind”; certainly no effort was made to extend
the worship any further. It sufficed to make the sun's disc
representative of Sun as Light, Inti, and to see in this
Sun-Light the Supreme, or the representative thereof. His
temple and even the whole village faced east. His divine
spouses were vestal virgins, practically spouses of the Inca.
All the great feasts were in his honour, though his sister-
wife, Mama Quilla, the Moon (in human form known as
Ocllo) was also revered, as goddess of weaving and spin-
ning, and minor festivals were permitted in honour of her
and of minor deities, such as the Planets, Pleiades, and
Rainbow, who had their special chapels and cults. The
Rainbow (god) was feared because he made dumb those
who watched him.
As descended from the Sun, Fire was greatly revered in
the mirror-form, but also in rock-form and volcano-form.
The Huacas (above) may have received additional rever-
ence from the fact that the natural earth-home of the Fire-
god was in stone. At the ritual" renewal of fire," it was
brought out of the (flint) stone or conducted from heaven
by means of a mirror, both forms being identified. There
was also the feeling that oracles spoke from rocks and
caverns. Rimac itself means the Murmuring (Voice), of
rock or earth.
But the Peruvians had still another great god, not local-
ized, as were Viracocha and Pachacamac, but not, as were
they, raised to universality by combination with the Sun-
god. This was the many-named god of the club, stone, and
sling, the thunder and lightning god called Illapa (Inti-
allapa), whom the Incas made subordinate to the Sun, while
they permitted him to retain his ancient festival. As of the
RELIGION OF PERU
115
Mexican Tlaloc, his abode was on the mountains, and his
thunder-stones were everywhere revered as potent fer-
tility- and love-charms. As personified Lightning, he was
son of the first divine man and born a twin; where-
fore all twins were sacred, that is, sacrificed, to him. Un-
holy (taboo) became the place that Lightning struck; men
struck by him went underground; but all Incas went to the
Sun. Ordinary men, if worthy, might also go to the Sun;
but otherwise, like those struck by lightning, they went to
Shadow-land, Supay, literally the Shade, to whom as a
god children in someodistricts were sacrificed. Their course
thither was conducted by a black dog and led over a bridge
of a hair. Diseased persons had a special abode after death
(a belief of Mexican and Huron also); but there was no
place of punishment. The dead were buried in caves or
under towers; expecting resurrection, according to Gar-
cilasso de la Vega. A sort of embalming or mummifica-
tion was practised by the Peruvians and mummies were
placed in their temples, carried in their processions, and
taken as fetishes into battle.1
In the legalized Inca cult, the minor gods had smaller
temples around the Sun-temple, the House of Gold at Cuzco.
The high priest was the brother of the reigning Inca; other
priests were either Incas or local priests of special gods
who at the same time acted as subordinate Sun-priests, like
Levites. As among the Chibchas, the priesthood was he-
reditary in the female line. Especial priests examined ani-
mal entrails (haruspices) or divined by flights of birds
(augures), maize-heaps, spiders' legs, water, and “odd
and even” tests. As the Incas expressly forbade human
1 Mummification, sun-worship, brother-and-sister marriage, and
megalithic temples are the chief items emphasized by those who
derive Peruvian culture and religion from Egypt. The combination
is a strong one. Yet, as we have seen, megalithic buildings are
found elsewhere; sun-worship is found everywhere (so to speak);
incest is not local; and mummification in Peru, as in Egypt, was
rendered possible by the extreme dryness of the atmosphere. Adhuc
sub judice lis est. Another practice of the Peruvian was tattooing;
but it is not necessary to derive it from the Pacific.
116
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
sacrifice, it is clear that it was a previous Peruvian prac-
tice. The usual “sacrifices” were vegetables, fruits, coca,
and chicha, an intoxicant, which are offerings used elsewhere
in South America. On the coast, headless skeletons (of
women) show that the locally prevalent worship of Sea and
of Moon was probably not without its human toll. In Co-
lombia, the Quimbayans sacrificed prisoners of war, as was
done in Antioquia. The Chibchas regularly set their tem-
ple-posts on the bodies of sacrificed slaves. This savagery
was reduced at Cuzco to the sacrifice of a llama, a dog, a
rabbit, or some other animal, offered to the Sun as a burnt
offering or eaten raw by the worshippers. Almost the only
human sacrifice occurred when the Inca fell ill and his son
was sacrificed to save the father's life, or when children
were sacrificed to give him a successful reign, or, in out-
lying places, to make an offering to Supay. This was as
nothing in comparison with the slaughterings in other parts
of South America and Mexico, and on the whole it must be
granted that the Incas went far in mollifying religion."
. But what the Peruvians lacked in cruelty they made up
for in debauchery, especially in drinking and its attendant
vices. A religious festival or pilgrimage always ended in
a drinking-bout lasting for days. Thus the harvest festival
closed with a drunken orgy. The festivals, however, also
show appreciation of asceticism. The most interesting of
these is the summer-solstice (December) festival, when the
young men to be initiated into the tribe were flogged, dances
and races followed, and men dressed as animals opposed
women in a rope-dance with a four-coloured rope (black,
white, red, and yellow). This ceremony concluded with the
piercing of the ears of the youths, prayer (ejaculations), and
1 Voluntary suttee was permitted to wives, especially to those of
the Incas: but sometimes images were substituted for the real vic-
tims. The vestal virgins of the Sun were actually virgins only
till their marriage with the Sun represented by the Inca; but if
untrue to their vows, they were buried alive, like Roman vestals.
If worthy, they received civic and religious honours, especial escort,
etc. There were 3000 of these “Elect of the Sun” at Cuzco alone.
RELIGION OF PERU
117
sacrifice. The winter-solstice festival (in June) was de-
voted to adoration of the Sun, preceded by fasting and fol-
lowed by a Saturnalia of debauchery. One has but to com-
pare Colombian custom to see that all these popular festi-
vals were racial rather than national. Thus at Tunja there
was a year-end festival in which twelve men, representing
months, in red, sang a death-song around a man in blue
(black). In the Bogota harvest festival, men dressed in
animal skins had a sun-celebration with prayer and the use
of masks. The elements of all celebrations were races,
games, intoxication, and licentious carousing. Savagery as
cruelty appears chiefly in agricultural (fertility) rites, as
when in Ecuador human sacrifice took place at the annual
sowing, and then it is obviously a logical piece of sympa-
thetic magic. There is scarcely any recognition of spirits
naturally evil. The northern Tamahi of Antioquia in Co-
lombia had an evil deity, Canicuba, besides a good deity
as creator, Abiņa, but neither was worshipped. These peo-
ple were chiefly agriculturists and developed great advance
in weaving and dyeing, feminine influence prevailing.
An interesting question arises in regard to the identifica-
tion of man and god in these southern tribes. Bochica of
the Chibchas was a cult-man who, like Quetzalcoatl, finally
disappears, here “to the east," and then is worshipped as a
god; his footstep is still visible on a rock. His laws were
codified by the earliest historical chief, Nompanem of
Irica; his sister, who ruled next, was followed by a chief
called Idacansas, who had power over diseases and the ele-
ments and thus started a cult marked by pilgrimages which
practically made him a god, or, at least, a divine priest.
Here we have not a priest as chief but a chief as priest.
At Tunja also, two chiefs became Sun and Moon and were
duly celebrated. Another chief here had a tail and four
ears and had from the sun the power to metamorphose
animals and men, virtually a divinity of a sort. Probably
the Inca chief also did not assume political command as
priest, but as chief, and then, as Sun's son, assumed priest-
118
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
hood. This is certainly the case in the North, where no
priest quâ priest becomes a sachem.?
The ethical content of American religions is distinctly
higher than that of the religions hitherto examined. Clan-
morality is everywhere strict and often involves other clans.
That is, truth between tribes, as in treaties, was observed,
though of course it was usually a virtue to deceive, despoil
and murder others. A certain connexion between ethics
and spirits is observable in the implicit assumption that the
tutelary spirits are present when conferences take place;
but most of the tutelary spirits and culture-creatures are
themselves famous for their knavery. In Mexico the mir-
ror-god sees the sinner; but there is no close connexion be-
tween god and good. Baptism or ablution is to get rid of
ills rather than of sin. The fast is recognized as a means
of “purity” of the same sort. Before a Peruvian pilgrim
might enter the god's temple at Pachacamac he had to fast
for twenty days; but this was to make certain, by a sort of
quarantine, that he did not pollute the temple with bad in-
fluence. The Incas had a system of “confession," but it
was not religious. The inquisitors were church-police in
the service of the system, which utterly destroyed individ-
uality and private initiative. They decided whether each
individual who came up for confession had withheld any-
thing the church-and-state ought to know. The hereafter
was not morally conditioned; there was no ethical balance to
be struck beyond the grave; though there was doubtless the
feeling in Peru, Mexico, and Bogota that the highest gods
were morally higher than the demons who plagued men
from below earth. But it is noteworthy that the hymns to
the Sun and to Viracocha express only the worshipper's awe
without any ethical implication. Communion with the god,
by eating him, or his image, or his victim, or, as in Peru,
1 The general derivation of kingly power from priestly power
seems to rest on a misapprehension. Every king, as pater familias,
is, like a father, at once head of earthly and heavenly affairs for
his family; but he does not become father by being priest.
RELIGION OF PERU
119
by snaring a drink with him, had the purpose of physically
strengthening the communicant, that is, it was religious with-
out being moral.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
W. H. Prescott, History of the Conquest of Mexico, Philadel-
phia, 1846, and History of the Conquest of Peru, Phila-
delphia, 1846–71.
A. Réville, Religions of Mexico and Peru, Hibbert Lectures for
1884.
Sir C. R. Markham, A History of Peru, Chicago, 1892; Gar-
cilasso de la Vegá, in Commentaries on the Yncas, trans-
lated, London, 1869–71; The Incas of Peru, London, 1911.
T. A. Joyce, Mexican Archaeology, London, 1914; South
American Archaeology, London, 1912.
R. B. Brehm, Das Inkareich, Jena, 1885.
S. G. Morley, Bulletin 57, 1915, of Bureau of American Eth-
nology.
CHAPTER EIGHT
RELIGION OF THE CELTS
In the last chapter we passed far beyond the confines of
Savage Religions and reached a plane even higher than that
upon which we are now to enter, the religions of certain
barbarians, midway between savagery and civilization,
namely, the inhabitants of northern Europe, from the time
of the Christian era to that of the Middle Ages, almost
synchronous with the more advanced types of South Amer-
ica. Although these barbarians are linguistically connected
with the higher Mediterranean group represented by Greeks
and Romans, they are religiously distinct, since from the
earliest historical period the inhabitants of Greece and Italy
had been profoundly affected by the far older cultures of
the Mediterranean littoral and of Mesopotamia. It will be
necessary therefore to ignore whatever Aryan unity may
once have bound together Greek-Roman and German-Celt
and treat separately the two divisions of northern and south-
ern Europe.
To the northern division Celtic religion serves as the best
introduction, because much of what the Celt believed was
once the general belief of Europe. When the Aryan-speak-
ing peoples spread from eastern Europe southward and
westward, they took as their own the land and religion of
the prehistoric natives, giving them in exchange a new lan-
guage and a new culture, partly that belonging by inheritance
to themselves, partly that which they had absorbed from
Scythia and elsewhere, on their long migration. Thus the
mixed inhabitants of future Gaul, France, Spain, Northern
Italy, and Great Britain had thereafter a religion combined
of indigenous and imported elements. In the course of two
120
CELTIC RELIGION
121
thousand years of westward progression the Aryan factor
must have become a thin stream irrigating the vast field
into which it emptied (much as the Aryan element thinned
out as it flowed into India), a field which had its own reli-
gious springs, indicated by the survival of monuments still
marking their former activity, the trepanned skull, the exit-
hole in the cromlech (from which graves the soul might
crawl), the toys and implements found in graves, menhirs,
and perhaps the pictured magic of immemorial caves.
Such vague indications of religious belief reach far back
of the entry of the Celts into western Europe. Perhaps
about 2000 B. C., the Celts, an offshoot of the eastern Aryan-
speaking tribes, between the Carpathians and the Steppe,
then located about the Danube, began to migrate further
west and south. One branch invaded Asia Minor and
Greece. Another streamed south-west through the Tyrol
and settled in Italy. A third spread over Gaul about 800
B. C., Spain about 500 B. C., and at the same time, extending
northward, invaded Britain, first about 500 B. C., and then
again about 300 B.C. Of these two northward streams, the
first became the Gaelic (Goidelic) or Irish Celts; the sec-
ond, the Cymrics, Britains, and Belgians. These two sub-
divisions stood to each other linguistically as the Romans
stood to the Oscans, Volsci, and Umbrians, the Gaelic divi-
sion pronouncing a q where the British-Belgian said p, and
u where the latter said ü. The older pronunciation is that
of Roman and Gaelic (compare Ionian k with Attic p),
as contrasted with that of Volsci and British. In fact, the
Volsci and Welsh (compare the Volcae tribe of Southern
Gaul) may once have been “Hawks," as the name perhaps
means, of the same stock with the same name.
In modern terms, the Irish preceded the British by sev-
1 Probably from this Celtic stock came Vergil, Catullus, Livy,
and other " Romans," whose families originated in the province of
northern Italy. Vergil's spirit is more Celtic than Roman.
2 Tacitus distinguishes the red-headed northern Caledonians, who
were like Germans, from the swarthy Spanish-like Welsh and the
Southerners, who resembled Gauls and Belgians (Agricola, c. xi;
I22
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
eral centuries and were pushed west by the later wave of
immigration, which had perhaps come more directly from
the Rhine and other eastern parts of Celt-land. The longer
acclimatization of the Gaelic Celts would have resulted in a
closer contact with the primitive European stock and may
account for some of their religious characteristics. The
later British, represented now by Welsh and Cornish, en-
tered Britain about the time iron was introduced there, circa
300 B. C., a thousand years after England's Bronze Age be-
gan. By this time the Celts of Gaul had already come into
contact with the civilization lying south (south-east) of
them through commercial routes which had been followed
for centuries. In fact, remains in Ireland show, as early
as the Bronze Age, influences which have been described
as “ Ægean, Scandinavian, and Iberian."1 Such contact,
at least that of later days, tended to civilize them but also
to undermine their native virtue and religious belief. By
the time Caesar came directly in touch with them, the most
popular god of the Gauls was no longer a warrior's god but
the god of arts and journeys (“Mercury,” thus defined).
Incidentally Caesar informs us that the Gauls were very re-
ligious and believed that all things happened by divine will.
He tells us, too, more specifically that they worshipped heal-
ing gods like Apollo and three great gods, whom he identi-
fies with Mars, Jupiter, and Minerva; also, that they derived
their origin from Dis Pater.
Modern scholarship has been inclined to ignore the im-
portance of such statements in favour of the a priori view
that all higher gods are secondary creations. To get to the
bed-rock of Celtic religion we must remove the upper layers.
This assumes what is upper. Historically the great gods
are as old as any we know in possession of the Celts. If
they agree rather well with phenomena common to other
compare Caesar, B. G. v. 12). The Gauls were of the same linguistic
stock as the British, sermo haud multuin diversus; but had become
lazy and were less war-like, sognitia cum otio.
1 See The Bronze Age in Ireland, by G. Coffey, London, 1913.
CELTIC RELIGION
123
branches of the same stock, it is reasonable to conclude, not
that high gods come before others, but that the Celts may
have brought high gods with them. Little localized spirits
stay behind when a people migrates; when resettled, the same
people picks up new ones off the ground where they grow.
Of course, a Roman would be apt to make mistakes in
describing outlandish gods. Some of the Celtic gods de-
scribed as “ Jupiters ” have a disc, some a hammer or bolt.
In identifying all these gods there is a good deal of uncer-
tainty. Nor need we lay too much weight on etymological
equations. Yet some of these, approved by recognized Celtic
scholars, are, if certain, instructive as well as interesting.
The father of Ossian (Ossain) was Finn, who in turn is
son of Cumhal, Irish for (the god) Camulos, whose name
lingers in Colchester (of old, Camulodunum), and the word
canulos appears to mean sky, etymologically equal to Ger-
man himmel. Euhemerized gods are a feature of Irish
mythology and there is nothing strange anywhere in the re-
duction of a god to an historical hero (the Persian epic is
built upon such heroes). Thor and Donar again may ap-
pear in Celtic Taranis or Taranacos, a thunder-god. But
apart from the slippery ground of linguistics there is toler-
able certainty that Belenos and Sulis represent sun-god and
sun-goddess, respectively (Belenos of Gaul, worshipped by
the Druids, becomes in the Morte D'Arthur a mere king).
Then there is a Vintius, probably a Wind-god, though called
Mars. Lucetius is a light-god, perhaps lightning. The
Mars of the British called “war-brilliant” (Belatucadros)
shows no sign of elevation from a low-down “spirit of fer-
tility.” Whať shall we say, too, of gods named “the all-
wise," "he of brilliant energy," "the enduring” (persist-
ent), dubbed by the Romans Mars or Jupiter? The gods
called “the highest” and “ thunderer" are at least as old as
any Celtic gods we know.?
1 He corresponds to a British fertility-god, Gwyn ab Nudd, and
the Welsh king of fairies.
2 Ollovidios," all-knowing," is called a Mars; Ambisagros, "en-
124
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
There is reason to believe that Celts and Romans con-
sorted together, before becoming “ Celts” and “Romans,"
for a long period. They have one or two grammatical forms
not shared by other Aryans and indicating a closer connec-
tion than that between Roman (Italic) and German or
Slavic. Roman and Celt had much in common otherwise.
Both were war-like, yet both from their earliest history were
agricultural. Ambactonos was a very venerable Celtic god
of farming. But there was no farmer-caşte. When a Bel-
gian warrior stopped fighting he returned to the plough.
The Celts, too, as well as the Gauls, had been expert metal-
workers for centuries before Caesar invaded Britain (in
55 B. C.). Both worshipped trade-gods and smith-gods,
sometimes under the form of fire-gods, who patronized arts
and represented recondite wisdom. As sundry Celts de-
rived through the mother (matrilinear), they naturally
made much of goddesses and had Mother and Queen divini-
ties, such as “Diana” (so named by Romans) and the
“Ops” called Rosmerta, who represented nature-power and
productivity, not as mere spirits but as high Powers. There
is also a Mother of the Gods, Anu or Ana, perhaps equiva-
lent to the Gaelic Danu, Mother of Light-gods (below).
How many Celtic gods were raised to godhead from man's
estate we do not know. Some gods may once have been
during," a Jupiter. Iovanucaros, "lover of youth," is a god paired
with Mercury, who is also “the wise," Visucios. The water-god
Bedaios is also called a Jupiter. These various Jupiters, etc., are
probably expressions of belief in a general sun-god and god of
weather ramifying into sky, thunder, light, etc., embodied with a
local clan-god and healing-god. They are chiefly of Gaul. The
"all-wise” (etc.) gods are epithets individualized as separate
persons.
1 Britain became a Roman province in 43 A.D. It was aban-
doned in 410 A. D., by which time trade-route culture, which had
existed long before, had been largely reinforced by direct contact
with the Romans, whose own religion had previously been Hel-
lenized and Orientalized. Traces of Oriental-Roman cult remained
in Britain long after the Romans withdrew. Even in Tacitus's time,
the better British of the south of England dressed like Romans,
spoke Latin, and were building forums and baths.
CELTIC RELIGION
125
'
human. One of the leaders of the Boii was “ deified” after
death.
It is therefore impossible to see primitive Celtic only in
the much later tales of giants, fairies, and magicians in
Ireland and Britain, tales which, were they primitive, would
still be of doubtful interpretation. If we seek as indicative
of Celtic character the most wide-spread phenomena, they
are the worship of a few great gods over a wide area, the
employment of magic, the influence of the priesthood, and
a general but localized belief in special terrestrial divinities,
silvani, animals, rivers, springs, etc. In Gaul and lower
Germany the cult of Mothers, generally a Mother in three
forms, is prominent, which in the British Islands becomes
a belief in fairies. Groups rather than individuals are often
honoured, or feared, like the Dusii, evil spirits plaguing
women, as elsewhere ghosts and storm-spirits are wont to
be honoured en masse rather than by individual names.
Honour was paid not usually in temples but in groves,
nameton, although Celtic temples were not unknown on the
Continent and idols were common in the case of individual
gods, such as the three mentioned by Lucan as Teutates,
Esus, and Taranis, who were individually worshipped with
bloody sacrifices. Of these, Teutates is possibly a tribal
god, whose name suggests, what is otherwise suspected, that
Teutonic and Celtic elements combine in many “Celtic"
phenomena. Taranis (above) is the Mars or Jupiter of
thunder. Esus is the tribal god of the Essuvii (in France;
“ interpreted ” as a solar or a vegetation-spirit); his name
appears to be one with that of certain Irish divinities (Aes).
A British culture-hero of local fame, Gwydion, though it
is not certain that he is Woden, yet agrees remarkably well
1 Such as Lug in England and France, Ogma in Ireland, Gaulic
Ogmius, and Epona (equa), the goddess of horses.
2 Such as the Dee (Deva, goddess); Sequana (goddess of) the
Seine; Belisama, “most warlike," goddess of the Mersey.' The
river itself was the local deity.
3 Gwydion's Castle in the Milky Way (in the star-cult of the
Welsh), which, however, is also “ Lug's Chain."
1
126
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
with the Germanic god in name and characteristics, as both
were distinguished for war, poetry, magic, and the ability
to raise up men from vegetable growths. Mabon, of the
Arthur legend, is one with Mapones, the “great youth "
form of that medicinal "Apollo" revered as a god of heal-
ing springs under the name Borvo (Bourbon), the “boiler."
Other such Apollos are Moguns, whose name survives in
Mainz (Moguntiacum), and Grannus, the Apollo of Aix-la-
Chapelle, who is paired with “long-lived " Sirona, an earth-
goddess, as Silvanus is paired with Silvana, and Borvo with
the probably animal-spirit Damona.
The last named deity, like the Epona already mentioned,
shows that animal-worship was wide-spread among the
Celts, who wore skins and engraved images of the boar and
serpent; but the bearing of these facts is by no means cer-
tain. They do not prove, as has been supposed, that the
Celts were totemists, nor is this proved by the further fact,
mentioned by Caesar, that the Celts did not eat the hen,
goose, and hare, although they kept them as domestic ani-
mals. The hare, for example, was used in Britain for divi-
nation, which might have secured its inviolability as an
article of food. The goose may have been sacred, as in In-
dia, through evincing a heavenly nature by its lofty flight.
Caesar does not mention as taboo the pig, which some Celts
will not eat. This may have been divine either as a fight-
ing-animal, the wild boar, or as a rooting animal sacred to
under-world deities. Its love of acorns alone would make
it perhaps sacred to the oak-tree revered by the Tree-priests
(Druids). Many of the divine animals or deities of ani-
mals are unexplained or even doubtful in meaning. Tarvos,
the bull," and Moccus (the boar?) and even Mullo (the
1 The Tarbfess was an Irish (Ulster) tauric festival or "bull-
feast," in which a man ate of a slaughtered white ox and then,
gorged, slept and dreamed, while four Druids repeated magical
verses. The man the sleeper saw in his dream was then made king
of Ireland, Windisch, Irische Texte, Leipzig, 1880, p. 200. This
shows a lingering divinity in the bull, as well as a lingering (magi-
cian's) power in the Druid.
CELTIC RELIGION
127.
ass?) are probably deities or sacred animals, the last per-
haps as a war-animal, like March, the horse of war (com-
pare Mars).Snakes were burned at the summer festival,
but the horned serpent seems to be revered. Artio of Bern
is either the local bear-goddess, like Artemis, or a culture-
goddess (from ar, to plough, daringly supposed by some
scholars to be related to King Ar-thur). The raven was
sacred; the crow was regarded as a prophetic, but not per-
haps as a divine bird. Yet in this whole domain of animal-
worship there still remains more dubiosity than certainty.
Like the Romans and their neighbours, the Celts laid great
weight on the flight of birds and course of animals for pur-
poses of divination, and snakes were used for the same pur-
pose. Further they observed celestial phenomena and em-
ployed yew-rods to the same end; but both the other priests
or soothsayers, vates to the Roman, and the Druids ex-
amined with special care the entrails of animals slain for
this purpose and the nature of the blood.
Such divination was but part of the priestly duties of the
Druids, whose role as philosophers and prophets was, how-
ever, probably much exaggerated by classical writers.
Druidic “philosophy” consisted in magic and a belief in
metempsychosis; they conducted the barbarously cruel sac-
rifices of the gods of clan and war and agriculture, consist-
ing in burning human victims in wicker cages. It was their
duty also to save the “soul of the oak" by amputating its
mistletoe with a golden knife in moonlight; and distil from
it a curative drink.
The priests formed no caste but were chosen from the
youths of the people and elected their own chief. In Ire-
land they superintended the selection of a king. As prophets,
they chewed acorns for inspiration and their sacred oak was
a parallel to that of Dodona, whose leaves also gave oracles.2
1 Moccus appears to mean boar (pig), but is called a Mercury
by the Romans, as Mullo is called a Mars.
2 A Gallic invasion may have taken place in Greece. In Asia
Minor there were Gauls whose centre of worship was Dru-nemeton
(Oak-grove).
128
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
They acted as political representatives of the people and
after Caesar's time adopted distinctions of rank of which
he says nothing. It is questionable whether the Druids had
everywhere the like authority. Their Gallic centre of influ-
ence was Carnutum (Chartres), but they had also a British
centre. That the Druids were not Celtic but a primitive
priesthood disliked by the Celtic aristocrats is an hypothesis
based on the belief that these aristocrats were “ Aryan”
and that the Druids were pre-Aryan magicians. They would
thus belong to the religious stratum represented by the cult
of rocks, trees, streams, and other objects of earth, as op-
posed to the Aryan element represented by the cult of sun
and fire. But in Gaul they were certainly much more than
the magicians of a despised primitive culture. The privi-
leges of this priesthood consisted in exemption from duties
of war and tribute; the right to punish offenders and even to
ostracize recalcitrants. Their office made them the educators
of the young, who were trained to memorize verses contain-
ing their sacred lore. They appear thus, especially as this
education is said to have sometimes taken twenty years, in the
light of Brahmans committing their sacred knowledge year
after year to other Aryan aristocrats, chiefly of the warrior
caste. In another point also they resemble the Brahmans,
namely in the feud between them and the Celtic nobles.
This led them to take sides with Caesar against their own
knights. It was political and not religious intolerance which
subsequently led to their overthrow, when the knights had
made themselves Roman favourites. Then the Druids in-
flamed the national hatred against the Roman conquerors,
who, however, not only reduced the Druids but also put an
end to their “savage sacrifices.” Classical writers sometimes
distinguish between the Druids and prophets and poets or
bards, as Caesar, who knew them first, does not. Probably
the immolation of victims was performed by other priests
(we know that other priests existed), and the bards may
have been a class apart, or, like the Irish poets, bards and
CELTIC RELIGION
129
an eschat pounded the
"Fire
magicians both, while diviners or seers were sometimes
Druids and sometimes not. It is clear that the Druids, as
the only organized priesthood, had charge of laws, human
and divine, and that they arbitrated disputes and awarded
penalties, exactly as did the early Roman priesthood. Per-
mitted to excommunicate any member of the tribe, they
were able to cut off any one who offended them from all
social intercourse. They held court once a year in what
was regarded as the centre of Gaul (Carnutum). They
were acquainted with Greek letters but refused to commit
their own wisdom to writing (exactly like the Brahmans).
Their teaching in Caesar's time embraced the subjects of
immortality, astrology, the extent and nature of the uni-
verse, and the power of the immortal gods. This last item
shows that they worshipped greater gods than the earth-
spirits. Their religious wisdom expounded the doctrine of
immortality, and taught an eschatology summed up in the
words that “Fire and Water will prevail,” to end the
world in a cataclysm. By the middle of the first century
A. D. their power had been broken. In Ireland the word
corresponding to Druid meant no more than a magician fa-
.mous for malediction. In Britain and elsewhere there were
later priestesses, as well as priests, corresponding to the
Great Mother and Great Queen divinities, as well as to the
groups of female spirits, such as the oak-spirits, Dervonnae,
the water-spirits, Niskai, and the goddesses of cross-roads,
not yet individualized.
The festivals reveal little outside of the common (Eu-
ropean) sun-, summer-, and harvest-rites of fertility and
lustration, but they show a worship of the sun-god recog-
nized by name also. At mid-summer and the "bright fire”
(Beltane) festival of May-day, cattle were driven through
fires and a deasil dance (“ with the sun ”) formed part of
1 Compare Welsh Rigantona, Great Queen (goddess) with Albi-
orix, world-king, Caturix, Battle-king, and other great gods known
only by such titles but identified as Mars by the Romans. Some of
the grouped goddesses may be Teutonic rather than Celtic.
130
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS :
the ritual. At Samhain, or New Year's, Oct. 31,1 the har-
vest festival, lasting a week, with its new fire from the old,
its savagery and licentious Saturnalia, reveals a cult of
weapons and of the dead, the avoidance of evil spirits, in-
jurious to animals and crops, perhaps, too, the cult of the
Maiden, as in Greece, a spirit of vegetation in female form.
Between these festivals came the feast of the sun-god Lug
(cf. Lyons), celebrated with horse-races, and the driving
of cattle through water. Its autumnal character would be
associated with the decline of the sun and decay of fer-
tility.2
Probably connected with some such spirit of fertility, mag-
nified into Mother Earth, come the teachings, vague as they
are, concerning the fate of man hereafter. The Celt has al-
ways loved the earth; even his other-world was terrestrial.
The fertile Mother, who is also mother of all the lesser
spirits of field and spring, is his Mother (goddess) also.
There is no idea that men were created; they descended or
ascended from Earth, whose consort is the Dis Pater recog-
nized by Caesar, perhaps the god represented as armed
with hammer and cup, symbols of fertility, and like the sun-
god, wearing three horns. The hammer and ax were them-
selves worshipped in all probability at an earlier date. Dis
may have been a male equivalent of Earth as her consort.
When burned or buried the men who come from him or
from Earth simply return to him to live happily. The
1 With the Celts the night preceded the day and the winter the
summer. Samhain or Samfuin was celebrated with a feast for
three days before and three days after the day. At this feast the
savages who celebrated exhibited the “tongues of the men they had
slain,” the greater number the greater glory. But as they cheated
by substituting animal (ox!) tongues, it was decreed that each
should unsheathe his sword, to test his word, for demons spoke
from the swords in old times (Windisch, op. cit., p. 198).
2 It still remains questionable whether the fire-practices, with fire-
wheels, etc., were sun-rites or apotropaic. Dr. Frazer has now
adopted the latter explanation. See the third edition of Balder the
Beautiful, London, 1913, in which the author accepts the view of
Westermarck, that the fire-festival was a purificatory guard against
evil spirits.
CELTIC RELIGION
131
lower earth-spirits became later the swarm of fairies and
brownies, who in northern lore preside over field and house.
Yet none of these is really older than the Mother herself
nor than the great war-goddess Andraste, to whom Boadicea
prayed when the Romans attacked her land. Historically
at least the great deities are old as they are long-lived.
Rigantona (Rhiannon) the Great Queen is of old the wife
of the king of the underworld (Pwyll), who is friendly to
the “sons of the sea ” and opposed to the gods of light
(so that Gwydion slays his son Prydéri). In the sixth cen-
tury at Autun there was an image carried about the fields
to protect them in idol-form. She was called Berecyntia,
that is, Gaulic Brigindu, a goddess, who in Gaelic form was
mother of Ogma (Ogmios, the god of the furrow and of
eloquence), but primarily a goddess of fire and fertility.
As Saint Brigit 1 in Christian times she still retained at Kil-
dare a fire-service presided over in secrecy by thirty nuns,
who acted as vestal virgins, guardians of the fire. She
was daughter of the “good god,” Dagda, whose character-
istic was skill or cunning (compare Daksha, the dextrous
god in India) in Gaelic legend, and consort of Bres, the god
of fertility.
What little we know concerning Celtic belief in a future
life is gleaned from Welsh and other northern legends.
The dead may appear as birds. Usually, however, soul and
body live hereafter in a happy land, probably below earth,
where there are various kingdoms and kings who contend
with each other as in this life. Exceptionally great men
may be transported to the Blessed Island Avallon or a simi-
lar western home of the dead, but in Irish legends generally
only gods and heroes go thither. At the same time, war-
riors are supposed to be influential from their tombs and
0
The live hereafte various kingite. Except Avallon of enerally
1 Brig may mean flame or power. Brigit was one of the Minervas
mentioned by Cæsar. She presided over healing and prophecy as
well as fire and smith-work, either in person or as “another goddess
with the same name.” Healing and prophecy are combined here
as in the Apollo-cult. Brigit herself is a female counterpart of the
Hindu Brihas-pati, lord of power and patron of the fire-cult.
132
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
the heads of the slain are offered to the mighty shades, who
must therefore live in or on earth. Oracles at graves are
also known; the dead speak from the tomb. These views,
one of an earthly paradise (the Celtic other-world is a “land
of youth and beauty"), and one of the life in the grave
(“the loveless land”), not to speak of the western Elysium,
do not accord very well with the Druidic view of metempsy-
chosis, and it is probable that the latter was not universal
among the Celts. As debts might be paid in the next life,
a man was apparently thought to be in some place where
earthly conditions still hold. Stories tell how a mortal on
earth might wed a spectre of the world below. The fate
of the dead was not conditioned by ethical considerations
and even in the transmigration-theory of the Druids there
was no idea of gradual purification, such as is found in
Pythagoreanism.
Arms and ornaments were burned or buried with the
dead and human victims also accompanied the soul, even
the widows in voluntary suttee sometimes electing to die
with their husbands. The dead were supposed to rise at
the beginning of the year; Samhain Eve (Oct. 31 ) was the
festival of the dead. Christmas Eve was called Mother-
Night, when the Great Mother received the dead, probably
originally one festival with Samhain. The Dis Pater of
Caesar, son or consort of Mother Earth, may have been the
god depicted as a huge dog swallowing the dead, but this is
not certain.2
Of the misty myths of British-Gaelic legend that of the
Holy Grail is the most important. It is an interpretation,
mediaevally spiritualized, of the never-failing dish of the
sun, as it appears in India, or of the “good god” Dagda,
in Gaelic lore, whose guarded cauldron spins about; out of
1 The future world is often located under a lake. Arthur's wife
is named “White Spectre” (Gwenhwyfar), which “suggests that
she too played a part in a story of the same kind" (Anwyl, Celtic
Religion, London, 1906).
2 others think that Dis Pater is Esus, or Bile, ancestor of the
Irish Celts.
CELTIC RELIGION
133
which comes for men and gods food inexhaustible. In
Welsh tradition it is represented by a cauldron of magic
knowledge. Bran of Britain had a cauldron which restored
the dead to life, like the well of Diancecht, the god of medi-
cine of the Danu tribe. All these, together with Medea's
cauldron and Arthur's Table Round, have been united with
more or less plausibility as phases of sun-disc mythology.1
Dagda is the clever god of the tribe of Danu, mother of
light-gods, Tuatha De Danann, defended by the sons of
Fire, whose arms are forged by Goibniv (Welsh, Gofan-
non), a smith-god. Another son of Dagda is Angus, whose
music led all to follow (Pied Piper) and whose kisses be-
came birds. The Danu tribe led by Nuada (a sun-god?)
was opposed by the Fir-Bolgs, whose gods were giant
Fomorachs, till Nuada lost a hand and the Fomorach Bress
married Dagda's daughter Brigit. Mile, son of Bile, even-
tually defeated the Danus, whose Nuada was slain by the
Fomorach Cyclops Balor (his daughter married Diancecht).
The Danus then fled to the western Isles of the Blest, those
preferring to remain becoming fairy women of the mounds
(Bean-Sidhe, banshees).
Bress and his Fomorachs have been explained as fertiliz-
ing spirits, but the Celts regarded them as spirits of storm
and death. Perhaps, as scath-spirits, they were both giants
and shadows. A defender of the Danu tribe was Manan-
nan, a three-legged glorious god and also first king of
the Isle of Man, patron of sailors and son of the sea, Ler
(King Lear; cf. Leicester). His son is Bran, an under-
ground giant-king, patron of þards, whose head guarded
the land. Erin was daughter of the culture-hero Ogma.
Boadicea (61 A. D.) was perhaps named for a Boudicca
goddess of war, a “great queen,” like Morrigan (Macha)
and Nemetona, another war-goddess of Britain. Bran's
1 Compare A. B. Cook, Zeus, Cambridge, 1914, p. 239 (more
speculation than history). The Hawk as sun also enters into these
speculations, Kirke, the Volsci as Hawks, etc., and the Troy-town
circles. Compare the Welsh Gwalchmai and Gwalchaved (Galahed),
Hawks of May and of Summer, respectively.
134
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
sister, Branwen, the "fair-bosom" British goddess, is re-
garded by some as a "northern Venus." The British
equivalent of the Gaelic Nuada (above) is Nudd or Lud,
who, as a king, gives his name to Ludgate and London. At
Lydney in Gloucestershire the ruins of his sanctuary have
revealed him as a god with a four-horse chariot and wear-
ing solar rays, his name appearing here as Nud or Nodon.
Lug, the long-handed Gaelic god of fire, may also have
Sothe rays has hanc appearing be
been a sun-god. He has already been referred to as one
of the gods recognized over a wide area, his name (Lugos,
probably the same) being preserved in Lyons, Leyden, etc.
It is his son who became king of the Welsh fairies (above).
The Welsh Arthurian tales have left a deposit of dwarfs,
fairies, and magicians in Brittany, of cognate stock, and
a noble circle of knights and ladies in English and Conti-
nental literature. What the characters were originally it
is hard to say. Arthur's queen, Guinevere, has already been
explained as a spectre-bride. Lud was one of his knights
and married his sister. Gawaine may be the sun. Arthur
himself may have been a "Romanized Briton” or a culture-
hero. Merlin is undoubtedly a primitive character (Britain
at first was called Merlin's Place). His figure reverts to
a time when culture-gods were gradually superseding older
deities. Arthur scorned the defence given the land by
Bran's head and the Saxon conquest was the result. But
Arthur passed to Avilion (Avallon, Elysium) before the
Saxons arrived and there is here no rumour of war, as in
Ireland, prior to the coming of the present inhabitants.
“Not by war and bloodshed but by justice and peace" did
Arthur conquer the country. He taught agriculture, civil
government, and literature by means of bards. According
to Welsh tradition, the first “pillar of Britain” was Hû
Gadarn, the ancestor of the Cymric race. The name Britain
comes from Prydain, son of Aed the Great, who first estab-
lished a settled government and was the second pillar.1
1 Squire, Mythology of Ancient Britain and Ireland, Chicago, no
date. Aed also means fire and he may derive from a god.
CELTIC RELIGION
135
Yet what has been guessed about the Celtic gods is more
entertaining than convincing and however interesting these
myths may be, they give us no clear light on primitive Celtic
religious belief. But they help to show more clearly its chief
peculiarity, the humanizing tendency of Celtic religion. It
brings the divine to earth.
Ulster, scholars have drawn the conclusion that the old Irish
kings were looked upon as divine. We know that chief-
tains were sometimes deified and that gods have descended
to earth as kings, but it is not till the Irish legend of
Conchobar that we hear of “terrestrial gods” (dia tal-
maide) as an epithet of chieftains and then only because
these chieftains claim descent from the Tuatha De Danann.
These god-descended kings are in fact no more than the
“god-born” chieftains of Greece, except as they are original
gods that have been converted into pseudo-historic kings.
One of them, famous for cattle-raiding, is Cooley (Cu-
chullin), the son of Conchobar's sister, mysteriously be-
gotten by the god Lug (above), and he himself per-
haps existed only in poetry. As son of the sun-god no
one could look at his glory; his bodily heat was so great
that it melted snow and boiled water. It is such " kings”
who in Irish legends suffer the taboos (gessa) of which
much has been made in the theory of the priestly origin of
the royal power.
Cooley's warriors were attacked in Ulster by all the rest of
Ireland, through the instigation of the queen of Connaught,
at a time when they were lying magically ill (in winter, when
sun-gods are weak?); but Cooley fought one chief a day
and defeated each champion in turn, while Lug healed his
wounds, till the Ulster heroes recovered from their“ curse"
of illness, brought upon them by Macha, the mate of Mor-
1 His sister Dechtire becomes a bird and devours vegetation. She
is also his charioteer. A boy she adopts dies and turns out to be
the sun-god, by whom unwittingly she becomes mother of Setanta
(Cuchullin). See Windisch, op. cit., p. 134f.
136
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
rigan, and routed the foe. This same Cooley slays his own
son in battle without knowing it (like Rustum) and is slain
by trickery after breaking taboo (here he eats dog-flesh).
Another cycle of stories relates that the god Camuios or
Cumhal (heaven?) had a son Fionn or Finn, who demands
the kingdom, from which the Gaul has ousted him, and heads
a band of patriots, among whom is Ossian (Oisin), called
Fianna (“Fenians "). These Fenians mingle with the
fairies 1 and Dagda's son gives his daughter to Finn. Sup-
ported by the Tuatha De Danann, the Fenians finally defeat
the king (of Ireland), who has united with the Gaul to dis-
possess Finn. After three hundred years, Ossian, who has
meantime been living in the Land of Youth (Paradise) with
the daughter of Ler's son Manannan, returns to his own
country and converses with Patrick, who exhorts him to
weep and repent. “Weep will I,” replies Ossian, “but not
for God, but because Finn and the Fenians are dead.” 2
Patrick came to Ireland in the fifth century and St.
Columba converted the Picts in the sixth century, by which
time paganism was declared by a contemporary writer to be
extinct in civilized Britain. Christian records have received
beliefs already influenced by German legends.3 What we
are fain to call Celtic in northern belief is often of doubtful
origin, but despite wavering etymologies and daring equa-
tions, enough remains certain to establish the broad base of
Celtic religion. Through forms generally local may be seen
a prevailing faith in many gods, some of higher phenomena,
more of terrestrial powers, a special devotion to nature in
her earthly manifestations, not unconnected with the poetic
temperament of the people and the spirituality of the Celtic
1 Windisch has shown that the Fenians were not a primitive race
before the Scots, as used to be thought. Windisch, op. cit., p. 154.
2 Squire, op. cit.
3 Many mythological traits have been inherited by the Christian
Church in Ireland, whose saints reflect mythological and Druidic
attributes and whose legends have absorbed a mass of Celtic “ lower
mythology." See on this fascinating subject C. Plummer, Vitae
Sanctorum Hibernia, Oxford, 1910, P. cxxix, seq.
CELTIC RELIGION
137
saints. Perhaps, too, the domination of the priestly power
(the Druids), as contrasted with the freedom of the Ger-
mans, may be a racial trait due to the mysticism of the Celtic
character.
CO
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Caesar, De Bello Gallico, iv. 20f., vi. 18f.; parts of Diodorus
Siculus, Strabo, Mela.
Pliny, Natural History, iv. 102f., etc., Tacitus, Agricola.
T. R. Holmes, Caesar's Conquest of Great Britain and Conquest
of Gaul, London, 1907.
Ernst Windisch, Irisché Texte, Leipzig, 1880.
J. Rhys, Celtic Heathendom, Hibbert Lectures, London, 1888.
Edward Anwyl, Celtic Religion in Prehistoric Times, London,
1906.
Charles Squire, Mythology of Ancient Britain and Ireland,
Chicago, no date.
G. Grupp, Kultur der alten Kelten und Germanen, Munich,
1905.
Alfred Ť. Nutt, Studies on the Legend of the Holy Grail, Lon-
don, 1888; Ossianic Literature, London, 1899.
J. A. MacCulloch, Religion of the Ancient Celts, London, 1911.
CHAPTER NINE
RELIGION OF THE SLAVIC PEOPLES
IYU
U
In English we are wont to speak of any people east of Ger
many as Slavic, though we sometimes call the Lithuaniansji
Letts, and Prussians West Slavs in distinction from the:
Russians, Czech, Poles, Wends, Slovaks, and Serbians. The
former should be distinguished as Baltic and the latter as
Slavic groups, the Baltic peoples lying between Germany and
the true Slavs. The mythology of both groups is in part
identical and they both belong to one linguistic family. The
earliest reference to their religion may be the remark made
by Tacitus concerning the Aestii (Germania, 45), who are
described as East Germans worshipping the mother of the
gods and carrying the figures of wild boars as religious in-
signia. The connecting link between the Baltic and real
Slavic groups is their mutual adoration of Perkunas as
chief god. He is the god of storm and thunder and was
formerly regarded as identical with the Vedic Parjanya
(rain-god); but the etymology is now suspect.
The first clear evidence regarding the religion of the Prus-
sians is from the fourteenth century, at which time they are
described as worshipping the sun, moon, stars, thunder,
birds, and animals; almost every creature being to them a
divinity. They are said also to have had holy groves and
fields and waters, which were taboo to the people at large.?
In general the Baltic group worshipped heavenly phenom-
1 Among these are usually enrolled the Bulgarians, but they are
Slavs only by language, being racially allied with the Turks.
2 The original account (1326 A. D.) of this taboo says: habuerunt
etiam lucos campos et aqas sic quod secare aut agros colere vel
piscari ausi non fuerant in eisdem (Usener, Götternainen, Bonn,
1896, p. 81).
138
SLAVIC RELIGION
139
1
na, especially the sun, moon, star of the morning, and dawn,
jut above all Perkunas, to whom sacrifice was made as late
is the seventeenth century. Some mythology sprang up con-
cerning him: his mother cares for and bathes the sun, whose
aughter was loved by Perkunas. The sun may be the
horses' god ” called Usinj by the Letts in the seventeenth
entury.
Offerings were made also to domestic spirits, notably to
the house-serpent. Every aspect of life was governed by
its special spirit or genius, such as the spirit of house, of
hearth, of wealth, of birth, etc. The female spirit that
watches over the bed of the mother is also a sort of Fortuna
or luck-goddess, like the Roman Carmenta. Other spirits or
deities guard and care for the field, the flock, the bees, the
bride, the groom, etc. They may be described as sacred
specialists.
We have already seen that certain religious phenomena
are conspicuous in some environments while not unknown
elsewhere, fetishism in Africa, taboo and mana in Polynesia,
totemism in North America. So here, the special character
of these spirits, as undifferentiated powers of an abstract,
rather than personal, nature has been particularly empha-
sized. Usener and other scholars following his lead (since
1896) have made it the basic form of all religious phenom-
ena, so that Usener himself derived all gods of the Indo-
Europeans from prehistoric types of this sort, the closest
analogue to the Lithuanian spirits being the Numina of early
Roman religion. This is therefore the proper place to ana-
lyse the phenomena a little more carefully and see whether
such far-reaching results as have been drawn from them are
fully justified.
These Lithuanian spirits are described for us by mission-
aries and travellers of the fourteenth and following cen-
turies, who briefly mention with disdain the various gods of
the people they regard (rightly enough) as little better than
savages; for such were the Prussians of six centuries ago,
whose primitive religion was only gradually influenced by
LIII
140
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
Scandinavian and Christian thought, the Scandinavians par-
ticularly having introduced among all the Baltic tribes the
great temples and costly images found there.
But even according to the accounts of the missionaries,
it is evident that the Lithuanian deities were by no means
such sexless abstractions as Usener represents them. We
have already mentioned Perkunas (Perkuns, Perun), the
great god of thunder and storm common to the Baltic and
Slavic pantheon, and obviously the greatest or one of the
greatest divinities. He was worshipped by some tribes on
the mountain tops and to him the oak was sacred as the
wood from which, in conjunction with the linden, fire was
produced; so that these trees themselves were sacred, to
men and women, respectively. Offerings were made to the
oak as his tree, sick people climbing three times through the
aperture made by the trunk and bough and leaving behind
them as offerings clothes, knives, and other things fastened
to the tree; or, in case money was the offering, it was placed
on the ground before the oak. A perpetual fire was kept
burning in honour of Perkunas. When a thunderstorm
arose the old Prussians fell on their knees and cried aloud,
“Pass us by, Perkunas.” Sacrifices to him lasted till the
seventeenth century as a rain-invocation, since it was he who
sent rain. He is known as the god par excellence. This is
surely no sexless Numen, for, as already stated, he has a
mythology representing him as wooer of the sun's daughter.
Even the Letts, who make “mothers” of most of the Lithu-
anian gods, do not feminize him. The priest, Vaidelotte,
wise man, wizard, knew him only as a mighty male god im-
personating the same natural phenomenon that has made par-
allel gods in other places. With him as a secondary god is
revered Lituvanis, “rain-maker," also a male god, appar-
ently an underling who makes the rain sent in storm by
Perkunas.
Another natural phenomenon is Veyopatis, god of wind,
whom the Letts turned into a “mother” god, Veya Mate.
We shall have occasion elsewhere to speak of this procedure,
SLAVIC RELIGION
but it suffices here to call attention to the fact that this con-
version of male into female deities results in a false appear-
ance of matrilinear and therefore earlier social condition.1
It is well known that the Mothers of the Letts are not earlier
but later forms of male gods. But in both interpretations
the deities are anthropomorphized sufficiently to be regarded
as either male or female, not“sexless Numina."
Corresponding, or rather antithetical, to the god of thun-
der or the sky (Svarog, sky-god, is Russian), stands the
figure of Zemipatis, the Earth-lord, who appears also as a
female, Zemeluks, whom the dead serve, but chiefly as
Zemininkas, the great god of the underworld, to whom a
sacrifice was made at the time (November 2nd) of All-Souls,
and in December or when bad weather was approaching.
To him a cock and hen were sacrificed and prayer was made.
Each worshipper laid upon the ground some of the food he
was about to eat and "gave thanks ” to the Earth-god, hop-
ing also thereby to get further blessings from this male
Hades, who, moreover, was the brother of the dea terrestris
called Zemyna, a goddess who brings blessings to households
and lands, and is also revered at burials. .
Sun-worship is also a Lithuanian trait. Saule-le, the
little sun, is the mother of the stars, also the bride of the
sky. “In Lithuania,” we are expressly told, “there was a
race that worshipped the sun.” An early myth represents
him as a male god formerly captured and so invisible, till the
stars with a huge hammer broke open his prison-house, and
this hammer plays a part in the ritual of his worship. His
name appears in various forms (Zvaigdukas, “Suaixtix").
In Kurland the peasant boys and girls at the solstice still run
about with fire crying out, “ Ligo, ligo, O Sun,” that is,
"swing" (again through the sky), an interesting reminis-
cence of the swing-ceremony, practised also by Hindus and
American Indians, as a sort of sympathetic magic to help
to eat and upon the fificed an
ing also
X
1 Matrilinear succession itself is not necessarily early; among the
inhabitants of Borneo, for example, matriarchy is later than patri-
archy.
142
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
the sun. Of moon-worship there remains a trace in the
worship of Menu, the new moon, to whom the (eastern)
Prussians still pray.
Among lower phenomena are to be noticed Akmo, the
Rock (god), Bangputtis, the “wave-blower," a water-god,
and numerous gods of the farm, such as Baubis, cattle-god,
Babilus, bee-god, Bobilis, garden-god, Gurcha or Kurcha,
the corn-genius, made of the ears of corn at harvest, but
identified with Padrymbe or Autrimpus as god of moisture
and growth.1
What is true in Usener's theory is that abstract personi-
fications are also found along with personified phenomena.
But this is not new ; such spirits, Increase, Health, etc., have
always been recognized. So the Lithuanian Budintaia (fem.
but also masc.) is an “awakener,” a spirit like the Vedic
Savitar, and Bentis is “binder" as conciliator, the spirit
that unites in harmony those travelling together (compare
Lygiczus,“ like-maker”). But alongside of these there are
countless “lords," corresponding to the Vedic lord of the
fields, such as “house-lord," " field-lord," " fountain-lord,"
“beer-lord” (Raugu-patis), who are not the things them-
selves but the lords or gods thereof; nor is the lord-form to
be assumed as a “later" element. Fire is worshipped as
"holy Ugnis," a male god, though the feminizing influence
is felt also in the conception of fire as Ponyke or Our Lady,
who gives omens; as omens are also drawn from the god of
fountains and water, to whom snakes are sacred. The
house-snake himself is no abstraction but a real animal god,
as is Yvas the owl (as god) or Vilkas, the wolf, to whom an
animal is sacrificed in December with a ceremony to keep
wolves from the herd. Even the group-spirits like the
Veles, ghostly forms of the dead as female spirits, and
1 Compare Usener, op. cit., p. 91, and Mannhardt, Myth. For-
schungen, Berlin, 1884, p. 286f.; Wald und Feldculte, 1875, p. 190.
As Autrimpus interchanges with Antrimpus, so perhaps Andra is
to be read as god of storm for Audros (sc. deva) genitive of Audra,
storm (Indra). With Kurcha, compare the maize-goddess figured
by the American Indians.
SLAVIC RELIGION
143
Laumes, forms representing nightmares, are not abstrac-
tions but very living creatures, the former perhaps identical
with the Vile, fairy-spirits, of the southern Slavs. They
bring good-fortune, etc., and are anything but Numina, as
they are passionate and unruly.
Other forms are those of the personal genius or“ helper”;
Puko, a sort of friendly dragon, who has a secret apart-
ment in the house and, if served with food and drink, brings
wealth to the house-holder; Ausca and Bezlea, Aurora and
the corresponding sunset-light as deity. Gyvate, the house-
snake, may be the ancestral ghost in the form of a snake, as
gyvas means "living one," but this is doubtful. The house-
lord called Dimstipatis is a sort of Lar, fumi focique domi-
nus; but the regular word for ghosts 1 is Deives (cf. Aves-
tan daevas), as “goddesses,” and virtually the same word,
Deivaites, designates the goddesses of springs and rivers
(nymphs). An interesting parallel to the Hindu use of
goddess as a general term for the plague-spirit is found in
Diedeveite, “great goddess," the only name of the deity who
brought the plague of 1571. There are also those thumbkin
gnomes called Barzdukai, bearded men, who live under
earth and give blessings, and the Krukai, similar dwarfs,
distinguished by a red top, who dwell in caves and the house
and bring luck. Along with these, but in no wise more prim-
itive, are those abstractions on which Usener lays especial
weight, Skalsa, Euporia, Vais-gautis, “ fruitfulness-getting,"
Eratinis, adjective diminutive as god of lambs, eras, Dvar-
gautis, “court-yard guardian," not to speak of Datanus
or donator (bonorum), Blizgulis, snow-god (“sparkler"),
and the tree-gods called by the tree-name, such as Birzulis,
little Birch, as god. Yet tree-cult is not the cult of a
Nomen. We are told that the earliest missionaries in the
fourteenth century were routed especially by the women,
who resented attacks on their tree-divinities, which seem to
have been especially favoured by them. Death is not an
1 Swetas Meitas among the Letts are "pure maidens,” as beings
of the under-world.
(144
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
abstraction and Giltine, which means death, is a goddess so
alive that she is worshipped even now. She also as Deive,
the goddess, is personified and has her hand-maiden, Ma-
gila, the Grave. It is true that Gotha, the goddess of in-
crease of cattle, is an abstraction from the word for herd,
and that sacrifice was made to her; and that we have com-
panion-forms to Silvanus in Girystis, god of the wood, Lau-
kosargas, guardians of the meadow. Further, Luck and Ill-
luck are personified; Gondu at weddings is invoked by
women and Pizius, invoked by men, is a phallic spirit; but
these are no older, so far as the evidence goes, than the per-
sonified phenomena which have become the most important
gods.
A natural but striking aspect of the Lett religion is the
conversion of Christian powers into native deities. Thus
Maria becomes an epithet of the “Mother of Cattle," who is
invoked as Lope mate Maria. So in Lithuanian, peklo, hell,
gives rise to Pikulas, Pluto, as a new god of the infernal
regions.
As the Baltic Daives are allied to the Avestan daevas or
evil spirits, so the general name for God in Slavic is Bogu,
Persian Baga, as sharer or giver, the spirit called the “ Phry-
gian Zeus," Bagaios. The only god the Slavs had was Per-
kunas, according to Procopius, though they worshipped
rivers, springs, “and other demons." Their sacrifice was
said to be for divination; which aim was otherwise secured
by water, as to the coming harvest, and by a war-horse, as to
the outcome of battle. The idol of the god who rode this
horse at night was a many-headed effigy destroyed in 1168.
His name, Svanto-vit, is thought by some to be no more than
an adaptation of Saint Vitus, but his cult, as prophesying
god of the Wends, probably contains original elements later
foisted upon the Saint. The Svanto-vit festival at Rügen
was an intemperate orgy of all the Baltic Slavs. Images,
priests, and sacred groves distinguish the Polish gods, cele-
brated at fixed seasons by male and female worshippers,
who sang and danced in their honour in an unrestrained
SLAVIC RELIGION
145
manner. They appear to have been gods of the seasons,
spring, harvest, etc., and not to have been ghosts or mere
Numina. The binding up of the last ears of the harvest
into an idol of the harvest-spirit (Kurcha) is a general trait
of peasant religion in Europe, found not only among the
Baltic Slavs but also among the Germans. Much in Slavic,
just as in Celtic religion, is the primitive undergrowth
common to all the (European) inhabitants before Aryan
culture began. Of this sort may be the spring festival, when
a figure representing Marzan or Marana is drowned, per-
haps to insure future strength by passing on his power.
How much Christian influence has made itself felt in
Slavic religion is doubtful. John the Baptist has become
Ivan Kupalo, the god of summer fruitfulness; Perun (Rus-
sian equivalent of Perkunas), the thunder-god, has con-
versely become Saint Elias; while Saint Blasius has become
the god of herds, Volos. Idols were common, some of
them costly. That of Perun at Kiev was destroyed in 988.
It was of silver and gold, held a fire-stone, and an oak-wood
fire burned ever before it. The underlying Slavic religion,
however, is all pagan and it is apparently rather closely
connected with Persian (Zoroastrian) beliefs, as not only
the names but the practice testify, notably the common em-
ployment of a dog to catch the expiring soul, or, usage of
the tenth century, to go with a man into the next world.
If not buried, the soul, dusha, wandered in trees; but when
cared for properly it went by way of the usual path of souls
to the fields of the gods. As late as 931 A. D., a girl was
buried with a dead man to accompany him on the journey
into the hereafter. Among things buried with the dead the
ladder is unique; it is for the soul to climb out of the grave.
Burning was also practised as well as burying. The ship-
like shape of the coffin indicates Scandinavian influence.
As opposed to the idea that all spirits are Numina or
spirits of the field, stands a host of gods like Daj-bog, sun-
god, Ogoni, Fire, Svarog, sky-god, not to speak of Domovoj,
the house-spirit, and other spirits of wood and water, which
146
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
latter might be interpreted as of any sort, either as hearth-
or ancestor-spirit, and either as singular or plural, since the
Domovoj is a sort of Penates, helpful spirit(s) of the home.
But sun, fire, and sky still linger in the names of the greater
gods, to reveal their original form.
The southern branch of the Slavs (Servian, Slovak, Slo-
venian) has a mass of tales out of which old myths have
been extracted with more or less dubiety, tales of nymphs
and wood-maidens, of the love of the sun-god for the morn-
ing-star and of the moon's infatuation for the same charmer,
though sun- and moon-cult are strange to the southern
Slavs; especially tales of the Vile fairies (above), who
tempt men, protect them, or destroy them. These are ex-
plained by some scholars as vegetation-spirits, though their
functions, which relate them sometimes to the clouds and
sometimes to the fate of man, as influential for good or bad
fortune, scarcely corroborate this explanation. They are
quite anthropomorphic spirits, falling in love, becoming
jealous and envious, bewitching, and helping man, whose
nature they share. Spirits of illness are also recognized and
vampire spirits who suck blood, against whom magic for-
mulas are available. The last are generally believed to be
ghosts. Fate or Fortune is represented as a goddess by the
Servians, who offer her libations and coins for good luck.
There are also kobalts and similar spirits and among the
Russians there is a demon of cold weather; while various
rites at the equinoxes, harvest, and spring-time keep alive
old pagan ideas of gods of fertility, the names of many of
them remaining only in the (present) designation of towns.
But the remains of genuine Slavic religion are scanty
and not very satisfactory for the interpretation of primitive
religious notions. The Slavs have kept in touch with antiq-
uity in preserving as gods the forms of Perkuna and Svarog
and a few more great gods and in their adhesion to old sea-
sonal rites; but the interpretation of the lower mythology and
of the influence on that mythology of later thought and of
foreign ideas is not certain. The solar mythology found in
SLAVIC RELIGION
147
Mannhardt's collections 1 has no great importance for primi-
tive Slavic religious conceptions, as a specimen or two will
show: “I look upon the sun as upon my little mother; so
warm and pleasant is she; only speech she lacks”; “ Behind
the hill in the valley stand three silver gates; through one
comes God, through the second comes the blessed Maria;
through the third comes the sun with two proud golden
steeds." The most instructive aspect of the religion as a
whole is undoubtedly the large number of (Lithuanian, Let-
tic) individual spirits representing material genera, as Birch,
Sheep, Bee, and the parallel with the functional spirits of the
Romans and other peoples. Yet because the Lithuanians
have a “corner" spirit of the space between hearth and wall
(like that of the Ainus), we must not forget that "holy
fire” is a greater spirit of wider application, nor can we
Vayu, wind-god, any more than Slavic Bogu and Persian
Baga can be ignored in the interpretation of primitive Slavic
religion. The mediaeval accounts of the spirits are not of
themselves satisfactory evidence that the spirits were under-
stood by the reporters, and the spirits appear, through the
· reports, at so late a stage as to make any induction in re--
gard to their original nature and function extremely hazard-
ous. The most significant religious rite recorded of the
Lithuanians is that alluded to above, in which Perkunas'
worshippers pray to him to “pass them by," as if he were
an evil spirit, which for the nonce he was. Of ethical qual-
ity in the divine nature there is little trace. The worship-
pers express gratitude and have spirits of concord (above);
but the only spirit indicating moral obligation is the “sup-
plicants' god," Ublanicza. Yet Bogu as "giver” recog-
nized man's dependence on the source of good.
Lithuanian religion here and there shows traces of an
undeveloped belief in metempsychosis. Undeveloped also,
but apparent, is the belief in an evil spirit, opposed to the
1 Die Lettischen Sonnenmythen, Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, vii,
PP. 73f., 209f., 281f.
148
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
good Bog, a nascent dualism. Priests of the native cult are
lacking; wizards and witches replace them. Their temples
were probably no more than sacred huts. Propitiation is
the key-note of religious expression. Gratitude to the
spirits is as rare as among the Slavs, but is sometimes
expressed.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
F. S. Krauss, Sitte und Brauch der Südslaven, Vienna, 1885.
J. W. E. Mannhardt, Mythologische Forschungen, Berlin,
1884; and Wald und Feldkulte, Berlin, 1875–77.
Hermann K. Usener, Götternamen, Bonn, 1896.
Louis Léger, La Mythologie Slave, Paris, 1901.
For the Lithuanians, see Mannhardt, Die Lettischen Sonnen-
mythen, Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, Berlin, vii. pp. 73, 209,
281; and A. Leskien and K. Brugmann, Litauische Volks-
lieder und Märchen, Strassburg, 1882.
CHAPTER TEN
RELIGION OF THE TEUTONS
THE folk-god Teutates and the possible Celtic parallels of
Woden and Thor (above, pp. 123-5) show that there is no
certain division between Teuton and Celt, neighbors closely
joined and much confused even in antiquity. Many names
of persons and places are still of uncertain origin. The
lower mythology of Celt and Teuton coincides to a marked
degree; for example, the elves, nixes, and pixes are of the
same sort and the very word elf may be Celtic. The Celtic
Mothers are domiciled on German ground and it is not cer-
tain how many goddesses regarded as Teutonic may have
been Celtic. In general, west of the Rhine early religious
phenomena are as likely to be Celtic as Germanic.
Teutonic religion is Germanic and Scandinavian, the lat-
ter in general being recorded later. At the beginning of our
era we know only of Germanic religion. At this time the
Germans stood in culture below the Celts, having, for exam-
ple, no deity corresponding to the Celtic “Minerva," as
they were also inferior politically. On the eastern border
the Germans appear to have surpassed the Slavs, from whom
the Scandinavians seem to have borrowed religious ele-
ments, as the Germans may have inherited from the Finns
magical lore and possibly some mythological figures.
The Germans were always notorious for their superstition,
egotism, and tribal self-centredness,1 characteristics which
affected belief and outward form of religion. Till the eighth
century they remained a barbarous, almost savage, people.
Yet some tribes were superior to others. Thus, as Plutarch
1 Georg Grupp, Kultur der alten Kelten und Germanen, Munich,
1905, p.
149
150
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
says that the Celts were nobler than the Germans, so Taci-
tus says that the noblest of the Germans were those (Chauci)
who afterwards settled in Kent and Northumbria. In Ger-
many itself there were three general groups, the Ingaevones
on the north littoral, the Istaevones or western Rhinelanders,
and the middle-southern Suabians. From the first group
came the Saxons and Angles, at the mouth of the Elbe and
on the Cimbrian peninsula and in Schleswig. These fore-
fathers of the English were already worshipping gods of
peace and trade while the middle and southern Germans
were still worshipping war-gods. The Germans had few
kings, chiefly in the east, but lived as mutually hostile demo-
cratic tribes; continental Saxons had no kings. Hence
they had no general head of the pantheon; their gods were
like their chiefs, each of importance in his own district, per-
haps respected outside of it but there inferior to the local
powers.
The Germans were not priest-ridden like the Celts; but
they were as awed by wise women as the Celts were by
Druids. They had, however, certain priests, whose duties
were largely political, though they saw to divination and re-
ligious processions. Thus as political headmen these priests
presided over legislative assemblies and punished criminals.
But the chief inspirer of the “secret something” was the
sibyl or wizardess, who was often regarded as a goddess.
She gave prophecies, inspired councils, and was generally
feared. Women anyway, as described by Tacitus, held a
high position; girls were expected to be chaste; wives faith-
ful to their husbands (under rather severe penalties).
When the husband's body was burned, the good wife might
die with her lord. So Brynhild says: “Make a pyre for
the Hun, my husband, and for them dying with him; cover
it with human blood and burn me there." Among the
Wends the wife was burned with the husband as late as 745
A. D., and this rite was doubtless usual among the early
Germans, as it was among the Celts and Scythians. Ship-
burial, with burning, was a Norse custom, illustrated in leg-
RELIGION OF THE TEUTONS
151
end by the burning of the good Balder in his ship with his
wife Nanna. Horses and men were burned or, later, buried
with chiefs, the practice implying a belief in a life hereafter.
According to Tacitus, German gods were not represented
by images and the only temples were groves. Probably the
sacrifice consisted at first in the victim being hung on a tree
in the sacred grove. Effigies and symbols of the gods were
used, however, and in the north there were temples as well
as images. In the Suabian country was revered “Isis," a
ship-goddess (called Isis, who had a remigium, for that rea-
son), and the northern islanders worshipped the Mother of
Gods called Nerthus. She was carried about in a wagon
drawn by cattle and then bathed by slaves who were at once
drowned. A similar cult of this Mother is recorded of the
Esthonians (Aestii), whom Tacitus regards as German, to-
gether with a cult of the wild boar (as in the Freyr cult).
All the Germans descend, according to the tradition known
to Tacitus, from an earth-god Tuisto and his son, the first
Man (Mannus), ancestor of the three tribal fathers. Apart
from the goddesses just mentioned and a certain Tamfana,
goddess of the Marsi, who was a deity of harvest fruitful-
ness (she was accompanied by a dog), and another later
known, perhaps Slavic, Nehalennia, worshipped in the pres-
ent Netherlands, the chief deities recognized by the Ger-
mans were, according to Caesar, Sun, Moon, and Fire, but,
according to Tacitus, “ Mercury, Hercules, and Mars."
Caesar's account leaves much to be desired, but it cannot
be due to a confusion between Celts and Germans; for, after
discussing the former, he says, antithetically: “The Ger-
mans have no Druids to preside over religious matters, nor
do they care much for sacrifices. They reckon as gods only
such as they can perceive and those by whose help they are
clearly aided, Sun, Fire, Moon; other gods they will not
accept even when told of them. Their whole life consists
in hunting and fighting. ... They do not care for agricul-
ture, living for the most part on milk, cheese, and meat. ...
They think it wicked to violate hospitality.” In later legend
152
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
in the cation to induce fit involved in thay much
and usage there seems to linger some remaining fire-cult..
Milk cast on a bonfire serves as a sort of sacrifice and the
fire of the smithy was probably revered, as was the smith.
Wayland the Smith was son of a giant and grandson of a
mermaid. Sacrifice to fire was common, as it is expressly
forbidden by Anglo-Saxon law. These are late records and
a race averse to agriculture does not pay much attention to
the fire-cult or sun-cult involved in the observance of land-
purification to induce fertility, a heathenish custom forbidden
in the eighth century; so that the fire-cult of Caesar's record
remains unexplained. But it may be due partly to the com-
mon use of fire in ordeals, such as entering flame or boiling
water. There is also a belief in flames as ghosts in
churchyards. But the magical fire-ceremonies grouped
about the idea of productivity and purgation perhaps imply
riddance of evil spirits and contain enough use of fire as a
mysterious power to enable an outsider to call them sacri-
fices to fire. The later ritual occurred at midsummer, St.
John's day (July 24), St. Martin's (Nov. 10), Walpurgis
Night (May I), and especially at the time of the winter
solstice and “ Twelfth Night,” when evil spirits and ghosts
were particularly active. In the north there were the three
annual festivals of sowing, victory (in spring), and harvest.?
Fires were built on the hills and fiery wheels were rolled
about as a means of purgation and of divination, the
torches representing lightning, etc. Bonfires were built in
which to burn effigies of evil spirits. From the smoke omens
were taken. People danced about the fire. In such a fire or
1 Forged weapons were sentient, would not work unless they
wished, quasi divine beings. As late as 358 A. D. the Gerinan Quadi
“worshipped their swords," but probably only as a symbol of the
war-god.
2 Water alone (ordeal by drowning) and blood, indicating a mur-
derer, are also early ordeals, later supposed to indicate a judgment
of God.
3 There was also at Upsala in the middle ages a hekatomb at the
feast of the nine-year cycle, in mid-winter. It is questionable
whether the autumn festival was originally a festival of plenty
(harvest) or, as in England, a feast of the dead. :
RELIGION OF THE TEUTONS
153
in the so-called “need-fire,” especially kindled by friction, lay
a means of purgation; people and cattle leaped through it.
Sacrifice of animals was made to the gods at such times and
the image of god or goddess was driven about the fields.
The need-fire or “sacrilegious” fire (so called by Chris-
tians) was particularly a fire of magical or religious import,
to expel demons. The Anglo-Saxon “Mothers' night"
(Christmas Eve) was celebrated with animal masks, appar-
ently a ghost-ceremony. In Scandinavia, men, in dire cases
kings, were burned as a sacrifice to avert famine in honour
of Odhin. The frequent mention of the circular dance in
connection with music and processional celebrations seems to
look to solar magic; but there is doubtless in all these rites
the recognition of a divine power in fire also. It is another
question how old these rites are and whether they may be
referred to a remoter antiquity than that in which they are
known to occur. They go back at least to the first centuries
of our era and may of course be inuch older. A cult of fire
may be the base of the Yule log rite which preserves the old
god; but is it a god that is preserved? The Yule ceremony
is not a general German rite, but Scandinavian, and not early
(about the ninth century). Any magic practices with fire.
may easily have been interpreted as a cult. The Germans,
like their neighbours, were devoted to all forms of magic
and it is not necessary to suppose that they learned them all
from the Finns, who, however, were noted magicians.
Divination was common by means of lots, the neighing of
white horses, a Greek and Persian belief, the flight and
sound of birds, flow of blood, dreams, accidental meetings,
was also ominous. All these, however, showed merely the
will of the gods. That such was the native interpretation is
evident from the fact that the earliest diviner “looks to
Heaven” as he draws the lots and invokes the gods. The
chief use of fire in connection with acknowledged magic,
1 Mannhardt regards them as pre-Aryan or European, funda-
mentally the same in Greece, Germany, etc.
154
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
especially in connection with the magic supposed to have
been borrowed from the Finns, was to burn the magicians.
The Sun and Moon cannot be identified with the names
of German gods. The Norse Balder (lord) is a poetical
figure, who may reflect a solar or year myth ; as the northern
Heimdall, god of light and beginnings, who can hear all
things and whose trump like Gabriel's wakes the dead at the
end of the world, the guardian of the bridge to heaven, and
contender every day with Loki for possession of the jewelled
necklace called Brisingamen, is possibly a representative of
daily sun-light. Loki or Logi (fire) or Lodhur(heat) as
"ender," though blood-brother of Odhin, may be the subter-
ranean fire that will end the world; but this Scandinavian
local mythology is inconclusive; no cult of these gods is
known. So it is only in later Scandinavian story that we
hear of Mundilfoeri, father of sun and moon, and of the
wolves that cause eclipses. The moon was believed to
affect vegetation 3 and worship of sun, moon, and fire is con-
demned by missionaries; but all this testimony is late. We
have indeed the precise statement in later accounts that the
Germans or Franks worshipped sun and moon. They are so
mythologically represented in a charm, perhaps of the eighth
century, as healers, Sinthgut and Sunna, two sisters.
This, however, may be a cue to the real state of the case.
The sun is feminine and would be represented not as a god
but a goddess. As such she may have been one of the fer-
1 Gentle Balder, like Adonis, is famous only because he died; he
may be a Danish vestige of Caesar's Sol. Loki is god and yet be-
longs to the giants. He is subterranean (fire as ender of the
world) or Logi, fire, who causes Balder's death, and has been
identified with a Requalivahanus, worshipped near Cologne, as
“ darkness.” Loki is father of Hel and of the Midhgardh snake.
He may retain the nature of Caesar's Volcanus.
2 The lateness of Walhalla and other Norse conceptions must not
blind us to the fact that many Norse elements are old. Balder and
Odhin and Loki revert to the seventh century at least. Balder may
still be a form of spring or of sun; either, rather than a former man.
3 But our German Pennsylvanian farmers "plant by the moon,"
still believing in its potency as affecting vegetation; this common
(even Scriptural) notion does not imply a divine moon.
RELIGION OF THE TEUTONS
155
tility-goddesses who are mentioned by Tacitus or one of the
numerous goddesses of whom only the names survive, such
as Sandraudiga, Hludana, Haeva, etc., from the Nether-
lands and Friesland. The names of days of the week are
drawn from outside and indicate no Germanic Sun and
Moon days.
cules, and Mars ") can be identified with Woden, Thor,
and Ziu, not only through the identity of the week-day names,
Wednesday-Mercredi, etc., but through their characteristics.
These gods were not, however, worshipped everywhere with
like fervour. Thor is Norse and his Germanic counterpart
Donar is a much less important figure. Again Ziu (Zio) or
Tiu is probably a decadent god of the sky. Woden is so
much a god of the dead that he might easily have escaped
Caesar's notice. There is therefore no real contradiction
in the seeming incongruity of the pantheon presented by
Caesar and Tacitus. That the two accounts are a century
apart and that in the meantime the Germans had become
more civilized is not of moment. National or tribal gods
do not die so quickly and the Germans were little less bar-
barous in the first century A. D. than in the first century B. C.
Of the group in Tacitus, Mars is the oldest and hence
least important. He was worshipped, especially by the Sua-
bians who were called Ziuwari (in part identical with the
Herminones), as a sky-god in the guise of a tribal ancestor
called Er, Irmin (as he was also called Saxnéat, sword-
companion, by the Saxons). The ordinary form of the
god's name is German Tiu, Ziu, Scandinavian Tyr, English
Tiw (Tuesday), with the Frisian variant Din (Dienstag).
With the title Saxnéat or Saxnot compare the battle-cry,
“On Saxons, seize your saxas ” (cleavers, stone-weapons).
The god is the old battle-god, hence called Mars by the
Romans, but at the same time he is the "regnator omnium
deus," who, Tacitus says, was worshipped by the chief tribe
of the Suabians in a sacred grove and to whom were made
human sacrifices. Thus, even if Ziu-Tiu is not one with
156
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
Zeus, phonetically, the god is the same, and probably, as
proper religious names do not always conform to the strict
law of phonetics, the names also are one. He was, in the
opinion of many scholars, the original chief god of the Teu-
tons, displaced by Woden. He is not important in Norse
mythology, though well known as a god who has lost one
hand, like Nuada, in contest with the wolf Fenrir (i.e.
eclipse?). He is, historically, by no means the chief Teu-
tonic god, yet he is found worshipped everywhere, chiefly in
the northern and central parts of Germany. Rams are sac-
rificed to him. The existence of a Ziesberg shows that he
was worshipped on the heights as well as in sacred groves.
As ruler of all, and the sky-god to whom the priest looks in
divinations (above), he may well be regarded as war-god of
tribes whose main business was fighting. As Tîg he is iden-
tified with Mars as late as the seventh century. Thus as
sword-god he may have been worshipped with the sword-
dance which Tacitus regards as a sport. He was introduced
into England as Mars Thingsus, god of the assembly, by
Frisian soldiers (222 A. D.), but adventitiously, and as tribal
god it is questionable whether he gave or received the tribal
name. He appears as a royal ancestral lord of the Saxons
in Essex and Wessex.
Of the three chief gods, Thor, Odhin, and Freyr, of
Sweden, Odhin represents the German Woden (Wuotan),
who is the Mercury of Tacitus. He may have been at first
the god of the Istaevones, Rhinelanders and those afterwards
called Franks from south and middle Germany. He was
apparently, not certainly, little regarded, though he was
known, among the Alemanni and Bavarians and southern
Suabians. The Suabians of middle Germany worshipped
both Tiu and Woden; but in the south it is significant that
Woden's day was not called thus but was known as Mitt-
1 It is noticeable that no German tribes have names of animals or
vegetables implying totemisin. Images of wild beasts, ferarum
imagines, carried by warriors, are mentioned by Tacitus (Hist. iv,
22), probably the effigies and signa already referred to, such as
Woden's wolf, Tiu's ram, and Donar's hammer.
RELIGION OF THE TEUTONS
157
woch. He was known as Godan among the northern Longo-
bards, about the mouth of the Elbe, and was prominent
among Saxons, Anglo-Saxons, and Frisians, the last wor-
shipping him particularly with his wife (here Fria) and his
“sons ” Thuner (Thor) and Tiu as late as the eighth to
eleventh centuries. Charles the Great in the eighth century
suppressed the worship of Woden among the Saxons only by
merciless rapine and slaughter. As Odhin he stands in the
middle of the Norse triad, but here, in Scandinavia, Odhin is
an aristocratic court-god as contrasted with Thor, the god of
the common people. Altogether, Woden, as Tacitus states,
was the most generally worshipped German god.
Woden means wind (Wode is a storm-demon) and is par-
ticularly the god who rushes along with the Wild Hunt of
souls, to whom he is psychopomp (hence as “ Mercury').
As god of souls he is also an ancestral god, while again as
wind-god he brings both good and harm to cattle and crops,
but at the same time as storm-god he is god of the storming
host of battle. He is in many ways a parallel to the Hindu
Indra, god of storms and battle and fertility. Odhin, like
Indra, wlio “wanders” and recommends wandering as a
cure for sin, is the “ noisy wanderer," ómi gangleri, but also
a war-god to whom warriors come for help and who receives
them into his heaven; in Longobard tradition he even be-
comes a sky-god, as did Indra. Human sacrifices were
made to Woden as war-god and to Odhin as war- and
heaven-god. But owing to outside influence Odhin is ex-
alted as lord of the Hall of the Dead (Walhalla), the very
wise magic-knowing god of the court-poets (scalds).
Versed in Runes, he speaks with the head of Mimir (spirit
of water and wit), a poet by virtue of the mead made of
honey mixed with the spittle of gods (in the form of Kvasir,
perhaps a Slavic myth), lord of the gallows, his steed, teacher
of battle-formations, and, finally, as an All-father (Christian
influence), the highest sky-god, creator and director of the
world. He gives wealth, victory, eloquence, wisdom, valor,
and “a fair wind to sailors." At the same time in this
158
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
1
T
Norse tradition he is a sort of superman who has come
from Asgardh (here on the Black Sea) as a man and human
king, brother of Veli and Ve. All this Scandinavian myth-
ology, however, is so mixed with classical, Slavic, and Chris-
tian elements that it throws a confused light on original
Germanic conceptions, as these are accidentally preserved in
the mass of foreign accretions and later local ideas. Odhin
the All-father is here, like Zeus, a god of amours and meta-
morphoses."
In Germany, the deep-seated nature of the Woden-cult
may be inferred from the fact that as late as the eighth cenz-
tury German (Roman Catholic) priests, professing to be
Christians, were still attending his festivals and actually
making sacrifices to Wuotan. In the sixth century“ Woden
rewards faithfulness” is still a religious motto. Beer was
acceptable as a sacrifice to this god in later times, as horses
and men were given to him in antiquity. Many tree-sacri-
fices belong to him as tree-god. Both as Woden and Odhin
the god rides a grey horse and wears a cloak and hat, but
Odhin only (as the price of Mimir's wit) has but one eye.
As Mercury, the “ giant Woden” invents Runes in later Ger-
man tradition. The normal antique German weapon was
not a sword but a spear and this is his weapon. Wolves and
ravens presaging victory are Odhin's animals.
As medicus a German charm makes Woden the chief phy-
sician, curer of the ills he sends (compare Apollo), and so,
in an Anglo-Saxon charın, Woden “takes nine wonder-
twigs," with them smites the adder, "and in nine it flew."
As another parallel with Indra may be mentioned that as late
as 1593. ears of harvest corn are left for Woden's horse.?
Groves (cf. Odenwald) and trees are sacred to him and as
god of fertility his day (Wednesday) was and still is con-
sidered by the pious German farmer as the best day for sow-
1 All the gods, however, assume all forms, especially those of
animals, birds and insects (as in the forms taken by Loki).
2 In the Rig Veda, the corn offered Indra is said to be for his
horses.
RELIGION OF THE TEUTONS
159
ing and planting, though otherwise unlucky as being the day
of the god of the dead.1
In connexion with the Norse god only is there the “home
of joy,” Gladhsheimr, in which Walhalla is situated. There
heroes meet to drink from cups offered them by the Wal-
kyries, maids who elect them that are to die and then wait on
them in heaven. A wolf hangs before the door; over the
Hall hovers an eagle; its roof and walls are made of spears
and shields and there Odhin sits, rejoicing most over him
who has killed most. It is noteworthy that these poetic
Scandinavian gods have no inherent powers. Odhin sees
all because of his throne. If another sits there, the other
can see as well. Thor's strength depends on his hammer.
Wisdom divine is in Odhin, but it is due to the magic ring
of the dwarfs, which he wears. The gods are ever youth-
ful only because they have the apples of Idhunn, etc. As
has been said: “Similar conceptions are met with in vari-
ous mythologies, but this dependent nature of the gods re-
ceives especial emphasis in Norse mythology. Not to their
own nature as such, but to external conditions, do the gods
owe their power." 2
The third great god of the ancient Teutons is Thor,
especially honoured in Norway and Iceland, not so promi-
nent, as Donar, in Germany; in Anglo-Saxon he is Thunor,
whose day is regarded as dies Jovis (Thursday). He
was reckoned a Hercules by Tacitus, possibly because his
thunderbolt resembled the club of the Greek hero, but per-
1 Some scholars identify with Woden the god Henno (Death)
of the mediaeval oath “ By Henno" and the Hünen (the dead).
Does our rustic oath "by hen” retain this word ? Based on this
Henno it has been urged that Woden was primarily a god of the
dead (chthonic divinity), but this seems improbable.
2 De la Saussaye, Religion of the Teutons, Boston, 1902, p. 286.
The author here calls attention to the groups of gods, three or
inore. There is no original group of twelve German gods. Idhunn
(above) has the apples of youth and is wife of Bragi, god of
poetry. A good example of a stupid god is Hoenir, who has to
be companioned by the clever Mimir, and when asked his opinion
always says " Let others advise."

160
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
haps also because he was extolled as “bravest of men” in
battle, a position due to his being an eponymous hero. In
Norway and Sweden and Friesland, where Thursday is
Thunor's day, he is a god of the people as contrasted with
the aristocratic Odhin, who is warlike and amorous while
Thor is home-loving and domestic.
The reason for this change of character lies in the fact
that, with the aristocracy, Odhin usurped the function of
Thor as fighter, leaving to him his other attributes of thun-
der-god as a beneficent deity of productiveness. This again
reverts to the fact that when thunder is first heard in the
northern spring, it indicates the breaking up of winter, re-
lease from the giants of cold and ice, the victory of spring
over winter, of fertility over barrenness. The battle of the
Norse Thor is thus a nature-contest and the farmer and
sailor have especial interest in him rather than in the battle-
god. So enduring is this conception of Thor that it is
matter of record that prayers were offered to him as a fer-
tility-god as late as the eighteenth century. As in India
plants were named after Indra, the god of thunder and fer-
tility, so plants were named after Thor, as thunderer.
Hence too the notion, quite opposed to classical tradition,
that a “thunder-riven” tree is a tree marked out for divine
favour, the wood of which was curative. The oak is espe-
cially Thor's tree and as late as 730 A. D. such an oak was
formally hewn down as a defiance to his worshippers by a
doughty missionary, who built a Christian church from its
timbers. Thor presided over agriculture.
Many mediaeval superstitions go back to the belief in
Thor's fertility. Thus Thursday is lucky for weddings and
his hammer“ hallowed” the bride, as it was a symbol of fer-
tility. He was also guardian of law. The day of public
meetings was Thor's day and his hammer marked the bounds
of the court. His influence in the north is shown by the fact
that place-names are his more than any other god's. His
face also, long-bearded, is carved on rocks and served in
effigy as guardian power of many ships. His temple was
RELIGION OF THE TEUTONS
IÓI
where the Thing or legislative assembly was held. Emi-
grants carried him to Iceland, where one Rolf, renamed
Thor-rolf, built him a temple out of wood transported from
Rolf's old home in Norway. His power was great in Swe-
den (not so great in Denmark), where he was regarded as
ruler of the air, storm, lightning, and crops. The ancient
saying, “ Odhin has warriors, Thor has thralls," betrays his
country popularity. It was to the professional fighting of
the robber barons and Vikings that Thor was opposed. A
winter sacrifice was made to him in hope of the next year's
fruitfulness. He alone overcomes Loki and his main task is
to fight and overcome the Joten, Anglo-Saxon Eoten, Ent,
or giants, who in some cases are brothers of the dwarfs, in
others independent beings of earth.
Many beliefs current in regard to Thor show his nature,
his red hair, like red lightning, his epithet Hlorridhi,
“roarer," his goat-cart, like the team of Pushan, the Hindu
fertility-god, and his play of ninepins with the gods (the
sound as of thunder; cf. Rip Van Winkle). His gauntlets
indicate strength. His girdle retains his power. His ham-
mer when thrown returns to his hand. His daughter is
Thrudhr, power, his sons are odhi, vehemence, and Magni,
power (compare the north German Magusanus Hercules).
In the world-drama of the North his nature has been some-
what modified by poet or priest. He is regarded as son of
Odhin in Norse mythology and his mother is sometimes
called Jordh, Earth. He has other “mothers,” but neither
they nor Sif (sheaf), his wife, have a cult. But it is possible
that some nature-myth is kept in the story that the malicious
Loki cut off Sif's hair and Thor compelled him to make
new “golden hair” for her with the help of the dwarfs.
This hair has been not unreasonably interpreted as the sheaf
of golden grain.1 In general, Thor is a nature-god whose
1 The son of Sif is Ullr, god of bows, hunt, and skates, who inay
be connected with the Frisianı hell-god Holler. Hel is a place (the
grave) scarcely personified at first, then becoming the daughter of
Loki, the subterranean god. Balder, slain by Loki, has now joined
Osiris and Shiva in the modern procession of "gods who were men.”
162
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
12
the pair, Nyord rules wind of Skadhi (pe Bremen is
later higher activities may have been affected by outer
(Christian) influences.
Wholly Norse is the cult of the “Lord” (Freyr), brother
of the "Lady" (Freyja), who like Baels are known only
by their titles. The two are replicas, the male probably later
than the female, whose relation to Nyord, the “ father” of
the pair, connects them with the mater deum Nerthus
(above). Nyord rules wind and sea and lives in Noatun
(place of ships) as husband of Skadhi (perhaps Finnish),
daughter of the giant Thyazi. Adam of Bremen is quite
precise as to Freyr, whom he calls Fricon; the god is one
of peace and pleasure and plenty, symbolized by the phallic
emblem. He and his “sister" and Nyord (Njordhr) and
Nerthus constitute a group of Vanir gods as opposed to the
As(aesir) gods. Productivity is the kernel of the Van or
Venus group, as destruction is the kernel of the As (cf.
Asura) group. The latter are not chthonic in antithesis to
the Vanir as “light-gods," nor are the Vanir gods Slavic.
They simply represent a phase which waxed in civilization
and religion, while the destructive phase waned. Thus the
early female gods of fertility are represented by Freyja; the
patriarchal society by the tendency to make her into a male ;
the connexion between peace and trade by the localization
of the later cult in the north; and the phallic element, al-
ways latent, by the remodelling of Freyja by the scalds on
the lines of the classical Venus, with whom they were well
acquainted. Eventually one may perhaps identify Venus, in
Freyja form, with Frija or Frigg, wife of Tiu and then of
Woden, probably originally a Father Heaven and Mother
Earth pair. Freyr was carried from the Ingaevones on the
north littoral to Sweden, where he grew so prominent that
he was made one of the national triad with Odhin and
Yet thus far this assumed derivation lacks not only proof but,
in Balder's case, verisimilitude.
1 Pacem voluptatemque largiens mortalibus, cuius etiam simul-
acrum fingunt ingenti priapo; si nuptiae celebrandae sunt, sacrificia
offerunt Friconi.
RELIGION OF THE TEUTONS
163
Thor. It was here that he became specially an amorous
deity, as his sister became mistress of all the gods. The
geographical relation is retained in the Frea Ingvine of Beo-
wulf (perhaps as Freyr). The cult of Freyr is that of the
old Nerthus: he has a spring journey in a car and presides
over fertility and marriage. As to the Aestian mother
of gods, the boar is sacred to him; men swear by it, the
boar's head is a sign of fertility. To Freyr, as to other
gods of the north, horses and men are sacrificed. His sister
is a woman's goddess; the cat is her beast; dying women go
to her. Yet to her also are sacrificed ox and boar. She is
a female counterpart of her brother or husband, for, as it is
wisely said, " the Vanir wed their sisters”; historically they
are their sisters. In the Viking myth the figure of Freyr
has to assume more martial proportions and as Thor slays
the “Roarer” giant Beli, so Freyr slays giants, and indeed
from the same original notion : giants of winter and cold are
subdued by spring and heat. Our Friday retains the name,
perhaps originally indicative of joy or love.1 Other female
deities of this sort may be suspected as earth or fertility
spirits in the figures cited as goddesses of special tribes, such
as Boduhenna (compare Henno, above), mentioned by Taci-
tus (Annales, iv., 73) and the Batavian Nehalennia (associ-
ated with “ Hercules Magusanus" and with the sea-god), a
goddess of fertility, with fruit and dog. Even the giantess
Gefjon, who ploughs the land, may be of this sort, not to
speak of the “true and happy” goddess Sandraudiga
(above) and Vagdavergustis, whose name means “ cause of
life-power," and other deities whose names were possi-
bly epithets of Freyja herself. The male form persists
in the god called President (fore-sitter, Forsite) of Helgo-
land, reputed son of Balder. Mediaeval spirits of birth and
death like Holda and Perchta (Bertha) are perhaps inde-
pendent later creations. In general we may assume that
the ancient Germans worshipped phenomenal gods, Sun,
1 Compare Freund and Frau, lady, first loved.
2 The gods were called tivar (cf. deus), "shining ones," "those
bly epizod called of Baldetinta (Berth
164
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
Moon, Fire, Sky, Wind, Thunder-Storm, and spirits of
earth or spring as fertility-deities. In the north and later
these gods become humanized, with familiar forms and hu-
man attributes,+ who live in the citadel Asgardh reached by
the rainbow-bridge Bifrost. The older Germans, instead of
humanizing their gods thus, deified their men (ancestors).
Yet the Norsemen also on occasion worshipped kings as
gods. There was, however, no fellowship, no communion
with the gods, nor had they moral significance, except as
they guarded law and demanded courage. The Scandi-
navian cried, “ Laughing I die"; thus only was he welcomed
to Walhalla. A belief in Fate, the word of the Norns, is
general; man dies as Fate decrees. Yet Walhalla is a late
conception and the Norns are Norse creations. Hel was
the grave, “concealing ” all; only later was it the place
underground for the common man, as opposed to the Hall
a land across the water arose in the north with sea-farers.
In the belief that England was engel-land (angel-land)
there is a faith built upon folk-etymology, which tends to
define the Hel-land or Seelenland more closely. Often the
dead, however, live in the mountains, or in springs or gar-
dens.
Whether the cult of spirits as ghosts is as old as the belief
in phenomenal gods is not a question to be answered on the
basis of German history. All-Souls probably retains such a
cult, as we find it elsewhere. The death at the grave shows
a belief in life to be, and the mediaeval Woden as soul-
leader probably points to the same fact. The practice of
bewitching by the dead, offerings and songs to the dead,
who measure," “binders," etc. The word god means “invoked.”
Culture-heroes are doubtful. Beowulf may be one. Tacitus men-
tions a local cult of two brothers (Aleis) as Castor and Pollux, but
their nature is undecided.
1 It is only here that we find a number of abstract Nunina as
female powers of one function. The fact that they are all late
poetic fancies is of weight in comparing the Slavic and Roman
Numina.
RELIGION OF THE TEUTONS
2
165
dadsisas, probably precedes prayers for the dead. Even fer-
tility-gods have no recognizable connexion with the dead.
The Walkyries are Scandinavian parallels of the (eighth
century) German Idisi, women who preside over the fate of
warriors and they may themselves be the "riders of the
dead” of Low German belief. At any rate, they correspond
in belief to the fighting virgins and matrons in whom, the
Roman account says, the Germans saw divinity. They
are like the three prophetic Norns, but they are without
limit of number; they sometimes assume swan-forms. The
Norns, like the Moirae of the Greeks, belong to the giants.
As storm-spirits, the Walkyries might themselves be ghosts;
but this explanation is only a guess. The soul 1 in Norse
belief is a fylgja, follower, not an ego. It is a separate per-
sonality, so that one may “stumble upon his own fylgja,"
as it goes about outside of one, hence a Doppelgänger. It is
the genius which leaves a dead man and enters his son, some-
times even as a female spirit admonishing a man. A night-
mare is a spirit or ghost. The dead live as ghosts at cross-
roads or in animals or may come to life on earth. Metem-
psychosis is repudiated as “old women's talk”; but it was
believed in old days in Scandinavia that, as the result of a
special curse, one may not be able to live again in human
form. The lower mythology of mediaeval times shows a
cult of souls of the dead, of witches, ghosts, spirits of trees,
water, springs, rivers, mountains, etc. Souls appear as mice,
snakes (the house-snake as a Lar), were-wolves, or as trees,
or roses, springing from the blood of the dead. The Norse
berserkers may be bear-clothed spirits like (were-wolves)
those in wolf-skins. The canonization of Christian souls
retains the old cult of the dead. House-spirits in various
forms are usually dead souls; but there is no basis for the
theory that spirits of forest, cave, tree, spring, etc., are
ghosts. The “balewise women ” who, as witches,” raise
1 Our “soul,” German Seele, may mean quick, lively, like Greek
Oumós, indicating the active principle.
2 The wise women of the north were of the seidhr or volva class.
166
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
storms, are also not necessarily ghosts. Even Fate, Wyrd,
becomes a she-demon, and the peasants “Du Wind, hast
Mehl für dein Kind” shows, as the child is Wind's, that
storm may be a spirit without being a ghost.
Elves and giants may revert in part to tales of prehistoric
men; but the belief in such beings is too universal to refer
the phenomena to such a source altogether. Elves are not
degraded, nor are giants prehistoric gods. Sacrifice was
made to elves in Norway. They help men but also need
human help. Giants are stupid, not necessarily hostile, but
generally opposed to (Norse) gods. All nature is more or
less alive. Wood-sounds prove a wood-spirit. “Feld hath
eyen and the wood hath eres ” (Chaucer). Definite wor-
ship of streams, stones, and trees is proved for the early
centuries of our era by exhortation against these cults. The
old oath,“ swear by oak and ash and thorn,” reflects a belief
in these trees as spiritual powers. To whip a tree or offer
it beer points to the same interpretation. Many such cus-
toms have been preserved till modern times. The cult of
trees, "blood tree,” “luck tree,” trees giving birth, the
Maypole, the “oak of Jupiter,” and even the world-tree,
Yggdrasil (Irminsul), are probably older than specific agri-
cultural cults, but any or all of these beliefs may be echoes
of prehistoric times. Sea-spirits naturally belong to the
North. There “ Sea will have sacrifice”; but tamer water-
spirits, water itself being a spiritual power, abound every-
where, as springs, and rivers, personified, or as Nixes
The former (perhaps Finnish) were sorcerers; the latter, sooth-
sayers, who "sat out” till they got a revelation. In general, one
was a witch and the other a sibyl. There were seidh-men as well
as seidhkona, women (kona, quean), but the volur (staff-bearing,
wanderer) were women, and sometimes functioned also as seidh-
kona. Compare Saussaye, op. cit., p. 389.
1 The Maypole is not properly a tree, but represents the spirit of
vegetation symbolized by the tree, like Adonis' garden, the Korn-
demon or year-demon as a vegetarian god in material form. On the
identity of the pole with the May queen, see Mannhardt, Der Baum-
kultus, Berlin, 1875, p. 312 f. The world-tree is the product of specu-
lative fancy, embodied first in the old Westphalian Irmin-pillar sup-
porting the world (universalis columna quasi sustinens omnia).
blood Preserved interpret To whip
RELIGION OF THE TEUTONS
167
(Nymphs) of a cruel disposition, liable to appear in animal
form, and sacrificed to (especially when a stream is ob-
structed, as by a bridge), sometimes with human lives.
Waterfalls were worshipped by the Norsemen and “ cheese
was offered to a lake" in the sixth century. The belief of
Mannhardt that all these items of lower mythology reflect
the general European cults of prehistoric times inherited by
Greek and German in analogous forms goes too far. Many
of them are individual, tribal, national, separately developed
out of the same material. The clay horses of a German
fair today are like the prehistoric figures of the Greek.
Similar intelligence produces similar results in religion as in
art. The Redskins also worship waterfalls and the Africans
have myths resembling the German beliefs. Nixes under
another name live in Burmese rivers. The fashioning of the
world from the body of an original giant Ymir reproduces
the Vedic dismemberment of the original god Man. The
fights with giants carried on by Thor and Freyr are like
those of Hindu gods with the gigantic fiends. But there is
not in Germany that thorough dualism which appears in
Greece in the opposition between giants and gods. The Ger-
man giants are often friendly and helpful to the gods. The
dwarfs are Celtic as well as German; they are artisans and
are more deeply impressed on the popular mind than are
the giants. They are the black elves, contrasted with the
light and grey elves, and are often visible only when they
lose their caps. In general, as contrasted with Slavs, whose
cult is chiefly of house- farm- and family-spirits, the Ger-
mans made more of the greater nature-spirits, sturm, sky,
etc.; though they, too, revered the little spirits.
German gods are fairly decent creations though not moral
in the modern sense. Purity and fidelity are marked Ger-
man characteristics from the time of Tacitus to that of the
mediaeval sagas. The trading people of the north are more
prudent than courageous; but treachery is hateful to the
gods. Otherwise no ethical consideration determines man's
fate hereafter. A man may be tricky, but not false to his
168
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
word. The more blood the warrior has spilled the more
welcome is he to Odhin's hall. Bravery and faith, of which
truth is a reflection, give the keynote of religious morality,
and this perpetuates the simple old cult of Mars, for Scandi-
navian belief, despite its foreign elements, is at bottom Teu-
tonic.
On the whole, Teutonic religion combines a crude cult
- with a crude bélief. It lies between the intellectual level of
the North and South American Indians, never rising to the
height of the best Mexican and Peruvian religious ideas but
distinctly surpassing, in some regards, that of the savages
of our Northern hemisphere. It shows no deep religious
feeling, no religious ethical system; it has no religious poet
or prophet; only tales about gods. It has feasts, not fasts,
as a religious expression. Scandinavia has only a primitive
dualism (good gods vs. giants, sun vs. darkness). Primitive
myth and savage cult characterize this religion, which is de-
void of spirituality and of intellectual dignity, until, prob-
ably under Christian influence, higher ideas appear in the
North. As compared with the Celt, the Teuton lacks even
the druidic philosophy, as he lacks the nystic feeling, withal
at a time when his more southern relatives had already
passed beyond their own early view of divine things and of
the rough gods found in the Homeric world. A thousand
years later in developing, when fully developed (before
Christian influence began), Teutonic thought was still almost
as rude as at its beginning. The only Aryans standing on a
lower religious level were the Slavs. Perhaps this was be-
cause the unaided Aryan intellect could get no further,
though the contrast of the northern group of Slavs, Teutons,
and Celts, with the southern Greeks, Hindus, and Persians
still remains as strange as it is striking, for no outside phi-
losophy raised Greek or Hindu thought to its early eminence.
The cleverer people may have gone south and left the slower-
witted behind, since those who emigrate from a poor land to
a better are usually the more progressive. Or perhaps, what
is more flattering to ourselves, climate created culture by
RELIGION OF THE TEUTONS
169
forcing to quicker growth an innate power. But, since we
have no right to suppose that language and race are inter-
changeable terms, they that became Greeks and Hindus may
have had little in common religiously with Teutons and
Celts, a few deified natural phenomena, Sky, Wind, Fire,
the greater lights of heaven, and revered ancestors; or per-
haps not all of these.
We turn now to those advanced religions which have left
literatures based upon religion. They fall into two great
groups, one of the Far East, India, China, and Japan, con-
nected through Buddhism; the other of the Near East, com-
prising the religions of Mesopotamia and the Mediterranean,
connected partly through historical dependence and partly
through a common stock of inherited ideas. Connexion
between the two groups is doubtful for the early period.
We shall begin with the religion of India, which stands in
its beginning nearest to the religions of the Aryans we have
already examined.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
The chief classical texts : Caesar, De Bello Gallico, i. 50;
iv. 7; vi. 21. Tacitus, Germania; Agricola, xxviii; Annales,
i. 51, seq.; xiii. 55, seq.; Histories, iv. 14, 22, 61, 65; V. 22.
Pliny, Natural History, iv. 27, seq.
Wilhelm Mannhardt, Der Baumkultus der Germanen und ihrer
Nachbarstämme; Antike Wald- und Feldkulte, Berlin,
1875–77; Mythologische Forschungen, Strassburg, 1884.
E. H. Meyer, Germanische Mythologie, Berlin, 1891.
W. Golther, Handbuch der Germanischen Mythologie, Leipzig,
1895.
F. B. Gummere, Germanic Origines, New York, 1892.
P. D. Chantepie de la Saussaye, The Religion of the Teutons,
Boston, 1902. (Contains an excellent bibliography.)
S. Bugge (translated by O. Brenner), Studien über die
Entstehung der nordischen Götter- und Heldensagen, Mu-
nich, 1889.
The following standard works are of more general content:
Jacob Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, Berlin, 4th ed., 1875–
38; K. Müllenhoff, Deutsche Altertumskunde, Berlin, 1870-
92; Germania Antiqua, Berlin, 1873, a collection of texts.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE RELIGIONS OF INDIA
I. FROM THE VEDAS TO BUDDHA
When the Aryans invaded India they found in the Punjab
certain snub-nosed black-skinned natives whom they reduced
to submission. These were probably Dravidians. A few
centuries later, along the Ganges and in the hill-country
south of it, they came in touch with other wild tribes, gen-
erally called Kolarian. The religion of all these savages
was animistic, in part totemic, but also a form of nature-
worship. The southern Dravidians today retain under a
later mask, easily removed, much of their old belief. They
are agriculturists and each village has its own Great Mother
spirit, sometimes without any other name, sometimes with
several names, who is represented by rough stones in a
shrine or a tent (tabernacle) used temporarily, when the
goddess is needed, as when plague breaks out. Often a
post or a mere pot of water is the goddess. The people
offer her flowers and on occasion, because she is angry, an
animal sacrifice, in which the animal's blood is used for fer-
tility and medicine." The Mother guards her village; a
boundary-stone keeps out evil spirits. A female ancestress
is the great divinity of some tribes and sends them all their
woes. The hill-Dravidians (Khonds) kill a pig, whose blood
falls into a pit, and suffocate a human victim in the pit, bury-
ing his flesh at boundary-lines, the victim being a youth pre-
viously carefully tended, like an Ainu bear. The Kolarians
worship stones at the foot of a tree, the snake and tree, ani-
mals, animal-totems, earth, the sun, etc.; recognize spirits
swarming everywhere, have sacred groves, dances, and songs,
CU
170
THE VEDIC RELIGION OF INDIA
171
and many believe in metempsychosis. Sun, earth, rain,
seasons, are all divinities ; smaller phenomena are regarded
as possessed by spirits and ghosts. Eschatology is on a par
with that of our Indians. Some native tribes, however, had
developed considerable skill in building and represenť a com-
paratively high civilization, from which the Aryans bor-
rowed.
The original inhabitants thus offered to the Aryans a field
like that offered to the Greeks by the “ Pelasgians," marked
by a religion of ghosts, ghouls, spirits, and animals, with
some nature-cult and temple-service, but sharply contrasted
with the warrior-religion which overcame it and yet was
deeply influenced by it. This Aryan warrior-religion looked
rather above than under the earth and cared more for gods
than for ghosts. Such is the religion common to the in-
vaders of Greece and India and the early Teutons. The
chief Indic Aryan gods are mentioned about 1400 as the
gods of a people who had not yet got beyond Cappadocia,
probably on their way to India,' as Varuna, Mitra, Indra,
and (the healing twin gods) Nasatya.
The invading Aryans were not agriculturists but warriors,
whose wealth and occupation were cattle and lifting cattle.
There were no castes, but there were priests who served
the Three-and-Thirty gods (Zoroaster's "thirty three
lords "), with oblations of beer, soma, Zoroaster's haoma,
on a spread of straw, used in both rituals, at the hands of
“ oblationists," so named in both cults, and praised them
in verse measured like the Gathas of Zoroaster. In fact,
the two religions were simply different phases of one. The
1 Scholars are divided as to when the Aryans first entered India
(by the way of Persia; there may have been a prior invasion from
the northwest). Some ascribe an absurd antiquity to the Vedas,
the first literature. Conservative writers have always held that 1200
B. C. is as early as we have any grounds for dating the Rig Veda,
and, in fact, 1000 B. C. is early enough to account for it, a date which
brings it into a needed proximity to the Zoroastrian Gathas, which
in language and ideas represent an intimate and close temporal con-
nection with the Vedas.
172
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
1
Veda recognizes the Wise Spirit (Asura) of heaven, wor-
shipped by Zoroaster, but not so universally. It was an
aristocratic cult, as Zoroaster's religion, too, was aristo-
cratic. But many clans scarcely consider this Wise Spirit.
They prefer the worship of the god of storm, war, and
fertility, Indra, to whose service the Rig Veda is chiefly de-
voted; while Zoroaster recognizes such nature-spirits, but
only as inferior to the Spirit of Wisdom. At the same time
in the Rig Veda appears a subsidiary cult of Sun, Father
Sky, Wind, Mother Earth, Fire, Wind, etc., perhaps of stars,
and the very important cult of Manes and of Yama, lord
of the dead, now blessed, living with Yama, Zoroastrian
Yima, in a heavenly paradise. As in Germany, the cult of
Dyaus (Tiu, Zeus) is observable but it is already decadent.
The same gods, in other words, are here the object of a
cult as were found in Teutonic and Slavic religions and for
the most part with identical names, even to the smaller
members of the pantheon, House-lord, etc.?
In its cult of Sky, Wind, Sun, Dawn, and other trans-
parent gods (a convenient term invented by Usener), its
noisy beer-ritual, and its simple morality of truth and brav-
ery, the Vedic religion is still quite crude, though it has a
complicated ritual, which, with the skilled versifiers and
astute priesthood, shows that it is no longer primitive in the
sense of being naïve. Some of its priests were mercenary,
some were poets and philosophers. Before the end of the
first Vedic period, the priests had already clouded the faces
of the nature-gods, recognized a unity underlying spiritual
plurality, speculated as to the origin of being, established an
1 Varuna, the wise spirit of the Rig Veda, is recognized as belong-
ing to the warrior class, of which he is king. As a western god
he is connected with the night-sky or as the night-sky with the west.
2 Thus Vayu, Dyaus, and Agni, wind, sky, and fire. The twin-
gods are in nature one with Castor and Pollux, as sun, Surya,
is Greek Helios (serius). Indra may be the Anglo-Saxon ent, giant.
Slavic Andra (audra). With the Wise Spirit (Asura) called
Varuna is associated Mitra (Mithra), “twin lords of right and
light." Varuna especially “hates the lie," and punishes wrong, but
forgives the penitent, as does the Wise Spirit of Zoroaster.
I
THE VEDIC RELIGION OF INDIA
173
the prit lingered een largely
g gods than of Varuna de but an any
elaborate religious mysticism, and swept the devil-cult and
witchcraft practices aside as a kind of magic fit to be re-
corded only in a heap of mangled verses drawn mainly from
the Rig Veda and devoted to demonology. Eventually this
heap was elaborated into an independent Atharva or Fire
Veda, though fire in magic had been largely displaced by
charms and antidotes. It lingered on in popular literature,
however, while in the priestly ritual it was made a minister
of the. Soma-cult. That the lower cult of demons grew
pari passu with the submergence of the Aryans in the flood
of animistic natives, and that the Atharva Veda is at least
several centuries later than the Rig Veda, are facts often
overlooked by those who assume that the lower cult was as
important to the Aryans as was the higher. It is significant
also that the priests ministering to the Atharva cult were
always of inferior sort and generally despised.
The trend of thought in the Vedic age was rather toward
consolidating gods than toward exalting any one of them.
For this reason the cult of Varuna declined and the popular
Indra became not exactly an all-god but an any-god, who
was conceived as greater than heaven and earth and as em-
bracing the functions of other gods. A vagueness of this
sort led to the dimming of faith. Synthesis began. Mock-
ery followed. The orthodox were described as "involved
in fog and talk”; the three fires of sacrifice were declared
to be the same, “these three are one.” The Goddess Un-
limited (mother of the gods) was first postulated and then
declared to be “all things." And again: “Being is one;
it has the names of different gods.” Thus, rather than by
expelling other gods, as in Palestine, or by subjecting other
gods to one, as in Babylon, India reached the idea of "the
one spirituality”; though antithetic to this trend there was
also a new development in the creation of a Lord of Beings
or Father-god, who emerges at the end of the first Vedic
period. He is Creator of gods and men, but remains always
rather a figure than an active personality and is eventually
called the Power (Brahman).
'-
-
.
.
174
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
native und merchappen
After perhaps a couple of centuries the Aryans drifted
down to the Ganges valley, where they appear as agricul-
turists and townsfolk, farmers and merchants, with a large
dependent population of native blacks. And as the brave
JAryans of the Punjab had gods in their own image, so now,
when castes had formed and priests were the power behind
the throne, these priests made the gods over into their own
image. From now on the mass of gods appear only as evil-
minded, cowardly, bargaining creatures, who disputed about
their honoraria (sacrifices), and themselves made sacrifices,
just like priests. Town life, with a body of slaves largely
drawn from wild tribes, brought up new gods from the
(dregs of un-Aryan society. So rose the fearful form of
the new storm- and fertility-god, disease-sending, lightning-
using, Shiva. In the meantime the priests exalted the cult
of the sun as Vishnu, with whom later were identified
| Krishna in the West and Rama in the East. Vishnu,
the wide-striding Vedic god, who “makes day” and is
"swift in going” is formally recognized as the creative
sun and “highest of gods." The farmers, though holding
tenaciously to their “Aryan rights," to drink soma and
learn the sacred lore, soon became practically as inferior to
the aristocrats of the court, nobles and priests, as farmers
and traders always become when brought up against those
who have specialized in ruling by force and trickery. The
aristocrats of this time said openly that the middle classes
were nothing more than“ food for warriors," and the priests,
who served only the nobles, their best pay-inasters, and
professed to be “ earthly gods,” gave up almost entirely the
old religion. They simply rana complicated machine of
sacrifice, costly and cumbersome, wholly magical in purpose,
as spellbinders of mystic spells. What they revered was the
mystic Power of the spell, which they made a divine, even a
supreme Power called Brahma.
Incidentally the secondary ritualistic texts of this period
(c. 800 B. C.) tell us of the first Man (Manu), possessor of
a minotaur whose bellow destroyed demons; of the Deluge

heit as Aly becames and pf up agano

THE VEDIC RELIGION OF INDIA
175
1. rhaps of Babylonian origin), from which Manu alone
. 5 saved in a ship by means of a Fish (as the fish-god Ea
d his worshipper); of the tower on which demons tried
tu scale the sky; and recount other native or foreign ideas
now domesticated. In the service, the chief distinction is
that offerings are laid in a pit for the Manes and in fire
for the gods. Human sacrifice has never failed in India;
but it was now formally ignored in favour of horses, bulls,
buffaloes, goats, and rams. Harvest festivals and daily do-
*mestic sacrifices were regularly made to the gods, Manes,
and spirits. At the winter solstice there was a rite to expel
demons, bring rain, and produce fruitfulness. Seasonal sac-
rifices took place every four months. Sympathetic magic,
rites of expiation, an all-souls feast, a rite through which
girls got husbands by propitiating Shiva, expulsion of de-
mons by satisfying them with blood poured on the ground,
by noise, smells, and fire, fasting and chastity as necessary to
religious rites, sacrifice, as a communion, a bargain, as piacu-
lar and as apotropaic; a gradual change from an under-
ground pit as the ghost-home to the place of torinent for sin-
ners, a resurrection, but of shining bodies, and a sensuous
paradise for the good in Yama's, later in Indra's, heaven,
these are the prominent features of the decadent Vedic age.
in which an abstract Creator, as “ Lord of beings." towered
above the gods of old. Bradema
nf survivals from earlier stages it is difficult to speak
with certainty, since we are not sure what survives and
what has been taken from neighbouring Dravidians and
Kolarians. Thus the Khasas are regarded as a warrior-
clari and profess to be Rajputs, but they are only half Hindu
and still practise the custom of having one wife for sev-
eral brothers. Totemism may have come from the Oraons
(mouse-totem) and Garos; but Aryan totemism, if it existed,
has left no sure trace, only animal-worship, withal the wor-
said of an animal as representing a god temporarily. Really)
divine animals like the cow are more divine (to the Brah-
2:1a112) later than earlier. Many families are called by ani-

176
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
mal names. Gods too are represented by animals, Indra
and Shiva, generative gods, by bull and boar; the sun by
a horse, a goat, etc., incarnations of divinity. The horsen
sacrifice celebrates the sun as a horse and might be a re-
flection of the same spirit as that shown to the Ainu bear,
for the horse is told that it is being sent to heaven. But
a divine animal is never sacrificed to itself in Vedic reli-
gion. There is here no slaying of a god, at least to. Hindu'
thought. Yet the sacramental meal is found, especially in
connection with the Manes, with whom the worshipper com-
Imunicates in the eating of the gods' food. The prevalent
belief in the efficacy of foundation-sacrifices is established
| by the Vedic building-ritual. Of the earth as a vegetation-
deity demanding human sacrifice, there is no trace before
Shivaite worship, which includes that of the Mother god-
dess, a horrible monster of the wild-tribes. She is the
female power and human victims were offered to her (as
goats are now).
But ritual and magic made only one side of the later re-
ligion. There were still philosophic priests, able successors
of those Vedic seers, who had asked “to what god shall we
sacrifice ?” (only to the great Creator, they meant); who had
argued that “ desire is the seed of mind”; who had made
the “ Soul of the world” their quest and said “in man and
sun is but The One.” One such later priest, vexed with sac-
rificial hocus-pociis, cries" How can people believe such
stuff?” Others left the sacrifice for the study (the forest)
and from them come what we call the Upanishads or later
treatises of secret wisdom, disjointed, tentative, illogical
studies, crude, and still clinging to the old mythological re-
ligion, but containing earnest and deep inquiries into the
great problem of the age, the nature of God and man's
1 See on these points a paper of Professor A. B. Keith in the
Journ. Royal Asiat. Society, Oct., 1907. Professor Ridgeway's sug-
gestion that the Shiva was once a man may be ignored, as may
Herbert Spencer's older contention that Ushas, Dawn, was once a
lady whose carriage was smashed by a rude Mr. Indra.
THE VEDIC RELIGION OF INDIA
177
relation to the divine Power or Self (Soul) of the world.
Here begins the first enunciation of the doctrine of the
everlasting effect of the Act. Whatever we do or think
(thought also as action) makes its mark on our soul and
according to the state of the soul thus marked will be our
fate hereafter. The faint beginning of this doctrine called
Karma (act) is Rig Vedic, where one is told to "join his
good works” in heaven and in the sub-Vedic idea that one
by good works, merit stored up, can get “beyond the
sun” and so escape recurrent death. For the complete
doctrine also aims at suppressing the recurrent" death and
birth wheel” and placing the perfect man beyond fear of
metempsychosis. This doctrine assumes universal applica-
tion, for Karma affects all, from the Creator to a blade of
grass. In popular presentation, since it soon lost its esoteric
form, it teaches that a thief becomes in the next life a
thieving animal, etc.; but it had to cross the older view of
hell and in fact soon united with it. A taste of hell-torment,
followed by a new birth according to his former deeds, was
every man's prospect; or first a taste of heaven, and then,
when the stored merit was exhausted, like a spent balloon
a man dropped to earth and was re-born according to what
his previous life had been, the good, their evil purged away,
in a high caste, the very good as a god. Such a man be-
comes a “god by merit” as distinguished from a “god by
nature." But the wise man who discards sacrifice and
rites goes direct to the Brahma and returns no more. Only
he who "knows Brahma” can do this. But herein the
whole religious paraphernalia of the past is really flung
overboard. Only the figment that rites were a sort of
preparation for higher knowledge saved religion, in the old
sense, at all for the mystics and philosophers. Belonging
to the priestly caste, they were reluctant to dismiss as en-
tirely useless the ancient ritual. Knowing it was useless in
itself, they made it preparatory, symbolized it, turned it into
a power-mystery for themselves and continued to teach it to
he unintelligent as still valid. There was no hypocrisy in
178
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
this, for to the ordinary man incapable of philosophy the
rite was all that bound him to religion.
Ethically the late Vedic religion is supported by divine
V precedent. The gods love truth; purity is the first step to
divinity; no sinner can know Him who is sinless. “The
Soul of the World is pure, like a light within the heart. To
attain to it one must be truthful, practice devotion (ascetic
fasting, etc.), gain knowledge, be abstinent." The Abso-
lute (Power) in the Upanishads interchanges with the per-
sonal Self (Soul) of the World. This absolute soul is all,
spirit and matter; it is pure being, good, intelligent, blissful,
and if one really knows that one's self is one with that Self,
one becomes in fact that World-Self, one merges into it, loses
individual consciousness, becomes a part of the whole, un-
conscious of difference.1 Indefinable is the Soul of the
World, to be defined only as “not this, not that” (so the
mystic of the Middle Ages says “ God is Nothing ”). There
is here no doctrine of illusion; the world is real. Yet the
weight laid on spirituality leads to the antithesis between
purest soul and not purest, partly because the first is not
transitory, as all material things appear to be, and again hu-
man life in its round of birth and death contrasts with the
state of “not death"; for pure soul, the unincorporate alone
is really blissful.
In this last deduction the Upanishadist comes to the point
where he touches Buddhism with its slogan, “birth is sor-
row. Insight and mystic communion with the All-Soul
enable the philosopher to become“ awakened,” the very word
describing Buddha. Ascetic saints of this sort devoted
themselves to divinė knowledge as a secret sacred posses-
sion. But they began also to distinguish between soul and
spirit, as that which is of and in the world, respectively,
thus teading in the latter case to dualism. The secondary
TAt this stage begins the rapt mysticism of the later Vedic age,
afterwards methodically cultivated and systematized as Yoga-dis-
cipline, by which the soul acquired aloofness from 177atter and be-
comes master of secret powers. In the Vedanta All-soul belief 1
similar process leads to absorption in the All-Soul.
THE VEDIC RELIGION OF INDIA
179
Upanishads reveal, moreover, the inevitable tendency to
make concrete the image of the Soul, as Lord, hence as a
personal God, and hence again as a God upon whose will
and grace depends the worshipper's weal, nay his very abil-
ity to know that God, knowledge of whom is salvation.
The next step is to know His name (sectarianism). On
the other hand, following the tendency to divide the universe
into matter and spirit, some maintained that there were
individual spirits without number, but these were meshed
in matter, till release from all material bondage made them
free. This tendency dissipated the idea of an All-Soul
and resulted in pure dualism (Sankhya philosoply), but it,
too, succumbed to the inevitable and made into highest spirit
one of the freed spirits as Supreme Spirit, though not as
Creator God. Mystic exercises (Yoga discipline), reduced
to a science, mark this religious phase, which has a further
well-defined tendency to regard physical attitudes as phases
of religious growth. .
In the meantime the masses continued to worship all the
religious phenomena of their inherited faith, physical ob-
jects, ghosts, and gods above, with a sectarian growth
leading to the Shiva and Vishnu cults. The hypostasis of
Brahma was retained as Brahman the Creator. The masses
kept, too, the hope of a happy hereafter in a joyous material
heaven. Song, dance, and mimetic exhibitions, not too nice,
accompanied religious festivals. In short, as is sometimes
forgotten, the common people remained frankly Vedic in
their beliefs, fears, and hopes, undisturbed by the disquisi-
tions of the mystics. Most of the population were now not
Aryan at all; but all who could, called themselves so and
invented pedigrees which Aryanized them. At the same
time they clung to their old native gods; so these gods were
brahmanized too and called “ forms” of this or that great
recognized god, a process still going on in India, where
every wild-tribe devil is converted by the Brahman priests
and becomes a form of Shiva or of Vishnu. On this un-
ending undercurrent of the popular religion, with its cult
180
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
of spirits, ghosts, and godlings, its spring-festivals, its
maintenance of the old domestic rites, its attention to the
dark, the productive, the mysterious, we cannot linger, but
must turn to the great heresies of the sixth century, B. C.
JAINISM
At this period religious interest was rather an affectation
of the petty Rajas who ruled along the Ganges from Delhi
to Benares. Like Akbar, they liked to encourage religious
and philosophical debates and pretend to take a part in them
and even to decide them. In the tumult of warring sects
of this time, two (there were many others) came to lasting
prominence, Jainism and Buddhism. The former was the
older. The name comes from Jina, conqueror, a title be-
stowed upon triumphant leaders of sects, who had con-
quered all controversial opponents and also conquered for
themselves whatever bliss true religion may win. In this
case the conquering Jina was Vardhamana or Mahavira (d.
484 B. c.), pupil of a certain Parshvanatha. This Maha-
vira either maġnified his teacher's order or instituted one of
his own, whose members called themselves Nirgranthas
(Emancipated). They did not believe in the authority of
the Vedas nor in the existence of God, but adopted a dual-
istic philosophy. Certain illuminated human beings of the
past became their objects of adoration. These were called
Tirthankaras, whose images today adorn the Jain temples.
They taught also that animals should not be injured and are
still famous for the care they take not to injure life.' Sal-
vation, they believe, depends on faith in their founder as
a saviour, through his teaching how men may become
emancipated, on a right understanding of his doctrines, and
on right living. The soul must cease from restless activ-
ity; a man may even starve to death with this end in view.
If thus calmed in life, it afterwards enters an existence of
peace, bodiless and immortal. This sect, despite its heresy,
has not antagonized the Brahmans, as it clung to rites and
ceremonies. It has existed for 2,400 years, being espe-
JAINISM
181
cially prominent in West and South India. It practically
worships the great Jina and his predecessors, for, like the
Buddhists, the Jains believe there were many Jinas. It
was always a formal sect and one of Mahavira's disciples
called Gosala founded a dissenting sub-sect which after-
wards (circa 300 B. C.) were called the Digambaras or
naked ascetics as opposed to the Shvetambaras or slightly
clothed. Originally, however, Gosala, representing the
Ajivika-sect, was a “livelihood" man or professional beg-
gar, whose life was morally objectionable; but he defended
it on the score of determinism, disclaiming freedom of will
and moral responsibility, views offensive to Mahavira, al-
though he also was a naked ascetic. The Jain church in
general allowed its lay brothers to build nunneries and
monasteries, whose members constituted the bulk of the
faithful. Owing to the great number of Jains and their
influence upon art and science, the religion is one that cannot
be ignored, though it has added little to original thought
or religious expression. The Jains of today are a pleasing
sect, who make an excellent impression owing to the ab-
sence of idols and of grosser superstitions in their religion
and to their placid and gentle demeanour.1 Mahavira and
Gosala were the--most prominent leaders of the eight sects
of the period which Buddha regarded as teaching wrong
doctrines, four of them being antinomian (incontinent) and
four being “unsatisfying."
BIBLIOGRAPHY
W. Crooke, The Popular Religion and Folk-lore of Northern
India, London, 1896.
Arthur Macdonell, Vedic Mythology, in Grundriss der Indo-
arischen Philologie.
1 Not so pleasing to western taste is the Jains' objection to the
destruction of vermin. At the present day the need of reform has
been felt by the Jains and various societies have been organized to
put fresh spirit into the sect, which, as is admitted by themselves,
has become too strictly ethical and lost whatever religious enthus-
iasm it ever had.
182
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
Adolf Kaegi, Der Rig Veda, Leipzig, 1881; translated by R.
Arrowsmith, Boston, 1886.
J. Muir, Original Sanskrit Texts, London, 1868-1894.
Vedic Hymns, translated in Sacred Books of the East, xlii and
xlvi; Shatapatha Brahmana, ibid., xii, xxvi, xli, xliii, xliv;
Upanishads, ibid., i, xv.
Whitney and Lanman, Atharva Veda, translated, Cambridge,
Mass., 1905.
A. Barth, The Religion of India, translated by J. Wood, Boston,
1882.
H. Oldenberg, Die Religion des Veda, Berlin, 1894; Die Lehre
der Upanishaden und die Anfänge des Buddhismus, Göt-
tingen, 1915. See also under Buddhism.
M. Bloomfield, The Religion of the Veda, New York, 1908.
E. W. Hopkins, The Religions of India, Boston, 1895.
Paul Deussen, Sechzig Upanishads des Veda, translated, Leip-
zig, 1897; The Philosophy of the Upanishads, Edinburgh,
1906; Őutline of Indian Philosophy, Berlin, 1907.
Paul Oltramare, L'histoire des idées theosophiques dans l'Inde,
Paris, 1907.
L. von Schroeder, Indiens Literatur und Cultur, Leipzig, 1887.
Mrs. Sinclair Stevenson, The Heart of Jainisin, London, 1915.
Jain Suttas, Sacred Books of the East, xxii, xlv.
E. Hoernle, Ajivikas (sect of Gosala), in Encyclopedia of Re-
ligions and Ethics.
L. D. Barnett, Antiquities of India, London, 1914.
J. B. Pratt, India and its Faiths, Boston, 1915.
CHAPTER TWELVE
THE RELIGIONS OF INDIA. II. BUDDHISM
BUDDHA, the Awakened, is the title given to Guatama (Go-
tama), a reputed prince of a Shakya clan living north of
Benares in the sixth and fifth centuries (d. 482 B. C.). It
is not certain that he was an Aryan; his conventional head-
dress of curly locks and his clan-name have been thought
to show descent from a northern, perhaps Scythian race.
His history is made up from later accounts and is pre-
sumably largely legendary. At the age of twenty-nine (says
tradition) he became a practical pessimist, disgusted with
the rotation of life and death (the Karma doctrine is tra-
ditionally assumed), and, to seek an escape, studied with
various philosophers whose wisdom turned out useless. At
last, after seven years, sitting under the Tree of Enlight-
enment, he became by intuition the Enlightened, or Awak-
ened. He gained a few disciples and thereafter preached
his doctrine through the little world known to him, founding
an order of mendicants as the nucleus of a church to which
lay members were admitted. He also, rather reluctantly,
permitted women to join his order, as nuns under supervi-
sion of the elders of the church. Tradition tells of a rapid
growth of the order, far too rapid to believe. Buddha died
at the age of eighty. Until the emperor Ashoka, became
a Buddhist the sect was probably only one of a number of
similar religious growths. We really know little about it
till Ashoka's time, the middle of the third century B.C.
Buddha is represented as conversant with other philo-
sophical systems and he may have known 1 the older Upani-
1 Oldenberg, Die Lehre der Upanishaden und die Anfänge des
Buddhismus, Göttingen, 1915, believes that the Upanishads were a
183
184
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
shads, though he ignored their basic idea of a world-soul;
the individual soul he rejected. The Upanishads rather ex-
ulted in the bliss of being perfect than sighed over life as it
is; they were joyous rather than sad; their pessimism was
only implicit. But Buddhism from the beginning was
grounded on grief. Buddha's first awakening came when, as
a boy, he beheld human wretchedness; the wail over the slav-
ery of birth and death was the prelude to the final note of
hope.
Of course, where hope exists pessimism may be converted -
into optimism. With the expectation of eventual salvation
no religion is thoroughly hopeless. But, in respect of life,
no religion is so frankly pessimistic as primitive Buddhism,
for in its scheme life includes existence in heaven as well
as on earth, and both forms of life are to be got rid of as
soon as possible. The peace of Nirvana comes from elud-
ing love and life.
It is sometimes said that, in contrast to Christianity,
Buddhism is not a religion of faith but of reason. But
Buddhism is a religion of unquestioning faith. Not only is
the doctrine of transmigration accepted on faith, but the
authority of Buddha and of his law is not to be disputed for
a moment. The Veda is not more holy to the Brahman
than is the word of Buddha to the Buddhist.
Buddha scoffed at the idea of a Creator and denied the
existence of a soul. He probably believed, however, in
gods, godlings, spirits, and the usual demons of his age,
perhaps accepting them merely because they were not worth
arguing, about. What he taught as essential was the rem-
edy for the grief of existence. This is embodied in the
Four Truths: I, Birth and death are grief; 2, this grief
western, Buddhism an eastern product, centuries later than the ear-
liest Upanishads (p. 288). He also thinks that Buddha knew the
(western) Sankhya philosophy only by hearsay. Jacobi, on the other
hand, opines that Buddhist categories reflect the Sankhya.
( 1 It has been questioned whether Buddha himself taught the
Karma doctrine. The Four Truths (below) ignore it. But the
doctrine was accepted by all Buddhists as orthodox dogma.
BUDDHISM IN INDIA
185
1
when desire ends; 4, desire may be extinguished if one
follows Buddha's Eight Rules, couched in the formula :
Right belief, right resolve, right word, right act, right life,
right effort, right thought, right meditation. Following
these eight precepts one attains to extinction, Nirvana, of
desire and its fruit. This extinction may be attained in
life here, so that one may “enter Nirvana ” while still on
earth. The condition of Nirvana is as negative as the
Brahma of the priestly philosophers. Buddha himself
studiously avoided all opportunities to explain Nirvana,
though many were offered him, and explicitly declared that
the less people indulged in vain imaginings as to life here-
after the better. This alone shows that the speculative
metaphysics of liberal Buddhism is not based on the Mas-
ter's thought or utterance. Primitive Buddhism has a psy-
chology (of a sort) but no metaphysics and no eschatology.
„It is simply a rationalistic ethical system, teaching that every
man may be his own saviour.
The value of Buddhism as a religion does not lie in its
originality, for the “ desire" motif is pre-Buddhistic,1 nor
in its psychology, which, though curious, is valueless, but in
what Buddha considered as of the slightest importance, its
moral excellence. Buddha frequently insisted upon moral-
ity but only as the first plunge into the stream carrying one
to salvation. Yet, seen at this distance, what Buddha be-
littled becomes the corner-stone of his own worth. For
amid the ethical chaos of a time when to be a noble or a
divine was to be noble and divine; when only a philosopher
could attain salvation; when even philosophers were de-
1 As this is often ignored, it may be well to point out that the
Upanishad series kama kratu karına implies that only he dies not
(again) who desires not. “Desire, determination, deed” (and
death) is what is meant by the series. Desire leads to will (deter-
mination), this to acts, and this to continual new fruit and death.
But he who is without desire dies not at all; he "enters Brahma”
(becomes one with the Absolute Being). Brihad Ar. Upanishad,
iv. 4, 5f.
-
---
-
186
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
cadent antinomians ; 1 when the common man had no hope
of salvation save through magical ceremonies; when spir-
ituality was submerged under ritual, and ethics had scarcely
any religious basis -- then Buddha arose and said:
“ Enough of rites that no one understands in honour of
useless spirits. Every man makes his own fate. I preach
simple truths; I have no esoteric doctrine. My Way is
open to all, to the lowly as to the exalted. Not high birth
makes a man a (true) Brahman - he uses this word ex-
actly as if one should say a worthy Christian — not birth,
not wealth, not learning make a man worthy, but a pure
heart, a good character, a noble aim in life. This alone
makes a man worthy; but to be greedy, passionate, a slave
of lusts, desirous of vain and wrong things, is to miss the
first step toward emancipation. Better is a slave who lives
nobly than a noble who lives slavishly.” In this Buddha
was original. In denying soul and God, he was but one of
many contemporary unbelievers.
Though Buddha was born an aristocrat and associated
with his equals, he laid no stress on caste and so admitted
into his order those of low birth. If we may believe the
artless tradition, even thieves and robbers became hypo-
thetical Buddhists (as murderers in the Middle Ages fled
to the altar), since the Buddhist mendicants were immune
from punishment. All this made for democracy, though
it was not Buddha's intent to assail the political and social
order. Caste at that time and in his part of the country,
round about Benares, was not the onerous burden it has
since become, but a natural division of the people into royal
(and noble), priestly, mercantile, farming, and slave classes.
Buddha lived on perfectly good terms with the Brahmans,
who had been accustomed for generations to hear all theories
of life discussed and were themselves the chief innovators
of ideas in the realm of metaphysics and psychology. The
only Brahmans condemned as Brahmans by Buddha were
1 Four of the eight philosophical systems to which Buddha ob-
jected were opposed to morality (professedly “incontinent”). od
BUDDHISM IN INDIA
187
those who pretended to worth on the strength of birth. He
taught the people the plain rules of conduct conducive to
emancipation, emphasizing above all the impermanence of
all constituent things, the non-reality of “soul," and the
need of suppressing “thirst,” that is, of extinguishing the
craving for a heavenly existence and its delights, which
is detrimental to a calm and reasonable life on earth. His
Eight Precepts showed how such a life might be attained.
“Right belief” means that one must not blindly accept
traditional teaching in regard to “soul" and other beliefs.
“Right resolve ” means that one must be of a lofty mind.
“Right life and effort" mean that one should so live as not
to injure other living creatures; one should learn to control
oneself.
The old thought of the Upanishads was that the universe
is a whole and that individuality, enforced by rebirth, implies
ignorance, which results in sorrow; but in Buddha's con-
ception the thought is rather that the release from individ-
uality ends the struggle of existence, which it is a gain to
lose altogether, for its grief is great. It remained for the
later church to rediscover the gain of continuing to live in a
higher form of life.
According to the creed ascribed to Buddha, error is a
state of bondage represented by ten “fetters " or delusions,
which a Buddhist must unfasten. These impediments of
truth are not only the delusions of ignorance, self-righteous-
ness, pride, and the desire for future life in a bodiless or
embodied form, in heaven or on earth, but also the delu-
sions of ill-will and lust, and, further, three most important
delusions, first, the belief in soul, second, the lack of belief
in Buddha as a guide, or in the law, order, and training,
or in Karma, and thirdly, the belief that rites and ceremonies
are a means of emancipation. To doubt the Buddha, his
law and order and the training enjoined by him, and the
doctrine of Karma, is entered as one “fetter of doubt"
and is regarded as the most iniportant delusion next to the
belief in a soul.
188
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
As Buddha did not believe in soul, he had in reality no
psychology, for there was no psyche. The Brahmans be-
lieved in a special entity, defined as being the size of a .
thumb, concealed in the body and called the real Self or
soul, Atman, the Ego. Buddha said that there was no such
soul, only a complex or confection of thought and feeling,
all the qualities and capabilities of this confection being
expressed as form, sensation, conception (perception), dis-
crimination (or action), and consciousness (or sense).
This quasi Self begins its career conditioned by Karma,
which comes from a former life and is due to ignorance.
This leads to a predisposition to action and to action itself;
and this, again, to consciousness (“recognition”). Con-
sciousness, one of the elements of this Self, is then the
prius to self-consciousness or individuality (“ name and
form"); from which comes the group of senses, producing
touch, which leads to sensation. Out of sensation comes
desire, and from desire comes attachment, from which, in ...
turn, arises a state of becoming, leading to actual being and
birth, and, finally, from birth comes pain (grief). As a
chain of causation explaining individual existence this con-
geries has obvious defects. Ignorance must have come from
a previous birth, for ignorance of the Four Truths is in-
tended, as the only alternative is to suppose that ignorance
implies the doctrine of cosmic illusion. But as the first
link in the chain leading to being, it cannot explain being
which it presupposes. Who or what possesses ignorance.
before possessing consciousness? The usual discourse on
the Four Truths and Eight Precepts does not suggest the
necessity of going back of " desire ” as an explanation of
existence. The chain appears to be an attempt to foist a
Yoga scheme upon an original Buddhistic scheme. Some
texts make consciousness the first link in the chain. But
though the scheme may not be Buddha's own, the belief
in Karma must belong, if not to him, at least to the early
teachers, as it permeates Buddhism. One of the Nikayas
(Anguttara) says: “ Deeds ripen; when they ripen one
BUDDHISM IN INDIA
189
experiences the fruit thereof, either in the present or in a
subsequent life." This is quite Brahmanistic in its clarity
as to Karma and its fruit.
Desire in this philosophy means a craving for the satis-
faction of living, leading to attachment to the world and
life. It is not love or passion, but the two are included un-
der it. Many passages show that, to the Buddhist mendi-
cant, love and even affection were as dangerous as passion.
He must break all home ties; must not be fettered by a
love of family any more than by a love of woman. Buddha
himself set the example of abandoning those who loved him.
Desire is legitimate and even needful when it means the
desire of a better life, the desire of emancipation; but all
ties including earthly love must be got rid of: "He who
is free from love is free from grief and fear.” Buddha
was afraid of women, regarding them as “ torches that
light the road to hell," and only protestingly permitted them
to enter the order. But there was no restriction put upon
the laymen regarding marriage, though love was felt to be
an obstacle to his release. The Buddhist in general, whether
mendicant or layman, is enjoined to have an all-embracing
compassion and pity rather than love for others. Every
excess, even of sentiment, is deprecated. One must follow
the Middle Way, avoid all extremes, not be very ascetic
nor too prone to pleasure. It is a reasonable doctrine and
the disciples are not at all unhappy. They loudly delight in
their lives of “joy without enemies, health among those
that are ill." Their pure pleasure is in feeling that they
are free from the burden of fear, superstition, and cere-
monies. They can even attain the perfect state of extinc-
tion of evil (desire and its fruit) in this life. They do not
tent await the end.
There is, however, another side to this peaceful serenity.
The primitive Buddhist of this sort is almost too self-con-
tained, too cold, too fond of rejoicing in his own health
when others are ill. He appears to be a sensible but very
190
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
selfish individual. He saves himself alone. He recognizes
no obligation toward others save the negative one of not
injuring them. He embraces all in his rather contemptu-
ous “pity," but he is far from exerting himself to aid any
one. Each for himself, is his creed. Buddha, he believed,
renounced his own emancipation to preach to others; but
it does not occur to the primitive disciple to do more than
preach in the present. . He has no ambition to be born again
for the good of mankind. He lives to become a Worthy
(Arhat), one worthy to escape the coil of life.
In the course of time this began to seem rather a narrow
view and by the second (perhaps third) century B. C. the
tendency to imitate the Master affected the church and
ision of doc Master affectea century B.
of the school known as Mahayana, Great Vehicle. The
Bodhisattvas, as the adherents of this school termed them-
selves, basing their belief on a reputed saying of Buddha,
held that Gautama Buddha was only one of a series of
Buddha-existences, who had given up felicity to aid the
world and save others. All men may become Bodhisats,
“creatures of wisdom," and this accordingly is the goal
they ought to seek. Each should follow the Master and
like him save others. Altruistic as was this aim, it was
looked upon at first as rather an ideal than a practical
procedure and the Mahayana way was more praised than
pursued (circa 200 B. C.). But with this idea of self-sac-
rifice went also a different conception regarding Buddha.
He was now no longer looked upon as a mere man but as
a superman; his birth, it was said, was accompanied by
flowers falling from heaven; at his death the earth quaked;
his mother was a virgin, his birth was immaculate; in short
he became a supernatural being. This thought, that Buddha
was more than man, probably began soon after the Mas-
ter's death and by the time of Ashoka, in the third century
B. C., it was not only established but embellished, while
every century added to the tale, so that both the Hina and
BUDDHISM IN INDIA
191
Maha (Little and Great) Vehicles devoutly believed in
Buddha's supramundane powers and excellencies.
When to this was added the idea that to be a Worthy
(Arhat) was really an unworthy aim, that any one might
become a Bodhisat, and that, when a birth or two more
had loosened the last tie, one might even become a Buddha,
the way was open to the creation of endless superhuman
beings of Bodhisat and Buddha nature. Naturally, too, the
Bodhisat in embryo rather looked down upon the unworthy
Worthy. Then he began to taunt the Worthy and called
his brother's faith and school the Defective School (Ve-
hicle) or the Little as compared with his own Great School;
though it was not for centuries that the Great Vehicle
showed numerical superiority to the Little Vehicle. In the
sixth century A. D., the disciples of the old school still made
two-thirds of the church.
While these schools divided the church, they did not
cause a schism. All were still one flock, though they were
in very different folds. In some regards the Great Vehicle
became a better vehicle of religion than that of the primitive
church. It had a higher ideal; it developed a new phi-
losophy, which practically taught the existence of a saviour !
and a God. But, in its emphasis on the spiritual side, it !
neglected the mental discipline and self-control of the older
school and lost itself in fantastic imaginings. It won its
ideal from idealism, which it apparently borrowed from
Brahmanic philosophy. The primitive church had three ar-
ticles of faith embodied in the confession of the neo-
phyte: “I believe in Buddha, as a sure guide, in the
Dharma (the law of Buddha), and in the Sangha (church).”
The "body of the law” was to the early church a literal
body of law, or at most it was the Buddha still incarnate,
so to speak, in his doctrines. But the word dharma,
meaning “support," meant not only the hold, the law, but
also the thing that holds, even the substance, and, as it were,
playing on the last meaning, the Great Vehicle interpreted
192
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
this Dharmakaya (body of dharma) as the eternal being
or support and substance of the world (what other systems
call the Absolute). Moreover, this school taught not only
that Karma might affect others as well as one's self, but
even that it might be transferred from one individual to
another; more strictly, that the merit obtained by Karma.
might in the infinite mercy of a Bodhisat serve as a kind
of vicarious atonement. Buddha taught, according to the
old texts, that Nirvana was the extinction of desire and
its fruits (individuality, rebirth) and likened this extinction
to that of a lamp: “What remains when the flame is ex-
tinguished ?" To him, metaphysical questions, even the
question whether man lived at all hereafter, were “ walking
in the jungle of delusions.” He said most emphatically,
when pressed for an answer: “When one who is delivered
from individuality dies, he goes out like a flame and,can-
not be regarded as existent. That by which they say he is,
exists for him no more.” He acknowledged no Supreme
Being, who is all intelligence and love, such as the “ Body
of Dharma ” is conceived by the late Mahayana. The Little
Vehicle made Buddha the Tathagata, "he who has arrived
(at the goal)." The Great Vehicle made him a form of the
Bhuta-tathata or Godhead as ultimate postulate of existence.
This interpretation is probably not older than the fifth cen-
tury A. D. In it the Absolute appears in three forms, a kind
of trinity, first as the “ Body of transformation," that is, as
the historic but divine Buddha in the flesh; then as an infinite
yet corporeal “ Body of Bliss” (answering to the concep-
tion of God as a person); and then as a “Body of Exist-
ence,” the Godhead or Ultimate. It (now He) appears as
a supramundane power in the form of Amitabha, endless
light, Amitayus, endless life, Vairocana, the glory or
sun, Maitreya, the loving one, names of Buddhas, exist-
ing or to come, as forms of the principle of existence. Ac-
cording to the Mahayana, the cosmic unity, called “ Body
of Existence” is an object of religious veneration and wor-
ship, for it is a spiritual existence; it has thought and action
BUDDHISM IN INDIA
193
and will. It may appear anywhere on earth as a particular
being, Buddha or any other sage, so that modern adherents
of this school regard Christ and Confucius as such par-
ticular forms of the Dharmakaya. Any man, though sub-
ject to organic laws, may be or must be a part of this tran-
scendental intelligence. It is thus, in Brahmanic language,
“ qualified” or “non-qualified.” As the latter, it cannot
be defined, for to define is to confine, to limit, and it is
illimitable. It is a void, emptiness, as transcending form,
a“ vast vacuity and nothing holy," as the prince of Benares
said when interrogated by the Chinese emperor, a no-ness,
reminding one of the “no, no" (negation of the Upani-
shads when explaining Brahma. Yet this no-ness is the
fountain-head of wisdom and compassion and as such cor-
responds to God. Naturally, with this view of the Bod-
hisat and the Dharma, was associated the soul-theory, which
to Buddha was anathema. It was, in fact, current soon
after his death, for “soul-view" is expressly stated to be
a heresy of the early church, and it afterwards became a
general belief. Yet some Buddhist philosophers repudiated
not only the soul of the individual but, in their later discus-
sions, extended the anatman, non-soul, theory even to a re-
pudiation of the noumenal reality of existence.
The Bodhisat cannot rest in the bliss of Nirvana but must
satisfy his unselfish heart by saving others through various
means, such as giving over his accumulated merit. As a
Buddha, this being can manifest himself everywhere at
once; light streams from his forehead; he appears like an
angel, but not as a “messenger” of another, for he acts
of his own volition. To attain this state, however, the
aspirant must pass through ten stages. In distinction from
the primitive Hinayanist (adherent of the Little Vehicle),
the Bodhisat may be termed the liberal Buddhist, not wholly.
on account of his faith but because of his general attitude.
The primitive is a formalist. His law says " kill not,” and
the Little-brother will not go to war. But the Great-
brother fights; he also mingles with the world and even
194
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
ventures to define Nirvana itself as “the flow of life and
death,” yas samaras tat nirvanam. Sin and evil are to
him but phases of Nirvana, which is the purification of
existence. Thus Nirvana may appear as the Absolute, as
when Nirvana is one with Dharmakaya, or in the form
attained by men, with a residue of pain, or in a form of
supranundane bliss, also attainable by men, where the
pain of birth has ceased, or, finally, in the form attainable
only by a Buddha, in which intellectual prejudice, the hard-
est tie, and all other fetters have been broken. Not all the
Mahayanists hold all these views. Some are Nihilists and
some belong to the Yogacara sect, a purely ideal monisin,
for like the early church the Great Vehicle has different
schools within itself. Another, though slighter, difference
between the teachings of the two main bodies may be no-
ticed. The doctrine of the Middle Way always meant to
the Hina school what Buddha repeatedly declared it to be,
a mean between indulgence in material pleasures and ascet-
icism. The Mahayana interprets it as a mean between ex-
cess of sentimentality and excess of intellectuality. A rea-
sonable avoidance of sensuality and of self-torturing ascet-
icism is thus converted into the avoidance of too great in-
tellectual effort as well as of hedonism.
We must notice here the fact that the most striking paral-
lels between the narrative or legendary elements of Bud-
Thism and Christianity come from the later Buddhist his-
tories, some of which belong to a period long after the
Christian era. Certain stories are common to both Bud-
dhist and Christian tradition and were probably developed
independently in each. A very few offer parallels so close
as to make it quite possible that one church has borrowed
from the other. Popular books on the subject are apt to
exaggerate both the number and character of cogent paral-
lels, while minimizing the important factor of dates, as
when, to support the thesis that Christianity borrowed
1 For this reason no one definition defines Nirvana. It was literal
extinction to Buddha, but to Buddhism it became bliss and heaven.
tween what Bhe Mida, main bo
BUDDHISM IN INDIA
195
1
from Buddhism, it is stated that Buddha preached so that
all who heard him, no matter what the hearer's mother-
tongue, could understand. This gift of tongues is indeed
suggestive of a loan, but as it is first found in a Ceylonese
work of the thirteenth century the borrower cannot have
been a Christian. Jataka parallels are all taken from a
“ History of Buddha's Previous Births," which dates from
the fifth century A. D., though containing, of course, older
matter. But if a parallel occurs only in the Jataka prose,
as we have it now, it cannot be assumed that it is pre-
Christian. The Presentation in the Temple is a parallel of
uncertain date, but only later writers make the child to be
"twelve years of age," apparently borrowing from Chris-
tian tradition. The fast and temptation in the original form
differ materially from the later. The fast was one of
twenty-eight days; later tradition made it forty-nine days.
When we consider that a forty-days' fast is quite Jewish, it
does not seem reasonable to draw the conclusion that
Buddha's fast was converted by a loan into that of Christ.
Buddha's temptation by the Evil One (Death) is certainly
much older than the story of Christ's temptation by Satan
and it is historically possible that the Christian story was
borrowed; but again it may have been independently con-
ceived. Finally, some of these parallels are plain fakes,
invented for popular delusion, such as the statements that
Buddha was born on Dec. 25th and began to preach at the
age when Christ began to preach. Buddha was thirty-five
or thirty-six when he began to preach (he spent seven years
in study after deserting his family) and his birthday is
unknown."
1 This loan-question is, in any event, not important. It is an his-
torical problem concerning minor details of the intercourse between
Christianity and Buddhism, affecting no fundamental truths or
teachings in either religion. The Roman Catholic Church, doubtless
by accident, has admitted a forni of Buddha into its list of saints and
such later loans may well have followed earlier loans. They begin
to be probable in the Apocryphal Gospels of the second century, at
which time there really seems to have been Buddhistic influence, felt
and retained by the Christian Church. Christianity appears to have
196
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
The Buddhist church as a religious machine was of im-
mense value. The earlier Brahmans had no congregation,
no body, no authoritative head; they were a heterogeneous
group of mutually antagonistic sages and priests, forever
| rivalling and belittling each other, without closer connex-
ion than a loose caste-relation. Buddha founded a church
which inade a compact organization. Each congregation
locally met twice a month to confess faults and later showed
respect or worship of Buddha by erecting tumuli over his
supposed remains and offering flowers there. The mendi-
cants were vowed to moderate privation, could not accept
gold, had to sleep on the floor, might not use garlands and
perfumes, nor eat at night. The lay brother and mendicant
both were vowed to ordinary rules of morality: not to kill,
steal, lie, or drink intoxicants; to be pure, abstemious, and
to abstain from plays, dancing, and singing (probably more
or less immoral). The mendicant might leave the order and
join it again at pleasure. While a mendicant, he begged his
food daily and devoted the rest of his time to meditation or
suitable conversation. The early Buddhists were not strict
vegetarians, as they became later.
Adopted as a state religion about the iniddle of the third
century B. C., Buddhism was soon introduced in the primi-
penetrated into India before 300 A.D. Christian docetic doctrine
may have been affected by Hindu philosophy. Garbe years ago
rightly made a distinction between the N. T. Gospels and the Apo-
cryphal Gospels: “The narratives of the canonical Gospels which
accord with Buddhist stories do not at all bear a specifically Bud-
dhistic or even a specifically Indian character; their origin is entirely
comprehensible without the hypothesis of an Indian derivation. On
the other hand, the stories of the Apocryphal Gospels, parallels
to which exist in Buddhist literature, shows genuine features of
India's romantic lore.” Contributions, Chicago, 1911, p. I. See on
this subject the author's India Old and New, p. 125f., and more re-
cently the less probable speculations of Garbe, Indien und das
Christentum, Tübingen, 1914; also the searching criticism of Vallée
Poussin in the Revue des sciences phil. et théol., 19.12, and Kennedy
in the Journ. Royal Asiat. Soc., 1917. Of the four “parallels " now
recognized by Garbe, two are not found till c. 500 A. D., the third may
be as late, and the fourth (the temptation) is of very general
character.
BUDDHISM IN INDIA
197
tive form to Ceylon and the East; in both forins it came to
China in the first centuries after our era and to Korea and
Japan from the second to the sixth centuries A. D. Burma
and Siam, where it was introduced in the fifth and seventh
centuries, A. D., respectively, alone keep the primitive forni
of Buddhism, though in Burma the Buddhists today are
really animists. Ceylon now has a mixed type, originally
primitive but overlaid with liberal doctrine.
The literature of both Vehicles is enormous and can here
be sketched only in outline. The canon of the primitive
.church consists of three collections (Pitakas) called Dis-
cipline (Vinaya), Logia (Sutta), and Mental Conditions
(Abhidhamma), to which as supplements are appended the
Jatakas (Birth Stories), and various bodies of songs and
aphorisms, such as the Hymnns of the Elders (Theragathas)
and the Path of Religion (Dhammapada). There are so-
called histories (Vamshas) of Buddha and of the Ceylon
branch of the primitive church and a heterogeneous epical
history of Buddha called the Mahavastu containing much
late material of stories and marvels, dating in its entirety
from the first to the fourth century of our era. Ashvagh-
osha, a great poet of the first or second century A. D. (pos-
sibly later), wrote a Life of Buddha in poetic form, of
which a part only is extant. The author was a converted
Brahman of the Little Vehicle, who afterwards formulated
or adopted the principles of the Great Vehicle, laying great
weight on bhakti, loving devotion to Buddha as a divine
saviour, an element foreign to primitive Buddhism. He
may be the author of the Awakening of Faith (Shrad-
dhotpada), translated into Chinese in the sixth century.
Another writer of this school is Buddhaghosha, who, be-
sides commentaries, wrote (c. 500 A. D.) a work called the
Way of Purity (Visuddhismagga). The Wonder Tales
(Avadana) belong to both schools. The most important
texts of the Great Vehicle are the Lalita Vistara (“Long
account of the Sport” of Buddha as a godlike being) and
the Sad-dharma-pundarika (Lotus of the True Law). The
1
198
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
former appears to be a revision and extension of a Hina
text compiled by sundry authors from the second or third
century to the fourth or fifth, possibly the sixth, century
A. D. In it Buddha is surrounded by 33,000 Bodhisats and
knows sixty-four alphabets, including those of the Huns
and Chinese! The Lotus was known to Fahien, a Chinese
pilgrim, circa 400 A. D., and was probably composed a couple
of centuries earlier. It is one of the nine late texts of the
Great Vehicle, revealing a very advanced state of religious
art and representing Buddha as God (Creator of the world
and self-existent), whose grace alone can save. Religion in
this period becomes a mere act of devotion; to bow to
Buddha is all that is necessary; all else rests with his grace.
The Buddha most affected in the Lotus is called Avalo-
kiteshvara, “ looking down” (with pity), while in the Suk-
havati (Happy Land), another text of this school, the most
praised form is that of Amitabha (“ endless glory”).
These two are the texts regarded as authoritative in the
Shinshu sect of Japan, while Manjushri, a Bodhisattva next
in dignity to Avalokiteshvara, is the ideal of the Japanese
Kegon sect.
In reading and citing from this literature it must be re-
membered that even the canon of the primitive church was
and though by the time of Ashoka it probably existed some-
what as it is now, yet no mention of the Tipitaka (three-
fold canon) is made before the first century of our era,
while all the Great Vehicle texts are at least as late as the
first or second century after Christ. The Jatakas were not
reduced to writing till 500 A. D. Passages cited from the
Lalita Vistara, for example, may be as late as the third,
fourth, or even sixth century A. D. Only when one of
these late texts is corroborated by other irrefragable evi-
dence may it be used to depict Buddhistic belief of the
early centuries B. C. The same remark applies, though not
so drastically, to the canon called Tipitaka. It may in any
one case indicate the belief of the Buddhists of the third
BUDDHISM IN INDIA
199
century B. C. and it may not. No one can tell what addi-
tions were made to the Pali texts 1 before they became what
they now are. Buddha's own Logia were not in the same
dialect as that of the Pali texts, and after he uttered his
sayings centuries elapsed before any written record was
made of them. Still less is it probable that the scholasticism
of the Abhidhamma reverts to the fifth century B. c. The
philosophy of both the Little and Great Schools probably
reflects centuries of contact with Brahmanism and it is a
significant fact that the greatest Buddhist philosophers were
converted Brahmans born several centuries after the Chris-
tian era.
How far the philosophy of Buddhism represents the re-
ligion at all, may be questioned. Most of the early Bud-
dhists seem to be satisfied with the simple scheme of salva-
tion, not from sin but from life, expounded in the dis- v
courses of Buddha. But the thought of the Brahmanic
disciples who were converted to the Buddhistic faith in
the first centuries of our era was already primed with their
own previous philosophy, just as that of the Christian Fa-
thers of the third century was primed with Greek thought,
and their adhesion to Buddhism resulted in transforming that
faith into schools of philosophy reflecting Brahmanic ideas.
The most prominent of the early Mahayanists was a Brah-
man philosopher, Nagarjuna, who lived a little later than
Ashvaghosha, possibly in the second century A.D. He
represents the Negativist or Nihilist school of Madhyami-
kas, 3 who deny all existence. A work called Prajnapara-
mita in 100,000 verses is ascribed to him. This work and
1 The Little Vehicle texts appear chiefly in Pali, a conven-
tionalized dialect of the Ceylon branch; Buddha spoke in the
Magadhi dialect. Most of the Sanskrit Buddhistic works belong to
the Great Vehicle.
2 This is the cool assumption made in a recent translation of the
Abhidhamma. It is about as reasonable as to refer to Augustine's
works as theology of the year one. Buddha was of the fifth cen-
tury B. C., but Buddhistic works in their present form are all much
later.
8 See for this school L. de La Vallée Poussin, Le Buddhism,
200
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
the (Great Vehicle text) Sukhavati-vyuha are said to have
been translated into Chinese in the second century of our
era (the oldest Chinese translations of Buddhist texts, 67
A. D., may not be from Mahayana texts).
Ashvaghosha himself was perhaps the founder of the
idealistic school of the Mahayana called Yogacara, but this
is usually referred to the later Asanga. The doctrines of
this school derive from Brahmanic Yoga and may even
have been influenced by Manichaean and later Platonic
ideas. The Bhumishastra of the Yogacara was translated
into Chinese before 421 A. D. and this work is ascribed to
Asanga. If not the founder of the Yogacara, Asanga is
at least its representative teacher. His school, like the
Shunyavada or negativist doctrine, denies phenomenal exist-
ence, but it recognizes existence in thought, and hence is
called idealistic (it may be called a dogmatic realism). On
the whole we may set the systematic exposition of the
Yogacara in the fourth century A. D. Asanga was active in
the latter half of the fourth and first half of the fifth cen-
turies (375-450?). Asanga and his older brother Vasu-
bandhu were Brahmans of the Kaushika school and were
converted to Buddhism, at first as Hinayanists of the Sar-
vasti-vada, which affirms that “all exists." 1 Afterwards
Paris, 1909, D. 189f.;. 290f. Nagarjuna's school founded some of the
far-eastern sects.
1 The truth between extremes is professed by the Middle Path
of the Mahayana. Hinayana divides reality into phenomenal and
noumenal (Nirvana) spheres, the phenomenal embracing physical
and psychic, both physical and psychic phenomena having objective
reality, but as impermanent (in flux). The noumenal sphere,
though real, is void of phenomena. Radical Mahayana, on the
other hand, denies the reality of the phenomenal world; the out-
side world is mental illusion; even the self (of self-consciousness)
has no real existence; of the noumenal world one can speak only
by negations. Conservative Mahayana, however, regards this view
as extreme. It asserts that the phenomenal world is real because
it is one with the noumenal world. It manifests the noumenal (but
has no distinct existence). The oneness of the Real (dharma of
non-duality) is the only thing we know but it cannot be defined;
whether being or not-being or a state between be existence, whether
things are or are not or are neither, no one can know.
BUDDHISM IN INDIA
201
both brothers appear as Mahayanists. Vasubandhu, who
is said to have been converted to the Mahayana in his old
age by Asanga, commented on the Lotus and other texts.
According to this school, the foundation of all psychic
processes is Bodhi, absolute truth and saving wisdom, but
this is attainable only for one who has practised Yoga
through ten grades of exercises of mystic sort, like those
practised by the Brahmanic Yogins. 1
Such psychic hygienic exercises really aimed at getting
Yoga-power and soon became mere magical practices, in
which the Mahayana texts were used as magic formulas,
Dharanis. This led straight to the Tantric cult, wherein
Buddhistic saints mingled confusedly with Shivaite gods
and goddesses, especially Tara, a goddess and “female
form” of Avalokiteshvara (sixth century). The most im-
portant Tantric exercises have to do with mystic dia-
grams, syllables, hand-movements, and with magical rites
on the eighth day of the half-months. This Tantra-yana or
third school of Buddhism, is really nothing more than a
combination of Shivaism, with its animism and magic, and
Buddhistic names. It no more deserves to be called a
school of Buddhism than does the combination of Yoga and
deception, or ignorance, which today calls itself Esoteric
Buddhism. But worse was still to come.
For Buddhism unhappily did not die in its glory in India,
but gradually became merged with forms of the Brahmanic
faith, till little of the original belief was left in the west,
while in the east and north it was perpetuated under new
conditions, generally in a debased form. Yet even in the
ninth and tenth centuries there were Buddhist kings and
a Buddhist temple was built in 1276, while the restoration
of the shrine at Bodh Gaya in 1331 shows that the old
tradition of the faith still survived. As late as the six-
teenth century Buddhism was still to be found in Bengal
and Orissa.
1 See the Sutralam kara (of Asanga) by Sylvain Lévi, 2 vols.,
Paris, 1907–11.
2
202
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
After the seventh century, however, the older Yogacara
tended to become replaced by Mantra-yana, a school which
substituted Mantras, religious formulas conceived in sym-
bolic syllables, for the Dharanis. This in turn: was suc-
ceeded by the so-called Vajra-yana, a more mystic and sen-
sual interpretation of the Mahayana. All is here conceived
in materialistic terms. The mind bent on Bodhi, saving wis-
dom, falls into the embrace of the (female) Niratma Devi
at the top of the formless (Arupa) heaven. This symbolic
process was interpreted rather too literally by the lower
classes and represents the third stage in intellectual descent
(from Mahayana to the Dharanis, from these to the use of
Mantras, and from these to the Vajra-yana). But a still
lower form of Buddhistic religion was that called the Ve-
hicle of the Wheel of Time, Kala-cakra-yana, which fol-
lowed the Vajra-yana (though Nepalese Buddhism still re-
mains mostly Vajra-yana). The Kala-cakra is the wheel of
destructive Time, and this Vehicle is in sum nothing but
demon-worship as a means of protection against destruc-
tion. Buddha here becomes a mere demon. Another form
of Buddhism (c. 900-1000 A. D.) in this decadent stage is
that mixed with Brahmanism, the Nathamarga, a sort of
Yoga-practice devoted to indrawing of breath and other
spiritual exercises, directed, however, to winning success
in this world rather than any spiritual gain. There was
also at this time a carnal road to salvation practised by the
lower classes of Buddhist and Brahmans called Sahaji-
yas, sages still worshipped, and sacrificed to, in Thibet.
Later Tantric worship, mainly of the Shakti or female ele-
ment, was not recognized before the sixteenth century. It
was designed chiefly for women and slaves, for the deities
are said to "prefer low castes.” This debauched religious
type, introduced in the twelfth century, but gradually
adopted by the upper classes, is supposed by some scholars
to derive from Scythian sources; but it is quite explicable
on India's own polluted soil, where any form of erotic
mysticism has thriven for a thousand years. Modern Tan-
BUDDHISM IN INDIA
203
trism pretends to be literary and conceals its indecency
under a thin garb of philosophy, palpably recent but pre-
tending to be ancient. What is ancient is the cult of ero-
ticism and inebriety; what is recent is the philosophic frame-
work, the exaltation of the female principle.
In Tibet,1 where Buddhism was at home in the seventh
century, although there was a form of Buddhism which
was practically theistic, the worship of the “ Original
Buddha," yet on the whole the church was pervaded with
gross superstition. Demonology rather than theology was
the care even of the higher minds. This branch, possibly
influenced by Nestorianism, had a ritual like that of the
Christian church, a' pope (Lama), bishops, clergy who
officiated in cathedrals adorned with images and pictures, at
services where incense and the tinkling bell reminded the
first Christian missionaries of home — much to their horror,
for they thought that the Devil had taught the Tibetans a
mockery of Catholicism. These Lamaists are divided into
two sects, distinguished by colours, red and yellow.
Although, like all vigorous religious organizations, Bud-
dhism split into (seventeen) heresies and (sixty-two)
sects, even the great distinction between Little and Great
Yanas has not broken it. In fact some of the literature,
like the famous Questions of Milinda, a theological tract of
the second century A. D., has remained common to both
sections, and of course both are built upon a great body
of common beliefs. In India Buddhism has disappeared,
except as it is resuscitated today by missionaries, but we
shall trace its growth and still living faith in the religions
of China and Japan.
1 The original Tibet religion was the Bon, which recognized
spirits in all natural phenomena, irascible but placated by stones
piled on a hill, and ghosts, placated (bribed) to keep away. But the
only lasting ghosts were those of the earthly aristocrats. The priest
was a Shaman, a magician, healer, banisher of evil spirits, and also a
prophet. Much of this native religion still lingers in Lamaism.
2 The 252 “heresies” of c. 252 B. C. were chiefly differences of
opinion regarding unimportant practices.
204
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
BIBLIOGRAPHY
H. C. Warren, Buddhism in Translations, Cambridge, Mass.,
1896.
Buddhist Texts, translated in Sacred Books of the East, x, xi,
xiii, xvii, xx, xxi, xxxy-vi, xlix.
Sayings of Buddha, J. H. Moore, Itivuttaka, New York, 1908. .
H. Kern, Manual of Indian Buddhism, Strassburg, 1896.
H. Oldenberg, Buddha, 5th ed., Stuttgart, 1906.
T. W. Rhys Davids, Buddhist India, New York, 1907; Indian
Buddhism, Hibbert Lectures, London, 1891; Dialogues of
the Buddha, 2 vols., London, 1899-1910.
G. F. Moore, Metempsychosis, Cambridge, Mass., 1914.
A. J. Edmunds, Hymns of the Faith, the Dhammapada, Chicago,
1902; Buddhist and Christian Gospels, Philadelphia, 1908.
L. de la Vallée Poussin, Buddhisme, Paris, 1909.
D. T. Suzuki, Outlines of Mahayana Buddhism, London, 1907.
E. B. Cowell, The Jatakas, Cambridge, 1895–1913. Six vol-
umes of Birth-stories translated.
W. Geiger, The Mahavamsa, Ceylon Chronicle, London, 1912.
This and the following volumes are published by the Pali
Text Society.
S. Z. Aung, Compendium of Philosophy, London, 1910.
Mrs. C. Ā. F. Rhys Davids, Buddhist Psychology, 1914;
Psalms of the Early Buddhists, 2 vols., 1908 and 1913.
F. L. Woodward, Manual of a Mystic, London, 1916.
See also under the Religions of Japan.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
HINDU SECTARIAN RELIGIONS
The effort to establish triads of gods is the counterpart of
the tendency to make the one god three-fold. In an early
theosophical essay it is said that there are in reality only
three deities, one of earth, Fire; one of the atmosphere,
Wind or Indra; and one “whose place is in the sky, dyu,
and his name is Surya” (sun). It is the sun-god who
“measures out the spaces" (compare Habakkuk iii. 6," he
stood and measured the earth"), under both the name of
Surya and that of Vishnu. The oldest interpreters of the
Veda understood Vishnu to be the sun-god or the three-
fold god who appears as fire, lightning, and sun in three
wide strides. His topmost step is also that "abode of
honey" in the sky whither the worshipper hopes to go, the
highest sphere which the stride itself established, and which
he, the good “cowherd” (compare our use of shepherd)
ever guards.1 A later mythology combines with this a story
of Vishnu as a dwarf suddenly enlarging his size and in
three strides encompassing earth; but the traditional Hindu
understanding of Vishnu down to the Bhagavad-gita is that
Vishnu is the kindly sun-god and as such, rather than the
war-god or than Shiva, he was worshipped by philosopher
and agriculturista The god of the lower classes, whom the
orthodox priests identified with the lightning-god Rudra,
was Shiva, A third great god was the personified Power
Brahma, whom, to distinguish as (masculine) personal from
the abstract (neuter) Power, we may call Brahman. He
is identified with the old Father-god and was generally
1 Compare the descriptions of Vishnu in Rig Veda I. 22, 90, and
154 with the Nirukta, vii. 5.
205
206
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
« three godshere had been a whole, as
recognized as the head of the orthodox Brahmanic pan-
theon. So the early texts of the Buddhists regard him as
the greatest god the Brahmans had. Very much later,
probably not before 300 or 400 A. D., simply in order to
unite the warring factions of the strictly orthodox Brahman-
worshippers, the then sectarian Vishnu-worshippers, and
the Shiva-worshippers, there was a formal union of these
great gods as “three gods in one ” or strictly " three forms,"
tri-murti, as previously there had been an attempt to unite
the two sectarian gods under a dual whole, as Vishnu-
Shiva, or Hari-Hara. The Smartas or traditionalists
(orthodox) have always looked askance but with enforced
indulgence at these sects and have been ready to accept
their followers provided they did not break too completely
with the received religion, as the Brahmans' religious text-
books provide offerings for the various spirits of the sec-
tarian cults.
Though in the Trimurti the three gods appear as Creator,
Preserver, and Destroyer, each member of the triad had
originally all these implied functions. Even Brahman, who
as Creator is popularly supposed to have done his work at
the beginning and ceased to be active, was a busy god till
the first centuries of our era, protecting and destroying as
well as creating. But he has finally dropped out of sight
and in all India there are only two temples where he is the
god. Shiva, the last of the triad, is a case of the first
shall be last, for he is the first of the three to become an
All-god. In contrast with kindly Vishnu, he represents the
fearful power in nature; he is god of robbers and thieves;
lord of cattle, for he slays them with his lightning; terri-
ble, monstrous, but called shiva, kind, euphemistically, yet
really austere, hence the god of ascetics. He lives in ceme-
teries, is adorned with skulls, garbed with snakes and ashes;
or again he madly dances on the mountain tops, the god
whom the Greeks took to be Dionysos because of the orgias-
tic traits in his character. Shiva is all one fears, yet a per-
sonal transcendent god. Shivaism was acceptable to Bud-
HINDU SECTARIAN RELIGIONS
207
dhism, for both were closely connected with Sankhyan
dualism. Shiva always remained a scholar's god, as because
of his dancing he was the god of the dramatist, while his
austerity alone would be enough to endear him to the phi-
losopher, who made him an All-god.
As a visible god Shiva bears a trident and rosary;1 the
crescent is on his brow; he has three eyes, with one of which
he consumed Kama, the god of love; and his wife is the
Mountain-goddess, Uma, Parvati, called the terrible, and
destructive mother, Kali, Durga, patroness of Thugs, a
wild-tribe goddess, fitly associated with Shiva, who had in
fact the same origin. In later literature, Shiva has the
phallus, lingam, as sign of his productive powers; his ani-
mals, boar and bull, probably represent this idea also. All
the wild-tribes when civilized prefer Shiva, and the Brah-
man priests see to it that the local demons of these tribes
are enlisted as forms of this god, who, though he is repre-
sented as having destroyed the orthodox cult, is still close
to it, in preserving austerity and upholding animal sacrifice
(both rejected by Vishnu-worshippers). One of the Shiva
sects called Pashupat, cattle-lord-worshippers, was said to
be “here and there opposed to the (orthodox) books,” but
the division is but metaphysical. The higher intellectual
followers of Shiva are Shivaites only nominally, taking
Shiva as a convenient name for their immanent-transcen-
dental God. Shivaism struggled against Brahmanic con-
trol rather than against Brahmanic belief. Like Buddhism,
it ignored caste and dared to say that caste is of no impor-
tance, for all men are children of one Father.
Included as elements of Shivaism are the worship of his
son, Skanda, the war-god, and that of the elephant-god,
“lord of hosts," who makes and removes difficulties (Ga-
nesha); the Mothers, too, hags of diseases especially adverse
to children, represent another element drawn from the
1 The rosary, conimon to Buddhism and Shivaism, was taken over
by the Christian Church, whose missionaries brought it back from
India.
208
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
Dravidian population. Brutal slaughter often marks Shiva's
cult and he appears in an equally rude female form, whose
cult implies that of the Shakti or female power, which
is found also in other sects but is most conspicuous in
Shivaism and was destined to make the chief factor in the
Tantric rites already mentioned. His devotees were often
found among the Yogins, who studied mesmerism and
occult power-winning long before the Christian era, and
whose pretended powers have given them the name of
Mahatmas. They aimed at imitating Shiva's austerities.
Some, representing sects of the middle ages, still survive,
Nail-men, whose nails grow till they pierce the palms; Sky-
facers, who hold their faces rigidly upward till unable to
bend them back; Up-arm men, who hold up their arms in
the same way; Tree-men, who hang upside down in trees;
Skull-men and Pot-men, who carry these symbols; and
Lingins, who worshipped the phallus itself as Shiva (twelfth
century). Most of these wretches nowadays have no idea
1 what their attitudes and symbols mean; all are intellectually
degraded or mere fakirs. Some of the older sects show
that Shivaism represented a higher thought. The Naku-
lishas, tenth century and later, sought “nearness to God”
through moral life and philosophy. About this time there
was in Kashmir a sect called Recognitioners, who aimed at
"recognizing God in the soul.” It is only thus we can
understand the statement that a philosopher like Shankara
was a Shiva-worshipper. Even the basest of modern sects
had originally an idea and a system behind the symbol,
which has now become their all.
The whole conception of Shiva reverts to a wild god of
native tribes identified with Tucra, a lightning and disease-
god of the Veda, who is also a mountain-cloud phenomenon,
cruel and kindly by turns, and has many epithets, or forms
as names, and to whom is made a bull-sacrifice. He is
taken, this all-pervading terror, as the name of the All-
god in his awful manifestations even in the Upanishads,
though not till they began to name personally the “great
HINDU SECTARIAN RELIGIONS
209
as part ent-cult. belonged Liga
terror," mahad bhayam, which the still earlier Upanishad-
ists called the Brahma. Nor was he then a sectarian god.
His phallus-cult is probably that deprecated in the Rig
Veda as opposed to Aryan worship, that is, it belonged to
un-Aryan inhabitants, as did the serpent-cult, afterwards
adopted from these aborigines as part of the Shiva para-
phernalia. He remained an adapted god of the Brahmans
(not sectarian), till perhaps about the fourth century B. C.,
when his worshippers became exclusively Shivaites, thus
beginning the sectarian worship of this god, whom they
called Maheshvara, Great Lord, etc. By the sixth century
A. D. there were Shiva sects in south India and by the ninth
there were two schools of Shivaism.in Kashmir. Probably
most of the modern sects go back to about this period,
though the elements of Shivaism are much more ancient.
Thus the worship of Mothers, that of Ganesha, and of
Skanda, were older separate cults, gradually amalgamated
with that of Shiva. The Pashupat system of Shivaism
probably began about 200 B.C. Shiva had no systematized
Descents (Avatars). When he appeared on earth, he came
as the great god, not in animal or human form, though
occasionally, in imitation of Vishnu, his worshippers have
invented Avatars for him also. His bull is regarded as a
sacred animal, but not as the god in person.
The worship of Vishnu, who bears the (sun-) discus,
like that of Shiva, takes many forms. First he was re-
vered as Lord, Ishvara, by philosophers who sought to
make him representative of deistic doctrines. Then he was
revered under the name Krishna or Vasudeva, a clan-god
raised to all-god-hood, and later as Rama, another clan-
god of the same sort. After he was recognized in a hu-
i These clan-gods may originally have been clan-men, later deified
as heroes and regarded as local gods; then as clan-gods raised to a
par with the god of gods recognized by a more advanced com-
munity. Heroes in India become divine, and divinities, almost as
soon as they die, sometimes before. On the other hand, it is pos-
sible that both Rama and Krishna were gods interpreted as men.
The evidence for neither view is convincing.
210
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
210
Jains as of revealing 1150, to the red, is ar
man form, the Brahman priests appear to have reasoned
thus: “ Krishna is a form of Vishnu; what about other
divine descents to earth? The fathers said that the Dwarf
was Vishnu. They also said that a divine Fish rescued
Manu; they identified the Fish with Brahman, but we
identify him with Vishnu.” Then they added all the other
condescensions of Vishnu as Descents, Avatars. These
they gleaned from their mythological learning, such as the
Avatar of the Boar, who (originally as Father-God) is said
to have raised earth; or from later lore, such as the man-
lion divinity, who tore an opponent to pieces, or the ancient
Rama-warrior of the Bhrigu clan. Then on various occa-
sions they added more,"such as the spirit called the Swan or
Goose, the sun-bird Garuda, the Tortoise, which bore earth
on its back, and eventually Buddha and even a future
Avatar, Kalkin. The list held at ten for a time, but the
Puranas added as many more, including the founder of the
Jains as an Avatar. These make, as a group, Vishnu's third
method of revealing himself to man, in forms under which
he is worshipped. Also, to the religious person, the soul
within, being one with the One God, is another form; and,
to the mass of people, the spirit in the idol is another.
Krishna, called Vasudeva, 1 is brother of Balarama San-
karshana, a bucolic drunken "ploughman” god, much cele-
brated in epic verse. In sundry early inscriptions and notices
of gods this Sankarshana is regularly associated with Vasu-
deva. Later, Krishna is credited with a son and grandson,
Pradyumna and Aniruddha, of whom the earlier accounts
have nothing to say, but whom the theologians adopt as
metaphysical figures. The only early partner of Krishna
is Sankarshana, the ploughman, his older brother. This
Krishna is the object of a cult originally independent of
1 Originally Krishna is independent even of Vasudeva, who seems
to have been another clan-god, belonging to the Vrishni clan, also
exalted from human or hero estate to the position of god of gods.
But Krishna appears as a Vasudeva-form in the Bhagavad-gita.
2 In the later systems, these relatives represent activities of God.
Thus Caitanya (below) explains Krishna Vasudeva as intelligence,
HINDU SECTARIAN RELIGIONS
211
Vishnu. He is dramatically represented as slaying his
wicked uncle. He is, in fact, a local hero-god whose cult
expanded till he was received into good society and identi-
fied with a Vedic sage of the same name referred to in the
Upanishads. After the Bhagavad-gita, “ the New Testa-
ment of India ” (c. 300-400 B. C.), he was also identified
with the Brahmanic highest spirit called Narayana, a name
in Manu's law-book of Brahman, who in turn was identi-
fied with Vishnu. The earliest religious system of the
Vasudeva-Krishna cult is monotheistic; the god is “god of
gods” and the object of special devotion, bhakti. The cult
of the four forms or manifestations comes later and is
found in the (Vishnu) Pancaratra system, assigned by some
scholars to the third century B. C., but probably considerably
later. The Bhagavad-gita does not yet recognize the iden-
tity of Krishna with Vishnu as All-god, only with Vishnu
as sun-god, nor with the four forms of the Pancaratra
system. It recognizes Krishna as the One God, who loves.
man and whose grace gives salvation. Knowledge and
works are not considered altogether vain, but they are depre-
cated. Faith alone suffices to save. “Give up works; medi-
tate upon me; then am I your saviour; I save those who set
their hearts on me; through my grace are they saved.
They that love me, they are in me and I in them. I am
the father, the mother, the Way (of salvation), the only
Lord and refuge. Even those who worship other gods with
faith and love are really worshipping me alone. He who
gives to me even a flower or water, from him I accept it
as a gift of love and sufficient sacrifice. Whatsoever thou
doest, offerest, or eatest, do it as a sacrifice to me, for I,
Krishna, am God."
Because Vishnu as the sun-god is the topmost god, whose
place is like an eye in the sky, and because his loftiest place
is the abode of bliss, and represents the highest, purest,
Sankarshana as consciousness, Pradyumna as love, and Aniruddha
as sportiveness; older systems interpret Pradyumna as mind and
Aniruddha as consciousness.
212
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
divinity, he rises steadily in esteem from the Vedic to the
Puranic age, a favourite with the mystic philosopher as with
those who preferred the gentle cult of the sun-god to the
wild-abuses of Shiva. In the later epic, the identity of
Vasudeva-Krishna with Vishnu is fully established, al-
though in this same epic there are several passages which
show that there was still strong antagonism against the
ascription of supreme godhead to Vasudeva. He was not
yet universally recognized, but was still more or less of a
local god, though strenuously demanding for himself the
status of God.
There was, however, another Krishna with whom the
saint of the Veda had to divide honours. This was the
cowherd Krishna," whose chief reputation was that of an
amorous swain of cowherds, delight of the maidens, whom
he chases and woos by the dozen. He was a musical,
prank-playing, dancing boy-god, unknown to the Bhagavad-
gita, but recognized in later parts of the epic as identical
with Krishna-Vasudeva. Nothing more incongruous can
be imagined than this union. A sort of Pan, playing his
pipes and chasing girls, is now the majestic All-god called
Vasudeva-Krishna-Vishnu. The easiest explanation is that
two forms of Krishna have united, one the warrior god,
whose glory was attached to the clan-god of the western
Vrishnis, and the other the local Mathura cowherds' god,
of whom as a child one told marvellous feats and as a
youth humorous pranks. His clan is supposed by Professor
Bhandarkar to have been that of the Abhiras. The cultus
is directed to him as the lover-god and this is what has made
Krishna-worship popular among the sentimental religionists
of India from the time of the Gita Govinda in the twelfth
century. Identified with that of Vasudeva-Vishnu, this cult
regards him formally as Supreme Spirit; but the whole tone
of such later sects is that of mystic eroticism centred about
Krishna as the lover-god.
1 This is the Gokula Krishna, whose cult probably arose shortly
before the Christian era and was brahmanized soon after that era.
HINDU SECTARIAN RELIGIONS
213
A third phase of the cult appears still later in the special
worship of the infant Krishna with the Madonna, possibly
a loan from Christianity due to the identification of Krishna
and Christ. Krishna is called Kushto and Krishto in some
of the northern dialects. Such are the forms of Vishnu
the sun-god as All-god on earth. At the same time there
arose an independent growth of sun-worshippers, probably
fostered by Persian influence, so that in the ninth century
of our era there were no less than six sub-sects of Sauras
(sun-worshippers), as there were six devoted to Ganesha,
an indication of the rapid growth of devotees of all kinds
at this period, who worshipped gods still distinct.
The essentially monotheistic Vishnu-religion played a
very important part in combating the influence of Shankara
(born 788 A. D.), who had established monistic idealism and
taught that life was a dream in a world of illusion. Some
time after Vasudeva-Krishna had been identified with
Vishnu the same process raised Rama, the western hero or
godling, to a similar position. The identification of Rama
with Vishnu is perhaps as old as the first centuries of the
Christian era; but there is no cult of him before the tenth
or eleventh century. Ramanuja, in the beginning of the
eleventh century, founded – South Indian church which,
while founded upon the Vedanta philosophy, held a differ-
ent interpretation from that of Shankara. To Ramanuja,
the world and soul are parts or attributes of God; the world,
in short, is not illusive but real. This is the true Upanishad
doctrine, of which the illusion-doctrine is a later phase; it
is a montheism as well as a pantheism. God is eternal, free
of all defects. He pervades the universe; he is creator,
preserver, destroyer. He is, however, incorporate in va-
rious manifestations, the Avatars of Vishnu, but He may
be recognized as the one within the heart. This god one
must worship with bhakti, that is, yoga or devout medita-
1 Bhandarkar, Vaishnavism, Saivism, etc., Strassburg, 1913, p.
38. By the third century A. D., Manichaeism and Mithraism and
probably Christian teaching had already penetrated to India.
2
214
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
.
tion. This church divided into two sects, one holding that
God first extended His grace to save, as a cat seizes its
kitten; the other, that man must first seek to be saved, as
a young monkey must first embrace its mother's neck to
be carried to safety. Hence these sects, still vigorous in
South India, are known as the Cat and the Monkey sects.
They are to the Ramanuja church what Augustinian and
Pelagian doctrines were to the Roman Church. The Pashu-
pats among the Shivaites hold to the cat-theology; but most
of the Shiva-sects are adherents of the monkey-doctrine.
Despite Ramanuja's name, he seems to have been a wor-
shipper of Krishna as a form of Vishnu. His follower
Ramanand, however, favoured Rama (fourteenth century).
His Vishnuism was a monotheism, opposed to eroticism; he
also preached against caste-distinctions. Kabir (died 1518),
of Ramanand's sect, and Dadu (circa 1600) spread the
cult of Rama as name of God through northern India, espe-
cially among the lower classes, to which they belonged.
Tulsidas about the same time (he was born in 1532) fur-
ther popularized this Rama-monotheism through the medium
of poetry in the vernacular. All these sects were virtually
monotheistic and ignored the grosser sentimental-sensuous
aspects of Vishnuism. A reform of Ramanuja's church
introduced by Madhva (1200–1275) in southern and middle
India had, however, introduced an element of weakness
in stressing the “ love ” element. Machora taught that the
individual soul was different from Brahma and that the
grace of God was won by sympathetic appreciation of God's
character. But, to attain this, one must yearn for God, ap-
parently a safe tenet, but not for Hindus. He who yearns
for God in India soon loses his head as well as his heart.
Madhva worshipped both Krishna and Rama as forms of
Vishnu, the name of God, and from this time on the special
Bhagavat worship (of Vishnu as Krishna) declined in fa-
vour of a more catholic Vishnuism; but the poetry of this
1 Ramanuja expressly defines bhakti as upasana and as yoga. He
nowhere teaches "love" in the usual Krishnaite sense.
HINDU SECTARIAN RELIGIONS
215
1 delights.ing to go afteshna and of
period shows a mystic love of God indistinguishable from the
gross sensuousness which has been the bane of the Krishna-
cult since the day of the amorous Cowherd. Thus, in the
twelfth century, Nimbarka showed a strong predilection for
the united worship of Krishna and his mistress Radha, which
led directly to the excess of the Radha-cult as taught in
the sixteenth century by Vallabha in western India, vir-
tually the worship of the lover-god Krishna and of Radha,
the aim of the devotee being to go after death to a vulgar
heaven of sensual delights. In this cult comes out strongly
the theory, also an early Christian idea, that the spiritual
guide of the sect, the Guru, represents God. He is divine
to the Hindu devotee and must be served with degrading
personal attendance; he owns the devotee and the devotee's
property.
Somewhat better was the contemporary religion of Cai-
tanya of Bengal, who indeed stressed unduly the amorous
element in the worship of Krishna, but he also preached.
a spiritual devotion and opposed the caste-system. Utterly
opposed to the growing tendency of erotic religion, Namdev,
in the fourteenth century, discarded the cult of Radha,
deprecated formalism and preached purity (love of a pure
heart for a pure God) to the western Mahrattas. The
Sikhs have incorporated in their Granth (bible) some of
Namdev's hymns. The Mohammedans taught him to de-
spise idols, which were used even by Ramanuja. In the
seventeenth century, Tukaram, a devout slave-caste teacher,
followed Namdev. The seeming catholicity as to caste of
several of these religious leaders is due to their low origin
as much as to their contact with Mohammedanism. Kabir,
the forerunner of the Sikhs, was a bastard son of a Brahman
woman brought up by a Mohammedan. Dadu was a cot-
1 It has been observed by many scholars that, as a rule, the Rama-
sects are purer-minded than the Krishna-sects. A Ramaite re-
gards the love of God as that of a father for his son; a Krishnaite
as that of a lover for his mistress. But the early Krishnaism of
the Bhagavad-gita was not of this debased type; there God loves,
but is not amorous.
216
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
ton-chdev wasse Vishal athenis strugan. I
ton-cleaner; Sena, a follower of Ramanand, was a barber;
Namdev was a tailor, etc.
In all these Vishnuite sects there is a strong reaction
against the practical atheism of Vedantic monism. Be-
ginning with Ramanuja, this struggle persisted down to the
sects which are half-Mohammedan. It started, however,
long before the formal attack of Ramanuja on his philo-
sophic predecessor, for the Narayana and Vasudeva (Bha-
gavat) cults were essentially monotheistic, not monistic.
They continue that God-idea which in the Upanishads them-
selves converts the holy terror of nameless Power into a .
God of grace. It is this tendency which led in the mid-
dle ages to the deistic sects like that of the Sittars (Blessed),
believers in a pure life and one God. They and even Rama-
nuja have been suspected of borrowing from Christianity.
But it is not necessary to assume any loan to explain Hindu
monotheism.1 All that the historian may say is that such a
loan is not at all impossible.
If there has been any loan from Christianity, it is to be
found in the mediaeval sects worshipping a Lord regarded
as a God of love; yet it is quite possible to derive this idea
also from native sources. Its mediaeval expression is
perhaps enhanced by, rather than drawn from, Christian
missionaries. At the same time, the close approach to
Christian expression even in the Bhagavad-gita lends col-
our to the theory that some later re-writer may have inten-
sified the faith-doctrine there advanced. Yet, in connexion
with this, it must be remembered that Buddha had already
become an object of loving personal devotion and perhaps the
influence of the Buddhist faith and love of the master, who
in the Mahayana system is also a saviour, was not an unin-
portant factor in the creation of the Gita as a counterblast
0
1 The belief in many “gods” does not impugn Hindu monotheism,
since, when the God-idea occurs, the gods appear only as inferior
spirits. Christians also used to believe in various spirits, angels,
devils, etc., as consorting with or opposed to God. These are the
devas and the demons of the Hindu monotheist.
HINDU SECTARIAN RELIGIONS
217
to the personal religion of the then dominant religious
party.1
Vishnuism includes also a Shakti cult (above) as that of
divine energy in Mother-form, so that it has a sort of
trinity of god-powers, God as All-soul, God as incarnate in
man (Krishna or Rama), and God as the energizing pro-
ductive power in the world; with which last Sir George
Grierson aptly compares the substitution by Syrian Chris-
tians of Mary for the third person of the Christian trin-
ity.
The Puranas, to which reference has already been made,
are a store of mythology and ritualism emanating from the
early and mediaeval centuries. Although historically of
some inferential importance and mythologically of the great-
est interest, their religious value is not so great as one
would expect. It is confined to the details of ritual, which
of course has its own worth but only when it embodies an
idea. The only idea in all the Puranic ritual is that the
god worshipped is in an idol; this idol is to be washed
and dressed, put to sleep and waked up, prayed to and
1 The epic in which the Bhagavad-gita is enshrined is a work of
centuries, which has caught up some extraneous matter from Persia
and probably some Christian material is embedded in it. Even
Professor Garbe but lately believed that its most monotheistic sec-
tion is an echo of Christian belief (Archiv fiir Religions-wissen-
schaft, xvi, 546). The more the present writer studies the sub-
ject the more is he convinced of the probability of early borrowing
on the part of India and the improbability of any one ever knowing
how much borrowing there has been India is a sponge that soaks
up all ideas and cults. It borrowed freely from the native aborig-
ines; it absorbed the border-land beliefs; it took to itself Greek
astronomy and perhaps Greek drama; and it would not be surpris-
ing if it had drawn something from a religion brought to its doors by
missionaries in the first centuries of our era. Its texts are plastic.
There is not an early Brahman or Buddhist epic or religious poem
(after the Vedic age) which has not been re- and re-written, with
any number of changes, interpolations, and additions. Moreover,
most of these religious texts are dateless; we congratulate ourselves
if we can approximate to within two or three centuries of the time
when they were composed. Nevertheless, probability is not proof.
2 Journ. Royal Asiatic Society, 1907.
218
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
fed, and glorified as the very image of the divine. Each
Purana has its own god; some are in honour of Shiva ;
some extol Vishnu; a few celebrate other gods. More-
over the ritual is not the same in all; but it might as
well be so, for all the ideas one can extract from the texts.
The Puranas in general are a sort of résumé of idolatry-
lore based on a polytheistic sectarianism which reverts to
the ancient henotheism of India: for the devotee, only this
god now worshipped is of moment. At the same time, they
contain references to the old fiends, devils, gods, and tales
garnered from antiquity, which show that these are still
the object of fear and wonder; but even these are chiefly re-
flections from epic tradition, though a few new figures ap-
pear. In general, the eighteen Puranas, from circa 300 to
1300 A. D., may be dismissed from a history of religions with
the remark that they are an early literary (save the mark)
expression of what may be seen today in the various sectarian
temples at Benares, where a horde of shrieking priests
drum up a rich living by showing the credulous a god-doll.
This religious phase is the nearest approach to shamanism
C
1 Compare, for example, Agni Purana, Ivi, f., on installing an idol:
"This image embodies the Supreme Spirit; its pedestal is the god-
dess; the ceremony symbolizes the productive union of the two
(as man and wife). ... Bathe the image with hot water in pitchers
of clay from holy ground ... bathe the Supreme God with con-
secrated water and scrub him with consecrated earth; pour over him
the washings of grain; say the magic words; wave lights and flags
before him; read the texts to him; spikenard and niyrobolan on his
head; eighty-one pitchers (of water) pour upon his head and an-
noint the god with sandal-paste . . . rub his body till he glows;
offer him perfumes and song; give him flowers and rich robes;
wave incense before him; put collyrium upon his eyelids; a mirror
shall he have and over his head an umbrella ; fans wave before him.
... The priest shall say, 'Oh best of gods, be pleased to go a jour-
ney. Then decorate the platform; place the god on the mystic
diagram called svastika; make the god enter the image with the
(designated) spells; anoint the image with butter; put a mirror
before it; worship the image withi songs, music, Howers, perfumes,
chowries, and lamps; place saffron and turmeric on its head; take it
to the river, bathe it along with priests and the best people; take
it out of the water, worship it again, bring it back to the temple ...
then celebrate the nuptials of the god and his spouse. ..."
HINDU SECTARIAN RELIGIONS
219
1
and fetishism to be found in what is supposed to be a civil-
ized community. It has no real support in the Hindu's own.
higher religion; for the pity of it is that it is not a primi-
tive form but a degradation. It represents decadence, the
substitution of sound and emotion for sense and sanity.
Native religions that have been influenced by Persian,
Christian, and Mohammedan beliefs cannot be regarded as
strictly Hindu. Nanak, a follower of Kabir, who himself
was more Mohammedan than Hindu, was born in 1469 and
created the famous church militant of the “ Lions of the
Punjab," known as Sikhs, which reflected various religious
elements and foreshadowed those modern reforms which
are more political than pietistic. The Sikh cultof Sword
and Book (Granth) built up a new political party, but its
religion was a farrago of old ideas. Nanak had been in
Arabia and borrowed from the Mohammedans his hatred
of idolatry and his teaching of monotheism, God being wor-
shipped under the Holy Name. He retained, however, a
strong sub-stratum of Hindu pantheism and the Sikh wor-
ship of the Guru (spiritual leader) was as pronounced as in
the Hindu sects. A large number of these, often sub-sects,
inaugurated by some ignorant pretender with more piety
than education, has now for many years agitated the popu-
lation of northern India.
The so-called Reforming Sects of the last century are
generally of a higher type, though they are all hybrid re-
ligions formed of a mixture of native and foreign beliefs.
The first was the deistic sect of Ram Mohun Roy (1772–
1833), called the (Adi) Brahma Samaj or Religious Congre-
gation, a conservative Bengal reform, afterwards liberal-
ized by Debendranath Tagore, till, like all other Hindu
sects, multiplying by scission, under the leadership of Ke-
shub Chunder Sen, a radical enthusiast of great sincerity
but of intemperate mind, it split into two divisions, the new
church calling itself the Brahma Samaj of India (1866).
The next year another (Prarthana) Samaj on the general
lines of the Adi (First Congregation) was started inde-
220
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
pendently in western India. Sen's sect objected to caste
and child-marriage; it was from the beginning more a social
than a religious reform; but it adopted the theatrical meth-
ods of Caitanya (to which it was related) and Sen him-
self offended his followers by permitting, for political rea-
sons, child-marriage in his own family. He came to be-
lieve with his devotees that he was half divine; he pro-
fessed himself a demi-Christian, and died a demi-Buddhist
(invoking “ the mother of Buddha”). Displeased with the
love-feasts and other paraphernalia of emotionalism prac-
tised by this Samaj, the sober members revolted (1878–84)
and formed the General Congregation (Sadharana), which
teaches the fatherhood of God and brotherhood of mani,
and insists that true worship is to love God and do His
will. A curious but important Samaj is that inaugurated
by Dayananda and known as the Arya Samaj. It appears
to have started under the influence of the Bengal Adi Samaj
as a western branch, beginning its activities in Bombay
(1875) and Lahore (1877), and was for a time in rapport
with the Theosophical Society. But Dayananda (1824-
83) was an independent, who is to be credited with the move-
ment originally leading to the Samaj. The Arya Samaj
labours under the burden of upholding the Vedas, not only
as inspired but as inculcating monotheism. It believes in
metempsychosis also and is divided into two sects called
the Carnivora and Herbivora, according as its members eať
meat and are liberal or, because Dayananda was a vege-
tarian, eat only vegetables, a sign that the leader is becoming
a divine authority. The Samaj as a whole, however, is a
party quite as much as a church, and with its slogan, “ India
for the Indians," bids fair to become mainly a political
body. It is “patriotic" in denouncing both British rule
and Christianity and intensely conservative in upholding the
1 There is also a Sadharana Dharma or General Religion (not
connected with the Samaj), embodying a reactionary movement
against reform. Many other local Dharmas are now organized to
defend the old faith.
HINDU SECTARIAN RELIGIONS
221
barbarous laws of antiquity; but in its abhorrence of idol-
atry, its demolition of the spiritual prestige of the Brahman
priests, and in its educational work it deserves all praise.
Another reformer called Shiva Narayana, though not the
founder of a Samaj, has laboured in Calcutta and among
the Assam tribes as a missionary, and has done good work
in teaching a purer religion combining Christian and “re-
formed ” Hindu ideas.
For India, a return to the teaching of antiquity, in so far
as it discards the priests' yoke, idolatry, and the sensual
side of Hinduism, is a consummation devoutly to be wished.
The great danger in the sects is that the Hindu tendency
to deification is liable to spend itself in worship worse than
that which the reformer would extirpate. Even the Mo-
hammedans, who, like the Parsees, have reform movements,
are not free from this abuse.1 Among the Hindus, the
now popular Radha Soamis, who prate of science and
combine into a “religion” a jargon of chemistry and mys-
ticism, are a moral but unintelligent religious body founded
by a music-master who discovered in 1861 that he was God
incarnate. The Deva Samaj is a body of professed atheists
who worship only their pope, as incarnate spirituality.
From such sects with their bizarre teaching no religious
gain can be expected. The theopoetic mind of India deifies
men without hesitation and if a man be unbalanced, as
are many of the sectarian leaders, the religion of his fol-
lowers becomes mere blasphemy. In America men of this
sort are kept in insane asylums, where they can act God
among other lunatics. In India they found a church and
become the heads of religious organizations.
Other reformers of note in the West but without churches
of their own are Ramakrishna and Vivekananda. The
former, whose words influenced Sen and Vivekananda more
1 A Mohammedan “reformer," who, to his own satisfaction, has
united Islam and Hinduism with Christianity, speaks of himself as
very God, the Holy Ghost, etc., and suggests that he should act as
pope of the universal religion which he has invented.
It hesitaectariat hemy. where
222
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
or less, was the type of an ancient mystic. An ignorant
old man, but of immense personal magnetism, his devotion
to God as “ Mother" and his undoubted, if rather hysterical,
piety niade him one of the most conspicuous figures in the
religious life of northern India. Vivekananda was a poli-
tician rather than a devotee. He popularized the cult of
Hindus in America and brought back to India a reputation
made abroad.
The peculiar fact about most modern Hindu reforms is
that they preach as a new doctrine of startling significance
what has been taught for many centuries, not only in other
lands but in India itself. We must remember, however,
that monotheism, love of God, and a decent life are quite
new to the ignorant natives, who for the most part have
always been polytheists and have led lives contaminated
by the gross moral abuses of polytheism. For, despite all
the religious leaders since the Upanishads, the mass of the
Hindus have worshipped every sort of god except God, and,
despite unimpeachable ethical codes, they have been forced
into immorality by their own priests. There is today no
viler caricature of a man of God than the temple-priest of
India and the more the Reform Samajas can do to lessen
his influence the sooner will come the day when moral
religion will take the place of superstitious debauchery.
It is the ignorant priests who uphold the wild sectarian
superstitions of the Puranas, against which Dayananda made
his ineffectual onslaught. India owes them nothing but
contempt. Her salvation, like that of Israel and of Eu-
rope, has always lain with those who could think and
see, her poets, philosophers, and inspired prophets.
TY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Sir Monier-Williams, Indian Wisdon, London, 1876 and 1893;
Brahmanism and Hinduism, London, 1891.
A. C. Lyall, Asiatic Studies, London, 1899.
J. C. Oman, Cults, Customs, and Superstitions of India, Lon-
don, 1908; The Brahmans, Theists, and Muslims of India,
London, 1907.
HINDU SECTARIAN RELIGIONS
223
M. Max Müller, The Six Systems of Indian Philosophy, New
York, 1899.
Paul Deussen, Das System des Vedanta, Leipzig, 1883-1906.
Richard Garble, Die Samkhya Philosophie, Leipzig, 1894 ; The
Bhagavad Gita, Leipzig, 1905.
J. H. Woods, The Yoga System of Patanjali, Cambridge, Mass.,
1913.
R. W. Frazer, Indian Thought Past and Present, New York,
1915.
Sir R. Ğ. Bhandarkar, Vaishnavism, Saivism, etc., in Grundriss
der Indo-arischen Philologie, 1913.
Charles Johnston, Bhagavad Gita, New York, 1908; translated
also, together with other epic texts, in Sacred Books of the
East, viii.
Sir G. A. Grierson, Bhakti-Marga, in Encyclopedia of Religion
and Ethics.
E. W. Hopkins, Epic Mythology, in Grundriss der Indo-arischen
Philologie, 1915.
M. A. Macauliffe, The Sikh Religion, six vols., Oxford, 1909.
J. N. Farquhar, Modern Religious Movements in India, New
York, 1915, The Crown of Hinduism, London, 1915.
Lajput Rai, Arya Samaj, London, 1915.
See also under Chapters eleven and twelve.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
RELIGIONS OF CHINA I
PRE-CONFUCIAN RELIGION
OUR knowledge of the oldest Chinese culture and religion,
sometimes called Sinism, to distinguish it from the mixture
of Sinism, Taoism, and Buddhism, which combine to pro-
duce the later religion, is drawn entirely from native works,
the most important of which purport to be those collected
by Confucius, the great diadochos of the sixth century B. C.,
who transmitted the literary treasures of antiquity. Later
scholars of his school added a few notable books. These
altogether make the five Canons, King, and four Classics,
Shu, of Chinese religion as officially recognized for the
last two thousand years. The first division, called the Wu-
King, Five Canons, contains the Yih-King, Permutations,
lines of uncertain date, origin, and meaning, traditionally
regarded as embodying a profound philosophy; the Shu-
King, History, traditional lore decked out with apocryphal
declamation; the Shi-King, Poetry, a collection of old songs
and odes; part of the (later) Li-Ki, ritual law and cere-
monies; and the Ch'un-Ts'iu, Spring and Autumn (Annals)
of the district of Lu (from 722 to 494 or 481 B. C.), this
being the only work composed by Confucius himself. The
second division, called the Shu or Classics, consists of four
works composed by disciples and followers of Confucius,
the Lun-Yü, Logia (Analecta) of the master reported by
later writers; the Tahion, Great Learning; the Chung-Yung,
a treatise on the mean (equilibrium and harmony of mind),
inculcating right for right's sake; and the seven chapters
of Mencius (Mang-tse), a follower of Confucius in the
224
RELIGIONS OF CHINA I
225
fourth century B. C. There is also a canon, called Hiao-
King,on filial piety ascribed to Tse-Yu, one of the imme-
diate disciples of Confucius.
Thus the history of Chinese religion is not supported by
“unchallengeable monuments, like those of Egypt. The
Shu-King itself was compiled by scholars whose account
is a mixture of tradition and invention arranged in order
to produce a desired impression. A good deal of this is
religious history, which is, as has been said of Chinese
history in general, “nothing more than prehistoric lore in-
vented by generations much later than the events them-
selves.” 2 To the category of invention belong not only the
accounts of the “heavenly emperors," when the Chinese
lived in a moral and material paradise, but also the data re-
garding the succeeding fabulous emperors, including Fu-hi,
whose date is given as 2953–2838 or 2852–2738 B. C., a
supernatural person, half human half serpent, son of the
Chinese Prometheus. It is said that he was born in the
northwest of (modern) China, which was the seat of the
earliest civilization, and this is the one historical fact of
importance concerning him. Fu-hi is the first of a list of
mythical emperors to whom are attributed various advances
in religion and civilization. He himself is said to have in-
stituted marriage, hitherto unknown; to have invented the
eight original diagrams of the Yih-King; and to have been
the first to introduce sacrifice to his god. After him Shen-
Nung, an ox-headed half-human emperor, invented agricul-
tural implements and discovered the medicinal properties
of plants. This beneficent ruler was followed by the famous
“ Yellow Emperor," Huang-ti (2704-2595 B. C.; or, accord-
ing to the Annals of the Bamboo Books, his reign began in
2491 B. C.), who enlarged the empire by driving away the
1 The text of the Tahioh and Chun-Yung is contained in the Li-
Ki, only part of which is reckoned as a King (Canon).
2 Hirth, The Ancient History of China, New York, 1908. The
Chinese scholars themselves suspected the value of their historical
books. One of them said, “Better to have no historical books than
to give entire credence to them.”
ILL
226
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
northern barbarians, perhaps Huns, and by extending his
sway to the south as well as to the east and west. The first
temples are ascribed to him; he regulated the calendar and
laid the foundation of the sacrificial cult, besides paying
attention to astrology, etc. After an interval, during which
"heresy arose and was suppressed,” two ideal emperors
called Yau and Shun (2357 to 2206 B. C.), appeared as em-
bodiments of all the virtues. Their follower Yü, whose
deeds are recorded in the Shu-King, was the first emperor
of the Hia dynasty, which lasted till a very wicked emperor
called Kieh (Kié), (1818-1766 B.C.) brought it to a logical
close. The history of these emperors is clearly composed
for moral effect. As this Kieh's reign of sin effected the
loss of the realm, so, conversely, the new dynasty, called
Shang or Yin, which lasted from 1766 to 1122, because
it began by being virtuous, enjoyed at first the favour of
Heaven. The early history of the Shu-King consists largely
in moral speeches directed to showing the proper path for
kings and ministers and people to walk in; but there is no
reason to suppose that any one of them is authentic, and
even in regard to the times when these emperors lived, it
is not probable that anything except names and generations
can be trusted, till a period which happens to be fixed by
astronomical data. This means, in reality, that there is
no credible history before the eighth century B. C. and that
till the sixth century very little is to be relied upon. The
first real date in Chinese history is 776 B. C., which happens
to coincide with that of the first Olympiad. Most of the
works indubitably authentic, dating from the sixth century,
were burned in a later age and what we have now are books
supposed to be identical with these but which suffered
1 There is little reason to suppose that the cultural development
of China was influenced in particular by contact with Babylon in
the third millennium B. C., as has been urged by Lacouperie, in his
Western Origin of the Early Chinese Civilization, London, 1894.
Professor Hirth says that "his (Lacouperie's) arguments seem to
be doomed to share the fate of De Guiness' attempt (in 1758] to
prove that the Chinese had grown out of an Egyptian colony."
RELIGIONS OF CHINA I
227
restoration as well as burning. They were edited by schol-
ars who filled in lacunae and freely reconstructed the text
of the classic “King” (canons), so that we cannot actually
be certain of the antiquity of any particular passage in
them, unless of course its data be supported by other evi-
dence. But the later writers even interpret the text as we
have it in favour of their own theological views, however
impossible such interpretation seems to be. It is obvious,
therefore, that texts incapable of meeting their sanction may
well have been suppressed altogether by the same devout
editors. The sacred books were burned by royal edict in
213 B.C. with the exception of the Yih-King, which, as a
book of divination, was universally esteemed at that time.
After the burning of Confucian books and the murder of
those professing their doctrines ? there was a considerable
interval in which such copies as survived at all moulded
away, till under the Han dynasty (206 B. C.-220 A. D.) the
previous edict was repealed. Then (191 B. C.) the old
books were restored, partly from memory and partly from
such copies as had survived. The best scholars edited
these; but, as even Professor Legge admits, these Han
scholars may have put their own ideas into Confucius's
mouth and they may have made additions to the writings
supposed to have come from his immediate disciples.3
1 Probably antique morality as depicted is coloured in the same
way. For example, the Shang dynasty, above, showed a (Budd-
histic) “ benevolence toward all animals," which was ascribed to
them probably after Buddhism's entry into China.
2 The auto-da-fé was purely a political matter, the Ts'in emperor
believing that the classics injured his cause. Four hundred and
sixty scholars, who persisted in disobedience to his edict, were buried
alive.
3 Sacred Books of the East, vol. iii, p. xix. Professor S. Wells
Williams says that even native scholars question the validity of the
ancient histories: “Many of the Chinese literati believe that not a
perfect copy of the classical works escaped destruction, and the
texts were only recovered by rewriting them from the memories of
old scholars. ... Not only were many works entirely destroyed, but
a shade of doubt thereby thrown over the accuracy of others.”
(History of China, re-edited, New York, 1901, p. 27.)
228
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
The first form of Chinese religion must then be gathered
from the earliest works we possess in their present shape.
The religion thus reconstructed appears not in a philosoph-
ical but in a popular manifestation. The religious belief
which formulates the underlying reasoned base of the re-
ligion is a later product; early are the vulgar beliefs and
the ceremonies established upon these beliefs before there
was any interpretation of the universe. From preconceived
notions regarding the race and religion of the Chinese in
their original habitat, we shall do well to hold aloof in
interpreting their beliefs. There is no cogent reason for
supposing that the Chinese were not inhabitants of China
for generations before we know anything of them.
The form of religion revealed in the earliest monuments
is chiefly animistic. Spirits, identified with or dwelling in
natural phenomena such as mountains, rivers, and clouds
are worshipped; but ghost-worship, in the restricted appli-
cation to ancestral ghosts, is more universal and, with one
exception, seems to be more antique. These ghosts ap-
pear to control the spirits of natural phenomena, and are
the main spiritual powers to which appeal is made. But
supreme over all powers, even the ancestor-ghost of the
emperor, is the sky-power, sometimes conceived as natural
phenomenon, sometimes as a spirit in phenomenon; in
whose person as Supreme Power animism and naturism
unite. The worship of this Supreme Power is in the earlier
literature indissolubly united on the one hand with its com-
plementary worship of Earth and on the other with that of
other ancestors. Heaven and Earth are the great parents
of all; but the emperor is especially designated as Son of
Heaven, originally not so arrogant a title as it seems today,
nor even as Homer uses the same words of any “heaven-
born king,” διογενής βασιλεύς, but one indicating that Heaven
regards the emperor as a son. But the mere fact that a
man is a king, that is, superior to common man, makes him
a superior man, a superman, hence filled with godlike power;
and being so he is divine.
RELIGIONS OF CHINA I
229
ving that is, the conclementary principienpears in all
Professor De Groot, whose view of Chinese religion is
based on southern practices, calls the religion of ancient
China Universism, believing that the philosophy of Yang
and Yin, that is, the controlling power of the universe as
exhibited by antithetic elementary principles, male and
female, underlies it from the beginning and appears in all
its phenomena. This is to interpret the northern by its
debased southern form and to inject into primitive thought
more than it contained. Professor Tiele held that the re-
ligion was merely animism. This is to ignore the approach
to God-worship found in the earliest literature. Professor
Legge, Professor Giles, and Professor Hirth regard the
earliest Chinese religion as almost or quite monotheistic.1
In the interpretation of this “primitive monotheism, of
which only scanty records remain,” 2 there is of course an
unconscious bias in the direction of the belief current some
years ago that man's original religion everywhere was mono-
theism. We find the same assumption, of monotheism as
the first religion, made in the case of the Hindus and of
the Egyptians, and even of the Hebrews! But Chinese re-
ligion is not primitive. Again, it is like that of other Mon-
golians, and, since we are acquainted with the raw religion of
the savages racially connected with them, if we are to make
any assumption it should be along historical and ethnolog-
ical lines, which would lead us to the conclusion that wor-
ship of ancestors is more likely than monotheism to have
been the “primitive religion” of the Chinese.
Worship of ancestors implies a belief in a life hereafter.
The Chinese did in fact believe that their ancestors at
death lived somewhere and could come at call. They spoke
of the spirit of the departed as going up, and differentiated
between the ascending spirit and earthly part; but it was
1“ The ancient Chinese were decided monotheists. ... The wor-
ship of ancestors began to be gradually cultivated as a side develop-
ment of this original monotheism.” Hirth, op. cit., pp. 78, 100.
2 Giles, Religion of Ancient China, London, 1905, p. 13. The
same view is held by most of the older scholars, who thought
Chinese religion was a degraded monotheism.
230
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
only divine beings like kings and perhaps their great min-
isters who were imagined to live in the sky; except as they
were thought of as stars. Of this belief, however, there
is no direct evidence in the earliest period. There is only
one worship for all people in that period, namely that
of the ancestors. At the solstices the emperor made sac-
rifice to Heaven and to Earth, a sacrifice offered on the
ground with the simplest utensils, the victim being a bull-
calf; in the case of Heaven in the southern and in the case
of Earth in the northern suburb. The worship of Heaven
is often united with that of mountains and rivers. Sun and
moon were worshipped with sacrifice on the east and west of
the city, respectively.
But only the emperor was of old allowed to sacrifice to
Heaven and Earth. Himself the Son of Heaven and as
worthy of worship as Heaven itself (being revered while
alive with the three prostrations and nine khowtows with
which Heaven is revered), the emperor, who is called
“Mate of Heaven,"" adores Heaven as if Heaven were
his own ancestor. The real significance of this feature
of early Chinese religion 1 lies in its betrayal of the ex-
clusiveness of the worship. To the common man, Heaven
was too glorious and majestic to approach; his private
gods were his ancestors and the lower spirits. Even in
worshipping Heaven at the present time, it is not as God
but as a spirit with whom Earth as another spirit is asso-
ciated. “The husbandman at harvest [today] acknowl-
edges that it is his duty to thank Heaven and worship
Earth" (instead of saying that he worships God. Edkins,
ibid.).
Common people, who were not permitted to sacrifice to
1 Although forbidden to do so by Confucian rule, yet private per-
sons at the present time do not hesitate to offer incense and prayer
to Heaven on the new and full moons. “The Chinese . say that
Heaven should be worshipped only by the emperor. ... This is
the theory, but it is not strictly carried into practice. Some profess
to worship Heaven once a year, others twice a month.” Edkins,
Religion in China, London, 1878, p. 92.
RELIGIONS OF CHINA I
231
Earth or Heaven, sacrificed to the door, ground, and field,
while the officers intermediate between emperor and people,
offered prayers for the people to the hills, streams, and
springs. This ceremony took place at the beginning of
summer. It was followed by the great summer sacrifice
for rain, which was offered to the five elemental gods, in-
terpreted by some as “to God," with music, for “music
was offered to the ghosts of deceased princes, high ministers,
officers, and those who had benefited the people, the worship-
pers“ praying that there may be a good harvest.” When
the crop was to be planted, the emperor in state guided
the plough for the first furrows; when the harvest was
ripe, the emperor tasted of the first fruits. Minute regu-
lations indicate a later Taoist development codified during
the Han dynasty (circa 200 B. C. to 200 A. D.).
The ordinary worship, addressed rather to spirits of the
ancestors and spirits of the earth than to Shang Ti (Su-
preme Ruler, as God) or to Heaven, is reflected in the
earliest religious songs. Out' of thousands of religious
songs current in his day Confucius made a compilation of
some three hundred, composed in rhymed strophes, the
Shi-King. In how far these songs or odes as they stand
today are really the songs of the times to which they are
ascribed, we cannot say. But, from the nature of the case,
songs are less apt to be tampered with than philosophy or
history. Certain Shang songs of the second dynasty (1766–
II22 B. C.), only five in all, seem really to belong to the
twelfth century and they are regarded by Sinologues as the
oldest in the collection. Most of the others we must be
content to refer to a period indefinitely older than the time
of Confucius, perhaps dating from the eighth century on-
ward.
In these five Shang songs the oldest expression of reli-
gion is to invoke the spirit of the ancestor and to "delight"
1 Or to spirits of these places. See the note on p. 234.
232
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
him, as it is said in the first song by music, not by liba-
tions, as is the later practice. This song begs the an-
cestral spirit to regard kindly the seasonal sacrifice, made
in his honour by the descendant, who prepares himself for
the ceremony by fasting and thus seeks to "realize the
ancestor," thought of as being at the time in his shrine.
This “meritorious ancestor” repeatedly sends down bless-
ings, as is said in the second song, where the ghost is lured
to his descendant by means of an offering of soup and other
viands, in order that he may confer longevity and send
down prosperity from Heaven. The fifth of these songs
speaks of pines and cypresses being cut down to make a
temple for the ancestors, who is here the former king and
still watches over his people and preserves them. Thus
three of the five songs of this oldest collection have to do
only with ghost- or ancestor-worship. The third song, pos-
sibly of the thirteenth century B. C., alludes to the miracu-
lous birth of an ancestor by means of a swallow sent down
by Heaven, and the fourth also speaks of Heaven or “God”
as founding the line, so that a Supreme Spirit is here recog-
nized as directing the event which led to the ancestor's high
position, the reason given being that this ancestor revered
God and hence by God's favour he was appointed to be the
model of the “nine regions” or provinces of the kingdom,
and Heaven treated him as a son.
Heaven is expressly called “yon blue sky” and even the
sex of Heaven is not fixed. An ode ascribed to the ninth
century has the expression “O mother Heaven, why dost
Thou not understand?"
The songs of lamentation reflect only that aspect of de-
1 Later, the drums, the sounding-stone, and song made the music.
Intoxicants (known as early as the twenty-third century, according
to Professor Legge) were used only at great sacrifices, to entertain
guests, and for family feasts.
2 Only the ancestor has a temple; other spirits have altars or
tablets. Great simplicity marks the early rite. It is said in the
Shu-King that “officiousness in sacrificing is irreverent and multi-
plying ceremonies leads to disorder.”
S
RELIGIONS OF CHINA I
233
spair which may appear in any religion. If one poet says
that Heaven is unjust, it is only right to remember that an-
other says, “There is the great Supreme Lord, does he
hate any one?” There is, in truth, a vigorous protest
against the pessimistic view. The ordinances of Heaven
may be inexplicable to men, but “the calamities of the vul-
gar do not come from Heaven.” Officers may not (do not)
stand in awe of Heaven and the innocent may suffer with
the guilty; great and wide Heaven may have sent down
death and famine; compassionate Heaven may be arrayed
in terrors; and yet it is not God that causes the evil, but
the evil ways of men produce evil, and hence it is that
"Heaven arrayed in terrors sends down its net of crime.”
The song asserting that calamities do not come from
Heaven may be dated with tolerable certainty as composed
in 776 B. C. The irregularity of Heaven, or, as sometimes
expressed, the fact that Heaven has “reversed,” is not
Heaven's fault. Heaven also is bound in the complex of
the good and evil. Departure from the Way (of rectitude)
compels Heaven's anger; it is not a matter of kindness or
compassion, as men think, but of inexorable law. This is
finely expressed in the Tang Ode:
How vast is God, the ruler of men below;
How arrayed in terrors is God;
With many things irregular in his ordinations
Heaven gave birth to the multitudes of the people;
But the nature it confers is not immutable.
Born good (by nature) are all; but few remain good.
It is not Heaven that makes you drunk,
So that you follow evil devices.
It is not God that has caused the evil times;
Evil times arise when one abandons the good old ways.
The explanation of the enigma is that people are normally
virtuous. Their “faculties are attuned to the law of
Heaven.” Hence there is no use in crying with the poets,
"I look up to great Heaven, when shall I find repose ?”
or “ I look up to great Heaven, but it shows no kindness”
234
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
other, nor smell, the Shi-kuredly is e
(two songs begin thus), for “those whom Heaven does not
approve sink in ruin” by a natural law applicable to the
king, as Son of Heaven, and to his people. So it is said:
“Great Heaven makes no mistake; if the king deteriorates
he will bring his people to great distress." The natural
law is somewhat quaintly expressed by the words of an-
other song: “ The doings of high Heaven have neither
sound nor smell," that is, the power operates silently..
If we may take the Shi-King as the earliest religious ex-
pression of China, as it assuredly is except for the mystic
lines of the Yih-King, we may sum up that expression
with the remark that it teaches the cult of Heaven and of
other spirits, especially of ancestors, which seems to be the
earlier phase, with a growing sense of the personality of
Heaven as God, and a vague belief that the ghosts or spirits
of men live somewhere hereafter, though the exact place
is vaguely conceived. A lady bereaved of her husband says,
“After death I shall go to his abode," apparently meaning
no more than is expressed in the lover's lament, “ Living
we may be separated, but when dead we shall share one
grave." Yet the ancestors do not remain in the grave;
they are tutelary spirits watching over their families; they
receive food and are honoured with music and the dance.
Thus one song says: “ People dance with the flute, to the
notes of organ and drum; all the instruments make har-
mony; all this is done to please the ancestors.” So the
ancestors known as Fathers of War and of Husbandry are
to the Chinese the most personal gods they have. This
crops out repeatedly, as in the following bucolic ode, at-
1 The cult of the spirit of the path (when one journeys) and of
hills and rivers is recognized, but it is not certain whether the
earlier conception is that the mountain is itself divine or has a spirit.
Some passages favour the former view, but others clearly recognize
the animistic divinity of phenomena. One of the Shi odes says of
the model King Wu that after a victory "he sacrificed to Heaven,
hills, and rivers." A virtuous king "gives rest to the hundred
spirits, even to Ho and to the highest hills.” This naturism is sys-
tematically neglected in accounts of Chinese religion, which as-
sume that "hills" are always "spirits of hills.”
RELIGIONS OF CHINA 235
INA I
I
tributed to some one, perhaps an officer of state, who joins
with his men in the activities of the farmer: “With lutes
and drums will we invoke the Father of Husbandry and
pray (him) for sweet rain to increase the produce of our
millet fields and bless my men and their wives. ... We
remove the insects that eat the roots and joints of the grain,
so that they shall not injure the young plants. May the
spirit, the Father of Husbandry, lay hold of these (pests)
and put them in the blazing fire. May rain come, first on
the public lands then on our private fields. Yonder shall
be handfuls left on the ground and ears untouched, for the
benefit of the widow.” This song is famous for its tone of
loyalty expressed in the desire that the private land shall
be blessed with rain after the public land. It is noteworthy
also, though not unique, for the closing words, full of com-
passion for the needy. The ancestral spirits are supposed
to partake of the sacrifice offered to them; but in the sacri-
fice to Heaven the incense of the food is enough. Thus
when the king goes to the border to offer the sacrifice of
the new year, on a day deemed auspicious by the diviners,
the words of the appropriate song are: “We divine the
right day; we then sacrifice a ram to the spirit of the path;
we offer flesh, roast and boiled, and thus bring in the new
year. We load the stands with offerings . . . and as soon
as the fragrance ascends, God (Shang Ti) well-pleased
smells the sweet savour.”
Extraordinary occasions, such as war, famine, even a
hunt, caused the celebration of special sacrifices. But as
rich and poor alike liad only one sacrifice, that to the an-
cestors, it is probable that other features are more ad-
ventitious and in part later; as the cult of agricultural
spirits reflects later conditions economically. Streams and
hills change as hordes move; the constant spirits are those
of the ancestors who move on with the horde. But Heaven
and Earth also are present always and their worship be-
1 Shen Nung, the patriarchal emperor, whose “date” is 2737–
2705 B.C. Hou-tsi, whose miraculous birth is recounted above, is
also a “fellow of God," a deified "giver of wheat and barley."
236
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS.
came more pronounced as kings claimed to be sons of
Heaven, whose worship was united with that of Earth as
parents of all. But even Heaven-worship was felt to be a
sort of ancestor worship reserved for Heaven's special son,
the emperor.
The general distinction between T'ien (Thien), Heaven,
"bright and high," and Ti, Ruler, or Shang Ti, Supreme
Lord (God) is this. T'ien remains more materialistic; the
blue sky, “vast and distant," although it is “our parent,"
inclines to the idea of an abstract power like Fate. But
Shang Ti is more a personal anthropomorphized spirit in
heaven, who may walk on earth. Yet circa 600 B. C., in the
Shu King, there is usually no difference between Heaven
and God (Shang Ti). The titles interchange in the same
passage; it is only that the general trend of expression
tends to make “ bright and glorious ” Shang Ti more per-
sonal and“ bright and high ” T'ien more an indefinite Sky-
power. But often there is not even this distinction. Both
are called “ Supreme.” Shang Ti is the heavenly spirit;
Heaven is the blue sky conceived as intelligent and moral
orderer of the universe. The idea of God, far from begin-
ning with an abstraction, grows out of the conception of
the blue bright wide sky as a power superior to the power
of the high hill, etc. In this the Chinese thought as did the
Aryans, who regarded the “ bright sky" as "Sky-Father"
and as the Father in Heaven. In the Shu King it is said:
“Heaven gives birth to the people, and to the rulers to
1 Yet man's fate is not in the hands of Heaven. Men shorten
their own lives. “Heaven considers only their virtue and gives
them length of years accordingly.” “Heaven is intelligent and
impartial.” It cares only for order (virtue). Long life is always
desired: “Five are the sources of happiness, long life, wealth,
mens sana in corpore sano, love of virtue, and fulfilling the (divine)
will." (Shu King.)
2 With Shang Ti in sacrifice are associated the Six Honoured
Ones, perhaps grouped together as The Seven Directors. The emn-
peror “sacrifices to Shang Ti, the Six Honoured Ones, hills, rivers,
and the herd of spirits" (in 2283 B. C.!). Altars are raised on hills
to the hills, but the ancestral service is held in a temple with
seven shrines (Shang and Chou dynasties).
orderer of the blue sky conceng Ti is the h
RELIGIONS OF CHINA I
237
ere used in diswer. Thetlih till it crackesenting the
regulate the people; Heaven gifted our king with valour;
(the other king) falsely alleged the sanction of Supreme
Heaven, but God disapproved of him” (iv. 2).
The“ will of Heaven” is ascertained by dreams and divi-
nation. The common form of divination was by the tor-
toise-shell, the arched back probably representing the vault
of heaven. This was heated till it cracked, the lines rep-
resenting an answer. The lines of the Yih King probably
were used in divination. Other indications were given by
the stalks of a plant, the millefoil or yarrow. God send's
a dream to indicate whom a king should choose as his min-
ister (Shu King). In political changes, however, the voice
of the people is the voice of God. “Heaven loves the peo-
ple” (not the king); “Heaven will effect what the people
desire"; "to the king the people is God.” Maintenance of
the Right Order by means of a man who revolts against
tyranny is always regarded as part of the divine plan, with
which all spirits and good men will agree. Heaven de-
clares itself by its orderly processes and righteousness with
which, to succeed, man must be in accord.? Though oracles
are not known, there is a suggestion of hidden “responses"
which seem to act as oracles. The relation between man
and Heaven is so close that spiritual intelligences, it is
1 When fortunate, divination should not be repeated, but often dif-
ferent kinds are tried at the same time.
2 In 1119 (?) B. C. the king fell ill and his brother, the Duke Tau,
reared three altars to his three immediate ancestors and addressed
them: “If you three have charge in heaven of him who is son of
Heaven, let me be substitute (die for hiin), who am better able than
he to serve spiritual beings." He then divined with three tortoise-
shells (one for each king) and “looked at the responses," which
were kept locked up. All were favourable. “He will live," said the
Duke, and the next day the king got well. Noticeable is here the
fact that the appeal is not nade to Heaven, but to the ancestors
who “in Heaven have charge of Heaven's son.” The date is un-
certain, but the tale is old as it is famous. What the oracular
responses were, is not indicated. Tablets of the ancestors were
carried into battle, and soldiers who were brave were rewarded on
the spot “before the ancestors" of the king; if recreant, they were
slain" before the spirits of the land”; their children also were
slain (Shu King; pretended date, “2188” B. C.).
238
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
said, are influenced by perfect government and put to
rest. The ethical import is clearly stated in the Shu King:
“God 1 confers a moral sense even on inferior people,"
and in its advice to kings: “Do not oppress; be gentle
but strict; promote harmony by forbearance (the later doc-
trine of compliance). People are born good; they are made
bad only by (their environment, by) things (external),
which cause them to follow their own desires." This radical
teaching is, however, not always maintained. Thus in the
Shu (Yü) it is also said " The mind of man is prone to err;
its affinity to what is right is small.” Other Tao doctrine
in the Shu is shown by the insistence on the doctrine of the
mean, by its statement that pride brings low and humility
exalts, for this is the Way of Heaven. Sin evidenced by
disaster to the people is regarded as due to the king, who
“ takes to himself all guilt and evil.”
The Li Ki is later than the other King and in its present
form cannot be older than the Han dynasty. What re-
mains in it of older value is not its incredible minuteness
of ritualistic observance, though this is important as an
index of the spirit of Confucianism, but the accidental
glimpses it affords into conditions not recommended but in-
cidentally mentioned, sometimes with disapproval. The
State, when elaborate ceremonial was the chief religious
motif, is one still harbouring barbarous practices, though
civilized by comparison with its neighbours. China was
a sınall land surrounded by savages who, though living in
caves and tatooing themselves and eating raw meat, yet
made a constituent part of the empire as compared with the
“demon nations" of the North (compare Avestan danhu).
Foreign cuistoms and manners were introduced into China
itself soon after Confucius's day and it helps to explain
his insistence on the good old custonis of the ancestors
1 Here one with “Yon Great Heaven," preceding, and the “Way
of Heaven," following (iv. 2). In the Shu also it is said that
“Heaven arranges all social relations. Heaven hears as the people
hear, sees as the people see, and approves as the people approve."
RELIGIONS OF CHINA I
239
to recognize that similar innovations were made even in his
lifetime. But China itself, the Middle Kingdom, was not
without its inherited savagery marked by the regular muti-
lation of prisoners of war as well as the usual mutilations
practised on prisoners for crime. From a religious point
of view it is interesting to see that the custom of burying
the dead with the living was not uncommon. At a later
date human sacrifices are not unknown, one even of a royal
heir of a conquered province. In 621 B. C., three brothers
of Duke Mu and others of his family and retainers to the
number of one hundred and seventy-seven were buried with
him. This custom of immolating human beings to accom-
pany the dead into the next world can be traced back but
little earlier than this. It arose with the growing belief
in the more human attributes of the dead, their needs and
desires hereafter as projected from earthly conditions, and,
since earlier ideas on this subject were very vague, it may
be questioned whether this particular barbarity was not
introduced from the outside world, perhaps from the Tar-
tars.For it is quite a different matter whether one tempts
royal ancestral ghosts with music to one's altar or provides
for their future pleasure a family of retainers and all the
pomp and circumstance of home.3
Yet even in the Middle Kingdom a witch or “some dis-
eased person” (a cheap bargain!) was exposed to die in
the sun when rain failed to come in due season, in order
that “pitiless Heaven” might pity and comfort with rain
the sufferer, and incidentally benefit other people. This
1. The Li Ki reveals that workinen employed to cut down trees
for coffins were beheaded if they erred in their work. Drunkenness
is condemned in the Shu King: "Put to death those who assemble
and drink together.” Another approved rule is that the emperor
should put to death even those who commit snall crimes inten-
tionally, but not those who commit even great crimes unintentionally.
2 The Great Wall was built against the Huns in 214 B. C., but as
early as 481 B. C. Confucius speaks of the “white foreigners."
3 In the Shu King an emperor sacrifices to the spirit of his just
deceased father by thrice pouring liquor on the ground, which
offering is repeated by his minister, after washing his hands.
1
240
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS,
is one of the practices “not approved,” even argued against
with scornful irony; but clearly it was a practice derived
from antiquity. It differs from “sympathetic magic" by
introducing the sympathy of Heaven as a religious element,
as it differs from the punishment of a Hermes or saint,
whose will has power.
The Li Ki records incidentally many simple superstitions,
such as that hawks become doves and grass becomes fire-
flies at certain seasons, which illustrate the faith in trans-
formation and perhaps show that to the Chinese there was
no very definite line between animate and inanimate mat-
ter. Hills (per se) receive sacrifice that they may guard
their local district, as Sky (Heaven) guards the Kingdom.
The name, as person, produces in China (as the Li Ki
shows) strict taboo of the name of the dead. Immediately
after a man dies, his son goes to the roof and calls his
father by name, “ Come back, So and So”;1 but this is a
final effort of affection to bring back the soul before it has
quite fled. After this, when the dead is recognized as
really gone, the name must not be mentioned. So when one
enters a house, one must at once inquire what names are
taboo in the family, a very necessary precaution, as proper
names may also be those of common things; for which rea-
son it is the rule that one should not give a son a (common
noun) name of any hill, river, day, month, state, or disease.
The last item shows that children were occasionally given
mean names, as they are today in South India, for the pur-
pose of warding off the evil (envious) eye or an evil spirit.
Wailing for the dead is incidentally said to be "from
love or from fear," a conservative statement. The mourn-
ers for the dead not only wail and put on special garments,
but they leap, and leaping is said to be as imperative or im-
portant as is wailing. This leaping or wild dancing 2 is
1 Instead of calling out, one may shoot arrows to arrest the de-
parting soul; but if the name is called in that event is not stated.
2 The northern Chinese Buddhists also still have the cham harail
(sacred dance) as a part of their religious rites.
VI
RELIGIONS OF CHINA I
241
performed three times. There is also mention of a three-
fold deasil (a Hindu rite) around the grave, but as if it
were an unusual custom. In this case the mourner with
bared left arm walks around the grave from left to right
three times. Seven is also a holy or at least respectful
number, as may be seen from the fact that on the death of
an emperor his revered body is put into the coffin on the
seventh day after death and buried in the seventh month,
while his ancestral temple embraces seven small fanes.1
In feeding the dead the mouth is stuffed with rice and pieces
of flesh are placed beside the corpse. Ridicule is made of
the idea that the dead actually need the food. One good
man filled jars with pickles for his dead wife and he is
laughed at; but the explanation that the jars are not really
less when the Li Ki was composed a more refined meaning
was current. Incense (of aromatic wood) is burned to
attract and show respect to the dead; perhaps earlier to
dissipate odours less pleasant. Candles on the bier are not
to cheer but chase the spirits.
From the formal recommendation of the Li Ki we learn
that the constant sacrifices were first the great seasonal
sacrifices 2 offered by the emperor to Heaven and Earth,
who also sacrificed to the four quarters and to [the spirits
of?] mountains and rivers. The bull-sacrifice was reserved
1 These were erected to his “spiritual sovereigns” (ancestral
ghosts). It is they who punish a bad king (“ saying, "Why dost
thou oppress my people?'"), quite as much as does God. Thus, too,
of the people. In the Shu a king says: “ The former kings will
punish you (the people), if you disobey me and when they punish
you from above, you will have no escape." The Seven Directors of
Heaven may have been thus conceived.
2 It is worthy of note that according to the express statements of
the Shu King neither Heaven nor ancestral spirits accept a sacrifice
as such; "only the sincere and reverent" can have their sacrifices
accepted. Reverence disposes Heaven to show favour and to make
one wise or virtuous. Conversely, calamities sent by Heaven may be
averted (they are chastisements and cease when no longer required);
but calamities “brought on by oneself” are not to be escaped.”
3 On a punitive expedition the emperor sacrificed also to the God
of War. When mourning for his father (for three years) the em-
242
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS.
for royalty. Two bulls were sacrificed to Heaven and
Earth, when a new city was founded, by the emperor's own
hand. Nobles might not sacrifice to Heaven but must
sacrifice to Earth and to their own district spirits, using
rams and boars for this purpose. Lesser officials used
lesser animals, and common people made offerings of their
ordinary food, such as rice, eggs, geese, or pigs. There is
no “unclean” animal. At a sacrifice, the emperor eats
beef or dog's meat with equal complacency. The object
of sacrifice is clearly stated to be the pleasuring of spirits
with music, food, or incense, in order to their appearance
at the sacrificer's altar and the "adjustment of their rela-
tions” with man. Sacrifice in view of supposed transgres-
sion is acceptable to the gods, although it is drily remarked
that “repentance never overtakes the past." In general,
there was a “minister of religion," to regulate all services
rendered to the Manes and other spirits. Once there is men-
tion of a noble lord who wished to sacrifice himself for the
sins of his people; and the royal prayer that evil and guilt,
inferred from national calamities, may be expiated by
the speaker, not by the people, sufficiently indicates that
the idea of tranſsferred sin is not unfamiliar. Usually,
however, sacrifices are simply to please, given with affection
or reverence; or, it may be, for aid, and after success, as
it were in thanksgiving, for victory or harvest. Typical
is the great imperial sacrifice, when the ruler and his wife
take alternate parts in presenting offerings, and all is done
solely " to please the spirits of the dead and unite the living
and the disembodied.” As shown in the Shi King, an offer-
ing to spirits is a sort of family feast, which on occasion
may become a means of asking aid from the ghostly chief
guests. As with the queen, so with other women, they are
not debarred from religious offices in honour of the dead.1
peror sacrificed only to Heaven, Earth, and the spirits of land and
grain. One-tenth of the royal expenditures was devoted to defray-
ing the cost of sacrifices.
1 Otherwise the position of woman is one of marked inferiority.
She has nothing to do with religion in general. Her whole duty is
TA
RELIGIONS OF CHINA I
243
All approved offerings and sacrifices were to beneficent
beings. There was no official cult of evil spirits. Yet
they were recognized by ceremonies, such as the noisy dem-
onstration to drive away demons of pestilence. This cere-
mony impressed Confucius, apparently as a sort of recog-
nition of their power, which he emphasized by respectful
behaviour toward them. Drought, too, is an evil clemon.
In short, as elsewhere, most natural ills are demons or
brought in by demons. These may act as servants of spirits
for chastisement, so that even the common man must be
religiously observant of all rites permitted by his circum-
stances, although it is said that the complex ceremonies of
social and religious life are not for common people, only
for the higher classes.
At the present day China still bows to every sort of spirit,
nor are all easy to divine. Animals represent souls in
many cases, as when pigs and rats are possessed of girls'
souls. But there are also natural spirit-animals, serpents,
which are not necessarily (though they may be) “pos-
séssed”; cocks, as holy birds which chase demons; the tor-
toise, the image of which on a grave gives a man's descend-
ants long life; foxes, which take hunian shape. An ordi-
nary animal, however, is not worshipped for itself but for
possessing a soul of a man; some by eating a man's body
eat his soul, etc. There is no end to the metamorphoses
conceived as possible. Men become rocks; poles have spir-
its; metals become animate; men become water-spirits
“neither to do wrong nor to do good (conspicuously); only to
think about the spirits and the food and to cause her parents no
sorrow.” Compare Pericles (ap. Thucydides) to the women of
Athens: “Let there be as little talk as possible among men about
youi, cither in praise or blame.” In almost the exact words of the
Hindu legislators it is said that a woman's duty is “in youth, to
obey her father or elder brother; when married to obey her hus-
band; and to obey her son when she becomes a widow.”
1 Extraordinary in so moral a code as that of the Li Ki is the
statement that the high class officials are not amenable to the laws:
“ High officials are not bound by penal statutes, as common people
are not bound by ceremonies."
244
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
(kvei) and cause disease, etc. One-legged hill-spirits are
not spirits of the hill but malformed spirits living in it.
Against all evil spirits drums and flags will avail; exorcism
also, with precedent fasting; or the blood of a dog or cock;
or clubs, knives, red (fire-cracker) flame or colour; even
twigs or a mirror. Dog, cock, and monkey (as scapegoat)
carry off disease-demons; amulets avert them. For good
luck are efficacious coffin-nails, the svastika, coins, horse-
shoes, the peach-tree and its wood, apparently not as spirits.
Each of the five elements, inetal, wood, water, fire, and
earth, has its indwelling spirit or demon. Many of these,
like the svastika, may be of Buddhistic origin.
Apart from ethical and political questions, the purely re-
ligious aspect of China did not change much from the early
period till the advent of Buddhism, and even after this
time it has remained substantially the same till the present
day, except that certain Buddhistic spirits have been widely
adopted. The chief deities worshipped in this Chinese sys-
tem are first Heaven and all its parts, Sun, Moon, Stars,
the five planets, especially the twenty-eight signs of the
lunar zodiac and certain constellations, such as the Great
Bear. Second, the Earth and all its parts, mountains, rivers,
soil, grain, earthquakes, drought, as spirits of good or ill.
Third, Wind, Rain, Heat, Cold, Thunder, Lightning, that
is, all meteorological phenomena. Fourth, the deified Sea-
sons and Quarters, four each. Fifth, The Five Parts of
the House, Gate, Door, Wall, Hearth, and Court. Heaven
and the Planets were regarded as emperors with the stars
as their officials, though they were but little personified.
Titles of the lower deities were indifferently Prince, Mas-
ter, or god, thus, Prince of the Wind, Master of Rain, Door
God, or simply the Thunderer. Gradually dead persons, as
tutelary divinities, have taken the place of original spirits
in the case of Soil and Grain, Kou Lung of the soil and
Ch'i of the grain. Military and other heroes have thus
after death been deified as God of War and as other spirits,
such as the spirit of water and of epidemics. Even a de-
LUI
RELIGIONS OF CHINA I
245
ceased woman, under the Han dynasty, was made Princess
of Demons, because, dying in childbirth, she appeared sub-
sequently as a ghost. So a few ghosts became national
gods, while the regular family ghosts were divinities only
to their own families. The emperor (and his representa-
tives) sacrificed to nature-spirits; common people only to
their own ancestors and to their door-god or hearth-god.
But about the time of the Christian era these rules were
more or less neglected and sacrifice was permitted by others
than the Emperor and his officials, even priestesses being
allowed to make offerings in the temples. If there were no
officials at hand, the people themselves might worship the
gods instead of having the service performed by officials.1
These are the chief traits of Sinism as gleaned from the
literature antecedent to the great teachers of China. Be-
fore turning to their work, we may for a moment consider
the negative side of this religion, and what the records fail
to say. Creation is mythologically ascribed not to Heaven
or God but to the cosmic Giant P’anku, who is naïvely de-
scribed as a carpenter hewing the world out of unformed
material and then as providing material by becoming in his
own body the universe. He chiselled out of masses of
granite, floating in space, sun, moon, and stars. His labour
done, he died. His head became mountains; his voice, thun-
der; his beard, the stars, etc. Certain natural phenomena,
worshipped by most savages, are expressly mentioned as
worshipped in the later literature and they may be implied
in the earlier, though there is little said about them. The
tortoise and divination plant suggest that these may have
1 A. Forke, Lun-Heng, in the Ostasiatische Studien, Leipzig, 1906,
P. 222f. Confucianism as a philosophy held various opinions re-
garding God and the soul. Some of the learned scholars of the fifth
century A. D. denied providential retribution in the present and the
existence of the soul in the future. The individual soul has many
divisions, as the blood-soul, breath-soul and others less vital in nail
and hair; some are gross and some etherial. The shadow is a
soul and the dream is a soul's journey. In this soul-belief the
ancient Chinese were on'a par with savages, as they were in con-
ceiving of all other spirits as bound to matter.
246
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
been holy in themselves, and we know that there were holy
trees, such as the acacia, plum, and fir. Serpents were
prayed to as dragon water-gods and sacrifice was made to
them. In 756 B. C., sacrifice was made to a yellow snake
as a “manifestation of God." Stones resembling human
beings were worshipped; probably also phallic stones, as
they are today, though their original function is almost for-
gotten. The spring-festival and fire-walking rite, in which
men leaped through fire, hacking themselves with knives,
preserve a similar recollection of a fire- or sun-cult. Animal
myths show that peculiar mana powers were supposed to
reside in certain phenomena. Shrines are found erected
to animals and even today stone animals erected upon
tombs are very commonly worshipped. Such modern fea-
tures have probably always made part of the popular re-
ligion, which, like all Oriental religions, is for ever making
new gods. Thus the great professional gods of today are
not a trait peculiar to modern China, but are the most recent
expression of this ancient ancestor-worshipping people.
But what is entirely lacking in the older religion is the
idea of the priest and his inevitable concomitants. Until
the advent of Buddhism, the Chinese religion had neither
a priesthood nor a mythology. Buddhism entered China
before the Christian era, according to received tradition,
though there was no active propaganda till the first cen-
tury of our era. For the first time in China, it offered the
spectacle of monks, virtually priests, united in a body and
spiritually set apart. Old China had no priest. Services
were conducted by the emperor, who even slaughtered sac-
rificial victims with his own hand, or by the mandarins who
officially represented him. It is indeed sometimes said that
the emperor was “ High Priest,” but this is a figure of
speech. To be a high priest one must have lower priests
under him; but the mandarins were nobles not priests.
Emperor and nobles officiated, as in their humbler worship
1 Man, London, 1913, No. 41.
O
RELIGIONS OF CHINA I
247
did the ordinary householder, without mediators, even as
the spirits worshipped performed no mediatorial office in
respect of the Supreme Lord. And as there was no priest
there was no hell and no dire fate to be dreaded hereafter.
So, as to the gods, the old Chinese worshippers had no vain
imaginings. The gods or spirits were tao vague to be hu-
manized; there was no Olympus, no adventures, war-like
or amorous, of the celestial spirits. These lacunae are due
to the same cause. The uninstructed Chinaman neither
invented a picturesque heaven above nor a hell below, be-
cause his whole spiritual interest lay in the lives already
lived by his ancestors. In contrast with Semitic occupa-
tion with the present and Egyptian preoccupation with the
future, the Chinaman, it has been said with some truth, was
occupied with the past. He looked backward rather than
forward; he was more concerned with his ancestors than
with his own ghostly future. The gods he worshipped were
mainly ancestral individuals and group-gods who lacked
individuality, “spirits of mountains," " spirits of streams."
Few outward changes in the cult of spirits or ancestors
are recorded. Libations were added to music to attract
the spirits, we are told; but even this must be taken in a
restricted sense, not as implying that the ghosts had not
been fed previously but that spirituous libations were added
to music and food. Again, the ancestor was originally sup-
posed to reside during sacrifice in a wooden tablet; but dur-
ing the Chou dynasty it became customary to let living
representatives of the dead impersonate him for the time be-
ing. These representatives were temporarily revered and
could make convenient answers when begged for favours.
This practice, however, was given up in the third century
B. C. The chief change was in the direction of anthropo-
morphization in the case of Heaven as a personal god with
human attributes and in the establishment of a philosophical
basis for religious practices.
This basis is the antithesis of the Yang and Yin as under-
stood by the explainers of the Yih-King, whose mysterious
248
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
alternate lines, whole or broken, appear to have been orig-
inally nothing more than a means of divination. But a
profound meaning was given to them from early times and
the strong and weak lines were interpreted as representing
fire and cold or male and female elements in the universe.
Together they govern productive nature. The Way of na-
ture is the method, antedating Heaven itself, through which
order and righteousness, based on order, first came into
being. Thus the Way or Tao may be called the mother of
all things, though neither thing nor spirit. Man, as part
of the universe, has also the dual nature of the Tao, which
is expressed most conspicuously by Heaven and Earth, par-
ents of all, one warm and light, one cold and dark. Man's
earthy soul at death returns to earth. This is the Kvei or
evil soul, as opposed to the Shen or spiritual soul, which,
manifested in breath, at the death of the body returns to
heaven and “moves on high as a shining light.”
1 Compare the Vedic Rita, Right Order, also Zoroastrian, Asha,
and the Egyptian idea of an Order-goddess above the gods.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
RELIGIONS OF CHINA II
CONFUCIUS, LAO-TSE, TAOISM
Two great religious leaders appeared in China in the sixth
century B.C. Neither, however, taught a new religion.
One was Lao-tse and the other was Confucius.1 Lao-tse
(born in 601 B. C.) was known later as the Wizard of the
West, whence some have supposed that he came from the
western world and even that he taught a Taoism derived
from India. On the contrary, Taoism is thoroughly Chin-
ese and Lao himself was foreign only to the Middle King-
dom, being a native of the South (Ch’u state). He ap-
peared foreign because he was a mystic and mysticism
was strange to the practical Chinaman. Yet the basis of
Taoism is inherent in the King, and Taoism belonged to
Confucius as much as to Laotse; but Lao differed from
Confucius as to the means of perfecting oneself in Tao.
The chief work attributed to Lao is the Tao-teh-King or
Canon of the Way and Purity. If not his text, it epitomizes
his philosophy in eighty-one paragraphs.
Both of these teachers recognized that orderly goodness
is the natural state of the universe controlled by Tao, and
that man as part of the universe and naturally good is, one
may say, religiously required to preserve and heighten that
goodness. Cultivation of the Tao is man's duty. Lao lays
stress on the firmness and impartiality of Heaven as model
behaviour for man to imitate and urges also the duty of
1 These names both contain in Chinese the word tzu or tse (sage).
Lao-tse is the Venerable Sage; Confucius is a Latinized form of
K’ung-fu-tse, the Kung-family sage. So Mencius and Licius are for
Mang-tse and Lieh-tse.
249
250
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
compliance, which means that, as parts of the universe do
not interfere with each other (are compliant), so the ruler
should be compliant: “ The perfect ruler complies with
the will of the people,” he sees to it that their wishes are
observed. Compliance tends to humility, which is also
exemplified in nature. It is the humility of the great river
ever seeking lower ground and gaining thereby in strength,
as it is the more sought by other streams the lower it is.
Arrogance and self-assertion have no place in nature; what
is weaker than water, yet what is stronger? One should,
too, not be full of oneself; emptiness, that is freedom from
materialistic desires and aversions, characterizes the sage
and the good.
The doctrine of the Shen Tao (compare the Japanese
Shinto) or Spiritual Way led to that of an apathetic atti-
tude toward the affairs of life. Dispassion leads to com-
plete indifference, including disregard of knowledge, which
is as baleful as desire. To gain real wisdom one must
discard knowledge. To be full of the divine one must be
empty of worldliness. There remains for the one seeking
wisdom only intuition as a guide to Tao. Lao was a mystic,
who “sought Tao” by contemplation. Probably among
the recluses of his day there were others who sought it also
by inducing trances through breath-suppression and the like.
At any rate it is at this point that the vulgar interpretation
of Lao-tse's idea begins. Seeking Tao became nothing more
than seeking for life-elixirs, since Lao himself taught that
Tao might be obtained even in life. The exercises of con-
templation soon became the “recondite calisthenics” in-
culcated by the later doctors of the school as a means of
securing longevity equal to that of old Phang, who “by
getting Tao” lived on earth for nigh two thousand years.
The passive attitude expresses itself in universal benevo-
lence; this leads to practical immunity from danger of poi-
1 Lao-tse himself taught that education and forms of worship are
1:ot only vain but injurious. The Taoist shibboleth is W11-wei,
“not doing, inaction.
RELIGIONS OF CHINA II
251
sonous or wild beasts, a Buddhistic trait. Gentleness, fru-
gality, humility, shrinking back or compliance, not putting
oneself forward, are virtues taught by the Tao. The Taoist
has no aim, no desire; "he rests and all is well.” Sages of
old had virtue without knowing it. They no more " tried to
be virtuous” than a black crow tries to be black. They
did not try to be benevolent; they were benevolent just as
they were tall or hungry. Classes did not exist; men lived
naturally, not only like animals but with animals, on a
friendly footing, as one family. All this is the usual vain
imagining of those who see the perfect age in the past
and find in man a natural goodness which can be brought to
light by divesting him of the artificial obstruction to per-
fection with which civilization has surrounded him. There
is therefore nothing very new to us in Lao's doctrine though
it was strange to his hearers. As an ethical teacher, he
alone reached the height of proclaiming the rule of “re-
paying injury with kindness," as a norm of conduct. Con-
fucius, confronted with this doctrine, repudiated it and
taught instead “reciprocity”- treat others as they treat
you. Be just to the injurer, kind to the kind, is Confu-
cius's rule.
Before speaking of the later forms of Taoism it will be
necessary now to examine the teaching of Confucius him-
self. Fifty years younger than Lao-tse, a practical states-
man, a man of the world, Confucius, it is said, once paid
a visit to Lao, who was at that time over eighty years of
age, but came away dumbfounded; he could not under-
stand the sage at all and felt as if he had “encountered a
dragon. We can easily believe this. Confucius, a timid
man in any event, was not an original thinker and when
he met one he felt overcome. The circumstances of Con-
fucius's life are much better known than those of the Wiz-
ard of the West. He was born in Lu (part of Shangtung)
when his father was already over seventy. He became a
teacher at an early age and spent his life trying to get, and
occasionally obtaining, political preferment, though he never
252
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
secured a permanent position. He died a disappointed old
man, one might almost say a disappointed politician,' were
it not that his eagerness to get office was inspired by a
real zeal to put in practice statescraft which he felt would
better the world. Practical politics, ethically supported,
was his main interest in life. He had not a spiritual na-
ture. It is probably correct to say that he believed in
Heaven, if not in God, but he certainly taught that the best
way to treat the spirits was to let them alone. He implied
to his disciples that no man can know anything about spirits
or life after death, and that it was more important for a
man to know himself and attend to his present life than to
worry about spirits and the life to come. At the same
time he was too staunch a conservative to neglect the rites
and ceremonies of religion. His great service to his coun-
try was in collecting its ancient literature. He himself
wrote the annals of the Chou dynasty; but for a moralist
he wrote them ill, the Ch'un-Ts'iu, or Spring and Autumn
(Annals, as his work is named) being not only defective but
"evasive and deceptive." His countryman Kung-Yang says
that "it conceals facts out of regard for the aristocracy, for
kinsmen, and for men of worth,” a native judgment which
needs only the comment that “concealment” includes mis-
representation. Confucius must not be blamed too severely;
the dynasty he was describing was that of his patron. Yet
despite this, it is somewhat of a shock to learn that the
greatest religious teacher of China, who is now worshipped
in hundreds of temples as a superman, was a deceitful his-
torian. The fact makes it the more doubtful whether the
works he collected were not also transmitted in a form use-
ful to the transmitter's purpose.
The many anecdotes which were current in regard to the
i Chuang-tse taunts Confucius with his political disappointments
and says that he was twice expelled from his native district of Lu,
tabooed in Wei, and a failure in Tsi. Confucius was really in exile
for fourteen years. He was recalled home at the age of sixty-eight.
2 This is exactly Buddha's attitude. See above, pp. 185, 192.
RELIGIONS OF CHINA II
253
Logia of Confucius were collected and edited as the Lun-
Yü some time after the master's death. He believed that to
S
the past, which represents the processes of Tao and shows
how evil kings died evilly and good kings had Heaven's
support. He endorsed with his approval all the rules of
ancient days, recommending a strict observance of the cere-
monial, rites, customs, and etiquette of the virtuous men of
old. To know these, to follow these, to become as the an-
cients were, would be to become as' perfect as the ancients,
who lived with due regard to the Right Way. This was all
practical, not religious, though visionary. He saw no use
in mysticism. He recognized no value in prayer. When
his disciples asked if they should pray for him in his extreme
illness, he replied in effect, Do not pray for me, saying “my
praying has been for a long time,” implying that he had
long ceased to pray, having nothing to repent of and no
favours to ask of the spirits of the upper and lower worlds.
He is described as mild and gentle in demeanour though
dignified, of easy manners but very respectful. He was a
firm believer in himself as Heaven's agent. On being ad-
vised not to go among the K’uang people, he replied, "What
can they do to me? Will Heaven let the cause of truth
perish?” As benevolence and knowledge were favourite
themes of his, he was asked to define them. “Benevolence,"
he said, “is to love men; knowledge is to know men." He
taught no secret doctrine. Like Buddha, he expressly de-
clared that he kept no esoteric wisdom concealed from the
crowd. “Do not think that I conceal anything," he said,
“I conceal nothing from you, my disciples; I do nothing
which I do not show; that is my way.” “Four things,"
they reported of him," the master taught, letters, ethics,
1 Confucius was probably superstitious by nature. The sound of
thunder or the sight of a inourner discomposed him. He was a hard
drinker, but light eater. Nowadays he would be described as a
charitable, timid, finnicky person, rather meticulous; he was, for
example, very particular in regard to the length of his night-clothes
and the use of chop-sticks,
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THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
thoroughness of thought, and truthfulness.” He did not
teach religion and were it not for his disciples he might well
be omitted from a history of religion except as a collector
of religious literature. But owing to his commanding posi-
tion as guide of Chinese thought for two thousand years he
is entitled to attention even in his unreligious dicta. “Your
good villagers,” he once said, “ are thieves of virtue,” mean-
ing that they were illiberal and narrow. Again he said:
"If I were sure of becoming wealthy I might become a
groom to attain that end; but as it is uncertain whether even
then I should get rich, I will pursue what I love." Of benev-
olence and learning he said, “ The love of being benevolent
without the love of learning induces only foolish simplicity."
Not his, but passed unreproved by him, is the mot quoted
from his disciple; “ If one does not transgress in great vir-
tues he may transgress in small virtues." Two political
maxims are Confucius's own. One is: “He who gov-
erns by his virtue is like the North Star; it keeps its place
and all the stars turn toward it." This is the kernel of the
Great Learning; it is the doctrine of example. Confucius
really believed that the people would be virtuous if the em-
peror was virtuous and that all a statesman had to do to
secure virtue and happiness in the state was to have the
emperor well trained in approved practices. The deplor-
able state of China in his day is remarked upon by him and
it is characteristic that he emphasizes the decay in manners:
“The manners of the age have long been in a sad condition.”
The second maxim is implied in the remark that “the pur-
suit of strange doctrine is injurious.” China has always
been intolerant of heresies. Confucius also laments the
paucity of scholars and of records.
The attitude of Lao toward Confucius seems to have been
one of scornful silence. But Lieh-tse, the later disciple of
1 Confucius's favourite disciple, Yen Hui, said with the approba-
tion of his master: "Teach the people propriety and music and
they will not fortify towns, but fuse their swords into agricultural
implements” (inaugurating a golden age).
RELIGIONS OF CHINA II
255
Lao, and Chuang-tse, the contemporary of Mencius, were
voluble abusers of the sage and his system, which Chuang-
tse calls “ random jargon." By the fourth century B. C, the
battle between the schools was at its height and produced
the two greatest upholders of the old masters. It is not too
much to say that Chuang-tse really did more than uphold
Lao's reputation; for if it were not for this learned and
brilliant follower, the master would have been forgotten,
except as his ill-used name persists as a cloak to all the
vain superstitions of later and modern Taoism.
Confucius was a statesman with ideals which, if not
broad, were high. He also, it is clear, built his ideals on a
belief in some moral power “making for righteousness” in
the universe. Benevolence was characteristic of his religion
and this is based on the impartial benevolence of Heaven, as
his inculcation of “right adjustment," propriety, and ap-
proval of music are based on the wish to imitate Heaven's
order and regularity. What made him great is the fact that
he exactly represented the racial spirit; what made him
popular with royalty was that his ideals tended to uphold
the status in quo ante. In desiring to bind his country to
old ideas he implicitly urged official suppression of all per-
sonal initiative. As any such initiative tends to disturb the
State, which should be immutable, such a teacher was an ideal
instructor in the eyes of a State desiring to remain without
change for ever. As a laudator temporis acti he was no
innovator, but he was an invaluable preserver of beliefs and
forms. Though a ritualist by nature and chiefly concerned
with the “ three hundred points of ceremony and three thou-
sand points of behaviour," his morality really rested on a
metaphysical basis, as did that of Lao, who also had no other
religion. Confucius taught ethics practically and the chief
virtue he inculcated was that of piety, of the son toward the
father and mother, of the subject toward the emperor. This
maintains on the one hand the worship of ancestors who are
dead and on the other loyalty toward the living sovereign.
In the latter regard it makes the emperor, as Son of Heaven
256
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
(a Ti), the object of religious devotion like that paid to the.
emperor of Japan. This Shinto spirit in Confucianism ex-
plains why it, rather than the teaching of Lao-tse, was ex-
alted by emperors as well as by all those who trod by predi-
lection the way of their fathers.
A supplementary rule ascribed to Confucius as part of his
general rule of piety was wifely obedience, troth in friend-
ship, and kindness toward those who deserved it. He also
commends the historical statement that at such and sucli
periods men were careful not to injure animal life need-
lessly. His general ethical system has been codified. Its
chief rules are to be pious, as explained above, to be benev-
olent, to cultivate peace, be moderate, study diligently, be
correct in deportment and courteous in behaviour, oppose
false accusations and false doctrines, control angry passions,
and pay taxes. There are many similar rules but not a word
about God. It is a system of morality rather than of reli-
gion. Yet it must not be forgotten that it was a religious
matter with Confucius to worship ghosts, and the exercise of
the virtues he recommends was also religiously binding.
His countrymen, though not till many years after his death,
exalted him, first as a noble, then as the perfect sage, and
finally served him as a god with many sacrifices and temples.
Sacrifice was indeed made at his tomb in the second century
B. C., but his first temple was not built till 555 A. D. Later
fables exalt his divinity and relate that his birth was her-
alded by strange portents and miraculous appearances; genii
announced to his mother the honour in store for her; fairies
attended at his nativity — the usual tales that cluster about
the birth of a god-man in the Orient.1
When Lao-tse died is not known. Confucius, who was
born in 551 B. C., died in 478 or 479. Put Shang, one of his
favourite disciples, lived till 406 B. C. The two great disci-
ples of Lao-tse were Lieh-tse, who lived in the second half of
the fifth century, and Chuang-tse, who lived in the middle of
1 Douglass, Confucianism and Taoism, London, 1887, p. 25.
RELIGIONS OF CHINA II
257
the fourth century, B.C. The greatest follower of Confucius
was Mang-tse or Mencius, who was born in 371(2) and died
in 288(9) B.C. We thus have a fairly continuous tradition
in respect to the teaching of both the founders of Chinese
religions. Confucius's disciples, as was natural, were many
more than those of the mystic, Lao, and several of them
were a generation younger than himself.1
China has had its pessimists as well as its optimists, its
hedonists as well as its moralists. Lich-tse (above) inter-
preted the doctrine of his master to mean that if death was
a return to non-existence, one might as well get what pleas-
ure one could from this present life. As man is absorbed
into the Creator, man may also become divine; that is, he
may not only brave wild beasts with impunity but he may
be like a god, walk unharmed through fire and go through
the air. Another follower of Lao-tse, named Moh or
Mih Ti,” eraggerated Lao's teaching and expounded a doc-
trine of saving love. Love for all men will be the salvation
of the world; all evil comes from hate and unjust distinc-
tions among men. The principle of love will abolish this
evil. Perfect love of man, like the sun, blesses all. Moh Ti
and Yang Chu, a contemporary hedonist, were opposed by
Mencius, whose seven chapters couched in dialogues sup-
posed to have taken place between Confucius and others,
show that his aim was the good of the realm, which might
be attained by wisdom, humanity, justice, and respectability,
which leads to piety, care of the dead, and loyalty. Like
Confucius, Mencius taught that man was good by nature as
opposed to the view openly professed by others that man
was naturally evil. Mencius adds something to the doctrine
of Confucius, but above all he presents his views with a
vigour and manliness lacking in the timid statements of his
1 Confucius refers to his disciples as seventy-seven in number.
He is popularly credited with having had three thousand disciples
during his life-time, of whom seventy-two were accounted “wor-
thy."
2 The form Mih or Mak is a corruption of Moh Ti (Tih). Like
Mencius, the name is sometimes Latinized as Micius.
258
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
master, and it is as a man rather than a novel thinker that
he deserves regard. “He may not be a sage, but his learn-
ing has reached the highest point," said his countrymen.
Confucius believed, but scarcely dared to say, that a wicked
king should be ousted; Mencius said roundly that a king was
of no importance as compared with the people, who indeed
are the judge: “Heaven hears as the people hear." He
dared not only to philosophize but to stand before an em-
peror and say, “If a king has faults, the nobles should
remonstrate with him and, if he will not listen, they ought to
put another king in his place." To revolt against such a
king is not revolution but “raising the standard of right-
eousness.” As between him and Confucius, the latter laid
more weight upon benevolence, Mencius upon righteousness;
Confucius thought most of private and domestic virtues;
Mencius allowed for human nature and permitted a king to
be self-indulgent if he was not false to good government.
A modern tone appears in his teaching that to be made vir-
tuous the people must be fed and then educated.1 Starving
folk cannot be virtuous; let them fill their bellies and when
they are no longer hungry they will educate themselves, be-
come virtuous of themselves. In good years most people
are good ; in bad years most of them are bad.
In maintaining that man was naturally virtuous, Mencius
had to contend not only with those who, like Siün K’uang,
his contemporary, held that man was naturally vicious, but
with those who argued that man was naturally neither one
nor the other but indifferently good or evil, as water flows
indifferently east or west. Mencius replied that water may
do this but it will not flow indifferently up or down, and
asserted that man has within himself. a natural principle of
righteousness and that he has also a natural principle of
1
1 This is in direct opposition to Lao-tse, who taught that the more
people were educated the worse they becamne.
2 The argument here is that man's very wish to become virtuous
proves him naturally evil, for it is only the thin, not those naturally
fat, who wish to become fat. Man's nature is due to association
and education, which alone make him good or bad.
RELIGIONS OF CHINA II
259
S
apprehending moral truth. Men naturally feel distress if
they see a child fal, into a well; they do not have this feeling
because they expect gain or have argued it out. Benevo-
lence and the knowledge of good and evil, together with
righteousness and propriety, are like man's four limbs.
There is also a passion-nature, but this is lower and there
is a restriction in exercising the senses; the higher moral
nature is chief; passion-nature is subordinate by Heavenly
appointment," and the greatest man is he who “ does not
lose his child-heart." This means apparently that he pre-
serves unimpaired his natural goodness. The great ques-
tions of Mencius's time were ethical, and it is evident that
moral problems were more discussed than any others. As
Mencius himself reports: “ The words of Yang Chu (the
hedonist and pessimist) and of Moh fill the empire. All peo-
ple have adopted the views of one or the other.” Mencius
objects to both, to Yang, because his principle, “each for
himself;" ignores loyalty, and to Moh, because “ love all
equally” ignores filial piety, which ought to express a more
than equal love. Neither of these doctrines introduces us
to a new religious element. The universal love advocated
by Moh is not based on a spiritual argument but on prece-
dents of antiquity and the economic advantage of following
them. Moh contends that universal love is the best working
rule for a State and that, if people will not feel this love,
they should be punished till they do. Yang Chu can scarcely
be said to deserve a place in a history of religion. He was a
brilliant cynic without moral basis, inculcating a ruthless
contempt for antiquity, which paved the way to the stand
taken by Shi-Huang-Ti (the “First Emperor”), who de-
stroyed Confucian lore, probably because its key-note was
that “to establish a kingdom well one must learn the lesson
of the ancients,” the lesson, namely, that tranquillity and
not conquest is the aim of a good king: “The coat of mail
1 Professor Legge, who has discussed these points in full in his
Life and Works of Mencius, London, 1889, compares this with the
doctrine of Bishop Butler's Serinons upon Human Nature.
260
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
and the helmet give occasion for war," and this is to be
avoided (Shu-King).
It is somewhat remarkable that the philosophy of Moh
(Meh Ti) was regarded by the Chinese themselves as on a
par with that of Confucius. The two sages are spoken of
by later authors as the two greatest men of antiquity, as if
for some centuries Confucius had not yet attained his rank
of paramount sage. From the point of view of superstition,
the followers of Moh believed in ghosts and spirits, adoring
them and imploring their help, while they neglected the cult
of ancestors. During the Han period, beginning 206 B. C.,
there were several notable Confucianists, such as Yang
Hiung, while side by side with Lao-tse is placed Huang Ti,
who is even called the father of Taoism. Huai Nan-tse,
another Taoist, was so great an alchemist that, it is said, he
and his household, including his dogs and poultry, all went
to heaven and became immortal. The Taoist. Han Fei-tse
maintained that virtue is of no account and that scholars
are parasites or destructive grubs, while divination is de-
spicable. Tung Chung Shu (150 B. C.) invented a new rain-
sacrifice and distinguished between disposition, due to Yang,
and feeling, due to Yin, the former being naturally good, the
latter evil.
Chuang-tse (above), the second great disciple of Laotse,
a century later than Lieh-tse, enlarged upon the cryptic utter-
ances of his master. He was to Lao-tse what Mencius was
to Confucius. From Lao-tse we get the wisdom of apparent
paradox:
Ignorance produces wisdom. Goodness is not to do good.
Weakness is stronger than strength. Emptiness is fullness. In-
action is more active than action (by not-doing all is done).
Ruling is ruining. Who holds by force, loses. Who subdues
himself, is mighty. Keep out and you will get in; keep back and
you will be advanced. Who is content, has enough.
Chuang explains Tao in more comprehensible language.
“The greatest politeness, it is said, is to show no special
respect to others; the greatest righteousness is to take no
RELIGIONS OF CHINA II
261
account of things; the greatest wisdom is to lay no plans;
the greatest benevolence is to make no show of affection;
the greatest good faith is to give no pledge of sincerity.
Repress the impulses of the will; unravel the errors of the
mind; put away the entanglements to virtue; and clear away
all that obstructs the free course of the Tao. Honours and
riches, distinctions, austerity, fame and profit, these six pro-
duce the impulses of the will. Personal appearance and
deportment, the desire of beauty and subtle reasonings, ex-
citement of the breath and cherished thoughts, these six
produce errors of the mind. Hatred and longings, joy and
anger, grief and delight, these six are the entanglements to
virtue. Refusals and approachments, receiving and giving,
knowledge and ability, these six obstruct the course of the
Tao. When these four conditions, with the six causes of
each, do not agitate the breast, the mind is correct, and being
correct it is still and pellucid; being pellucid it is free from
pre-occupation and thus enters the state of inaction in which
it accomplishes everything. ... Subject and object meet in
the Tao ... positive and negative blend in the infinite One
... the universe and I are one. . . . If man loves God as
his father, he should have a greater love for that which is
greater than God” (Tao).
But in other regards Chuang is distinctly an innovator ; nor
is he entirely consistent with himself, for he says: “God
is the Ultimate, manifested in nature; at the beginning of all
things God was.” Lao-tse is a mystic but he mentions
God? only as posterior to a finite principle; he does not
teach metempsychosis nor the doctrine of illusion, whereas
Chuang says: “When the real awakening comes it may be
that life will be found to have been a dream, Confucius a
dream, I myself a dream --- or is the dream reality? I
dreamed I was a butterfly, but woke and found that it was
I; or am I a butterfly who dreams that it is Chuang? What
1 In his Tao-Teh-King (if it is his), he derives being from not-
being, that is from the Absolute to be described only by negations
(it is the Unknowable).
1
262
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
is ? What seems? And yet betweeni butterfly and man
some barrier exists; a change of form, that is all.” It is
not impossible, though improbable, that some Brahmanistic
thought had already filtered through to China, as Mr. Lionel
Giles has suggested."
The China of Mencius and Chuang was no longer the
China of Lao-tse and Confucius. Foreign elements were
appearing in the state. Changes were taking place even in
clothes and equipment that would have shocked Confucius.
Prime ministers, even emperors, were half-breeds. The
emperor who died in 425 B. C. was not only half Tartar by
birth but he married a Tartar, so that his children were any-
thing but Chinese. Wu-ling (325-299 B. C.) introduced the
Tartar dress and boots and cavalry into China. And along
with boots and war-horses entered demoralizing ideas. It
was a time of political and intellectual life. Materialism,
already latent in the doctrines of Confucius, who ignored
all spirituality, was now not only recognized but proudly
proclaimed to be the only truie philosophy. It was against
this materialism that Mencius raised his voice. He could no
longer cite Confucius as an authority; to many, Confucius
was not only a dream but a nightmare. By only a few
was his ipse dixit accepted without dispute. All opinions
got a hearing and it is to the lasting credit of the Chinese
that in the long run the optimist and moralist prevailed
against the pessimist and hedonist. It is to Mencius that
the Chinese owe the final triumph of the Confucian view.
that man is naturally virtuous and that, for this reason,
righteousness is a religious aim. Mencius does not usually
speak of God (Shang Ti) but of T'ien (Heaven); yet once
he says: “ Even though wicked, man may sacrifice to Shang
Ti, if he fast and purify himself.”
Mencius was one of a number of brilliant scholars of his
age. But there was little accomplished for Chinese religion
after his day save in the philosophy of religion and the best
1 Musings of a Chinese Mystic in Wisdom of the East series.
RELIGIONS OF CHINA II
263
1
work here was done under the influence of Buddhism. Tao-
ism shows a steady decline to the unintelligent hocus-pocus
called by that name ever since. Imported Buddhism exerted
for certain seasons a profound influence upon the spiritual
life of the more educated classes. Philosophy of native
sort was still tinged with classicism, but in so far as it di-
verged from this was at its best in a sort of Epicureanism.
This system, the most original philosophical system of China,
was a materialistic monism, elaborated in thirty books and
eighty-five chapters by Wang Ch’ung, who was born in 27
A. D. and died circa 97. Several of his works are lost, but
his Lung-Heng or philosophical essays survive. He is an
eclectic philosopher, an admirer of Confucius, whom he yet
criticizes freely, and he bases his principles of philosophy on
the old theory of the Yang and Yin, yet not as leading to a
and earthly “fluids” are material. There is here no spir-
itual correlate to the Yang, no Tao, and no supreme Reason.
All natural phenomena are explicable from natural causes.
Heaven and earth were originally one vapour, as is taught
by the old philosophers, who say that the Great One divided
into heaven and earth. When chaos ended, what was pure
and ocean. The mixture of their fluids produced man.
Air and fiery ether represent Yang; earth and water, Yin.
The two elements are therefore male fire and female water,
one represented by sun, stars, and spirit or mind, the other
by water and its sediment (earth) and body. Heaven, like
earth, does all things spontaneously and without volition;
hears no prayers, rewards no virtue, does not live like a
king (as God), cannot feel, see, or hear. When the Yang
fluid comes forth spontaneously, plants grow; when it ebbs
and Yin increases, they wither and die. Man's soul and
mind are one and one with the fluid of heaven, which is
inactive consciously but active unconsciously.” The fu-
sion of the male fiery and female watery fluids, heaven and
earth, makes man; so man is said to have a father in the
264
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
sky; but in reality the fluids crystallize together to make
man; it is as when, so to speak, ice is made; so man is crys-
tallized, and melts again into those fluids; the vital spirit
is represented by, or resides during life in, the blood; the
body represents the earth fluid. Ghosts are not deceased
beings but warm airs, parts of the fiery fluid without body.
No man can know the future or prolong his life. Fate is
determined by the amount of fiery fluid he has in his make-
up; it is one with star-fluid, so astrologers can tell about it.
Rain comes from earth; it is not a gift of heaven. Virtue
is an excess of heavenly fluid, a fluid which seems to tend to
virtue (so the ancients tell us). Man is not naturally good
or bad, as older philosophers argue; 1 his virtue depends on
the amount of his heavenly fluid.
According to Wang Ch’ung, the vital fluid (Yang) em-
braces the five elements, water, fire, wood, metal, and earth,
which form the five organs, heart, liver, stomach, lungs, and
kidneys, and these are the seats of the five virtues, benevo-
lence, justice, propriety, knowledge, and truth. Interesting
as is this philosophy in its denial of spiritual life, it adds
nothing religiously to the denials of former centuries. It is
rather a negation of religion than a religious form, and in its
dogma that the heaven-fluid possesses truth and knowledge
as well as the other virtues, it is not very logical. These
virtues, however, appear only in the “hearts of the sages,”
not in heaven itself.
In the eleventh century, under Buddhistic influence, there
arose a nature-philosophy, Sing-Li, propounded by Chou-
Tun-i, who also accepted the Yang and Yin antithesis but
sought to discover an ultimate principle for both. His dis-
ciple, Chu Hi (1130–1200 A. D.), besides his literary activ-
ities, occupied himself with the same philosophical problem
1 Alfred Forke, Lun-Heng (Leipzig, 1907); he has compared at
length Lucretius, v. 439–449; 485-493, etc., and the parallel in the
materialistic Carvaka of India. See also the same writer's essays
on Yang Chu and the Chinese sophists in the Journal of the Peking
Oriental Society, vii, and of the China Branch of the Royal Asiatic
Society, xxxiv.
RELIGIONS OF CHINA II
265
and solved it by making the Ultimate, which to Chou-Tun-i
was either active or passive, as Yang and Yin, an incor-
poreal intelligence or supreme Reason, Li, immanent in the
universe, but having matter coeval beside it. Soul, con-
scious existence after death, and a personal God are denied,
though Chu Hi used the word God, probably by a figure of
speech (“God raises up the hero to overcome the calamities
which God sends down”). Since there is in this Neo-Con-
fucianism, which was influential in Japan, a rational prin-
ciple in all things and this is moral (moral ideas are qualities
of the Ultimate), the system forms a religion of a sort,
though not wholly native, for all metaphysical religious ideas
of this period are affected by the speculations of Buddhism.
Taoism was for centuries the accepted religion of China.
But Lao's Taoism had degenerated into a search for the
elixir of life and the philosopher's stone; even in life one
may acquire Tao. Beguiled by the hope of these valuables
many emperors gave protection and encouragement to the
Taoist doctors who practised alchemy and preached doc-
trines which they claimed were derived from Lao-tse, to
whom 'sacrifice was made in the second century of our era.
Even as early as the third century B. C. the “First Em-
peror” (246–210 B. C.) fitted out a naval expedition to find
the land of perpetual youth and discover its secrets. At that
time the Taoist magicians already professed ability to live
like gods, see into the future, rule natural forces, etc. Wu
Ti, an emperor of the first century B. C., became the intel-
lectual slave of these charlatans. Soon after this Buddhism
began to influence Taoism, which in the fourth century A. D.
invented or borrowed new gods and in course of time
1 Known there as Shushi; it was complemented by the Neo-Con-
fucian School of Wang-Yang-Min (1472–1528). Neo-Confucianism
was a synthesis of Buddhism and Confucianism.
2 Buddhism may even have affected the Shu King (as it now is).
Compare in this work: “Put away all selfishness and then you
may say 'I have accumulated merit.'” The same King says that
“Crimes are registered above," but does not explain how; probably
only in the “mind of God” at that period.
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THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
adopted from the Buddhists the doctrine of future punish-
ments and imitated its external features, idols, temples, and
monasteries. Fa-Hien in 399 A. D. made a pilgrimage to
India and brought back Buddhist texts. The first Taoist
pope, imitated from Buddhism, was Chang Tao-ling, said
to have been born in 34 A. D., who discovered the secret of
longevity and at the age of sixty “made a pill, swallowed
it, and became younger than ever." It was he who, still
youthful in the second century, founded a semi-clerical State
with a religious discipline based on self-humiliation before
the higher powers and on confession of sins.
It may well have been that then as now there were sin-
cere seekers of truth as well as seekers of life-elixirs among
the Taoist recluses who withdrew to the solitudes to practise
piety and soul-strength by means of silence and breath-
exercises. Some of them resemble the Yogins of India.
But in general they practised magic not meditation. Just
how far back or how deep was the influence of the Bud-
dhisni which made such headway in the centuries following
the Christian era, it is difficult to say. Legend says that a
statue of Buddha was brought to the capital 122 B. C. and
that missionaries arrived 67 A.D. At any rate, missionaries
came in 147 A. D. and by the fourth century A. D. the ritualism
of Buddhism had made a lasting appeal to the common peo-
ple. The religion itself, its spiritual hope and sentimental
tone, contrasted favourably with the formality of Confucian-
ism and with the mysticism of Taoism. But the fortunes of
both sects varied with court favour. Confucianism flourished
side by side with Buddhism in the fourth century, when
monasteries began to be established. Under the Eastern
Tsin dynasty Buddhism largely prevailed (till 420 A. D.).
Persecution followed, but in 502 A. D. the emperor Wu Ti
was so devoted to this religion that, like the later Japanese
rulers, he gave up a throne to enter a monastery. Hundreds
of Buddhist works were imported in the sixth century and
Taoists who would not worship Buddha were slain. Later,
both Taoists and Buddhists became disliked, partly because
RELIGIONS OF CHINA II
267
of the quackery of the one and the evil behaviour of the
other sect, whose nuns were not very exemplary; though
again in the seventh century, when Hiuen-tsang went to
India to procure Buddhist works, Buddhism flourished
alongside of Taoism. At this time Lao-tse was formally
canonized and his supposed works were made part of the
State examination, while both Taoists and Buddhists were
permitted to become State officials, and even the Nestorians
were received at court and a church was built for them.
T'ai-tsung not only received them and heard their doctrines,
but he had some of the sacred books of the Christians trans-
lated for the State examination. Finally, however, in the
ninth century, after the Buddhists had been persecuted by
the Confucianists in the eighth century, the Taoists, who
at that time had been undergoing a new sentence of banish-
ment, were again recalled, and succeeded in having not only
the Buddhists but all other foreigners put under the ban as
irreligious teachers. All Buddhist establishments, more than
fifty thousand, were broken up and the Buddhists, Mani-
chaeans, and Nestorians were “sent to their own lands."
After this, though the Buddhists were again tolerated, the
Taoists had no rivals save the Confucianists till the Mongols
began to favour Lamaism. Marriage was practised by the
Taoist priests till the time of the Sung (960-1127), but the
Taoists were otherwise favoured by this dynasty 1 and for
that reason were obnoxious to the conquerors of the Sung;
but they became powerful again in the fourteenth century
under the Yuan Mongols; and the Ming dynasty (1368–
1643) at least treated them with consideration, though
forcing them to pass examination in the Confucian classics
if they wished to enter public life. In the next century,
however, they were regarded as imposters by the emperor
1 The first Sung emperor opposed the Buddhists, but conten-
porary rulers favoured them and began to build at this time pagodas
to preserve relics of Buddha. A few of these edifices had been
built previously, but most of the existing pagodas date from the
tenth century. Kublai Khan, the first Mongol emperor, was strongly
attached to Buddhism.
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THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
and were literally laughed out of court. Later Ming em-
perors even treated them as heretics.
It is from this later period, perhaps from the sixteenth
century, that we have the chief Taoist literature of today,
the Book of Rewards and Punishments and the Book of
Secret Blessings. The former reckons out how many years
are to be deducted from a man's life for every fault, twelve
years down to a hundred days, according to its magnitude,
and embodies the ethical code, to practise which leads to
quiescence on the part of “recorders of crime," as certain
spirits are called. The rules of this code are partly moral,
partly practical ; on the whole their ethical quality is unim-
peachable. Thus, from the first of these books:
Thou shalt not steal; thou shalt not break up marriages; thou
shalt not kill for gain; thou shalt not envy, nor covet; nor suck
the brains of others; nor injure living things, except as enjoined
for sacrifice; thou shalt not destroy men's tools; nor open flood-
gates, nor laugh at deformity; nor bury an effigy to inflict an
incubus upon a man; thou shalt not murmur against Heaven,
nor against rain, nor against wind; nor give alms and then
regret it. Honour thy parents; wives, respect your husbands;
women, be gentle and obedient. Man, do not rage on the first
day of the month; nor dance and sing on the last day of the
month or year; 1 do not weep or spit toward shooting stars nor
toward the north pole (which is the door of heaven), nor point
out a rainbow; be virtuous, humane to animals; pity widows
and orphans and all those who are unfortunate; rejoice with
them that rejoice; help the needy; do not boast; do not swear
to thy innocence before the gods, nor give bad food to the
people, nor love wine and dissipation; live with thy wife in
harmony and do not dispute angrily with those near akin.
The most popular moral or religious book with all sects
in China is the somewhat similar Book of Secret Blessings.
With injunctions like those above as to honouring parents,
helping the needy, saving those in danger, feeding the hun-
1 Because the hearth-spirit ascends to heaven to register man's
faults and good deeds on the last day of every month and the spirits
of Heaven and Earth examine the virtues and sins of each on the
last day of the year, with a view to rewards and penalties.
RELIGIONS OF CHINA II
269
gry, etc., it lays especial weight on kindness to animals:
“ Abstain from shedding blood; do not tread upon insects
on the path; burn a candle in your window to give light to
the traveller; do not spread nets to catch birds, nor poison
fish and reptiles." It also inculcates the rule of devoting
one's wealth to the good of one's fellow-men; of loving good
and fleeing from evil; of charity toward all.
How much the Taoist pantheon has inherited from remot-
est antiquity and how much invented or borrowed is difficult
to say. The Taoists regard the stars as divine beings, espe-
cially the Great Bear, and generally deify natural phenom-
ena such as thunder, lightning, and ocean. They worship
dragons, who cause rain and convulsions of nature. They
have also, as already noticed, deified men as patron gods of
occupation, a god of scholars, a god of soldiers, etc., who
lived and died as common mortals hundreds of years ago.
Some spirits grant riches, others old age, happiness, etc.
Stars in the Great Bear are especially honoured; all stars
are divine, sublimated essences of things. The planets rep-
resent the five elements, fire, water, earth, wood, and metal.
Jupiter, owing to its long cycle, is revered by astrologers.
The Taoist religion today is a State-religion and the third
section of the sacrifices, which contains many Taoist ele-
ments, is a reflection both of old Sinic divinities and of the
more modern cult of “benefactors ” and stars.1 Genii and
demons swarm everywhere. They bring reports to heaven
of man's acts below. They pluck a man in examinations or
1 The “third section" of spirits contains twelve sorts of deities to
whom sacrifice must be offered at least once a year: Physicians of
the past; Kuan Ti, the War-god; Wang Ch'ung, a star, once a man,
as god of scholars; the North Pole, as throne of Heaven; the
Ruler of Fire; Cannon gods, worshipped by the military; gods of
walls and moats; the god of the Eastern Mountain Summit (his
temple is north of the altar of the sun; eighty-six mountains in all
receive sacrifice); the four dragons; the female divinity of naviga-
tion, together with male river gods; gods of the soil, together with
the god of architecture; and gods of storehouses. Imaginary spirits
are the Unicorn, Phoenix, and Dragon, portentous apparitions, wor-
shipped to get sons, rain, etc.
270
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
pluck out his eyes or cause eclipse and pestilence. Some
of these are new in form but the idea is old. Borrowed
from Confucianism, a rival of God (Shang-Ti), is Yü-
Huang-Shang-Ti as Supreme Lord or (as some say) next in
power to the Three Holy Ones, a triad borrowed from Bud-
dhism and arbitrarily interpreted as Lao, the father of the
race, and the cosmic principle. There is also another triad
called San Kuan, which makes a trinity of "three rulers"
(of heaven, earth, and water). The Buddhistic Avalokitesh-
vara was still portrayed as a young man with a moustache in
the eighth century; he is now sometimes male and sometimes
a goddess called Kuan-yin (goddess of mercy). Buddha
himself has become “ Mother Buddha" (in Wu-tai). The
god of future punishment is Yen-lo-wang; he is said to be
the Hindu Yama.
The Taoists have developed both astrology and the sci-
ence of prognostication. They draw auguries from obser-
vation of all the changes of nature. Phenomena of this sort
are carefully mentioned in the Li-Ki and their interpreta-
tion was made a science during the Han dynasty. All of-
ficials have orders to observe and report extraordinary phe-
nomena, colour of sky, storm, eclipse, rainbow, heat, and
rain (some stars influence wind; some influence rain).
Gales and earthquakes are recorded as auguries, also all
monstrosities, unnatural births, etc. A hen with three legs,
for example, indicates that there will be undue female influ-
ence about the throne. Cases of resurrection are reported
as omens. Chance “words of boys” are oracular; beasts
and birds, above all “wind and water," Feng Shui, or Ti
Li (geomancy) are means employed to this end. Feng Shui
is a science by itself; no house, no grave, no business, can
1 See Legge, Religions of China, London, 1880, p. 167f. The or-
iginal three are the Three Jewels (Triratna).
2 The ignorant Buddhists of China worship Fuh and Poosa.
(Buddha and Bodhisattva) as God, the latter being “more sym-
pathetic,” the former higher in rank. Poosa is virtually God to the
lower classes, but Kuan-Yin sometimes replaces him. Edkins, op.
cit., p. 97f. Compare Kuannon in Japan, below, p. 299.
· RELIGIONS OF CHINA II
271
be begun without it. Even those not Taoists do not dare to
act without a Feng Shui magician.
Such is the popular religion of today. Officially, both
Taoism and Confucianism are State religions, but while the
latter is the religion of the learned, the former is both the
real religion of the mass of the people and the religion with-
out which even the learned cannot get along. But Confu-
cianism alone has the influence imparted by the possession
of a literature which is virtually holy writ. Taoists have
no intellectual standing. The Buddhists, like the Taoists,
get their adherents only from the uneducated. Even the
Taoists and Buddhists themselves are said to reject all
teachings which (they think) are inconsistent with Confu-
cianism. “Ever since 631 A. D., when the Confucian classics
became the sole subjects for competitive examination, they
have been the main study of every generation. . . . By all
who are educated, Confucius, the Perfect Sage and Throne-
less King, is worshipped as a god.” 1
In reviewing Chinese religion, it is obvious that after
Buddhistic influence begins we are dealing with a mixed
creed and cult and in estimating the Chinese for themselves
we must judge them before Dharmaraksha and Kashyapa
fulfilled the dream of the white horse and its rider. It is
to the Buddhists that the Chinese owe their introduction to
religious philosophy. Before the advent of Buddhist sects
we have much ethics and a little metaphysics, but no pro-
found philosophy of religion until Bodhidharma, in apostolic
succession from Buddha, laid the foundation of the Zen
school of religious Contemplation. This and other Buddhist
sects, of China and Japan, will be more conveniently
1 Douglas, Confucianism and Taoism, London, 1887. By the Con-
fucian classics is ineant here (as often) not the classics as Shu, in
distinction from the Canon, but, in general, the nine books (Five
King and Four Shu) of canonical authority (see p. 224).
2 Arthur Lloyd in his Creed of Half Japan, London, 1911, com-
pares Rev. vi. 2, composed, he says, a year after the Chinese emperor
saw the vision (of Buddhist invasion) fulfilled in 67 A.D.The
future Avatar of Vishnu, for that matter, will also appear riding
on a white horse!
272
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
treated together under Japanese religion (below). It re-
mains to inquire whether other religions affected the Chi-
nese. Babylonian influence of the unknown past may be
rejected as too hypothetical to be probable. Tartar influ-
ence probably added little; it adversely affected pure Chi-
nese thought. Mohammedanism and Mazdaism both
reached China in the seventh century. The former is still
represented by a local body of believers but neither of these
religions of themselves made any real impression upon the
Chinese people. Manichaean beliefs entered China without
any lasting effect in the ninth century. Jewish teaching is
said to have reached China during the Han period and in
the twelfth century; a small Jewish colony (largely Mo-
hammedan) is still to be found at Kaifungfu.?
The Nestorian Christians, whom we have seen strongly
entrenched under imperial favour in the seventh century,
appear to have left not only a famous monument 3 but many
disciples, who under subsequent persecution became absorbed
either into Mohammedanism or into the secret society known
as the Religion of Immortality (literally “the pill of immor-
tality"). They believe in a “Teacher from above," who
was reported to have lived on earth seven centuries before
(i.e. before 755 A. D.). As early as the third century Barde-
sanes reports Christians in China. A few Japanese cult-
words, like ansoko for, incense, are of western (Parthian)
origin. Eating of meat and marriage of priests may be due
to Christian example. Some knowledge of Christianity may
have come into China before the seventh century, but if so it
was probably without much effect. What is highly prob-
1 The tenets but not the sects themselves were transınitted to Japan
in the case of the Bidon, Nehan, Chiron, and Soron sects.
2 Some of the modern sects called Buddhist are really Taoist
mixed with other elements. The “ Bread and Tea " sect, for exam-
ple is a form of Wu-Wei (Do-nothing). It embraces a number of
sincere opposers of idolatry who as vegetarians offer the gods only
tea and bread. They worship Heaven and Earth, the emperor and
the religious teacher.
3 Saeki, The Nestorian Monument in China, London, 1916.
RELIGIONS OF CHINA II
273
able, however, is that the persecution of Wu-tsung in 845
(like that of Timur, in the fourteenth century) drove into
hiding the two thousand foreign missionaries then living in
China, many of whom were Christian. Before this per-
secution the Nestorians may have affected the Chinese
Buddhist sects, as they would by then have affected
Japanese scholars, who were studying in China in the same
eighth century. Yet it is easy to exaggerate the im-
portance of this supposititious influence. Chinese and Japa-
nese analogues to Christian teaching are quite explicable
without recourse to the hypothesis that they were bor-
rowed.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Chinese Classics, translated by J. Legge, in the Sacred Books
of the East, Confucian texts, iii, xvi, xxvii, xxviii; Taoistic,
xxxix, xl.
S. Wells Williams, A History of China, New York, 1901.
Friedrich Hirth, The Ancient History of China, New York,
1908.
J. J. M. De Groot, The Religious System of China, Leyden,
1872–1910; The Religion of the Chinese, New York, 1910.
James Legge, The Religions of China, London, 1880; The Life
and Work of Mencius, London, 1889.
Herbert A. Giles, Religions of Ancient China, London, 1905;
Chuang-Tzu, Mystic, Moralist, and Social Reformer, Lon-
don, 1889.
J. Edkins, Religion in China, London, 1878. Brief account of
the three religions.
W. E. Soothill, The Three Religions of China, London, 1913.
R. K. Douglas, Confucianism and Taoism, London, 1887.
M. M. Dawson, The Ethics of Confucianism, New York, 1915.
E. J. Eitel, Handbook for the Student of Chinese Buddhism,
Hongkong, 1870.
1 The great Chinese empire of the first century of our era gave
opportunity to come in contact with the far West, which an em-
bassy of 120 B. C. had already made known. This embassy notes the
use of stamped silver coins and horizontal writing in Judea and
Persia. The Nestorian monument, originally unveiled in 781, was
found in 1625. It mentions the fact that the Virgin was born in
Ta Ch'in (Judea).
274
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
A. Forke, Lun-Heng, Philosophical Essays of Wang Ch’ung,
· Leipzig, 1907-II.
On Yang Chu and Mih, see Journal Peking Oriental Society,
iii. 3, 203.
P. Y. Saeki, The Nestorian Monument in China, London, 1916.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
RELIGIONS OF JAPAN
SHINTOISM AND BUDDHISM
THE present inhabitants of Japan (Nippon, " Sunriseland,”
from the Chinese “ Chipangu”) are in part racially allied
with the Chinese, being of Mongolian origin, possibly from
two branches of that race. But the earliest religion is more
akin to that of the Malay race. In both there is the same
fanciful deification of nature. There is a superficial re-
semblance to the cult of the Ainus. The two peoples, to-
gether with certain troglodytes, were in the same localities
for centuries, and though the Ainu are apparently of differ-
ent stock and were antagonistic to the invading Japanese,
they shared many religious traits with the latter, as indeed
would be indicated by their common use of the Kamui rods,
probably because they were originally on about the same
plane of culture.
Our first knowledge of old Japan, its culture, myths, and
religion, is derived from two sets of official documents, writ-
ten in Japanese and Chinese, and dating from 712 and 720
A. D., respectively, called Kojiki (Records) and Chronicles
(Nihongi). They were written for the purpose of preserv-
ing tradition but with a distinct tendency to inculcate the
1 When we first hear of the Japanese they were still emerging
from the stone age, using both metal and stone weapons, being in
part hunters and fishermen and in part agriculturists. They raised
rice, barley, millet, and beans; used horses only for riding, had no
architecture, no vehicles, no cattle, no cotton, and no saké or tea.
Their first notion of writing was derived, probably in the third cen-
tury A. D., from Korea, that is, eventually, from the Chinese, to
whom the Japanese owe the beginning of higher culture. For the
Ainus, see p. 46f.
275
276
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
.
divine nature of the imperial house, and they are affected by
Chinese influence throughout. As history they have no
more value than the Hindu Puranas, which were written
about the same time, or the Chinese Shu King, which also
combines myth and tradition with useful implicit teaching,
but their general contents is valuable since they preserve old
tales which reflect popular belief. The later of these works
first recognized prayers directed to the ancestors of the em-
perors, who, according to the tradition established by these
histories, are descendants of the “heavenly king" Jimmu
(Tenno), the great-grandson of Ninigi, reputed grandson of
the sun-deity. The date of Jimmu is traditionally 660 B. C.
There is no reason to believe that this is correct; but it an-
swers the same purpose as the assignment of the foundation
of Rome to the year 753 B. C. The date of the empress
Jingo, the warlike queen who, in the course of her long life
of a hundred years, “conquered Korea,” is traditionally
about 200 A. D. Her son Ojin, who was afterwards deified
as “god of war" under the name Hachiman, is said to have
died in 310 A.D. But the earliest certain date in Japanese
history is 461 A. D.
The religion of this early period had at first no name.
There was no need of a designation until it became neces-
sary to distinguish it from the other religions which soon
submerged its primitive character. It was then called by a
Chinese name Shen-tao, “Way of the Spirits,” or in Japa-
nese Shinto, afterwards translated by Kami no michi, “Way
of the Superior” (powers). The native histories do not
pretend that this religion was inspired or revealed. The
complete system of Chinese ethics was brought into Japan
at an early date, perhaps the fifth century A. D. Its special
religious effect was to emphasize ancestor worship, which
at this early time was thus made a part of the official Shinto
cult.
In its more original form Shinto has no cult of ancestors.
Such a cult depends on the realization of the family, the
preservation of family names, and the belief in a continued
RELIGIONS OF JAPAN
277
existence hereafter of one's ancestors as powers capable
of affecting the welfare of the living. Of all this there is no
trace in primitive Shinto.
The belief in regard to the soul and ancestor seems to
have been that found in many other cases of parallel cul-
ture. The fact that the Mikado is divine as descendant of
the Sun does not show that common people may boast of
this descent, and so the fact that Mikados and other great
men, scholars, kings, and heroes, live revered hereafter does
not show that common people live after death, still less that
they are worshipped. The Polynesians, the Africans, and
even the Eskimos made a distinction between such people
as had a future life and such as had none. Shinto, till in-
fluenced by Buddhism and Confucianism, seems to be quite
inarticulate regarding the future. There was certainly no
heaven or hell for the vulgar mass to go to; they were imag-
ined as living underground for a time and food was given
to them to prevent their being angry and becoming spiteful
demons; but there is no indication that this implied a cult
of ancestors or that the ancestors were thought to remain
alive aś potent spirits. Probably there was no thought
about them at all. Many people in a primitive state trouble
themselves not in the least as to a hereafter and have no
fixed notion as to whether they will live long beyond the
grave or not. The Japanese conception of spirit is itself
faint. As is seen in the legends, the early Kami are powers
as phenomena, and so with human beings, when the living
phenomenon passed the man passed. As is said of the amor-
phous first gods, “ they had these names and died.” Distin-
guished people may have two souls, a rough and a gentle
soul, and they may continue to exist; but the vulgar go down
to the earth and perish, unless perhaps they appear as birds
or snakes and so continue a fresh phenomenal life, but even
1 Most Japanese scholars and some Europeans, misled by the later
faith, teach that Shinto was from the beginning “pure ancestor wor-
ship.” Saito in his useful History of Japan in China, London, 1912,
D. 26, even translates Kami by "ancestors."
278
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
this is an unusual occurrence. The soul-idea (tamashii,
“ball of wind") is connected primarily with breath; death
was called “breath-departure," and soul was "wind-ball."
There are no prayers for the welfare of the dead; they are
not invoked. Human sacrifice made at the tomb of royal
persons has sometimes been cited in support of the “pure
ancestor worship” of Shinto. But on the contrary, this
custom, which is found in other lands in exactly parallel
circumstances, proves only that the extraordinary people
thus honoured were supposed to retain their royal state
hereafter, and as they were all divine beings by virtue of
their descent from the Sun, the practice indicates merely
that royal persons were divine enough to survive. The
Manchu Tartars and some of the Chinese followed this cus-
tom and also confined it to the nobles. According to tradi-
tion, more than a hundred male and female attendants were
thus buried with one Japanese empress (before history be-
gins, perhaps in the third century), and the burial of the
living with the dead continued till 646 A. D.; but the substi-
tution of effigies for living victims soon set aside the barbar-
ous practice, though the substitution itself retained the idea.
Finally, even the use of effigies was discontinued, as Bud-
dhistic burning, till the recent revival of Shinto, took the
place of the older burial (about 700 A.D.), even in the case
of emperors. The older Shinto regarded everything con-
nected with death as imparting pollution and recognized no
religious funeral rites. In the early histories, “the state
of the dead in general is nowhere alluded to.” i Florenz has
pointed out that the general practical distinction between
1 Chamberlain, T. A. S. Japan, 1906, Appendix p. lvii. For the un-
derworld, Yomi, separated by a hill from earth and somewhat like
earth (in having hills, houses, etc.), see ib. p. xlvi. The Bon-odori,
or lantern feast of All-Souls celebrated in July, is a Buddhist not a
Shinto festival. At this time the souls of the dead return to earth.
Mourners wear white clothes and white sandals are given the dead
for the journey to the next world, according to modern usage. Over
the “land of gloom," Yomotsukuni, presides Izanami, as a sort of
spirit of death.
RELIGIONS OF JAPAN
279.
Shintoism and Buddhism with the mass of Japanese is that
the chief joyous festivals are in honour of Shinto gods; but
in mourning and death the people turn to Buddhism.
All the early stories show that the sun-goddess was the
supreme object of devotion, both to men and to gods.
Deities preceding her and her contemporaries are fanciful
figures without religious significance and perhaps due to
foreign influence. The objects of religious regard and of
mythical interest are, like the sun, the moon, fire, the light-
ning (as dragon-sword), three water-gods, volcanoes, moun-
tains, trees and animals; but not ghosts. These phenomena
are revered directly, as spiritually potent per se, not as con-
taining spirits. In other words the earliest Japanese belief
was pure naturism. At the same time lower spiritual beings
are regarded as incorporate in earthly forms. But Fire, for
example, is not a spirit of Fire but a phenomenal power,
whose cult is still retained in the now tricky "fire-walking "
and in the yearly fire-festival (Nov. 8), when fires are
lighted in honour of the food-goddess, Inari. The wife of
Ninigi underwent a fire-ordeal to prove her innocence. So
Water is judge in the water-ordeal.
Popular spirits, such as ogres, oni, and goblins with bird-
claws, tengu (some tengu have temples), mountain genii
(sennin, in human form), represent phenomena though not
themselves phenomena. Yet most of these, not worshipped
but dreaded, are later creations than the early worshipped
forms of nature. The first deities were nebulous forms,
many being sexless, but they reflect a nature-cult. This is
clear in the “ earth-propitiation," Jishidzume, not to be ac-
counted for by any ghost-worship. The Great Offering at
the beginning of a reign, with its tasting of first fruits, is
the chief Shinto ceremony. Though now for the Mikado
alone, it was originally a general practice in which the wor-
shipper joined the deity in the feast. Gratitude is shown;
it is not a religion of “perpetual fear” (as Lafcadio Hearn
1 The red-hot axe-ordeal is another fire-test; but the ordeal by
boiling water is a later form.
280
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
calls it). Human and animal sacrifices were made direct
to rivers and other gods, but without any idea of sprinkling
with blood. Gift and bargain, and occasionally the scape-
goat idea, are the sacrificial principles of Shinto. The gift
was often a mere symbol of affectionate regard.
In a history of religion, mythology serves no purpose
except to illustrate religious ideas. It will be superfluous,
therefore, to record the trivial and obscene tales of the gods
of myth. What is imperative is that they should be recog-
nized as mainly mythological, quasi historical, not as reli-
gious. A brief outline of the story of creation shows that
there was no idea of a creator-god as supreme deity; that
the myth-gods who appear as progenitors of the race and
land are not religiously important, since they merely appear
as actors but receive no worship; and that the host of octad
gods are mere names, probably never recognized as divin-
ities at all. The account of the first gods in the Kojiki is
as follows: .
There were once two beings, male and female, who began
of their own accord (not commanded to do so by a Supreme
Being) to "invite” each other. First the female invited
the male; but this did not please him. Then he invited her,
and she agreed with him to become the parents of Japan
and other islands, the sun and other gods. Each of these
two beings, on account of the “invitation," has the same pre-
fix, izana, Izanagi, “male who invites," Izanami, “ feinale
who invites." They carried out what they had planned; but
Izanami died in giving birth at last to the fire-god, and de-
scending below earth became foul with corruption. Izanagi
1 There are different sets of these gods-by-name. First, to ex-
plain creation, are assumed such gods as Master-of-Heaven, High-
august-producing-wondrous-deity, and, third, Divine-producing-won-
drolis-deity, who simply came into existence and died. There are
otliers of this sort, who merely appear and die, till the advent of
Izanagi and Izanami. Another set spring, chiefly in groups of eight
(a Buddhistic holy number), from Izanagi's clothes, from the drops
of blood shed when he kills the fire-god, and from the head and
trunk of the fire-god, all octads being "gods” without real exist- :
ence.
RELIGIONS OF JAPAN
281
sought her and found her, but Izanami, though decomposed,
was angry and he barely escaped to upper air again, where
he slew the fire-god, from whose body came an octad of
gods, and washed his eyes free of the filth of the place of
dead. From his left eye came the Sun,1 from his right the
Moon, from his nose Susanowo, the “violent” god of
rain or water, afterwards also of the underworld. In his
“violent” and mischievous tricks he let fall, as it were,
a number of gods of no account. He plagued his sister,
the Sun, till she shut herself up in a cave, when, with the
help of one of the, unaccountable, “gods without crea-
tion" (in the first set of gods), he planned to make his sis-
ter, the Sun, appear; which he did by dancing obscenely till
she looked out (reminiscence of sun-dance??). to see why
the gods were laughing, on which was shown to her her own
reflection in a mirror and she was told that the gods had
found another fairer sun. At this she came out and all was
sunny again. When the gods, after banishing the “violent”
one from heaven, because of his tricks, learned that earth
was now quieted, the grandson of the Sun came down and
secured constant peace by slaying all who opposed him.
This was Ninigi, great-grandfather of Jimmu (above, 660
B. C.). The violent god also had human descendants, who
lived in Idzumo.
Out of all these myth-gods only the sun-deity, Ama-
terasu (Omikami) and the food-goddess became objects of
a cult. They all, whether good or bad, receive the appella-
tion Kami, that is Superiors, a title conferred on any crea-
ture, god or animal, who shows superiority to the common.3
From the Sun descend the emperors, called the Mi-Kado
(kado, gate, or mika-to, “great place"), where justice is
1 She is thus twice created (a mixture of myths).
2 The Kagura or sacred dance at Ise and Nara may perpetuate this.
The equinoctial (sun) festival called Higan (March 17-21) is, how-
ever, a Buddhist celebration.
3 Some of the gods have tails; others, geographically remote, are
known as “savage gods”; others become animals. Of the Kami,
there are eighty myriads, or in one account eight hundred myriads.
U
282
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
administered. She, as shown in the legend above, is not a
creator-deity. It is centuries later before the god Masubi
is poetically invoked as “creator of men.” The shrines or
temples, mia, of the pure Shinto faith celebrate only natural
phenomena and natural forces. Most of these have only
local festivals. A few are national and widely celebrated.
Notably at Ise are found the "outer" and "inner" (Geku
and Naiku) shrines of Food as goddess and Sun as goddess,
respectively. The primitive functions of these divinities
have been enlarged. To the Black Stone, Geku, thousands
of diseased and maimed persons flock annually and cure
themselves of disorders by making offerings. They carry off
the shavings of the peeled rods called Gohei, found also in
the Ainu cult, which are now supposed to harbour spirits re-
pugnant to evil (spirits). Tickets enclosing such shavings,
Ise-o-harai, are used at the semi-annual festivals of purifi-
cation. The ordinary Shinto temples contain no idols but
Gohei, a mirror, a jewel, and sword, connected with the
legend of the Sun and her “violent" brother, together with
the usual gong, which is struck by the worshipper to attract
the deity's attention. The visible mirror shown in Shinto
shrines is a loan from the Buddhist Shingon sect. The true
mirror is always concealed. This is the mirror which is a
token (called the “spirit”) of the Sun. Possibly from imi-
tation of Buddhist structures also may have been derived the
Torii or gate-ways closely resembling the Hindu torana,
which stand as gates to Buddhist topes in India. The tem-
ple itself is comparatively late. At first the gods lived in a
walled enclosure only. The first emperors lived in struc-
tures which were both palace and temple. To the Sun and
Food as goddesses are presented offerings of food and drink
except at festivals, when the Shinto tokens, mirror, sword,
jewel, and cloth are given to the shrine. Great care is taken
not to pollute the food by the breath; the face is veiled.
This cult is without doubt the earliest. The only general
ritual in early days was the Ohoharahi or great purification,
the object of which was twice a year to free the land of evil,
RELIGIONS OF JAPAN
283
either as disease or sin. All“ foulness," incest or leprosy,
for example, was deposited on a horse and washed off in
the sea, the scape-goat idea. It is now regarded as a pro-
pitiatory service. Similarly the ritual called Norito is now
regarded as “laudation,” but its original meaning was to
ask for favours for a consideration (do ut des). The most
ancient prayers contain both praise and statements regard-
ing offerings made as quid pro quo. The Mikado celebrates
an offering of first fruits and, according to later regulations,
there are festivals consisting in imploring the gods 1 to
give good crops, rites to invoke the water-god, the fire-god,
etc., to do no harm. But there is no invocation of ancestors,
nothing to indicate that the Japanese looked' to ghosts to
give them goods, as in China.
Apart from nature-worship, there are innumerable traces
of phallic worship in phallic symbols found everywhere. It
is impossible to dissociate these symbols from those used in
certain houses where the meaning is obvious, though an
attempt has been made by Shintoists to soften their signifi-
cance by the explanation that they merely represent power
and so are used as admonitory warnings against trespass.
They are still openly invoked by women wishing to succeed
in their ancient profession. Temples, at Nikko and else-
where, retain numerous Konsei or phalloi for their original
purpose.
Shinto had no organized priesthood; the emperor was the
religious head and acted as chief priest. Other priests were
laymen acting as attendants of the shrine. There was no
formal cult of animals (the fox-cult is late) ? or of trees, but
1 Thus the harvest-god, Hitoshi, is implored to give rice, etc., and
is rewarded with a horse, cock, and pig. All these gods in the
"godless month of October ” desert their shrines and go to the
temple of Idzumo, except the deaf “god of luck," Ebisu. In Id-
zumo is found today the purest Shinto.
2 Inari, the food-goddess (or food-god), originally rode a fox,
as other gods ride stag, tortoise, etc. This_fox became revered
as itself a divine power, injuring crops. “Fox-possession” is a
popular superstition; the victim must pay a priest to exorcise the
demon-fox.
284
IS
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
both are occasionally revered as Kami." There is no totem-
ism and no regular metempsychosis, but transmigration into
animal forms is spoken of in legends. “ Possession," in this
life, by foxes and demons is conimon. Buddhistic influence
has made itself felt in the reckoning of myriads of gods,
whose number as Kami is of course unlimited. It is said
there are thirty-seven thousand Shinto shrines; but many
of these are indifferently mia and tera (Buddhistic). It is
difficult also to extract from common Shinto domestic serv-
ice the unadulterated Shinto form. Each family now has
at home a Kami-dana or god-shelf and, apart from this,
Ihai or tablets to the ancestors (Chinese), to whom offer-
ings are made and before whom a lamp (Buddhistic) is
lighted. Handclapping and bowing in the ordinary service
represent the nearest approach to “praise and prayer.” No
moral or spiritual blessings are asked for. At festivals
music and dancing are ritualistic. Statues as idols have
been taken over from Buddhism.
Besides the lack of a priesthood, Shinto, until affected by
Buddhism, had no idea of a heaven or hell, no idols (the
mirror can scarcely be regarded as such) and no religiously
moral code. There is in fact no ethical distinction possible
in gods who are all equally gods whether good or bad.
Intercourse with the gods was not the object of the simple
divination practised by the Urabe (diviners). It was not
to find out what was the gods' will, but to peer into the
future, that recourse was had to dreams, to chance utter-
ances, to the cracks, on the deer's shoulder-blade and tor-
toise-shell, made by fire (Chinese model). Of deep religious
feeling there is none in pure Shinto; the devotional act is
perfunctory. Religious fervour entered Shinto with the
worship of the Mikado, who concentrates in himself the
intense loyalty of the people and is both loved as emperor
1 Crabs and bugs found in certain parts of Japan are still popu-
larly regarded as embodying the spirits of certain clans and leaders
of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Star-worship, in distinction
from sun-worship, is not an early Shinto trait.
RELIGIONS OF JAPAN
285
and adored as divine representative of the Sun. But all
this is a new feature of Shinto. There were many centuries
when the emperor was disregarded and looked upon as in no
sense a quasi divinity.
Although Shinto had no moral code, it recognized the
virtue of courage and kindness as religiously endorsed by
the character of the sun-deity. It also, in conjunction with
the Chinese model, from which in this regard it is difficult
to separate it, valued expressly the Chinese Five Relations,
but laid the weight, not upon filial piety, as did its model, but
upon loyalty. Magic, incest, and bestiality were regarded in
general as offences against the Kami. Lying was not reli-
giously offensive. Marriage, like burial, was without reli-
gious sanction. Modern Japanese moralists, and so Mo-
toori in the eighteenth century, defend the lack of a higher
ethical code in Shinto by insisting that all moral systems
imply a defective morality. The good old Japanese were
so good that a moral code was superfluous. Under the
influence of Chinese civilization was eventually evolved the
Bushido“ Way of Warriors," the code of chivalry. It re-
flects the spirit of Japan at its ethical acme, though drawn
as much from foreign as from purely native sources. This
code taught loyalty to the emperor,1 inculcated obedience to
authority, stoicism, and Giri, or duty (right) of revenge
and of committing suicide, harakiri, on occasion. It taught
also, by practice as well as teaching, that no means was too
base to compass the end regarded as righteous. A life of
1 The great code of Prince Shotoku, which (circa 600 A. D.) is
based on a Chinese model, already insists on "paying due heed to
the orders of the emperor.” The “prince is like heaven, the sub-
jects like earth.” This code also insists on the (Bushido) rule of
“politeness." Bushido, therefore, cannot be regarded as a Shinto
product, but a combination representing the warriors' interpretation
of rules of conduct, the base of which lies at the close of the pure
Shinto period. It derives from the inherent character of the Japa-
nese as modified by Chinese influence, but it did not attain its real
meaning till the Tokugawa Shogunate put an end to feudalisin and
established Confucianism as interpreted by Chu Hi, the Chinese
philosopher of the twelfth century, who inculcated obedience to the
emperor as the first duty of man.
286
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
debauchery, the sacrifice of women to such a life, lying and
murder, if practised for the sake of one's chief, were not
only blameless but obligatory. It descended also to points
of refinement in dress, taught good manners,“ politeness,"
and also emphasized the training of women, not treating her
according to Western notions of chivalry but educating her
to be courageous and self-controlled. It ignored chastity
in men but insisted upon it in women, unless it was neces-
sary to sacrifice it for loyalty's sake. This code arose in
the Kamakura period (1186-1339 A. D.) and was that of the
Samurai, the warriors of the Daimios or feudal lords, who
in the person of the chief Daimio, the Shogun, held all the
power in the middle ages. They used it to make a mere
effigy of the Mikado, who was not restored to imperial power
till the revolution of 1868. Buddhism contributed not a lit-
tle to this end (see below), but there is no Shinto protest
against the submergence of the emperor till quite late. To
pass over the Buddhistic period for a moment, it will suffice
to say that it was not till the fourteenth century that there
was any attempt to revive pure Shinto, which for six cen-
turies had been merged with Buddhism. Kitabatake Chika-
fusa (1354 A. D.) made a first endeavour to reconstruct a
pure Shinto, as opposed to the mixed Shinto composed of
Shinto, Confucianism, and Buddhism. In the seventeenth
century, Hayashi made another effort to free Shinto from
Buddhism, but his own Shinto was largely Confucian. It
was not till much later, under the influence of learned and
patriotic leaders, that the present conception of Shinto
came into being, an idealized Shinto, which discards other
1 When, in 1603, the Tokugawa clan obtained supremacy, the edu-
cated classes turned Confucian.
2 Mabuchi (1697-1769), Motoori (1730-1801), Hirata (1770-1843)
devoted themselves to the revival of “pure Shinto," frowned on
the Shogunate, as on Buddhist, and Chinese learning, and sought
truth in Japanese imperialism. This movement culminated in the
disestablishment of Buddhism in 1868.
The Yuitsu sect of Shinto started in the fifteenth century as a
“ Unitarian" (yui-itsu) sect in opposition to the mixture of Shinto
and Buddhism called Ryobu (below). In its early form it was
KELIGIONS OF JAPAN
287
religions while it has little faith in its own mythology, but
emphasizes what it considers the spirit of Shinto, that is,
devotion to the native cult, especially as represented by the
cult of the (Mikado) descendant of the Sun, withal as ex-
pressing the emotion of patriotism, the feeling of national
unity as a religious trait. The substitution for religion in
Japan today is Shinto as Yamato-Damashii, the Spirit of
Old Japan.
Shinto now covers in popular usage a number of super-
stitious and licentious practices, such as the Tenri- and
Remmon-Kyo, founded by ignorant peasants, which go
under the name of Shinto without having any real relation
to it. Shinto has been largely affected by Buddhism, chiefly
in a Chinese form of that faith. Japan itself has modified
its borrowed religion and philosophy, but has originated
little. No high ethical code and no native philosophic system
arose among the Japanese, perhaps because Japan was in-
fluenced from without before it reached the highest intel-
lectual level. Its best philosophical work has been in syn-
thetic harmonizing of precedent systems.
Buddhism, as has already been indicated, meant much
more to Japan than it did to China, where it impinged upon
a long established religious culture. Into savage Japan in
the sixth and seventh centuries of our era Buddhism sud-
denly brought its whole paraphernalia of books, images,
gods, saints, hells, heavens, and means of “salvation," and
with its overpowering appeal to sense, feeling, and thought
inundated the simple religious elements with which it came
in contact. Most of the Japanese “gods” were only nat-
ural powers regarded as supranatural; many of the mytho-
logical figures were rather “heroes” than gods, resembling
such figures as Hiawatha among the American Indians.
These were said to be mischievous spirits and were talked
about as figures of a story rather than worshipped. Of
merely a combination of old Shinto with Taoistic and other ele-
ments. Geku-Shinto followed in the next century, proinulgated by
the priests of the Geku-shrine and mixed with Confucianism.
288
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
man's place in the universe, of the universe itself as real or
ideal, of a basis of religion, of a God, of any need of
“salvation," no Japanese had apparently thought at all
until Buddhism arrived in Nippon. In the sixth century
(583 A. D.) an image of Buddha was sent to Japan from
Korea, where Buddhism had been at home for two cen-
turies; but this formal introduction coincided with a do-
mestic calamity which made the new religion, or rather the
new god, for the religion was not yet understood, seem in-
auspicious, and though the Koreans tried again to implant
their faith in Japan it was without result. The real pro-
moter of Buddhism in Japan was Prince Shotoku Taishi
(593 A. D.), who first learned from a Korean priest the
simple moral code of a Buddhist (not to steal, not to lie,
not to get drunk, not to kill, and not to commit adultery).
Shotoku was virtually the ruler of the country and used his
power to erect many Buddhist images, build forty-six Bud-
dhist temples, tera, domicile 1,385 Buddhist monks and
nuns, and support with all the power of the court the now
firmly established faith. He was also instrumental in pre-
paring the Japanese code of laws referred to above, based
on Chinese models.1 Buddhism thus introduced was an
alien creed and its many missionaries felt the need of mak-
ing the common people believe that it differed only in form
from Shinto. For this purpose they had to adopt even-
tually the same means which in the first centuries of our
era led to the successful introduction of pagan gods and
heroes and festivals into the Christian church as forms
of Christian figures and feasts. Thus, as in America the
Jesuits said to the Redskins, “Whom you worship as Manito
we call God, worship Him," so the Buddhist priest said to
the Japanese barbarian, “Whom you worship as sun-deity
1 In 605 A. D. there was already direct communication with Chinese
Buddhism. In the laws of Shotoku it is said: “Honour the three
jewels of Buddhisnı, the priests, the ritual, the founder. It is the
highest religion in the world. Without Buddhism there is no way
to make men turn from wrong to right.”
RELIGIONS OF JAPAN
289
we call the Sun of righteousness and of being, Vairocana,
worship Him." The union thus effected became known
as Ryobu Shinto, the Twofold Way of the Gods. Other
Buddhist figures, saints and incarnations, were as easily
amalgamated and, what had been lacking in Japanese belief,
a system of eschatology based on a moral code.
As Buddhist power began to make itself felt, always un-
der royal patronage, Buddhist practices replaced Shinto
customs. Thus burial gave place to cremation and the
slaughter of animals for sacrifices was discontinued in
favour of floral and vegetable offerings. Buddhism ig-
nored ancestor-worship, which by this time had become
Shintoistic as it was Confucian. But the identification of
Shinto gods with Buddhist spirits went far to heal this
breach between the two religions. In 673-686 A. D. the
emperor. Temmu forbade the eating of flesh and made
the Buddhistic service obligatory in every home. Under
the empress Jito (690-702 A. D.) there were already 545
Buddhist temples in Japan. For two centuries after this,
Chinese culture and Chinese Buddhism were the objects of
unstinted regard and deference on the part of the court.
The reason was largely political. To maintain itself, the
imperial power tried to break up the old government of
clans and families and substitute a centralized power, after
the model of China. It did away with the provincial pleni-
potentiaries who had usurped, as the court looked at it,
royal prerogatives. It appointed salaried officers to govern
the provinces instead of hereditary heads of clans, who had
received taxes and made their own government. Taxes
were now paid direct to the emperor and all land was de-
clared to be owned by him. Court favour thus paid to the
Chinese system included Chinese culture of all kinds and
Buddhism as representative of Chinese religion. It was not
foreseen that exactly this element was to prove deleterious
to royal ambition. Undoubtedly the educated classes and
1 As early as the eighth century a Buddhist priest, favourite of the
empress-dowager, caused the exile of the emperor and endeavoured
290
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
court circles, which included men of the highest attain-
ments and often men who had had a prolonged training on
Chinese soil, looked askance at the barbarous simplicity of
Shinto and welcomed Buddhism both as an intellectual gain
and as a political advantage. But the insidious arts of the
Buddhist religious leaders, who were veritable pontiffs, pos-
sessing their own estates and their own military adherents
by the thousands, soon made themselves felt to the detri-
ment of the very patrons who had established them in power.
Not only were the weak-minded emperors persuaded that
the way of salvation for prince and people was best fol-
lowed by the retirement of the emperor from the world,
whereby the Buddhists got rid of their rulers by the time
these puppets began to feel themselves too royal (the age
of religious retirement was at latest from forty to forty-
five), but the overweening pride of these ecclesiastics flung
into the field again and again armies which, when an emperor
proved obdurate, attacked and subdued the royal forces and
brought the power of the emperor to naught. Moreover,
when not contending with the throne, one sect would fight
another whenever the objectionable sect needed to be re-
pressed. The monasteries were in short armed camps of
religious fanatics and potential traitors from the moment
they arrived at power to the moment when they were sup-
pressed. It was they who, as religious leaders, influenced
and encouraged the Daimios and Shogun "leaders of ar-
mies” to resist the centralizing effect of imperial preroga-
tives, until first the Fujiwara 1 family (670-1050 A. D.) and
then others, the Taira and Minamoto families, of more mili-
tary character, reduced the Mikado to a mere effigy. The
emperor Shirakawa 2 (1073–1087 A. D.), who finally had to
invite the Minamoto clan to defend him against the priests
to place himself upon the throne. He was prevented only by the
courage of one man who got from a Shinto shrine an “oracle"
forbidding the act.
1 The ancestor of the Fujiwaras descended from heaven and the
family is said to rank with that of the emperor in age and honour.
? This emperor robbed his treasury to build temples. Under him
RELIGIONS OF JAPAN
291
and thus inaugurated the dynasty of this clan, complained
that“ dice, rivers, and Buddhists” were the three things that
would not obey him. When such a clan became allied with
the religious leaders it became too strong to be extirpated and
the best the court could do was to retain the semblance of
dignity which it lacked."
Of the sects introduced into Japan, some were mere
schools and their adherents were merely secluded scholars,
who had no effect on statecraft or on the religion of the
masses. Others were militant and aggressive; their ad-
herents were both scholars who disputed in regard to the
interpretation of scriptures and worldly schemers who util-
ized religion to influence politics. To the mass of people,
the various forms of Buddhism, represented by the “ twelve
schools” (or more), were, as metaphysical variations, unin-
telligible. The populace reacted not to such intellectual sub-
tleties but to the outward glory of a religion which pre-
sented to their unaccustomed eyes and ears a magnificent
ritual, imposing temples, gorgeous processions, richly clothed
priests, waving banners, genuflexions, mystic mutterings,
incense, bells, chaunts, readings in an unknown tongue, and
added to all this the promise of a future life of happiness
and the service, at their disposal, of learned and potent ma-
gicians, which was the view held by the common people in
regard to the monks.
It will be useful, however, to sketch in briefest outline
the distinctions between the Buddhist sects, because at
least two of the twelve became the real interpreters of
Buddhism to the common people. Curiously enough, most
of these sects are not established upon a broad basis of
the Buddhists fought in arms against each other and against the
government.
1 The Taira family was overthrown in 1185 A. D. It was super-
seded by the Minamotos and they held power till subdued by the
Ashikogas, whose dynasty lasted from 1338 to the end of the six-
teenth century. This last family in 1392 settled the contest between
the “two emperors ” (of the south and north) in favour of the
northern court. Defeated by Nobunaga, they finally yielded to the
Tokugawa family (1603-1868).
292
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
Buddhistic scriptures but each upon a body of doctrine
drawn from one late Buadhistic tract. It is as if Chris-
tian sects were based on selected writings of the Church
Fathers, a City-ot-God sect, etc.
Of the sects, the majority are of Chinese origin and they
are divided also by geographical distinctions. The earliest,
brought from China, were sects of the old Nara period
(720-760 A. D.). Then come the two great mediaeval sects
(c. 800-1000), when Kioto was made the capital; and finally
the four most important sects, Zen, Jodo, Shin, and Nichi-
ren, of the Kamakura period (hetween 1175 and 1253).
Only the oldest sects belong to the Hinayana or Little Ve-
hicle. We shall find also that there is a sudden change of
base in the religious position of these sects, from knowledge
to faith, from agnosticism or atheistic idealism to the idea of
God, as mercy or immortal life or immortal glory, Amida,
etc. But the idea itself was not new. Faith and God were
old properties of Buddhistic propaganda and Amida was
contemplated mystically long before there was a Jodo sect.
It is simply that in Japan as in India the need of God and the
faith-form of salvation came later to sectarian expression.
The period intervening between that of Buddhistic organ-
ization and this reform was one of degeneration, civil wars,
and the rise of military clans.1
It will be unnecessary to discuss all the sects, which,
though counted officially as twelve, really number, when
the sub-sects are included, about fifty. Typical sects or
schools which really have no religious iniportance among
the people are, for example, the (seventh century) Kusha,
a school studying particularly one text which, as its name
implies, resembles a "storehouse” of Little Vehicle meta-
1 For convenience these periods may be roughly estimated as: 500-
800 A. D., period of establishment, introduction of old sects, Prince
Shotoku and the Nara sects; 800-1000 A. D., ecclesiastical organiza-
tion, the Kioto sects, Genshin, the abbot of Eshinin, pioneer of
the Amida cult; 1000-1200 A. D., ecclesiastical decay, civil wars,
Minamoto dictatorship at Kamakura; 1200-1300, religious reforma-
tion, Amida-worship, Zen sect, etc.
RELIGIONS OF JAPAN
293
physics; also the synchronous sects called Sanron? and
Jojitsu (subjective idealism), the latter of which, now
extinct, was a school of the Little Vehicle, while the San-
ron professed to be eclectic; and the Vinaya or Ritsu sect
(Little Vehicle), all of which were branches of or studied
especially the tenets of the Hosso, of Dosho and Gyogi
Bosatsu. The Vinaya (sect) was brought directly from
China to Japan and established without modifications in
the eighth century. The Hosso sect, brought to Japan in
625 A. D. (or c. 650?), is still extant and has the longest
history of all the sects. It was Gyogi Bosatsu, a leader of
this sect, who (above) first thought of identifying the Sun
with the Buddhist Vairocana. At present this sect is the
smallest of all, having only forty-one temples and less than
seventy priests; but historically it is one of the most inter-
esting, since it came directly from India to China, whence
it was almost at once transplanted to Japan, and is most
closely connected with the Hindu Yoga philosophy. Like
the Sanron it is eclectic in its scriptures and as a Mahayana
sect teaches subjective idealism. Many of the earlier
sects have disappeared. They yielded, probably because of
their lack of contact with “real life,'' 2 to the later schools,
most of which belong to the Great Vehicle. Of these,
the pantheistic Kegon sect, which came to Japan in 735 A. D.,
is made picturesque on account of the fables attached to its
transmission and the divine manifestations which took place
when it was revealed. In the eighth century also came
from China the soniewhat similar but warlike Tendai sect,
which dared to assert and maintain temporal authority
against the court. It was introduced (767-822) by Saicho
(Dengyo Daishi) and teaches that salvation may be ob-
1 This school denies the real existence of phenomena and main-
tains that nothing is known of the noumenal world.
2 The sects at first were aristocratic schools of scholars supported
by and resident in Nara, the capital, or near it. All that the con-
mon people got from them was the universal Buddhistic truths,
knowledge of Karma (Japanese Ingwa), desire of Nirvana, worship
of Buddha, celebration of his birthday (April 8), etc.
294
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
tained by the realization of what it calls “ Buddha" in one-
self through any means fitted to the intelligence of the
learner (hence unjustly called “Jesuitical Buddhism” by
some Western scholars). It even took into its fold Shinto
gods, such as Fudo, the many-faced god who dispels de-
mons with fire. It is based on the text called the Lotus of
the True Law (or Perfect Truth). At one time it had
40,000 monks, but it has at present little influence in its
original form, though it has developed three sub-sects.
This and the following Shingon sect were most influential
during the Heian period (794-1186 A.D.), toward the close
of which the monks began to take more interest in politics
than in religion. In the following period (1186_1339)
Yoritomo (d. 1200) had to forbid the priests to carry arms.1
Shingon or the True Word sect (also based on the Lotus)
followed Tendai. The Word was no more than a mantra :
or magic formula; one who knew it could produce any
desired effect, including salvation, by thinking. Kukai or
Kobo was its introducer, a clever painter and engineer
(774-835 A. D.), who had studied Buddhism in China with
Saicho (804 A. D.) and like him established Shinto gods as
Buddhist saints. Buddha in this sect, as in most of the
Mahayana sects, was not so important as the Universal
Being called Vairocana (Jap. Biroshana), a form of
Buddha, or rather that eternal Buddha of whom the his-
torical Buddha is a manifestation. Magic and a gorgeous
ritual made this sect acceptable to the masses; the doctrine
that mind and matter are one and that every one can become
Buddha (for Buddha is the universe inherent even in dust)
endeared it to the admirers of mystic pantheism. Tendai
and Shingon are the only sects to adopt the Tibetan prayer-
wheel. A similar contrivance, seen at some temples, is more
1 The Tendai was an attempt (begun in China by Chi K'ai) to
harmonize all sects; but in Japan it tended to adopt the “ vacuity"
principle: real being is beyond all phenomena and relativity; the
universal must be manifested in the particular; reality unites both.
This was the doctrine Nichiren (below) sought to restore to purity
from the mixed Shinto-Buddhism of the later schools.
RELIGIONS OF JAPAN
295
original. It is called rinso, a revolving book-case contain-
ing Buddhist scriptures. The believer who revolves it with
the hand gets all the merit of revolving the contents of
the volumes in the head.
The last two sects are the first of the Kioto sects, called
by some writers the mediaeval sects in distinction from the
old sects, which had already declined by the eighth century.
Their influence was clearly in the direction of popularizing
religion and making it easy for the common people, though
the metaphysics of the Tendai and the mysticism of the
Shingon were only for adepts. After the prestige of the
Tendai was lost, an offshoot of the sect carried still further
the popularization of Buddhismi.
This was the Zen or Contemplation 1 sect, which has
three schools. Its original thought is that book-knowledge
is vain; one must find salvation by looking into one's own
soul. This view led to a practical revolt against idolatry and
made the believers quietists (the Rinzai school, founded by
Eisai, 1141-1215). Another school of this sect gave up this
extreme view and devoted itself to study as well as to con-
templation (the Soto or Sodo school, founded by Dogen,
1200-1253). The names are taken from Chinese Buddhists
of an earlier date. The third school (Obaku) was founded
by a Chinese priest, Ingen by name, in 1650. The Zen sects
were virtually Japanese (not Chinese). They remained not
only active but militant and acrimonious up to the present
day. The most remarkable result of this teaching of con-
templation, a mystic self-intoxication, which has earned the
Zen the name of Quakers of Japan, is that it has become the
favourite sect of the warrior class. Yet this apparent con-
tradiction is easily explained. The Zen sect was located at
Kamakura (military headquarters). Contemplation and
finding God within oneself easily become in unphilosophic
minds a laissez faire religion, which eniphasizes the beauty
1 That is Dhyana, the school of Bodhidharma, which reached
China in 520 A.D. The method was old; the sect merely stressed
the old feature.
296
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
and godliness of non-action in religious matters, while the
essential contemplation is transformed into idle thought or
vacuity of thought. It thus gave the soldiers freedom from
ritual and from mental effort, which was all, they desired.
It became and still is one of'the largest and most popular
sects, and to its influence is partly due the chivalrous char-
acter of the native soldier. It may be said to have trans-
ported Buddhism from the school to real life.
But in all the sects thus far mentioned, salvation, though
admittedly better than non-salvation, was rather a vague
benefit to the common man. He was taught that salvation
meant Nirvana, practically (in Japan) absorption or union
with the Blessed All, and since the alternative was a dreary
outlook of perpetual pain he was easily induced to strive
for salvation, especially when this was attainable at little
or no cost, as among the adherents of the Zen sects. Be-
cause, without exception, these sects granted salvation as
the reward either of knowledge or of the illumination which
came from contemplation, they were known as sects incul-
cating the old way of Salvation by the Law. Just after
the Zen sect had begun its existence, arose the first of two
even more popular sects, which together go by the name of
Jodo or Happy Land sects, teaching salvation by faith in
Amida. These sects substitute, for knowledge and illumi-
nation as means of salvation, simple faith or faith combined
with its expression in ejaculation. But, and this induce-
ment was even stronger than the simple means of salvation,
the happiness promised to the faithful was no longer the
abstruse joy of union with an incomprehensible all-entity but
the sensuous joy of a heavenly paradise. This belief is
based on a Buddhist text describing future felicity in ma-
terial terms, and the Buddha here is regarded as (Amida)
Amitabha or Amitayus (Limitless Glory, Limitless Life).
The believer looks forward to the Happy Land, Sukhavati,
to which he may attain hereafter by merit and faith, ex-
pressing his faith in the words “ Bow to Amida,” whose
grace will bring him to the Happy Land where Amida will
RELIGIONS OF JAPAN
297
meet his soul. This is the pietistic religion of pure Jodo,
founded (1133–1212 A. D.) by Genku (Honen) as a reform,
for Honen was originally of the Tendai sect, which saved
only the elect, while Jodo saves all believers.2
A little later this reform was itself slightly reformed by
Shinran (Hanyen; 1173–1262), whose knowledge of the-
ology was doubtless inborn, for he claimed descent from a
Japanese god. He was a pupil of Honen who, though fa-
mous for saintliness, suffered from the jealousy of the ortho-
dox and was banished; some of his followers were slain.
Undaunted by this precedent, however, Shinran renewed the
evangel, only simplifying it a little more, so that he felt
obliged to call his sect the Jodo Shin-shu, or True Jodo Sect.
This re-reformed sect abandoned even the “ bow to Amida"
formula as a means of salvation and maintained that one
did not have to wait for death and a greeting hereafter
from Amida to become sanctified; but Amida is found in life
in the soul of whosoever has faith in him. This creed found
favour with the Shoguns and the common people, who be-
came converted in too large numbers to be expelled. Faith,
not virtues, was the shibboleth of the sect. At present it
has ten sub-sects and nearly twenty thousand temples, be-
ing the most popular and numerous of all the sects, though
the Zen is a close rival. The Shin-shu (as it is usually
called, though it is also termed Ikko and Monto, "gate").
is really a Protestant theistic church, which relies on "the
merits of another” and on faith as means of salvation.
Faith brings change of heart and so cleanses it of sin.
Shinran, like Luther, shocked the church-world by marry-
ing and his monks follow his example, marrying and even
eating meat, a practice abhorred of all Buddhists except
1 Sukhavati means "happy" (land). It is erroneously rendered
“pure" by those (and others) who think of “a land of pure de-
light.” Sukha does not even imply pure; it is joy, happiness, the
antithesis of duhkha, pain, misery (never impurity). For the texts,
see SBE. xlix.
2 The essence of this creed was discovered by Honen in the writ-
ings of the Chinese monk Zendo (Santao). .
298
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
Buddha. The disciples of this teacher need not study Vairo-
cana, the mystic sunflower of pantheistic divinity, centred
in petals bearing the name of Amitabha, Manjusri, Avalo-
kiteshvara, Maitreya, and other Buddhas and Bodhisats, as
taught in Shingon, nor must they pass through three grades
of wisdom. They need only lead a moral life and have
faith in Amida. Even Jodo demands that meritorious deeds
should back up faith, be it only the merit of repeating the
“bow to Amida” formula; but the Shin teaches that faith
alone is necessary and then Amida, realized in the heart, is
within oneself, not, as in Jodo, waiting to welcome one, after
death, to the Happy Land.
As Honen got his pietistic inspiration in regard to faith'
while reading Zendo's works, and as Zendo lived in China,
where Nestorians were settled in 635 A. D., some have
even thought that the Happy Land sects derive from Chris-
tianity, an intrinsically improbable thesis in this form,
since they are based on a text which, older than Chinese
Buddhism, easily lends itself to the application made of it
by both sects. The Shin use a rosary, but this was im-
ported from India. It is the leading sect in the care of
the lowly and the only sect which “provides a way of sal-
vation for women.” The metaphysicians of this sect main-
tain their belief in an immanent (not a personal) divinity,
and assert that the common conception of Amida is only
for the benefit of those unable to understand truth. But,
to the mass of worshippers, Amida is practically saviour
and God. They are well-nigh monotheistic; they are saved
by the grace of God and live with him in Paradise for ever.
In other words, the people of Japan have gone through
the same stages and come out at the same place as have
the common people of India and elsewhere, to whom re-
ligion without God and Heaven is meaningless. In this
particular the Shin stands in sharp contrast with the Zen,
which ignores God and promises nothing as to a future life.
In another, outer, particular it resembles Zen; for it also
is a military religion beloved of soldiers, and as a church
RELIGIONS OF JAPAN
299
militant has interfered with effect in politics. Jodo recog-
nizes other divine forms, notably that of Kuannon, the
goddess 1 of mercy, whose seven or more, even thirty-three,
images are often found in Buddhist temples. Yet in this
regard the Jodo merely retains that background of poly-
theism which lies behind all Oriental pantheism and theism.
Finally it may be observed that in both Happy Land sects
the distinction between the moral code of the layman and
that of the monk, which dates from the beginning of Bud-
dhism, is definitively abandoned.
The last important sect of which we have to speak is that
of (Rencho) Nichiren (1222-1282 A. D.), Very different
estimates of his character have been made. To one scholar,
his sect is “the most superstitious and bigoted of Japanese
Buddhist sects.” 2 To another, Nichiren was a great apos-
tle of righteousness. The sect arose at a time when Kub-
lai Khan was threatening to destroy Japan and Nichiren
came into notice first as a prophet of evil, which might be
prevented if the people were converted to the truth as he
saw it. They had sinned, said Nichiren, in adopting Shin-
gonism, which was mixed with Shintoism and Hinduism and
led merely to sorcery. Again he opposed the cult of Amida,
who had usurped the place of Buddha, the formalism of
the Ritsu school, and the “ devilish” religion of the Zen.
He took as his guide the scripture called the Lotus of the
True Law (or Perfect Truth, as he termed it), which had
been rightly presented by Dengyo before it was misunder-
1 Klannon is now the goddess of mercy and is one of the most
beloved of Japanese divinities, answering in this capacity to the
Virgin Mary as the merciful. She really is a male (or sexless)
divinity and was so depicted when first introduced into China,
where she or he represents Avalokiteshvara and as such, a Buddhist
figure, deserves a place in the church, which cannot be said of
inany other divinities adopted by the Buddhists and converted into
church dignitaries. Chujo Hime, an early Buddhist nun, famous
for her pious tapestry, is now regarded as an incarnation of
Kuannon. On the Chinese form, see above, p. 270.
2 A judgment made by a native and cited by Chamberlain in
Things Japanese, London, 1890, P. 116.
300
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
111; we are hif the Buddha-na you.” Surelye,
stood, and his confession of faith was simply to pronounce
its title. Nichiren preached with fierce religious zeal and
if he is mocked as a revivalist who has “deified even mud,"
it must not be forgotten that he also taught what Buddha
taught, not salvation by the grace of Amida, but that each
one must work out his own salvation. To Nichiren, this
was accomplished by observing the law, by self-examination,
by reflecting on the blessings vouchsafed to the true be-
liever, and by constant prayer. One must not only know
but live the truth, which is eternal, as its revealer is eternal.
He believed himself to be a reincarnation of an ancient
saint; he was a mystic; Buddha manifests himself in trees
and grass, in the whole universe; but Buddha is Lord and
Father of all; we are his children; religion is the realiza-
tion of this truth and of the Buddha-nature in ourselves.
“Behold the kingdom of God is within you.” Surely we
cannot condemn this teacher as a fanatic demagogue,1
though his intolerance was not in the spirit of ancient
Buddhism.
The remaining sects are small and unimportant, though
the native theistic Yudsu Nembutsu (“ Bow to Buddha")
sect has 358 temples and the Ji2 has 515 temples. It
was not till three centuries after the founder of the last
of these sects that reviving Shinto began also to divide
into sects, to the number of about a dozen. None of
these is anything more than an adaptation of Shinto to
Buddhism or an adaptation of Chinese philosophy to Shinto.
One of these is based upon the philosophy of Chu Hi
combined with Shingon Buddhism and another reverts to
the Chinese Yi-King. These two sects, the Suiga and
1 There are now seven sub-sects, 5066 temples, and a great multi-
tude of followers of Nichiren's Hokko-shu. For a sympathetic ac-
count, see Anesaki, Nichiren the Buddhist Prophet, Cambridge,
Mass., 1916; for one less appreciative, Griffis, The Religion of
Japan, New York, 1895, P. 281. The Kamakura Zen, Jodo, Shin, and
Nichiren sects represent distinctively Japanese Buddhism.
2 The Ji-shu, founded 1275 A. D. by Ippen, uses the same ritual as
that of the Tendai and Shingon, but is closely related to the Jodo.
RELIGIONS OF JAPAN
301
Deguchi sects, belong to the seventeenth century. An
earlier sect is that called the Jikko. It resolves Izanagi
and Izanami into the male and female forms of one abso-
lute deity, who resides in the Fuji mountain, which should
be worshipped as the intellectual centre of the universe.
Comment is superfluous. A Japanese proverb says " when
folly passes by, reason draws back.” One of the latest of
these eclectic sects is that called Shingakuha. It arose in
the eighteenth century and teaches “heart-culture,” inducing
religion by the use of colloquial language, humour, etc.
Among most of the Buddhist sects there has been an
easy tolerance of gods not their own but drawn into their
fold by naming them saints of Buddhism. These gods go
by the general title of Gongen, temporary manifestations
of Buddha. Thus Sarasvati, the wife of Brahman, is re-
vered as Benten, goddess of sea and sky. She appears also
as one of the Seven Happy Gods of Fortune, who, histor-
ically, may be Kubera, the Hindu god of wealth, Sarasvati,
Mahakala (Time as god), the Buddhist Maitreya, two
forms perhaps representing Lao-tse, and one Shinto god.
This group of gods exorcises demons by means of beans,
hated by demons, on New Year's eve and serves as a
bugaboo to children. Another god is Daruma, Hindu
Dharma, god of justice, who renounced his eyelids to see
better, a form of the Hindu “ unwinking gods,". but is
degraded at present into an image, having a pipe in his
mouth and serving as a sign for tobacconists. An earlier
figure is Jizo, of the eighth century, who compassionates
mothers and children. The Tendai sect tolerated the wor-
ship of the Two Kings (Ni-o), who are really Indra and
Brahman disguised as Gongen. Ema, or Emma-o, god of
the dead and ruler of hills, seems to be a god of Buddhism.
Statesmen and generals are also deified or canonized.
Ieyasu, the implacable but great unifier of Japan, notorious
1 Griffis, op. cit., p. 218. The Japanese names are Bishamon, Dai-
koku, Ebisu, Fukurokuju, Hotei, Jurojin, and Benten or Benzaiten
(serpent-symbol). The identifications are not assured.
11
302
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
Suddhists exalteer tof gods in Japan small matter
Y
as the persecutor of Christians in the seventeenth century,
was a member of the Jodo sect, which was favoured by the
Shoguns, and he is now glorified or deified as Toshu-gu,
Great Light of the East, or Gongen Sama (in idol-form).
Takamori, the desperate upholder of feudalism against the
new régime (died in 1877), is now the regent of Mars.
The earlier rebel Masakado on dying proved so malevolent
a ghost that his spirit was appeased by making him a god,
till, in the revolution of 1868, when he fell into disfavour,
his idol was hacked to pieces, and his divine office was
handed over to a Shinto god. Other idols commonly found
in Japanese temples are those of the 500 early Hindu saints
or Arlats (Rakan in Japanese). Some of these at least
really lived, so that they may be set down as the first of
Buddhists exalted to a quasi divinity; but owing to the
nebulous character of gods in Japan it must never be for-
gotten that to be made a “god ” is a small matter, a decora-
tion, so to speak. With men it amounts at most only to
canonization. Like most Japanese practices it was adopted
from the Chinese, and, as in China, even scholars are thus
dignified. So the wise imperial councillor Michizane, the
minister of the emperor Uda (893-898 A.D.), was canon-
ized as Tenjin Sara, the heavenly Patron of Literature;
he now has many idols. Mr. Benj. S. Lyman, an American
scholar and engineer of Philadelphia, who developed the
Japanese mining industry forty years ago, has recently been
macle “god of metals."
The immense importance of Buddhism in the cultural
and religious evolution of Japan cannot be overestimated.
“Almost every branch of industrial and artistic develop-
ment owes something to the influence of the [Buddhist]
creed."'! It gave the Japanese a culture and religion which
have had a lasting effect for good. At the same time it
must not be forgotten that all the Buddhist sects lost their
spiritual value as they became mobs of hired soldiers fight-
1 Professor Asakawa in Japan, History of Nations, Philadelphia,
1906, p. 33.
RELIGIONS OF JAPAN
303
ing for or against a political chieftain. In the fourteenth
century the monks became mere militia. Sect fought with
sect and especially the Shin and Nichiren sect-feuds cost
the lives of thousands of monks. The only sects which
were not entirely transformed by military activity were the
Zen (Soto and Rinzai) sects whom the Ashikagas supported.
They, almost alone, upheld religion and learning in that
troubled era.
But what Buddhism accomplished ethically is another
matter. In the period of degeneration (1000-1200 A. D.)
the Buddhist monasteries, like those of the same period
in Europe, were centres of vice and debauchery and
Buddha himself, in the docetic interpretation toward which
the Mahayana leaned, could offer no commanding personal
model to which appeal might be made in favour of a moral
code, especially as even the learner's own personality was
questioned. Despite these disadvantages theoretically, the
Buddhist had a high moral code, but its practical strength
was due to the infusion of Confucian ethics.
Christianity was brought into Japan by Xavier in 1549
and found at first no opposition, owing to the anarchical
state of the country, in which the Buddhists had had a
hand, so much so indeed that the war which caused the
overthrow of the Togashi family goes by the name of the
Shin war. It was at this time that the Jesuits arrived and
their initial success was due to this political reason. For
Nobunaga, who suppressed the Shogunate for thirty years,
would have been glad to suppress the Buddhists also. He
did in fact burn the temple of Enriakuji, really a fort
filled with an army of Buddhist priests, who had pillaged
the country and acknowledged no authority for half a mil-
lennium. Nobunaga was a member of the ancient Taira-
Oda family but he was not himself a Shogun, though he
formed an alliance with (the Tokugawa) Ieyasu in the
interest of the imperial power. The only reason he sup-
ported the Christians was that he wished to weaken the
secular power of the Buddhists. Under imperial patronage
01
304
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
of this kind it is not surprising to learn that within forty
years there were from two to three hundred thousand
Christian converts. Most of them were ordered by their
Daimios to be converted, sometimes" within a day.” The
Jesuits, however, naturally saw in this unexpected catholicity
on the part of the Japanese the hand of God. But mis-
sionary success lasted only till the Tokugawa Shoguns
began to fear that Spain was seeking under guise of reli-
gion to make Japan a Spanish province. or by this time
the Japanese had become acquainted with Portuguese and
Dutch traders and knew what Spanish ambition meant.
The result was that even in 1587 an edict of Hideyoshi 1
banished all foreign religions, the short-lived patronage of
Christianity.ceased, and the foreign sect was prohibited by
the Tokugawa. Ieyasu then began a systematic persecu-
tion of the sect (in 1614), obliging converts to recant by
trampling on the crucifix and meting out to the Jesuits the
same measure they themselves had adopted toward Euro-
pean heretics, namely torture as barbarous as that of the
1 At the death of Nobunaga in 1582 his chief officer Hideyoshi
(a man of low birth) became the most powerful man in Japan.
Ieyasu (of the Tokugawa family) envied his position and at first
rebelled against him; but as each of these leaders feared the other,
they eventually laid aside their differences and Hideyoshi, highly
honoured by the emperor, became chancellor of the empire. He
conquered Korea and China before he died in 1598 and was suc-
ceeded by Ieyasu, who, refraining from foreign conquests, devoted
himself to founding the fortunes of his own Tokugawa family and
establishing a Shogunate that gave lasting peace to his country. It
was not till Nobunaga, Hideyoshi, and Ieyasu had established peace
that Neo-Confucianism, in the Shushi and Oyomei (Wang-Yang-
Min, above, p. 265) forms, became fully established in Japan. The
Shushi school, recognized as orthodox in China by the Ming em-
perors (1402–1644), was made the authorized system by the Toku-
gawa Shoguns. It was encouraged especially because it promoted
loyalty. The Oyomei school trusts more to intuition than to knowl-
edge (compare Zen). A third school of Neo-Confucianisın is that
known as the Classical school of Yamaga Soko (father of Bushido)
and Ito Jinsai. It stresses emotion but professes to go back to
Confucius. A fourth, Eclectic, school is a combination of all exist-
ing Confucian schools. See A. K. Reischauer, Studies in Japanese
Buddhism, New York, 1917, p. 143f.
RELIGIONS OF JAPAN
305
Inquisition. The persecution even in Japan was not all
on one side. Daimios, who had been converted by the
Jesuits, persecuted such of their vassals as refused to be-
come Christian," and this undoubtedly strengthened the sus-
picion that the “ Kirishitan” were endeavouring to make
Japan a Spanish dependency, as was charged by the Dutch.
Ieyasu was a national reformer and a statesman of high
order, who rescued Japan from internal disorders that had
raged for two hundred years and gave her a peace which
lasted for two hundred more. His measures were harsh
even toward his own countrymen, for he deliberately im-
poverished all the Daimios in order to weaken them and
thus preserve the country from their incessant contentions.
He permitted the imperial power to retain little real power
and established a Shogunate which endured till 1868. In
these important political activities the suppression of Chris-
tians, who had shown arrogance and intolerance, was only
an item. He died two years after the persecution was
started. Besides the Jesuits, the Dominicans, Augustinians,
and Franciscans had founded missionary settlements in
Japan. Converted Daimios had even sent out investigators
to visit Spain and Italy. They remained eight years and
visited the Pope (1582–1590). A similar expedition of
Christian Samurai started in 1613 and returned in 1620,
after another visit to the Pope. Despite the (1587) edict
of banishment, Christians continued to enter the country
disguised as merchants and for that reason were all the
more assumed to be spies of Spain. Finally they took sides
with the enemies of the now all-powerful Tokugawa family,
and were implicated in an open rebellion (1637–39) in be-
half of Masudo Shiro, Tokisada, who was desirous of be-
coming the ruler of the empire. In order to win support
among the farmers and common people he let it be known
that he performed miracles and was the “heavenly mes-
senger” prophesied by Xavier, and destined to establish
1 Nobunaga destroyed Buddhist temples and killed the priests
with their women and children.
306
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
Christian supremacy. Supported by the Christians he seized
a province, murdered its governor, and set up an independ-
ent principality. He was overthrown and his supporters,
among them the Christians, were massacred. Christian
thus became synonymous with rebel and traitor; but a
Christian might evade death by becoming a Buddhist. Not
only missionaries but all Europeans as such were now
suspect. No European books were allowed to be brought
into the country and all ports were closed except to the
Dutch. They, because they had never been missionaries
but on the contrary had rather aided the authorities against
the Jesuits, were still permitted to enter by one port. It
is well to consider these political data. They palliate some-
what the crime of persecution, though they cannot undo the
horrors enacted during fifty years. In 1716, the six-year
census, called "examination of faith," was instituted and
given into the hands of the Buddhists, who by means of
this register were able to keep track of and suppress most
of the genuine converts to Christianity. Yet in 1865 some
of the descendants of the early Christians were discovered
still clinging to the signs of their old faith. Four thousand
of them suffered imprisonment for their fidelity (1867).
The changes during the last century have been mainly
along political lines, the re-establishment of the Shinto rit-
ual, the exclusion and readmission of Christianity. No
notable novelty has been introduced except that of inter-
preting Shinto in various unhistorical ways by way of ad-
justing it to modern needs. Thus in 1849 Shinto was first
taught as a monotheistic religion by Kurozumi, who re-
garded the sun-goddess (Heaven-Shining One) as God (quâ
the sole source of vitality), with whom man should seek
to be in communion. Both Buddhism and Shinto were
formally disestablished in 1884. Buddhism had been abol-
ished as a factor in the state religion after the restoration
of imperial authority in 1868. But the Buddhists were stili
1 This was not intended as a reassertion of Shinto religion as the
Srate religion, but it seems to the people to imply this.
RELIGIONS OF JAPAN
307
allowed to preach patriotism and humanitarianism (1872).
Freedom of religious thought was granted to the people and
in 1875 the Doshisha theological school was founded by
Neeshima, who had been a student in America. Subse-
quently, there was a temporary union of the three older
cults, Shinto, Buddhism, and Confucianism, called the “Way
of uniting three religions,” to oppose Christianity. Since
the war with China (1894-95) and that with Russia (1904–
05) the national spirit has reawakened the warrior-spirit and
there has been a strong tendency to regard Shinto as the
national religion, though the modern followers of this “an-
cestor-worship” do not themselves believe in a future life.
Morality is on the whole taking the place of religion among
the educated classes.
Prophecy is no part of history, but as Japan is the only
great nation without a religion recognized by the State or
generally acknowledged by the people, it is a tempting field
for speculation. Its statesmen inculcate the religion of
loyalty. Its philosophers believe in a Oneness which
transcends human categories. Its plain people are idolaters
or agnostics, or in theistic sects recognize Amida as God.
Yet in this regard the Christian missionary objects : "they
cannot conceive of God as a person.” But in such a state-
ment “God” translates Buddha as the Absolute and it
would perhaps be tempting, if temerarious, to inquire how
many Christians regard The Absolute as a personal God.
What is significant is that Japanese Buddhism regards
Amida simply as the highest personal expression of
Buddha, that is, as the highest conception of God humanity
can have, because the Absolute cannot be conceived at all.
Goci, in fact, to the Japanese theologian appears in a
trinity, first as the Absolute, second as personified Mercy
and Wisdom in the form of Amida, and third as the
historical Buddha (or any one of the many Buddhas).
Salvation, obtained in the old sects by “turning from
1 Anesaki, Religious History of Japan, Tokyo, 1907, p. 47.
2 Salvation in early Buddhism means escape from eternal life; in
308
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
ignorance and opening" (the mind to truth; tenmāi
kaigo is the formula), is in the theistic sects, as it seems
fair to call them, though some missionaries strenuously
object to the term, a matter of grace extended to a be-
liever: “All the doctrines of Buddhism are grounded in
mercy.” That this saying may lead to ethical laxity is true;
so Lutherism actually led to antinomianism. The Japanese
say, “He whose heart is pure, to him the heart of every
being is pure.” May we not conversely say also: He who
has been ready to take as pure religion the best of every
religion, his heart is religiously pure? But there is an-
other Japanese saying: “If the heart be pure, the Way
will be open." This Way must combine the ethics of
loyalty with the faith of philosophy.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Hisho Saito, History of Japan, London, 1912.
G. W. Knox, Development of Religion in Japan, New York,
1907.
T. Harada, The Faith of Japan, New York, 1914:
B. H. Chamberlain, Kojiki, Tokyo, 1906.
K. Florenz, Geschichte der Japanischen Litteratur, Leipzig,
1906; Japanische Mythologie, 1901; Nihongi, 1903.
W. G. Ashton, Shinto the Way of the Gods, London, 1905.
I. O. Nitobe, Bushido, New York, 1905.
Sir E. Satow, The Revival of Pure Shinto, in Transactions of
the Asiatic Society of Japan, Yokohama, iii, Appendix;
Japanese Rituals, ibid. vii and ix.
Arthur Lloyd, The Creed of Half Japan, London, 1911.
Bunyiu Nanjio, A Short History of the Twelve Buddhist Sects,
Tokyo, 1886.
A. K. Reischauer, Studies in Japanese Buddhism, New York,
1917. This has the best description of the Buddhist sects.
the theistic sects it means admission to Heaven as a friend of God.
The Karma complex (substitute for soul) of the early Buddhist
has also become purely psychic or animistic in these sects.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
THE RELIGION OF EGYPT
We turn now to a group of religions all more or less inti-
mately related, the Mediterranean-Mesopotamian group,
composed of Egyptian, Semitic, and Aryan elements inter-
woven to such a degree that the religions of Babylon and
Rome, of Abydos and Athens, etc., cannot be regarded as
quite independent, and yet it is difficult to determine in how
far each is dependent upon the other. Racial lines become
rather unimportant. The southern Aryans had some con-
nexion with those of the North, but, in the South the
Aryans were merged in the older Mediterranean civiliza-
tion; while in the East the connexion between Aryan and
Semite was of the closest. We shall begin with the oldest
of the Mediterranean religions and then take up the oldest
Semitic branch and, after studying the other religions of
this complex in their natural order, irrespective of race,
come to an end with the religion which, representing the
union of Aryan and Semitic, is also the logical close of the
series, since it is, as it were, the full expression of all that is
enduring in the preceding religions.
The religion of Egypt appears to be an indigenous crea-
tion. In its later stages we have to do with foreign types,
such as the Nubian god Dedun and the protecting dwarf-
god Bes, who may have come from Somali-land. Espe-
cially in the Delta was there Semitic influence sufficient to
add to the Egyptian pantheon the fornis of Baal and Astarte.
But these are easily distinguishable from the native gods.
The earlier pantheon contained the products of different
Egyptian localities gradually fused through migration and
309
310
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
politics into closely related or even indistinguishable figures.
That Egypt received its mythology from Asia has often been
suggested but never proved.
was but a phase of African religion in general; since the
Egyptians retained many primitive elements in their religious
customs and in their animal gods. A number of Sudanese
beliefs and practices, even religious symbols, are like those
of the Egyptians. But much in this field is too specula-
tive to be regarded as assured, and at present it will be bet-
ter to assume that Egyptian belief is not imported, though
it may to a certain extent have been inherited from earlier
conditions, and it may be that the pre-dynastic inhabitants
differed racially from the later in degree, having less admix-
ture than those, say, of the sixth dynasty (c. 2500 B. C.). .
One of the great gods of Egypt was Ptah, the divine
sculptor, who, by uttering their names, conceived and made
the world and the gods. He himself was the god of Mem-
phis and as early as the Pyramid age, that is from 3000 B. C.
to 2475, was already extolled as the creator. His site, it is
said, was called Hat-ka-Ptah," temple of the soul (or
genius) of Ptah," pronounced by foreign tongues aikypta,
Aegyptos. It is fitting that Egypt should have received its
name from a god and the name itself, if the etymology
be correct, may serve as a reminder that more than two
thousand years before Christ a creator god was recognized
whose word, as conceived by the heart (mind), was the
turies must have elapsed before so philosophic an explana-
tion of creation was evolved, for behind the image of this
1 Prof. E. G. Smith, in his recent work, The Ancient Egyptians
and their Influence upon the Civilisation of Europe, Cambridge,
1911, seems to think that an Armenoid element from Syria altered
the course of later development, and that the Pyramid men were a
drawn between the Ethiopic and Mediterranean peoples, and
whether a new type arose in the Dynastic period.
2 A similar creation is attributed to Thoth, the god of wisdom
(see below).
THE RELIGION OF EGYPT
311
Ptah stretches a long number of years in which the deity
was of lower form. This lower form, nevertheless, is also
of importance, since its very antiquity illustrates the fact
that, however far back we trace Egyptian history, we find,
a theogony and theology which already foreshadows the
system of later millenniums. The Egyptians were, in short,
from the beginning a religious people. Nor was theirs a
religion wholly occupied with death and sorrow, as one
might suppose who knew only the Book of the Dead and
such documents. As Renouf has emphasized, early reli-
gious rites were accompanied with music and the dance,
not simply to scare away demons but to exhilarate the
human worshippers. Festivals were cheerful; there were
gay songs; even dogs were trained to howl a pleasing mel-
ody; and in the popular cults there was a boisterous natural
note which seems almost Hellenic in its mixture of religion
and sensuousness untinged with grief and boldly joyous,
the embodiment of pleasure in life rather than fear of
death. The sun received offerings of fruits and flowers,
not bloody sacrifice, and hymns of joy, not funereal dirges.
And if the effigy of a corpse was exhibited at banquets, as
Herodotus tells us, it was only that the guests might not
forget to enjoy themselves, while yet there was time. Not
a mere reminder of sad things; but Eat and drink, for to-
morrow ye die; therefore be merry now. Yet this may
imply scepticism as to the future, which finds voice at an
early age (circa 2000 B. C.). Beyond the grave, it is said, is
"the land that loves silence”; hence again, “Be joyful
now.” In the Lay of the Harper, this admonition is fol-
lowed by another: "Be devoted to pleasure; but be just;
love right, hate wrong.” It is already a moral religion.
Charity, compassion, gentleness, forgiveness are strictly en-
joined. To show compassion to the poor, and to be hon-
est in word as in deed, are virtues which ensure happiness
hereafter. The funeral formula is en hotep, “in peace,"
and this “Peace be with thee” was felt as an assurance as
well as a benediction in the case of the good. For after
312
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
death the god Osiris judges the soul according to the rule
of morality thus formulated. Its fate accords with the
evil or good it has done. Yet eternal life must be insured
by the care of the living descendants, who give nourish-
ment to the dead. The ka or soul, image or genius of a
man, is revered by his family, who establish a shrine for
it with regular offerings, lustral water, etc., given to the ka
every tenth day. Such is the outline of this religion as it
existed for centuries. But there was no purgatory; prayers
could not better the condition of the dead. The poor and
ignorant had a mean place hereafter, yet they suffered no
punishment because of their ignorance; only sinners per-
ished.
But before entering upon a fuller description of this
religion it will be necessary to trace in outline the periods
of development to which reference will constantly have to
be made. There are great gaps in Egyptian history con-
cerning which we know nothing.? What happened from
the VII to the XI dynasties (2400 to 2100 B. C.), is a mat-
ter of conjecture. Doubtful is the relation between the
southern and northern kingdoms, between the native and
Hyksos rulers (c. 1680 B. C.), between Egyptian and foreign
culture. There were forty-two provinces in Egypt and
each had its local god or gods. But the chief difficulty in
the interpretation of the religion lies in the antithesis be-
tween the higher and lower forms, between the priestly and
bucolic religion, that is, in the internal rather than the ex-
ternal factors, in the fusion and combination of all these
great and little gods of which each section of Egypt had
an over-supply. In rough outline the history of the land
begins with a king called Menes, mentioned by Herodotus
(ii. 4, 99) as "the first mortal who reigned over Egypt."
He was supposed to be of Abydos, of the district This,
i Egyptian chronology is based on the statements made by
Manetho (third century B. C.), who arranged the kings in dynasties,
on sundry native lists of kings, and on a calendar cycle, which may
have begun 4240 B. C. For details, see Breasted, History of Egypt,
New York, 1911.
THE RELIGION OF EGYPT
313
in upper Egypt about a hundred miles below Thebes, which
Herodotus says he founded, and probably lived in the
fourth millennium B. c.1 The two kingdoms of upper and
lower Egypt were then united. The early dynasties, after
this perhaps mythical king, are reckoned in groups. First
come the First and Second dynasties, about 3400 to 2980
B. C. Then comes the Old Kingdom or the Pyramid Age,
when Memphis was the capital, including dynasties III to
VI, about 2980 to 2475, that is, the first five hundred years
of the third millennium B. C. (other authorities give to the
Old Kingdom the dates 2700 to 2000). To this age be-
longs the maker of the greatest pyramid, Khufu, or Cheops
as known to the Greeks. By this time a king was already
deified, namely Snofru or Soris, last king of the third
dynasty, who had fought in the East (he also first opened
copper mines). Some scholars have supposed that he ex-
tended his power as far as Mt. Sinai. Internal wars in all
probability account for the gap till the eleventh dynasty.
The XI and XII dynasties, called the Middle or Feudal Age
(Kingdom) represent the centuries 2160 to 1788 B, C.
(sometimes reckoned from 2000 to 1800 B.C.). At this
time Thebes became most prominent. Syria and Palestine
were known. Then, after two centuries of invasion (the
Hyksos kings), followed the dynasties XVIII to XX (first
half), about 1580 to 1150 B. C., called The Empire. In this
period 3 the Pharaohs made Syria a province of Egypt.
Then came a period of decadence, when the priestly power
got the upper hand and the XXI dynasty was founded by
a priest of Amon-Re. This period of Decadence extended
from dynasty XX second half to dynasty XXV, about 1150
to 600 B. C. After this, the Restoration, dynasty XXVI,
1 Or earlier! His approximate date is 3400 B.C. (Breasted), or
4400 B. C. (Brugsch), or 5650 (Wiedemann).
2 Probably Semites, perhaps Amorites.
3 The famous XIX dynasty (1350–1200 B. C.) includes Ramses II
(1292-1225 B. C.), who may be the Pharaoh of the oppression. The
XXII dynasty was founded 945 B. C. by Sheshonk (Shishak, I Kg.
xi. and xiv.).
1
314
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
663 to 525 B. C., the latter the date of the Persian conquest
by Cambyses; followed by the Greek conquest of Alexander
in 332, and by the Roman conquest in 31 B.C. Between the
XXI and XXVI dynasties there had already been a suc-
cession of foreign invasions, Lydian, Aethiopic, and As-
syrian (all part of the Decadence, above).
in Osiris as a poeath but also with the sun-religi
From the religious point of view there are three lines of
thought to be distinguished during this evolution. First,
the old belief of the people in animal-gods, which has re-
sulted in a confused mass of strange divinities, half human.
in aspect and half animal. Second, the State religion of
the sun-god and the belief that royal personages are sons
of this god and go to him after death. Third, the belief
in Osiris as a power inimical to the Sun, an earth-power
associated with death but also with the production of life,
lintil this was finally fused with the sun-religion, which
then developed into a monotheism, about 1375, when Amen-
hotep IV gave up the worship of the old sun-god, Amon,
and instituted that of Aton. The great periods of Egyp-
tian history are those of the XII (begins c. 2000), XVIII
and XIX (1350–1200) dynasties of Thebes. In the eight-
eenth dynasty Thothmes (Thutmose) III (1501–1447), who
owed his throne to a conspiracy of the priests of Amon,
practically ruled the then known world. Ramses I (1350
B. C.) was the first king of the XIX dynasty. But the
power of the priests destroyed the power of the State and
by 1100 B. C. the State church ruled the Pharaoh.
Although we find sun-worship in Horus-form and Re-
forin established in the earliest period, the fact that animal-
gods were already regarded as forms of the sun probably
shows that these animal-gods were older than the sun-god,
and, if so, older than the other nature-gods. Yet it is not
at all certain that Sun and Nile were not gods as primitive
as Bull and Crocodile. With animals were worshipped
stones and trees, and these lower, aboriginal, deities had so
strong a hold upon the people that they were never re-
THE RELIGION OF EGYPT
315
nounced till civilization modified them out of recognition
or did away with them altogether. There is no strong evi-
dence to support the view of Sayce 1 that such a wave of
early culture swept over Egypt from without as to intro-
duce new religious notions and rites, (e.g., the deification of
kings). Egyptian kings were worshipped by the fourth
dynasty.
Among animals, serpents hold a high place, but as ob-
jects rather of abhorrence than of regard. Thus in the
Pyramid texts there are many charms directed against
them. The sun-god Re was wounded by a serpent and the
Pharaoh, who is one with Re, is protected from them when
dead by charms. But this was under the sun-cult, and a
charm against the serpent is an indication that the magic
of the charm has taken the place of a belief in the potency
of the serpent. Pilgrimages are made even to this day to
the “mountain of the serpent," where are tombs to a male
and female serpent, which have been worshipped there for
six thousand years. Just such a god was the serpent wor-
shipped by the children of Israel. This serpent-worship
reaches its culmination in the dread of the asp or cobra-
like viper and the uraeus, poisonous snakes, particularly
feared, and hence venerated; out of the general horror of
which grew the cult of the dragon-serpent Apop (Apophis)
with seven heads, the foe of Re and Horus and the monster
of the deep inimical to all souls entering the underworld.
He thus became the personification of the darkness of night
and of all evil. The sun-god Re and Apop fought much
as Marduk and Tiamat fight in Balbylonian legend. Ac-
cording to Budge, the two stories are so much alike that
they must have had the same source. Yet this is not an
inevitable conclusion, since such antitheses appear in mytho-
logical form elsewhere. This serpent is not an animal, still
less a totem. It may be said here once for all that many
1 Gifford Lectures (1903), The Religions of Ancient Egypt and
Babylonia.
2 The Gods of the Egyptians, London, 1904, 1, p. 327.
316
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
writers have assumed totemic origin for serpent, bull, etc.,
in Egypt without remembering that totemism implies not only
clan-worship but also brotherhood with the animal-class
on the part of man. No primitive totemism is found in
Egypt. The contempt poured upon the Egyptians by the
Greek and Roman world was based on partial ignorance of
what the animals were whom the one revered and the other
despised. Before the Greek ridiculed him, the higher sort
of Egyptian had already passed from pure animal-worship
to nobler conceptions; but the mass of the people still wor-
shipped snakes, and stones, and probably the priests in gen-
eral believed in such divinities.
It would be useless to enumerate the animals regarded
as gods by the Egyptians, because the cult was localized at
first in each instance; a list of them simply represents the
animals originally regarded as divine at different places.
It will suffice to notice the most important.
Herodotus tells us of the worship of Epaphos (Hd. iii.
28), that is the bull Apis of Memphis, the animal sacred to
Ptah. This god appeared to the people (and thus made a
holiday) at an unfortunate moment, which angered Cam-
byses. On its tongue was a beetle, on its back the figure of
an eagle, and when Cambyses wounded it, he went mad.
This is the “new life of Ptah," a bull that conserved the
life of the creator-god in animal form. He had annual
festivals and when he died a costly funeral. But this is
only one elevated form of cattle-worship. The bull per se,
as well as an incarnation of a higher god, was a bucolic
divinity. As Serapis of Sinope, late in Egyptian history,
the Apis became an “Osiris-Apis ” and through this con-
nexion was reintroduced to the Greeks as an equivalent of
Hades. The Golden Calf of the Israelites may have been
the symbol of the original god as bull of Memphis. As
1 Joseph married the daughter of a priest of Heliopolis, where
the Sun was worshipped as a bull or a bull as the Sun, the animal
being a form of the sun-god; this is the Mnevis form of Re.
On its tomen Cambyses, wasbull that
THE RELIGION OF EGYPT
317
1
“Serapis,” the bull was encircled by a serpent, representing
immortal life.
Of the worship of the ram, ba, it need only be said that its
cult was heightened (as reproductive god) through the acci-
dent of ba being also the word designating soul. Hence
the ba of Amon-Re was at once the “ram” and the soul
of the Sun. Khnum, the cataract-god and creator, has a
ram's head. At Bubastos there was a cult of cats, perhaps ·
originally as the foe of snakes; but there was no general
worship of cats before (c. 2100) the XI dynasty and it
was not till the XVII dynasty that the cat became chief god
of Bubastos. Earlier than the cat at the same place was
worshipped the lion, and the cat may perhaps have repre-
sented the nobler brute. Later every cat in Egypt was
mummified and brought to Bubastos for burial as a divine
creature, sacred to Bast, the goddess with the head of a
cat or lion, almost identical with Pakht (wife of Ptah).
The lion, separately, was also revered as an embodiment of
the Sun, as most local divinities were made forms of the
Sun. This primitive lion-worship (become sun-worship)
has been perpetuated in the form of the (“ throttler” lion)
Sphinx at Gizeh, which is of the IV dynasty and probably
older even than the Great Pyramid, near which it stands.
This figure, about 140 feet long (the head is about 14 x 30),
is a lion with a human face, and its position is such as to
face the rising sun. Lion-gods guarded the tunnel through
which the Sun passed at night. They were called “ Yester-
day and Today” (Akeru, later Sef and Tuan). But hu-
man-headed lions (really representing kings) also guarded
the palace of the king as son of the Sun. They were to
keep off evil spirits and did not represent mysterious wis-
dom, as the Greeks thought. They were also male divini-
ties, not, like the Greek sphinxes, winged lionesses. Some
1 So India confused aja, "goat," with aja, the "unborn," eternal.
2 But the goddess Sekhmet, representing the Sun's destructive
heat, has a lion's head. The cat is her manifestation.
318
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
Egyptian sphinxes have lion-heads, others have human
heads.and leonine bodies; still others, the head of a ram.1
The great sphinx at Gizeh dates from the first half of the
third millennium (time of Cheops) or earlier, and is an
idealized lion, perhaps intended as a form of Horus. Be-
fore it are altar and temple grounds.
A good example of the very local character of some ani-
mal gods may be found in the statement that the crocodile,
Sebek, was killed in some places, as an Elephantine, and
worshipped in others, chiefly at Thebes. It is feared and
so killed; it is feared and so deified. As a god it kept off
hostile tribes across the river. As a demon it was asso-
ciated with Set, the enemy of Osiris; but by the VI dynasty
(c. 2475 B. C.) it was identified with Re, the Sun. In the
Delta the hippopotamus, Rert, was more generally wor-
shipped as productive and beneficent. It is the emblem of
Set and also mother of the Sun in later syncretism. Other
animals worshipped here and there are the elephant, jackal,
ichneumon, hare, hedge-hog, shrew-mouse; also the bear
(perhaps), and the wolf (cf. Lycopolis) ; but not the dog,
except as jackal. The pig, as associate of Set, the god of
evil, was detested. The ass was regarded by some as a god,
by some as a devil. The baboon was the animal or emblem
of Thoth, but his head was always that of the ibis.
Among birds, mention must be made first of Horus, the
falcon (symbol); 2 then of the fabled phoenix, Bennu, heron-
type of resurrection, typified by the new Sun of which it
was the emblem. Herodotus (ii, 73) reports what he con-
siders to be the general belief: 3 “ It seldom makes its
appearance. . . only once in five hundred years, as the in-
habitants of Heliopolis say; who narrate that it comes only
on the death of its sire. Its plumage is golden-coloured and
1 A sphinx with a hawk's head represents the hawk-god of Er-
ment (south of Thebes) called Mentu, god of war in the XIX
dynasty.
2 Sokar, the death-god, appears as a hawk, i. e., hawk as soul
(especially of kings).
3 It is doubtful, however, whether this is a correct report.
THE RELIGION OF EGYPT
319
1
red and it resembles in shape an eagle . . . it comes from
Arabia and brings the body of its sire to the temple of the
Sun.” The same authority mentions the various animals
considered as gods in his own day and says that the Egyp-
tians also worshipped real birds ? as well as the phoenix and
that eels and some fishes were sacred to the people. Among
all the lower animals, none was so sacred as the holy beetle
or scarab, the symbol of the rising sun and also god of
creation and resurrection. Owing to its “self-existence"
(supposed to be born of itself) it became the symbol of
eternal life.
It does not present an adequate view of Egyptian reli-
gion to present these animals as other than they were. To
refer to Anubis as “the ancient mortuary god,” without
emphasizing that this god was the jackal, who was a mor-
tuary god because he devoured the dead, is to give a false
impression. The underlying truth thus glossed over is that
the beast himself was at first a god; only as a later phase
can we speak of the god of the dead as a divinity having
only a trace left of his animal origin.
If we turn now to the higher gods we shall find a number
of local divinities whose tendency is to enlarge their do-
main and become vaguer in consequence of a wide-spread
synecretism. These gods represent natural powers as well
as abstractions; they were presumably local divinities grad-
ually amalgamated both with each other and with higher
gods even than themselves. They often appear in triads
and enneads and even in groups of three enneads, which
consist of the chief local gods. The triad, usually of father,
mother, and son, is replaced by an ennead consisting of
eight gods grouped about the chief local god. Altogether
1 Both the ibis and baboon represent Thoth. The vulture repre-
sents mother-gods. The goose is connected with Amon.
? Anubis was the god of the necropolis of Siut (Lycopolis), where
the city-god was the “path-opener" (Upwawet), wolf-god or sun-
god. The city and necropolis gods are often identified. This Ptah
is not only Ptah-Tatanen (two gods in one), but also Ptah-Sokar
(the necropolis god).
320
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
the composition of such enneads, belonging to different
cities, reveals the names of what we may consider the most
revered gods. Thus at Heliopolis (Cn) Atum, the sun-
god, the head of the ennead, begets of himself the air-god
Shu and his wife Tefenet (of unknown meaning), from
whom were born Geb and Nut (earth-god and sky-
goddess), whose children were Osiris, Set, Isis, and Neph-
thys. Later the same city recognizes three enneads, twenty-
seven gods reckoned as three dynasties prior to the histor-
ical first dynasty of Menes.
On the other hand, as opposed to these nature-gods, for
the most part local gods of the Delta, the ogdoad at Hermop-
olis in upper Egypt consisted of such abstractions, though
furnished with animal heads, as the elements or powers
(differently interpreted) in male and female form, the lat-
ter being one with the former but with a grammatical end-
ing indicating the feminine, although the group of eight is
headed by (Hermes) Thoth. He was the local moon- and
time-god of creation and magical powers, the scribe of the
gods, who represents science and art and is represented by
the ibis or peacock and baboon form, whether as symbol
or as original deity. As such he became the Greek Hermes
trismegistos (also the planet Saturn). His consort is
Maat, the Right Order, goddess of measure and justice,
whose“ priests” are the judges.
The best-known triads are those of Abydos (Philae),
Osiris-Isis-Horus; of Memphis, Ptah-Sekhet-Iemhotep; and
of Thebes, Amon-Mut-Khensu. Amon is at first a local
earth-god. Mut, the mother-god, is identified with Isis, the
cow-mother; the sky being woman or cow as productive fe-
male; Khensu, her son, is the moon; Sekhet, wife of Ptah,
1 The sun-god himself is born of Nun, the 'water of primeval
chaos, or springs from a lotus or appears on the sun-stone pyramid.
Each local god is revered as creator. Some of these local divinities
were female. Thus the Sky, as creatrix, spins out the world.
? Probably originally Thoth with four powers, abstractions or per-
haps quarters, frog-headed beings (grouped with four others with
serpent-heads). Compare Michabo and the Four Winds (p. 86).
THE RELIGION OF EGYPT
321
is identified with Pakht, and has a lion's head. As already
noticed, she is a goddess difficult to distinguish from the
cat-headed Bast; she is daughter of Re, the sun-god. The
Sun is male, as is the Moon; but Earth is also male and
heaven, the sky, is female in this mythology. Mut as
sky-mother has a vulture's head. As mother of Horus, Isis
is Hathor, cow; she is also identified with the star Sirius
(Sothis), as Osiris is with Orion, and at a later date with
Venus. Probably Hathor was originally quite distinct.
None of these family triads imply a real trinity. At Ele-
phantine the triad was not even a “ family three,” but a male
god with two females. The enneads are not fixed; some-
times ten or eleven gods make a group. The individual
relationship of the gods is also not fixed. Horus, the four-
fold early sky or sun-god in falcon-form or as a winged
disc, is son of Isis and of Hathor and also son of Re; son
too of Geb and Nut (Earth and Sky), and of Osiris, who
himself is father, brother, and husband of Isis and father
and son of Horus.
Evidently different localities and different times are rep-
resented by this confusion. We may distinguish in gen-
eral two geographical groups, one that of the North and
one of the South, originally two warring nations after-
wards politically united. The earlier great power was that
of the South, the seat of the sun-cult. Opposed to this
is the realm of lower Egypt, the Delta, where the earth-
god Osiris was recognized and identified with various local
gods, such as Hapi, the river, the ram at Mendes, and the
tree at Busiris, and was associated with Isis, local goddess
of Buto near Busiris; but he was opposed to Set (Typhon),
god of storm, dearth, and death, later as Sebek, the croco-
dile-god of Ombos, and as Apop, god of darkness, a god of
Upper Egypt and the eastern part of the Delta. Set later
became the serpent and Satan of the Osiris-cult. Re, the
material sun, whose name-power Isis controlled and whose
eyes had to be restored, was worshipped by the “great
house” (Peraa, Pharaoh) of On (Heliopolis). He was
322
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
called Atum-Re, later Amon-Re. Osiris, his foe at first,
was a death-god from his connection with the earth or
burial. Re is the god who goes through the sky on his boat,
rowed by stars, of two poles lashed together, like those of a
Nile boatman. This is the “boat of millions of years" in
which his worshipper, the king, hopes to sail with him. The
early cult of the sun is an aristocratic, royal service; it is
always the king who hopes to be friend or even overcomer
of Re; it is the king for whom the great pyramids are built,
and to whom stores of provisions are offered in the tomb
of the pyramid. The royal pyramid itself is a symbol
of the sun, and the obelisk, crowned with a little pyramid,
is of the same general character. The pyramid texts depict
the power obtained by the king through magical charms,
which he uses to get entry into the eastern sky, where was
the home of the Sun and other gods. He fares thither on a
boat ferried by Look-behind, the poleman, and arrives at
the garden of the Tree of Life, and finally is welcomed
by the gods, whom he subdues or even devours by magic
charms, ousting the scribe of Re from his place, or per-
haps becoming a passenger or rower in the sun-god's boat.
All felicity and power is his and he uses it unscrupulously
to get a good place in heaven and even to take the place
of the sun-god, so that in some texts the king actually be-
comes Re. Such is the royal religion of the South.
On the other hand, in the Delta, opposed to this cult but
almost as old, is the Osiris-cult. Osiris is not an active god,
as is Re. He does not help his worshipper, as does Re, by
interfering in his behalf; but his son Hokus does this for
him. The worshipper on dying at once becomes Osiris,
and then Horus, as his son, exerts himself for the lead.
Osiris is the god of the poor people and is only gradually
exalted to the sky; his native place is earth and the realms
below earth. It is only later, for example, that the stars
1 The different $1117-presentations are due to the fancy that the
god sails across the sky (as above) or flies (as the hawk, Horus);
or he is a bull-calf born of Hathor every day, etc.
THE RELIGION OF EGYPT
323
as souls become his followers, and Osiris himself makes one
of the four Horus gods, taking the place of the older Horus
of the East. The great strength of Osiris lay in the popu-
lar belief that he was a human god; it was on earth that he
lived and died, and as soon as the country became one
politically the two cults began to merge, till even the priests
of Re had to accept Osiris as a great god and represent him
as ascending to heaven, though the pyramids themselves
bear texts showing that at first he was regarded as a foe
to the sun-god. The royal state theology had finally to
give way before the cult of the humanized earth-god. Even
the local habitation of Osiris is changed. Originally he is
“ First of the Westerners”; then he goes to the East, the
home of Re, where is the sycamore ™ on which sit the gods
in the East.” The life of the dead is then changed to a
sky-life, even in the Osiris cult, and finally the two gods are
identified, and thus what was primarily the happy fate of
the king becomes the fate of the pious poor. At first the
dead king is warned against going to the West: “ Those
who go West, come not back again." At first, too, the com-
mon dead are called "those whose places are unknown,"
or vaguely thought of in the West, or again they were
thought to be stars, but this last belief gave way before that
of the Re-cult. The pyramid texts do not speak of any
hereafter in the nether world; to them the sky was heaven,
the abode of the blessed dead. The union of the two lands,
the South and the North, took place, however, as early as
the twenty-seventh century (when “Unis unites the [North
and South] two lands ”), even if the political activity of
Menes as uniter of the Two Lands in the thirty-fourth
century be disregarded. As Re is amalgamated with Atum
or Tum, oldest name of the sun-god, and with Amon, so
at last he becomes one with Osiris, as Osiris in turn is
identified with Ptah. Especially noteworthy, however, is
1 Unis (Unas) was a king of the fifth dynasty for whom was
built the oldest of the five pyramids containing the Pyramid Texts
at Sakkarah (the date according to Brugsch would be about 3300).
it belief to not speana heavefi,
2
324
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
j set up Set repilaition.
the similar amalgamation with the lower ancient gods, the
animals. Thus Anubis, the jackal, god of the grave of
shallow sand, becomes associated with Osiris and with Set.
Set himself, perhaps the Moab god (Numbers xxiv. 17,
“ break down the sons of Sheth, 'tumult?”), was at first, as
explained above, the god of storm and death, who later be-
came the evil genius, foe of Osiris.
In the XVIII dynasty, Thutmose (or Thothmes) III
(1501-1447 B. C.) set up a temple to this foe of Osiris. It
has been supposed that Set represents a foreign Semitic
invasion but this is merely supposition. The pantheon is
not one of very divine beings. All these gods are anthropo-
morphic; they are not omniscient, nor omnipotent, but have
feelings and passions like men, suffer, conquer, and are
overthrown. Even Re suffers from the serpent and is
overthrown by human spirits. The combination of local
gods, which makes a god indicated by a double name Re-
Amon, Re-Atum, etc., is sometimes utilized to identify dif-
ferent gods as forms of one at certain periods, "as “ Khepera
in the morning, Re at noon." The motherhood of Mut, the
mother (-sky), passes over to Re and the god is called
“ father and mother of all.” Even the gods not of nature-
origin share in this syncretism. Ptah, who kept his life in
the Memphis (Apis) bull, is regarded as a form of Re, but
he was originally the chief god of the "city of the good,"
Memphis, the oldest capital of Egypt (Egypt was the
sacred name of the town). As said above, he formed a
triad with Sekhet and Iemhotep, who was the physician god.
As other gods become assimilated to Re, so foreign gods
join the Osiris cycle. Thoth (Hermes), the literary god
of art and learning, stands in Re’s boat, but he also assists
Osiris. He appears originally to have been one of the ani-
mal gods (ibis), but one of his forms is Khensu the moon-
god (“traveller "). In the earliest period the antagonism
between South and North was still apparent in theology.
Horus, son of Isis, leads smiths and metal-workers to the
North and overcomes the land. He is a hawk-form of the
THE RELIGION OF EGYPT
325
1
sun, heru, “ he above," and was probably the earliest god
worshipped by the whole country. He is of especial in-
terest because of his Greek name Harpocrates (“god of
silence"), that is Heru-p-khart (or Harpekhred), originally
the “Horus-child” or younger Horus, son of Isis, as the
rising sun. Hathor was the mother of the elder Horus.
Hathor, sometimes sky-goddess, absorbed other goddesses,
as Re absorbed other gods. She, like Isis, had a cow's head
and was both mother and daughter of Re, who in his own
cycle was father of Horus. Sayce regards her as Ishtar,
Astoreth of Canaan. She became the type of the supreme
woman, goddess of love, dance, song, yet perfect mother
and daughter, who was identified by the Greeks with Aphro-
dite. Yet she was also a goddess of the underworld, who
received the souls of the dead, as well as consort of Horus.
The Anion-cult united with that of Re when Amon, after-
wards important as an oracle but at first an obscure local
god, became glorious in the XII Dynasty and reached inde-
pendent greatness, as Thebes became the capital of Egypt.
This local Amon was raised to be a form of Re, when Thut-
mose III conquered Palestine about 1500 B. C. His god ab-
sorbed then the other forms. It was a priest of this god
Amon who founded the XXI Dynasty.
Busiris in the Delta means “plain of Osiris " and his field
of marshmallows, asphodels, was merely the cemetery of
Busiris ; but the sepulchral temple of the god, an old royal
tomb, was at Abydos. The views regarding the true nature
of Osiris are as numerous as the authorities who have dis-
cussed him. Dr. Budge imagines that Osiris was first a
king and was then identified with the Nile (the Nile ap-
pears independently in the triad of Elephantine as a creative
principle). Sir J. G. Frazer sees in Osiris the type of the
divine king, whose health and strength are preserved for his
people by slaying him when he grows weak or old and thus
passing on his power to the next king. Cases of this sort
are found in Europe and elsewhere. But that Osiris was
actually a king (any more than Adonis) rests only on the
326
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
support of his "tomb " being that of King Khant. Yet
even the tomb of Zeus was known and Osiris is rather, like
Attis and Adonis, a spirit than a man. It is perhaps more
reasonable to suppose that the people regarded him as a
king because of his story and to find in his earthly rather
than human nature his first existence. We have only to
extend this to the general fruitful spirit which is shown
both in Nile and in earth-growth to get the most consistent
explanation of the god. Yet the important point in the
religion which centred about Osiris is not how he began,
but what he was to Egypt. He was looked upon as a man-
god who had lived, suffered and died and then risen again
from the dead. The story is told crudely. He is de-
stroyed by the sinful Set and is dismembered; but Horus
sacrifices his eye and with it awakens the dead god to life,
so that ever after a gift to a god is called an“ eye of Horus."
When Osiris rises from the dead he becomes the lord of the
underworld and every soul that dies and hopes to rise again
is called Osiris, the god being identified with the soul even
of the humblest worshipper. One fact is certain, that, like
Maat 2 and Ptah, he was not a beast-god. Accompanying
Osiris as judge of the dead, Anubis, the old beast-god of
burial at Siut, is there to look at the balance, and Nephthys
the mother of Anubis, who is sister-wife of Set, joins in
judgment, so that the Osiris-cult is mixed up with the older
animal-cult, but Osiris himself has no trace of animal origin.
His sister-wife is Isis, who mourns for him when slain
and finds his remains, and their child is Horus, the earliest
form of the goddess-mother (Madonna) with the child.
1 For allusions (there is no direct evidence) to Egyptian king-
killing, see M. A. Murray in Man, 1914, No. 12; and for an Ural-
Altaic case, ib., 1915, No. 13. The great festival at Sais was a sort
of All-souls, when all the dead returned. The case of Osiris is
thought to be supported by that of the Shilluk king, but he may
have been merely the legendary founder of Fashoda. The deifica-
tion of the king as Osiris does not prove an earlier sacrifice of the
king, but it suggests it.
2 With Maat as the right order, justice, etc., a pure abstraction,
compare Tao and Rita, in Chinese and Vedic mythology.
THE RELIGION OF EGYPT
327
Thus Osiris represents the type of resurrection and eternal
life and at the same time is the father in the triad of father,
wife and son. Osiris's cult as it expanded absorbed that
of Re, whose attributes were transferred to Osiris. Ac-
cording to Plutarch (Isis, ch. ix), Isis is one with the god-
dess of Sais," whom the Greeks call Athene. She was the
great mother-goddess (also mother of the Sun), whose
shrine bore the inscription, “I am all that was and is and
is to be and none hath ever raised my veil.” The father of
Osiris is Geb, the earth-god whose chief cult was at Helio-
polis. Geb and Nụt (sky) produced the sun-egg, and Geb's
symbol is the goose, whence he is interpreted as the “great
cackler" (Kenken-ir). He is likewise father of Set and
Nephthys. Nut pours out water for the soul of the dead
and her holy sycamore at Heliopolis is still holy to the local
Christian.
Not quite so confused as his gods is the soul of the wor-
shipper. At first, indeed, we are confronted with a strange
medley of "souls," the ka and the ba, the shadow-soul, and
other forms, but in fact, though savages have several souls
and something of this sort might have been expected, the
Egyptian did not have a shadow-soul and a spirit, khu,
distinct from a soul, ba. He had a body which survived
death, a ka or genius and a ba or soul.? These might be
duplicated in the case of gods (Re has fourteen kas and
seven bas) but for a man one apiece was enough. The ka
is a spirit born with a man and given him by the god. It
is not part of a man's personality; it guards him particu-
larly in the next life, so that when a man dies he “goes to
his ka" in the sky (so even of Osiris, " he went to his ka").
The ka is thus the superior guardian and when a man dies
he is dominated by his ka, who speaks for him to the god
after death, brings him food, assists and protects him, as a
1 She is supposed by some scholars to be of Libyan origin, perhaps
d at first a war-goddess.
2 Compare Breasted, Development of Religion and Thought in
Ancient Egypt, New York, 1912, p. 56, note 2.
328
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
:
sort of guardian angel. Originally the ka is only given to
a king, afterwards to each and every man. A man's person-
ality consists in his intelligence (in his belly) and in his
breath as vital power, symbolized by a cross and called ba,
a soul, which, however, begins to live as an entity only when
the man dies, so that ceremonies are performed to make the
dead “ become a ba." Hence food is given to support life
hereafter and transform the dead into a soul, as Horus's
eye transformed the dead Osiris into a living soul. His
body was a part of him without which he could not live;
he was reanimated and re-embodied. He was not naturally
immortal. His faculties had to be restored to him by “mak-
ing him a soul, ba," so that he might exist again as a per-
son. Thus his “power” and “body” were given to him.
The belief in the ka made every object finally have a ka
and led to the naïve belief that figures of men placed in the
tomb could represent men who afterwards were “respond-
ents," Ushebti, forced to work for the dead man who con-
trolled them in the Field of Peace, or Elysian Fields, where
the respondents took the place of slaves in the agricultural
hereafter. In the earliest belief, the soul of the common
man at least and perhaps of kings lingers in the tomb, for
which reason so many loaves of bread and jugs of beer had
to be provided for it. But later, when all went to a better
world, this food had to be conveyed to heaven for the soul
and bequests were regularly made for the sole purpose of
keeping up the nutriment of the dead. The dead, too, were
at first malicious, seeking to draw others to death; for which
reason even Osiris and his followers are kept away from
the tombs. As, too, even loved ones when dead were thus
moved to injure their living friends, so the dead also as
well as the living were afficted by the dead, and were fur-
nished with medicine to keep off their attacks. The soul
in common belief went eventually to heaven. At this time
it was represented in the form of a bird or grasshopper,
1
1 In the same way, figured food in the tombs took the place of
real food, into which it could be converted by a magic formula.
THE RELIGION OF EGYPT
329
or it was thought to climb up a ladder, which was guarded
by gods. They would let no one pass who did not have
the right formula or open sesame which would let him by.
Thus magical formulas played always a great part in Egyp-
tian religion. The cult of lucky days was also an essential
part of religious ceremony. But oracles were not much
respected till a late period, when “ Jupiter Amon” in Libya
became renowned chiefly as an oracular god. The cult of
formulas was connected with a special kind of metempsy-
chosis. It was not, as elsewhere, a general belief that one
on dying became reincarnate, but by the virtue of magical
formulas one might, if one wished, become a sparrow or
flower. This form, however, ceased at the will of the in-
dividual and the belief had no moral content, such as is
found in the scheme of Karma in India. The effect of
this magical cult was felt in Greece, where, too, the Osiris
mysteries affected the Orphic mysteries.
In Egypt itself there canie out of this regard for magical
formulas the so-called Book of the Dead, which was not a
book at all, but formulas and hymns, of magic purport, to
aid the dead to cross safely to the other world, to determine
the judgment, and live happily hereafter. These became a
collection called “ Going from day," the vade mecum of the
dead. The various parts having been put together in mod-
ern times, it is now a volume of some two hundred chap-
ters, containing charms, directions for the ghostly journey,
hymns, prescriptions for restoring the body, etc. But be-
sides the magical contents these inscriptions contain a moral
respectively, and these relieve the dreary monotony of
senseless magic. The moral teaching was, in a way, part of
the magic, for it was to overcome the forty-two gods, who
were stern censors, that it was carried with the dead. Thus,
as the amulets and magical formulas guarded against devils
and monsters, the moral code guarded against the still
worse monsters called gods, who, if not satisfied with the
soul's report, would bar it from bliss and give the victim
330
THE I
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
Y OF RELIGI IONS
to the “Devouress” of hell to eat, or, according to a later
view, the flames of hell tormented him; which was the “sec-
ond death.” This collection, called Book of the Dead, be-
longs to the Osiris cult. To the Re cult belong two in-
ferior collections, the Book of the Other World and the Book
of the Gates. The first (am duat) belongs to the XIX
Dynasty (1350 to 1200 B. C.) and the second depicts the gates
to the caverns in the under world and tells how to pass
through them; it reverts at least in part to the age of the
Middle Kingdom (about 2000 B. C.). The soul might go by
either of two ways, land or water, a lake of fire lying be-
tween, which one had to avoid. Consequently the map of
the next world was a necessary part of one's equipage.
Then one might by mistake get into the place where souls
were executed, or find himself going upside down; so there
were special chapters, entitled Not Entering the Place of
Execution and Not Walking Head-Downward. Those who
did not escape but walked head-downward became foes of
the dead and formulas against these foes were also neces-
sary. Much of the eschatology and even more of the sac-
rificial rites may be historical (as they are logical) develop-
ments from savage African beginnings.
The future which consisted in being in the boat of Re
and sailing with the sun-god across the sky, and that others
which consisted in being an inhabitant of the Fields of
Peace or Elysian Fields of Osiris, may both be regarded
as later views compared with that primitive notion of the
hereafter which held that the soul crept into the tomb and
came out of it to eat the offering, a view held perhaps
longest at Memphis, where the cemetery-god was Sokaris,
but probably the original view of all Egyptians before the
rise of the Osiris cult and the extension of the Re-heaven to
ordinary people.
The priesthood and the temple-service of early Egypt are
not of the same antiquity. Formal temples are not known
in the earliest texts; they are supposed to have been built
first during the Middle Kingdom (2160 to 1788). Of what
THE ITS
331
RELIGION OF EGYPT
1111
sort were the buildings devoted to the gods before that, or
if there were any besides pyramids and obelisks, we do not
know. Probably the tombs served as temples of a sort
and the sacred stone or tree may be regarded as a natural
temple. In the temples, when erected, animal figures rep-
resenting the gods were systematically cared for by priests,
who gradually formed themselves into a body, partly hered-
itary like a caste, which eventually exerted a political in-
fluence sufficient to usurp the throne. Before temples and
a formal priesthood, the prototypes of the religious fes-
tivals chronicled by Heredotus may already have existed;
they celebrated powers of nature personified in more or less
priapine form and there is no reason to suppose that the
erotic-religious element was lacking at any time. Perhaps
there were even temples of this cult that were later de-
stroyed, for in the first place the Hyksos probably demol-
ished much of the early architectural work and in the second
we know that kings sometimes destroyed temples of inferior
gods, to build those of their own superior divinities.
The king originally acted as head-priest and he was al-
ways the over-priest, even when the priesthood was com-
plete. Nobles and their ladies acted as servants (priests)
of the local god, but as voluntary officials. The priest offi-
ciated as magician through the power of the spoken or read
word, to which a magical power was attributed. It was,
however, rather through political prestige given by the pow-
erful king of a city that the priesthood as a whole acquired
political authority. In time the shaven priest became might-
ier than the king, who held at first, but had not retained,
the spiritual dominion. The laity had no part in the serv-
ice of the god, except as musicians, etc. Festivals, proces-
sions, sacrifices, the receiving of offerings, were all in the
hands of priests, whose revenues were enormous, the State
gradually assuming the cost of maintenance of temples.
Human sacrifices were discontinued under the Ramses
realm; they were chiefly for providing guardian spirits for
new buildings. Crude superstition expressed itself as else-
332
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
capturede was in3); Agains also as
where in magic, philters, luck-charms, amulets, etc. Dreams
were of import; lucky days were observed. Finally, as a
means of salvation, magical formulas became as potent as
morality..
Of Egyptian contact with the Semitic world we learn
a good deal by inference as well as by actual historical
data. As early as the beginning of the third millennium
before Christ the Egyptians were in touch with Arabia
and Palestine. Memphis, the capital of this period, was
known to the later Hebrews also as [Men-]Noph (cf. Hos.
ix, 6; Isa. xix, 13). Again, in the nineteenth century B. C.,
Palestine was invaded and a city (perhaps Shechem) was
captured. It was at this time that social ethics was strongly
developed. Then came the Semitic invasion of, or with,
the Hyksos (c. 1680), the conquest of Syria by Thutmose
III in the fifteenth century, the Egyptian control of the
mines at Sinai, the interchange of letters with foreign po-
tentates in the fourteenth century, the Pharaohs of the
oppression and of the Exodus in the Nineteenth Dynasty
(thirteenth century), the building of a sun-temple in Ca-
naan about 1200; an expedition into Phoenicia in the twelfth
century by Wenamon; the marriage of Solomon and the
daughter of Pharaoh (1 Kg. iii and ix), the intercourse
between Shishak and Jeroboam with an invasion of Pales-
tine, and so on till the time when the Nubians conquered
Egypt, the period of Sennacherib (2 Kg. xix), the sack
of Thebes by Ashurbanipal (Nahum ii, 8 calls Thebes No-
Amon, city of Amon), in 661 B. C., and the death of Josiah
at Megiddo in 608 B.C.
Contact with Crete (and so with Greece) is indicated by
the Egyptian labyrinth of the nineteenth century and other
works of art and by the similarity in the names Elysium,
field of Alu, Rhadamanthys, Re of Memphis, etc., as well
as by the constant wars with the Philistines (of Crete or
Asia Minor).
1 Seven of these letters were written by a king of Palestine, c.
1360 B.C.
THE RELIGION OF EGYPT
333
Parld, both wint was in clos lasted till
- Thutmose III had merged all the priesthoods of the coun-
try into one sacerdotal body, headed by the priests of Amon,
local god of Thebes, who as a form of Re became the chief
god in the sixteenth century. The conquests of this king
(1501–1447 B. C.) extended over Palestine, Phoenicia, and
all Syria ; his empire thus established lasted till 1360 B. C.,
during which period Egypt was in close connection with the
Semitic world, both without and within the borders of
Egypt. Palestine had been invaded as early as 1850 B. C.
by Sesostris III. Egypt was no longer an isolated land.
The kings who give us the great hymn to the Sun and the
hymn which for the only time in Egyptian history is mono-
theistic in tone come from a family that had probably been
vassals of Semitic conquerors. It is in these circumstances
that a sort of monotheism first appears in Egypt. It appears
only to disappear immediately. Nothing could seem more
un-Egyptian than this' religious phenomenon, thus suddenly
rising and as suddenly going, the phenomenon of a One
God, who disperses all other gods and under whose power
all the paraphernalia of the old religion are swept away,
that nothing, not even the consecrated formulas of the old
creed, may impair his majesty. Scholars, however, are
rightly loath to recognize anything foreign in this sudden
exaltation of the “ disc of the Sun." It is in fact a good
instance of what may happen without a “foreign loan.”
We may compare the similar (personal) exalted height
reached in Mexico and Peru (above, p. 113). In none of
these cases was there a higher religion from which the loan
could be made. Moreover, the pantheistic tone leading to
the quasi-monotheism of Egypt was native.
The first significant hymn to the Sun itself is that of
Amenhotep III (C. 1400 B. C.), “most splendid of Egyptian
1 Thutmose carried away from Lebanon a silver statue which may
have been the counterpart of the Palestinian Mother-goddess. This
goddess shows the marks of Hathor and even wears the Egyp-
tian uraeus symbol. In 1468 B. C. he ruled as far east as the Eu-
phrates.
334
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
disc of the sun or falcor
emperors.” 1 In this hymn the sun-god, who is still known
by his old name, is acclaimed as the god "begetter not be-
gotten," by whom all men see, the disc of day, creator
of all and giver of their sustenance, the great hawk of
the sky, the primordial being who made himself, the sole
lord who takes captive all lands every day — that is, a
universal god. But the god is also called here “a mother,
profitable to gods and men” (a humane power who is
both father and mother). The son of this king, also
called Amenhotep (IV), succeeded his father about 1375
and established the worship of Tum or Aton, that is the
disc of the sun, but only in the sense of power or real be-
ing of the sun as the one god. The old symbol of the sun
was the hawk or falcon and the triangle contained in the
pyramid, but as these were purely Egyptian and the young
king desired that his god should be understood through all
his realms, he wished a symbol to correspond and took for
it the disc with rays each terminating in a hand, as the
old theology had represented the sun with arms. The disc
represented the heat or the source of power, the essential
power of the sun. The king made himself high priest of
this sun at Heliopolis, discarding, however, all the physical
notions of Re and Amon, the sun-boat, and the voyage
through subterranean caverns. This god was in fact a
sun-god only in name; he was a one god and as such op-
posed to all other worship. The young king gave up poli-
tics for religion; he became a zealot, discarded his own
name because it contained the word Amen (Amon) hotep
and changed it to “ Atoni is satisfied” (ikhn-aton), ex-
punged from all the monuments the word Amon, even in
his father's name, and treated thus all other gods. Finally,
he left Thebes and built a new capital as the centre of solar
monotheism or pantheism.
1 Breasted, op. cit., p. 315. Kings of this period traded with
Arabians and worked the mines of Sinai.
2 To destroy the power with the name. Thus Isis obtains power
over Re when she learns his name by a trick, according to an old
myth.
THE RELIGION OF EGYPT
335
The hymns to this god are the highest expression of reli-
gious thought in Egypt. Aton is thus addressed :
“Thy dawning is beautiful in the horizon of the sky [the
Horizon-Horus was part of his name], O living Aton, Begin-
ning of life! ... Thou art all (Re) and thy rays encompass
all lands; all hast thou made, all thou carriest away captive.
... Creator of the germ and maker of the seed, thou givest
life to the son in the body of the mother, soothing him that he
may not weep, nursing him in the womb, giving breath to
animate all. When in the shell the fledgling chirps in the egg,
thou givest him breath to preserve him alive, and when thou
hast brought him to burst the shell, then cometh he forth from
the egg to chirp with all his might. Manifold are thy works,
sole God, whose power none other possesseth. Thou hast cre-
ated the earth according to thy understanding ſheart] sole God,
[beside whom there is no other]; when thou wast alone didst
thou create, men and cattle, large and small, all that go upon
their feet, all that are on high, all that fly with wings, and also
the foreign lands, Syria and Kush (besides) this land (of
Egypt). Thou settest each in his place, thou providest all
their needs; every one has his possessions and the days of each
are reckoned; diverse are their tongues, their forms and their
skins; thou hast made different the strangers. All the lands far
away — thou makest their life, a Nile hast thou set in the sky
for them when it falls (as rain) making waves upon moun-
tains and like the great flood watering their fields. O how
excellent are thy designs, O Lord, that there is a Nile in the
sky for strangers and for the cattle of every land. But our
Nile cometh for Egypt from the lower world. Thou makest the
seasons, thou nourishest the gardens with thy rays as a mother
with her breasts; even the sky afar hast thou made, millions
of forms thou makest, shining as living Aton, dawning, glitter-
ing, going ever and ever returning; through thyself alone thou
makest millions of forms. And thou art he who art in my
heart; none knowest thee, save me, thy son Ikhnaton, whom thou
hast enlightened in thy ways and might. Thou art the life of
life; through thee men live.”
Shall we say that Ikhnaton was pantheist or monotheist?
Most of his hymn has perished, for it was copied in only
one tomb; parts of it or other short hymns are found in
other tombs at Amarna. A few verses from these show
much the same thought:
YI
336
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
“ Beautiful is thy rising, O living lord of eternity, Aton;
thy glow brings life to all hearts; thou fillest Egypt with thy
love; God, creator, maker of all, men and cattle large and small,
trees that grow in the soil, they live when thou dawnest, father
and mother of all; they see by means of thee and ever their
heart rejoices because of seeing thee, when thou dawnest as
their lord. When thou settest in the western horizon, they
sleep after the manner of the dead, their heads wrapped up,
their nostrils closed, until in the morning thou risest; until thou
risest in the eastern horizon. They lift up their arms to adore
thee; thou makest hearts live through thy beauty; yea, men live
when thou sendest forth thy rays and every land rejoices. Sing-
ing, music, and shoutings of joy are all in the hall of the god”
(the benben, pyramid).
This king, who got tribute even from the Aegaeans, was
not destined to succeed in his plan of ousting the old gods.
Scarcely had he died when his work was undone, and a
conspiracy of priests reinstated the old cult. This panthe-
istic religion was, therefore, somewhat like that which we
have seen arise elsewhere as an individual belief, but it
acquires special dignity from its early occurrence and the
philosophical basis for the belief. Aton is a pantheistic,
almost monotheistic god. He is the only god but he is
in his creation, as it is said, “thou art far, but thy rays
are on earth.” He is god in nature. “The flowers of the
marshes are drunk with the god; the birds lift their wings
in adoring him; his beams are in the depths of the sea.”
But if Ikhnaton was “the first individual in history," 1 in
rejecting time-hallowed myths and standing as a being apart
from his predecessors, he was peculiarly lacking in judg-
ment. The people he governed he forced to worship his
god, frightening laity and priests alike to bow to this di-
vinity alone -- till it was inevitable that the reaction should
completely overthrow his purpose. Thereafter only an
echo here and there survived; the faith of Aton was done
away with, but Atum-Re retained some of his marks, the
monotheistic phraseology was kept more or less, the feeling
1 Breasted, op. cit., p. 339.
THE RELIGION OF EGYPT
337
red. The sthe poor, ther all, but what sint
that the god was in man remained, the personal element
which makes a direct bond between worshipper and god
persisted. The sun-god, restored under his old name, was
now the god of the poor, the god who hears the prayers
of all, who brings the Nile for all, but who also like Osiris
judges all; Amon-Re "assigneth him that sinneth to the
fire and the just to the West.” In this he resumes the
function of Re as judge of righteousness, as he appeared
long before the Osiris cult. In the early texts, Re is al-
ready a god of truth, piety, and pity, and it is not till toward
the end of the pyramid age that Osiris becomes ethical and
judge of ethics. One further conception, that of Re as
the perfect god, not only as the good shepherd, as he is
depicted in early texts, but as the restorer of the happy age
after the deplorable tumults of the tenth Dynasty, about
2160, when the Feudal Age began, has led to the view that
this is a Messianic teaching. We possess the complaint
of one Ipuwer, who laments the sad condition of the land.
At the end of his lamentation the sage contrasts the pres-
ent with the past, a happy time, and cries out, “Where is
the god today who hath no evil in his heart, doth he sleep?
Behold his might is not seen.” Now this does not seem
like a prediction or even like a hopeful expression, and to
call it " Messianism nearly fifteen hundred years before its
appearance among the Hebrews" is an exaggeration or
even contradiction of the data, for we are not entitled to add
" as yet” to the last clause, and the whole cry is one of
despair without help or hope.?
Some rather forcible analogies may be pointed out be-
tween the development of Egyptian religion and that of the
Hebrews, even if we ignore Messianic hopes. Thus the
nature gods yield their functions, as such, and become in-
1 Otherwise Lange, followed by Breasted (op. cit., p. 212: “ This
is but the earliest emergence of a social idealism which among the
. Hebrews we call “Messianism"), who concludes that it may have
been the Admonitions of Ipuwer which inspired the Hebrews with
the iclea of a Messiah. But the Egyptians' ideal is of the past rather
than of the future.
0
338
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
terested in man, being spirits with the same interests as
those of man; the upholding of moral laws becomes their
office. Again, the many gods become unified, are on their
way to unity long before they are recognized as one god.
Life hereafter is only for a few of nobler sort, who live
with the sky-god. But the great god is still restricted to
a small province. With enlargement of the political hori-
zon the god also is enlarged; with political disaster, on the
other hand, the wail of hopelessness and scepticism is heard.
Then too the paternal side of monotheism produces the
sense of personal piety and then appear the individuals,
preacher and psalmist, voicing this sense of personal re-
sponsibility, as well as continuing the sense of social justice
derived from antiquity. Finally in the substitution of magic
and form for ethical verities, as when even the sinner can
magically compel his heart not to testify against him, and
when the priest and sacerdotalism take the place of inward
piety, are involved decadence and fall — points admirably
brought out in the work of Professor Breasted already cited.
But we cannot abandon the Egyptian religion without
consideration of a few more points. What strikes one
most strongly is that the people are intensely prosaic, not
romantic, not very imaginative, not at all philosophic. A
few great minds think great thoughts, a few love beauty;
but the people as a whole are repellantly material, their
minds are primitive minds, thinking always in concrete
images; their virtues are practical. Again, an unbiassed
view of the religion shows that the concrete imagery of
the mass made it necessary for them to preserve the rudest
conceptions. In the case of Osiris, plants sprout from his
body. In the celebration of his resurrection, the “passion
play" was a rude contest between the forces of good and
evil carried out by the crowd of worshippers whose reli-
gious zeal voiced itself in war-cries and resulted in a free
fight, where heads were broken and lives were lost. Nor
must we forget that the popular conception of Osiris was
that of a phallic god, whose effigy was carried through the
THE RELIGION OF EGYPT
339
1
streets in a howling Bacchanalian procession, in which the
phallic sign was conspicuously exaggerated; such traits in
short as we find in other nature-religions.
Since Osiris was the chief god of Egypt for some two
thousand years, we may well close this account of the na-
tional religion with a closer examination of those features
which made the strongest appeal to his worshippers. Let
us assume for the nonce an Egyptian environment. Our
great god incorporates that spirit of productivity which
shows itself in the source of life, the Nile, and in the field
made verdant and fruitful by him. Long since he was king
of our land, the son of Earth, who had given him this land
to care for. His rule was beneficent, he established jus-
tice and slew his foes. Beside him stood ever his sister-
wife, Isis, who cared for him and protected him, as queen
of the land. Osiris ruled the North, but in the South was
his brother Set, storm, darkness, desolation, opposed to
light and love and bountifulness. Set prevailed, either 1
luring the good god into ambush or openly assassinating
and dismembering him; at any rate, “his brother Set felled
him to earth” (some say, he was drowned). But when
Isis heard of this she mourned and searched for her hus-
band, “sadly going through this land nor stopping till
she found him”; and at last she found him at Byblos or
Abydos (two versions). Isis and Nephthys her sister to-
gether searched and found him, in the form of birds going
hither and thither, and at last discovering his body (or col-
lecting it) they embalmed it (or Anubis came from heaven
to do this); but out of his tomb grew a sycamore which
embraced the body of Osiris, symbol of the god's imperish-
able life, and out of him even dead came forth life for
Isis, who bore him a son to avenge him. This was Horus,
who, grown strong, came forth from the Delta, where Set
had sought to slay him, and finally overthrew the southern
god; but in the conflict he lost an eye. Then the god Thoth,
1 Here and below two versions of the tale are given.
340
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
2
the wise god, spat upon the wound and healed it, but Horus
took the eye and found Osiris and by giving him the eye
brought him back to life, reuniting his dismembered limbs
(or taking off the bandages of the embalmed corpse).
Then came the triumphant cry: "He wakes, Osiris wakes,
the weary god awakes and stands; he controls his body
again. Stand up, thou shalt not end, thou shalt not perish."
This is the cry that has echoed through the years, “thou
shalt not perish.” But Set was judged in the tribunal of
the gods, for the strife between them was adjudicated by
the divine Enneads, and Osiris was vindicated. And Thoth
gave the verdict: “All the gods are satisfied, all the gods
of the earth, all gods south and north, west and east, gods
of the nomes and gods of the cities.” And Set from that
time on bore Osiris upon his back, as Atlas bears the earth.1
But Osiris was proclaimed king.
This is the drama, the overthrow of Set, which the pas-
sion play presents in eight scenes year by year. And now
let us turn to the final scene, where Osiris, judge of the
dead, receives the soul. For each must die, but each, if
good and kind in life, dies but to rise again; each is him-
self an Osiris. So the soul, armed with magical formulas
to guide it safely to the judgment hall, comes at last be-
fore the god who died and rose again and who now stands
as judge of all the dead. Forty-two gods sit around him
and the soul makes its plea: “I have not slain; nor
robbed; I have not stirred up strife; I have not lied; I
have not lost my temper; I have not committed adultery ;
I have not blasphemed the god; nor reviled the king; nor
stolen temple-food," etc., etc. Then the soul speaks to
the gods: “Hail to you, gods, report no evil of me to
this god whom you follow ; speak the truth for me to the
god of all; save me from babi (the Devouress), who eats
the entrails of the dead on the day of judgment. I come
to you without sin, I have done that wherewith the gods
1 Breasted, op. cit., p. 36.
I have temple Hail to follow abi (the of judgn with th
Y
THE RELIGION OF EGYPT
341
are satisfied. I have given bread to the hungry, cloth-
ing to the naked, a ferry to him without a boat. I have
given offerings to the gods and for the dead. I am pure
of mouth and of hands.” Then the god Osiris upon his
throne with Isis and Nephthys behind him and the sun-
god's Ennead, the Nine Gods of Heliopolis, look upon “ the
balance of Re” (both indications of the originally solar
court of justice) and as the balance is manipulated by Anu-
bis, Thoth presides over the pen and writing-tablet, to re-
cord the verdict. Behind him lurks the Devouress, to de-
vour the sinner if the verdict goes against him. Destiny
and the two goddesses of birth look on, as do the divine
spirits called Taste and Intelligence (in some cases Truth
escorts the soul into the hall). Anubis calls for the heart
of the dead man. This is put into the balance and on the
other side a feather, emblem of truth. Then Thoth says,
“I have judged. No sin is found in him. His soul is
justified by the great balances,” and the Nine Gods say,
“He is sinless, the Devouress shall have no power over
him; let him have the bread of Osiris and a domain in the
field of offerings.". Horus then leads him to Osiris, saying,
“His heart has come forth righteous; he has no sin; Thoth
has judged him; he has written it down; the Nine Gods
have spoken.” Then the soul kneels to Osiris and says,
“ Behold me, I have not sinned, I have not lied; let me be
of thy beloved and of thy followers." This is the end of
the drama. The god who died an innocent death receives
into his kingdom his follower, if he, too, be innocent. No
sinner may live with him; the beast that rends the entrails
devours him who is found unworthy. Unquestionably a
moral power underlay this belief. Yet it must not be for-
gotten that the moral side of religion underlay also the cult
of the sun-god. And it must be said of both cults and
of the combination, which results in Osiris instead of Re
being the judge hereafter, that magic goes hand in hand
with morality. If in the final judgment morality decides
the issue, yet magical formulas not at all moral are neces-
342
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
the people higher minds, Cult became ratendency,
sary to bring the dead man before the court, failing which
he is liable to go astray, become a homeless or impious
ghost, irrespective of his previous morality.
The sun-cult, with its monotheistic tendency, as com-
pared with the Osiris cult, became rather a philosophy
suited for higher minds, while the Osiris cult appealed to
the people by virtue of its human sympathy. Osiris had
the advantage attaching to all gods who have themselves
been human.1
In summing up the religion of Egypt, we may say that
the gods are primarily of two sorts, animal gods and nat-
ural phenomena. Half-animal gods are a later product.
Despite their forms they are wholly anthropopathic. That
local gods imply, as Petrie asserts, an antecedent mono-
theism, is an erroneous induction. Each little place had
its own little Power as chief god, but it also had others.
The gods in general appear to be indigenous local spirits,
later synthesized, as people came together. The Osiris cult
is native to the Delta. In it is found the prototype of two
great religious features, which redeem the inanity of the
general Egyptian cult. The first is the image of the man-
god, suffering, dying, resurrected, and become the saviour
of men. Not less remarkable (and rarer) is the ethical
importance of the belief, unknown to the early Semites, that
a future beyond the grave is conditioned by the ethical
quality of the life here.?
Unimportant, though of some interest, is the fact that
the story of Joseph and Potiphar's wife is like an old Egyp-
tian story; 3 that the Christian agape and monastic estab-
1 On the relation between this myth and others of like character,
in which a dying man-god is revered as type of resurrection after
death, see particularly Frazer's Adonis Altis, Osiris, London, 1914.
2 Compare H. O. Taylor, Ancient Ideals, New York, 1906.
3 Dr. Daniel Voelter, Die Patriarchen Israel's und die Aegyptische
Mythologie, Leiden, 1912, has sought to show that the whole his-
tory of Joseph is nothing but the Osiris myth in the form of an
Israelite legend; but his conclusion seems forced. The Joseph
story may have inspired or reflected the Egyptian (1209-1205 B. C.)
Tale of Two Brothers. Compare on this tale Renouf-Sayce, Rec-
THE RELIGION OF EGYPT
343
lishment may have come from Egypt (the Therapeutae of
Egypt who had an agape, were, however, a Jewish sect);
that the Madonna and Child as an art-form is an imitation
of Isis-Horus; and that a Logos-germ may be seen in the
Creator-god's creation through the thought or word. He-
braic bull-worship and serpent-worship may have been
brought from Egypt or may as well have been native
products due to the same stimulus.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Alfred Wiedemann, Religion of the Ancient Egyptians, Lon-
don, 1897; Die Toten und ihre Reiche im Glauben der
alten Aegypten, Leipzig, 1900.
G. Steindorff, The Religion of the Ancient Egyptians, New
York, 1905.
J. H. Breasted, A History of Egypt, 2nd ed., New York, 1911;
Development of Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt,
New York, 1912.
W. M. Flinders Petrie, A History of Egypt from the Earliest
Times, New York, 1905; The Religion of Ancient Egypt,
London, 1908; Egypt and Israel, New York, 1911.
E. A. Wallis Budge, The Gods of the Egyptians, London, 1904;
Egyptian Idea of the Future Life, London, 1899; The
Book of the Dead, London, 1899. . The Book of the Dead
has also been translated by P. Le Page Renouf and E. H.
Naville, London, 1893-1907.
W. Max Müller, Mythology of All Races, vol. xii, Boston, 1918.
ords of the Past, London, 1889-93, New Series, vol. ii, p. 137ff.,
and Sir G. Maspéro, Les Contes populaires de l'Egypte ancienne,
Paris, 1882, now translated as Popular Stories of Ancient Egypt,
London, 1915, by Mr. Johns from the fourth French edition.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
BABYLONIAN AND ASSYRIAN RELIGION
The foundations of Babylonian history have been mate-
rially strengthened in the last decades. Recently discovered
inscriptions reveal records of kings of the fifth millennium
B. C.; new dynasties have been found; fresh light has been
cast upon the relations of Mesopotamia with the West. A
certain readjustment of dates has in consequence seemed
to be necessary. Sargon, whose control of the Euphrates
valley foreshadowed Semitic supremacy, may be restored
to his old position as king circa 3800 3. C. instead of 2800;
Hammurabi (perhaps Amraphel, Gen. xiv. I) may be of
2200 B. C., instead of 1950 B.C. But some scholars still
think it impossible to ascribe so remote a date to Sargon,
though Nabonidus (555-539 B. C.) says that Naram-Sin,
son of Sargon, lived 3200 years before his time and to
other scholars this statement appears to be supported by
the newly found lists of kings, among whom figure Etana
(Ethan of the Bible) and Gilgamesh, and even Tamnuz,
hitherto known only as legendary and divine beings. A
conservative estimate may, however, refer the beginnings
of Babylonian history to at least the fourth millennium
B. C.
That Babylonian culture was at first largely Sumerian is
generally admitted. But whence the (future) Babylonians
first came, and whether they found prior Sumerian settle-
ments north of the Persian Gulf is not certain. All that
we know positively about the early period is that long be-
fore the supremacy of Babylon there were various small
southern sites, Nippur, Lagash, Erech, etc., apparently of
Sumerian origin, while farther north Agade (Akkad) and
A1-
V14
344
BABYLONIAN AND ASSYRIAN RELIGION
345
Sippar represented a primitive Semitic stock. Both groups,
separately or together, were at sundry times opposed to
Elam, till Hammurabi, sixth king of an entirely new dynasty
(the first Babylonian), of Amorite origin, routed Elam once
for all, and Babylon became supreme till overthrown by the
Kassites and Assyrians.1
The Sumerian population of Lagash, once the chief
southern town, for defence against the Semites combined
with other Sumerians and gradually formed a confederacy
of the Southern Sumerians against the Semites of the
North and East. The first king to become king of both
North and South was Sargon, whose concealed birth and
escape in a box set afloat on the river is a parallel to that
of Moses, and also to that of a hero of the Hindu epic.
Sargon became king of Sumer and Akkad, but this dynasty
did not last long. Shamash, sun-god, was the chief deity of
Akkad or Agade. A patesi or lord of Lagash was Gudea,
whose religious zeal aided the development of temple-
structures. .
About 2000 B. C., Hammurabi of the first Babylonian dy-
nasty welded all the people of the various Sumerian and
Semitic strongholds into one State, improved the old in-
herited code of laws, and gave a permanent form to the
discordant religious elements, in that the special god of
Babylon was made representative (substitute) for the city-
gods, who inevitably had to disappear or become connected
with the great god. The older Semitic and Sumerian gods,
sun, moon, and Ishtar, were kept thus under the Baby-
1 Who the Sumerians were, even of what stock, no one knows.
Apparently they came down from the eastern or northern hills, as
their gods were described as of the mountain (house). They had a
predilection for the moon-god and for sundry goddesses (Nin-
divinities) afterwards semitized as male (gods whose names re-
tained the nin-). The first three kings of the Assyrians were of
Hittite stock and the Hittites were perhaps Aryans.
2 According to the old reckoning, Sargon and his son Naran-Sin
would belong to the middle of the third millennium and Gudea
would be dated c. 2350 B. C. They may all be inlich older (see
above). Naram-Sin was one of the few deified kings.
346
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
.
lonian (Amorite) god Marduk; the Amorite Adad or thun-
derer (Rammon) was added to the pantheon; and the gods
of the small towns became relatives of the great Marduk,
whose compound nanie probably means Amorite-sun-god.
The influence of this Babylonian religion upon the West-
ern world used to be regarded as overwhelming; but it was
less early, less direct, and altogether less important than
was once assumed. It probably had no early influence upon
Egypt and very little upon Greece. The mother-goddess
worship, conspicuous in all Babylonia, was not confined to
Mesopotamia but was generally Semitic. Certain legends,
such as the story of Actaeon devoured by his hounds, and
Adonis mourned by Aphrodite, drifted into Greek mythology
from Semitic sources (not necessarily Babylonian), but
Greek religion was not affected by Babylon in any impor-
tant phase. Even the neighbouring, though later, religion
of Zoroaster was not markedly affected by the Babylonian
cult.2
The Assyrians, from Ashur in the north, appear to have
been at first in close contact with the Hittites. But the
Assyrians were still a rough mountain race when Baby-
lon was already a commercial city. Like all these peoples
they worshipped a god of the clan (Ashur) as well as the
sun- and storm-gods. The original inhabitants of Ashur
seem to have been neither Sumerians nor Semites, but, if
1 Greek niysteries have no Semitic counterpart. Incense came to
Greek religion from the East, but not before the eighth century,
The shepherd loved by Ishtar and changed by her into a leopard
devoured by his hounds is recast as Artemis, Actaeon and the stag
(myth not religion). Compare Farnell, Greece and Babylon, Edin-
burgh, 1911, pp. 290 and 314.
2 Anahita as a form of the fruitful mother-goddess was probably
a late adaptation. Stress has been laid on the majesty of the
Zoroastrian god, on seven as a holy number, etc., and even on the
fact that a list of Assyrian gods contains the name of Orinuzd;
but these fail to prove that Zoroastrianism was drawn from, or was
even influenced materially by Babylonian ideas. Astral gods were
not early but late, as compared with the original Babylonian pan-
theon.
3 King, History of Babylon, London, 1915, p. 141.
BABYLONIAN AND ASSYRIAN RELIGION
347
Hittite, they were later largely reinforced by Semitic ele-
ments. They are first heard of about 2400 B. C. From
about 1800 B. C., when Hittite power centred in Asia Minor,
the Assyrians made inroads upon Babylon, but they did not
become important till the fifteenth century. Under Tig-
lath-Pileser (1130-1100 B. C.) they conquered Babylon,
which at this time had been under Kassite dominion (1750–
1175 B. C.). Assyrian supremacy is represented by the
great names of Sennacherib (705-681 B. C.), Esarhaddon
(680-668 B. C.), and Ashurbanipal (668–626 B. c.). The
seat of the empire had been transferred first to Calah and
then to Ninevah. Babylon was destroyed in 689, Ninevah
in 606 B. C. Cyrus, who founded the Persian empire in 550
B. C., annexed Media, which had helped Babylon overthrow
Assyria. It was a new Babylon which Nebuchadrezzar II
built (604-562 B. C.); to which, after besieging and taking
Jerusalem (597 and 586 B. C., 2 Kg. xxiv.), he transported
the Jews.
- But as the Assyrians became, in dress and language, one
with the Babylonians, so in religion. Except for Ashur
and a special predilection for the Amorite god Adad-Ram-
man, the Assyrian pantheon coincided with that of Babylon.
This again, in the main, united, by the process already
described, with that of the Sumerians, Enlil of Nippur,
Anu of Erech, Ea of Eridu, Nabu of Borsippa, Nin of
Lagash with Baui, the great Mother-goddess. The West-
ern Semites, however, did not affect female divinities ex-
cept as Ishtar in various forms or names; the others they
let die. Thus Nina, a water-goddess, becomes Nina Ishtar
of Nineveh. As in Egypt, by merging gods there arose
triads, of which the chief was Anu, Enlil, and Ea (sky,
earth, and water). Anu of Erech was sun and sky; Enlil
I
1 The close connection of these kings with the Western Semites
may be remembered by comparing 2 Kg. XV. 19, 29f.; ib. xvi. Jof.
(Ahaz); Sargon's overthrow of Samaria, 722 B.C.; Sennacherib's
intercourse with Hezekiah, 2 Kg. xx. 12; Manasseh as vassal of
Esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal, 2 Kg. xix.; 2 Chron. xxxiii., etc.
348
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
of Nippur was a mountain-god of storm and earth; and
Ea of Eridu was representative of water and magical wis-
dom, either because, as in Scandinavian myth, the two are
naturally united, or because the priests of Ea had accumu-
lated a special amount of magical matter and the god had
thus become authoritative. Nebo or Nabu (compare Nebu-
chadrezzar) was a water-god of Borsippa later subjected
to Bel-Marduk, the greater god across the river, but asso-
ciated with him: “Bel boweth; Nebo stoopeth” (Is. xlvi.
I; 1x. 7). With the rise of Babylonian Marduk, Ea is
made father and Nebo son of Marduk, and other local gods
similar in nature are identified, the solar element as Sha-
mash, Ninib, Nusku, Nergal, Marduk; the lunar element,
as Sin and Nannar (northern and southern representatives),
with Ningal as his consort. One of these, Nergal, was a
Kuthah god brought into Palestine (722 B. C.). He was
destructive (war and pestilence) and thus became identi-
fied with Ninib, sun as war-god. While most of the female
deities were merely earth-spirits or aspects of their male
consorts, Ereshkigal, consort of Nergal, was a still im-
portant mistress of the under-world; Bau (above) had a
great New Year's festival; and Ishtar or Nana of Erech
received honour everywhere, both as a war-goddess and as
a fertility-spirit. As Venus she was regarded as the daugh-
ter of the Moon, Sin. As moon-goddess she appears as
Ashtart of the Phoenicians, Astoreth of the Canaanites.
Her symbols are dove and pomegranate, a voluptuous
Venus as contrasted with war-like Ishtar. The Assyrians
called her Our Lady, Belit, and distinguished between the
Ishtar of Arbela, the war-goddess, and Ishtar of Nineveh,
the voluptuous goddess, who some have imagined was orig-
inally Hittite.
At Babylon, Anu, Enlil, and Marduk, as a triad, show
that Ea has lost to his “son” the third place. Marduk
in fact at first interprets and then, as mediator, ousts his
“father” and becomes as “good shepherd " the type of a
protecting god. He is usually interpreted as an Eridu sun-.
BABYLONIAN AND ASSYRIAN RELIGION
349
god, but he is perhaps rather a parallel to Amurru of the
Amorites, Ashur of the Ashurites or Assyrians, etc., a
clan-god, who cared in every way for his people and so
was typified as god of sun and life and of power and war.
It would be useless to analyse all the triads of this sort,
Shamash, Sin, and Ramman, or Nergal, Ramman, and
Nana, etc. The lesser gods are grouped as Annunaki and
Igigi, spirits of earth and heaven. In Babylon, Marduk as
Bel-Marduk absorbed the other divine powers, as he took
the “lofty house " of Ea from Eridu and set it up in his
new home. By thus absorbing gods Marduk might have
become sole deity, but neither he nor Ashur became God,
though Ashur as the sun, yet without an image, was even
better fitted to make of the religion a monotheism, espe-
cially as he became the head of a supreme temporal power.1
To meet the need of syncretism, however, old hymns ad-
dressed to other gods were made to say that Marduk was
identical with each, or rather that each was Marduk, in
order that the incantation, in which names had to be used
with care, might be effective. So tales told of other gods
were recast in honour of Marduk. Marduk's rival, of Bor-
sippa, Nabu, regained glory in the West as god of wisdom
(so in Moab) and culture, as well as water and agricul-
ture. In Assyria he became the god of the stylus, of
scholars, and at Borsippa of astrology.
To these gods were made sacrifices of animals, bread,
fruit, wine, milk, all ready to eat and actually eaten at once
by the priests, a communion service of the Mexican type, in
which gods and worshippers share. To the gods were sung
hymns mixed deftly with old magical formulas, so that
exorcism united with requests for aid, magic with religion.
Both divination (see below) and prayer reveal that the
Babylonians were true Semites after the western type, that
is they cared little for the next world but very much for
this. The warlike Assyrians have been said to resemble
1 He was represented, like Aton in Egypt, by a disc, inscribed
with a bowman as sign of martial power.
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THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
1
the Romans, with whom there may have been even a re-
mote racial affinity; in contrast, the commercial Babylonians
resembled their own kin, Phoenicians and Carthaginians.
For the striking difference between Babylonian and Assyrian
is that the former is before all else a humane business-man
and the latter is a cruel blood-thirsty warrior. Hammu-
rabi was protagonist of peaceful civilization; Ashurbanipal
delighted to pierce his captives' eyes with his own hand.
Hence Assyria had no native civilization; she had to absorb
that of others. The Assyrians were eastern Aztecs, the
Babylonians they conquered were their Mayas. What is
known as Assyrian literature is the literature the Assy-
rians appropriated and possessed by right of conquest.
Around the gods have gathered Babylonian tales of espe-
cial interest to the student of religions, as they are primitive
parallels to the Hebrew legends. Creation, Adam, Noah
appear here in a ruder form. We may take these up in
their Biblical order.
In the Babylonian story, creation is preceded by a state
in which chaos and order struggle as personified beings.
When“ heaven and earth were nameless," is the time
when the drama begins. Only the watery waste existed,
called Apsu, Mummu, and Tiamat, later differentiated into
sweet and salt waters. Possibly we are to interpret the
two as producing together the monsters born of them or
of Tiamat, who represents the barren floods of Chaos, her-
self the greatest monster (T'hon) of her brood. But there
is no attempt to revert to nothing; even earth was, only
it was nameless. “Floods covered heaven and earth.”
This raises the question whether the ensuing struggle was
not a nature-myth rather than a real creation-story. The
flood and storm of the tale are interpreted by some scholars
as wintry phenomena yielding to the spring-time sun-god.
What lay back of Tiamat and Apsu is not revealed. Other
accounts make the gods as old as chaos. Chaos bred mon-
sters and then the divine Heaven and Earth, as Anshar and
BABYLONIAN AND ASSYRIAN RELIGION
351
Kishar, ancestors of Anu,1 Enlil, and Ea, prepared for
conflict, to maintain order. But they are not the aggressors;
only the elements of disorder are aggressive. The eleven
opposing monsters of Chaos are created by Tiamat and
headed by Kingu, to whom Tiamat gives the tablets of
destiny and whom she makes her consort. The peace-loving
gods seem to fear: they send a messenger to Tiamat, “ May
her liver be pacified, her heart softened." Here the ac-
count becomes confused and what was probably depicted in
the first form of the legend as the victory of Ea or of Anu
(in the Erech version Anu is victor) is manipulated in
maiorem gloriam of Marduk, for in this story Marduk
reigns. In this version, too, Ea and Anu appear to dispose
of Apsu and Mummu, while the greater Tiamat is reserved
for the favourite god. At any rate, we next see Bel-Marduk,
at the command of his father, going joyfully into battle,
after preparing for the combat by making weapons, bow,
lance, club, lightning-bolt, storm-winds, and a net where-
with to catch Tiamat. The gods get drunk with joy, an-
ticipating victory and hailing Marduk as already lord of
the universe. On Storm (his chariot) he rushes forth,
haloed with light, from which Kingu shrinks. Him follow
the seven winds. Tiamat, however, fears him not, but
when Marduk challenges her, she fights, “raging and shak-
ing with fury," yet all in vain. For Marduk stifles her
with a poisonous gas (“evil wind”), and then transfixes
her, also taking the tablets from Kingu and netting the
other monsters. But Tiamat he cuts in two, making one
half of her the sky, which is then bolted, to keep the wa-
ters from descending; as in Genesis the upper waters are
debarred from those below by a “firmament." Marduk
completes his victory by retaining the names and powers
of the gods, given him for the fray, and assigns them
their astrological spheres and stellar forms. He then
1 Anshar and Anu, forms of the same word, may be one.
2 By taking the “names” of the gods he assumes their powers.
even winds anges her, she fights Marduk stifles
352
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
creates man out of his blood and bone, that the gods may
have worshippers.
This myth recalls the "watery waste" of Genesis, but
only remotely. Man is here blood-relation of his god. In
the corresponding Sumerian version, creation is effected by
Aruru with Marduk as secondary helpmate, showing the
feminine divinity as mother-goddess. It is she, perhaps
one with Ishtar, who creates Enkidu out of clay.
Another story suggests Adam and his fate. Adapa is
a worshipper of Ea. He is catching fish near his lord's
temple, when the south wind, blowing up the Persian Gulf,
overwhelms him. In self-defence Adapa breaks the wings
of the wind. Anu, being wroth at this, demands that
Adapa shall come to heaven and explain his act. Ea now
advises Adapa what to do. On arriving (Ea says), he will
be offered the food and water of death and must refuse
them. Adapa goes to heaven and first flatters Tammuz,
who guards the gate, by telling him that he (Adapa) is
wearing mourning, not described, for him. Anu accepts
his exculpation. Then all the gods seem kindly disposed.
Apparently thinking that, since the man has got to heaven,
he might as well be made immortal, they offer him the food
and drink of life. But, with Ea's warning in mind, Adapa
refuses both, and so fails to attain immortality. So in
Genesis iii. 22 it is said, “ lest he put forth his hand and
take also of the tree of life and eat, and live for ever."
Adapa also puts on clothes given by the gods, but not to
cover his nakedness. Sayce regards Adapa as one with
Adam, whose story, however, has to do with two trees,
one of knowledge and one of life. Yahweh Elohim in one
does not wish man to become immortal. The recast Hebrew
form prohibits the eating of the fruit of the tree of knowl-
edge, with the implication that, if he obey, man may remain
doces with the implicaties that it has been
in the garden for ever; as Gen. iii. 3, which says, “ye shall
not eat of it or touch it, lest ye die," must originally have
e “set up the stars as likenesses ” of the gods and also "fixed
the year.”
BABYLONIAN AND ASSYRIAN RELIGION
353
been a reference to a deadly fruit. So the serpent says,
“ Ye shall not die," pretending that it is not the tree of
death but of life. The substitution of a tree of knowledge
(of good and evil) for the death-tree appears to be a later
touch. The serpent also may be Babylonian, as a seal-
cylinder contains a group of a man and woman and serpent
about a tree (of life).1
The tree of life appears also in the Gilgamesh legend.
Gilgamesh may have been an Elamite king who conquered
Erech. His name, as already stated, is found in dynastic
lists. In the story, he is a demigod hero. To overcome
Gilgamesh, the creator-goddess (Aruru; see above) forms
a man of heavenly sort (" of Anu "): “ Aruru washes her
hands; she takes a bit of clay; she throws it on the ground;
so she creates Enkidu.” He is an inhuman, hairy crea-
ture living with animals. But, protected by Shamash, by
means of a hunter (sādu) and a woman, Gilgamesh in-
duces Enkidu to come over to his side. Enkidu, through
his companionship with the others rendered quite human,
supports Gilgamesh and fights against Khumbaba (perhaps
an Elamite). After Gilgamesh, with Enkidu, has con-
1 Jastrow, Hebrew and Babylonian Traditions, New York, 1914, pp.
52–61. The Adapa story comes from a time when Eridu, now
ninety miles from the Persian Gulf, must have been close to it;
otherwise the worshipper would not be on the Gulf, "fishing for
his lord," who is evidently close at hand. As the Gulf, owing to
silting of the river, recedes ninety feet a year, Eridu, at this rate,
would have been on the shore of the Gulf 5280 years ago. This
would fix Adapa's exploit as occurring shortly after 3365 B. C., which
is perhaps the time of the story.
2 Nimrod also is a hunter (säid); he stands for Babylonian cul-
ture. Compare Genesis X. 10-II; “Nimrod's kingdon was Babel,
Erech, Accad, and Calnah, in the land of Shinar. Out of that land
he went forth into Assyria and built Nineveh." The nanie Samson
(Shimshon) is one with that of Gilgamesh's divine patron, Sha-
nash, the sun-god. Samson's long hair may be a solar attribute,
but his adventures with lions, his love-affairs, and other traits link
him rather with Gilgamesh and Enkidu. Hercules (though this is
doubtful) appears to be a Greek form of this myth, which has de-
scended upon the fabulous Alexander, seeking in India the fountain
of life. Professor Jastrow has recently shown that Enkidu is a
double of Gilgamesh.
354
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
quered this foe, Ishtar desires him to be her lover; but
he replies that the sad fate of her lovers is too well known:
“ Tammuz thou causest to weep every year; thou didst
love a bird and crush it; the lion thou loved'st thou didst
bury again and again” (etc.). Ishtar complains to her fa-
ther Anu, who creates a strong bull to destroy Gilgamesh.
While Enkidu holds it, Gilgamesh slays it. Ishtar then
curses Gilgamesh; but Enkidu throws the slain bull in her
face and threatens to slay her likewise. Ishtar mourns a
day for the bull, assembling all the sacred prostitutes, her
priestesses, of Erech. But now disease assails Enkidu, who
dies and is lost to Gilgamesh. When the latter also begins
to pine away (decline of sun-power after the solstice?), he
fears for himself the fate of his lost friend and thinks ·
of Utnapishtim, who alone of men has escaped the fate of
death and may give him good advice. He tries to find this
immortal man, meeting lions on the way, but conquering
them with the help of Sin, and comes at last to Mashu, the
mountain that reaches to the lower world guarded by scor-
pion-men. These he passes and comes thence to the sea
crossed only by Shamash. It is an ocean on the way to
the underworld and is guarded by the maiden Sabiti, who
tells him that all men must die, and advises him to return
and eat and drink and love, while he may. This clearly
indicates that after death no joy remains. With the help
of the sailor of Utnapishtim, however, Gilgamesh crosses
these "waters of death” and, finally finding the “long
lived” one, first inquires how, if to escape death is impos-
sible, Utnapishtim, who is also human, is still alive.1 Ut-
napishtim explains that he escaped at the time of the deluge
and gives the tale thereof. But his wife pities Gilgamesh
and prepares a root with the condiment shiba (old age)
which she gives him to eat, after which he has to bathe in
the fountain of life and also to eat of another plant. But
as he reaches down for this latter plant, which will finally
1 Utnapishtim in one version is alive, but weak and weary, not
altogether like a god.
BABYLONIAN AND ASSYRIAN RELIGION
355
make him immortal, a serpent (demon) snatches it away.
So Gilgamesh has to return; but first he gets permission
from Nergal, king of Aralu (the lower world), to question
the deceased Enkidu in regard to the condition of the dead.
The daemonium or spirit of Enkidu then rises up like a
wind, as the spirit of Samuel rises before Saul (1 Sam.
xxviii. 7-9), and Gilgamesh questions him.
The story of the flood as told by Utnapishtim is as fol-
lows: A flood was sent upon the city of Shuruppak after
Ea had warned it and at the same time had told Utnapishtim
in a dream to build a ship and save his family. Enlil
(Bel) had cast out Ea and so Utnapishtim was safe on
Ea's waters but not on Bel's earth. The lord of the whirl-
wind, Ramman, brought on the deluge-storm, cyclone, which
lasted seven days (another account says six), frightening
men and gods; as it is said: "Brother does not look after
brother, Men care not for another. In the heavens, even
the gods are terrified at the storm. They take refuge in the
height of Anu. Like dogs the gods cowered at the edge
of the heavens.”
The storm is further described: Ishtar is frightened
and reproaches herself that she assented to this destruction:
“I created and I have destroyed my own creatures.” Ac-
cording to these words, the storm is not regarded as a pun-
ishment. Enlil is represented as opposed to the saving of
man. All the gods sat down and wept; for men had been
turned to clay and there was naught but water. After
seven days, however, the flood ceased, and shortly after
this an island appeared and the ship approached the moun-
tain Nisir, meaning “salvation," where it remained for
seven days. Then Utnapishtim tells how he sought to know
whether the waters had gone down elsewhere: “When
the seventh day approached I sent forth a dove. The dove
flew about, but finding no resting-place, returned. Then I
sent forth a swallow. The swallow flew about, but finding
no resting-place, returned. Then I sent forth a raven. The
raven flew off, and seeing that the waters had decreased, did
356
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
not return." Utnapishtim then gets out and on the top of
the mountain sacrifices to the gods, who "smelled the sweet
flavour and collected like flies," but Enlil is excluded, since
without consultation he caused the flood (says Ishtar)" and
handed over my creation to destruction.” Enlil approaches,
sees the ship, and angry that any one is saved, wishes to
know who is responsible. Ninib tells him that Ea must
have saved Utnapishtim, for Ea alone is wise enough
(“ knows all arts "). Then Ea speaks: “ Thou shouldst
punish the sinner, but be merciful and not destroy all,”
and of himself he says: “I did not reveal the decision
of the great gods (to cause a flood), but I sent a warning
dream to Atra-Khasis, which told him thereof.” Atra-
Khasis, the “very wise one,” is Utnapishtim, the name
which, in inverted form khasisatra was converted into
Xisuthros, or Sisouhros, the hero of the flood in the clas-
sical writers who followed Berosus. Ea means that he
merely told the hero to build a ship. So Enlil became
reconciled and blessed Utnapishtim and said: “ Hitherto
he was human; but now he and his wife shall be as gods;
he shall dwell in the distance at the confluence of streams,"
that is at the confluence of the four rivers of the garden of
Paradise, Euphrates, Tigris, Karun, and Kercha. The ac-
count ends with the assurance that there will not be another
such flood. The structure of the ark points to its being a
vessel of the Euphrates. The different versions in the
Bible, one making the flood last one hundred and fifty and
the other forty days (in the former Noah does not leave the
ark for a year), show a combination of two stories.
This is the tale told Gilgamesh by Utnapishtim. It oc-
curs in different versions, the details of which have been
explained by Professor Jastrow. Of late there has been
1 Atrakhasis is also the name of the hero in an Akkadian tablet
of c. 1800 B.C. The tale above locates the flood at Shuruppak
(about half way between Nippur and Larsa). In Berosus, it oc-
curs at Sippar. Berosus, the historiographer of Chaldea, lived at
the end of the fourth century B. C.
2 It is impossible here to give these details; they will be found
BABYLONIAN AND ASSYRIAN RELIGION
357
an attempt made to combine the deluge-story with that of
the first man and Paradise, under the caption of a Su-
merian epic, but the interpretation appears to be too doubt-
ful to be relied upon.
The request made by Gilgamesh, that Enkidu reveal the
mysteries of life hereafter, is only partly granted. A satis-
factory description is withheld on the ground that it is too
sad to tell; a mere glimpse of the gloomy underworld is
allowed, when Enkidu tells Gilgamesh that Ereshkigal
(Allatu) and Etana live there. Ereshkigal is the goddess
of the subterranean cavern, from whom come diseases and
evil. Those who die unburied have no rest but must roam
about on earth eating offal; only brave warriors who are
buried and have attention after death are moderately happy
hereafter. At least they “lie on couches and drink pure
water,” and are at rest. Yet other accounts reveal that the
underworld was a realm of decay and horror, a prison de-
scribed as a “house from which no one comes forth who
has entered it.” The inhabitants feed on dust and live in
darkness, being “clothed like birds in feathers.” Such is
the description in the account of Ishtar's descent to the
underworld (the death' of vegetation), when she searches
for her beloved Tammuz. In this gloomy place rules Eresh-
kigal, sometimes associated with Irkallu or Urugal, a per-
in Barton's Archaeology and the Bible, Philadelphia, 1917, p. 277f.,
and in Jastrow's Hebrew and Babylonian Traditions, New York,
1914, p. 321f. In the view of Professor Jastrow, "the deluge myth
rests on the annual decay and death of nature," perhaps magnified by
the recollection of a particularly stormy season. Of the two Biblical
versions, the Yahwist story stands nearer to the Babylonian legend
than does that of the Priestly Code. The Hebrew tale introduces
an ethical element not found in the Babylonian story. It differs
from the latter also in making the deluge a prelude to the promise
that the world, owing to the righteousness of Noah, shall not again
be destroyed.
1 This is based upon a cuneiform text found at Nippur. As first
interpreted, by Dr. Langdon, the flood comes before the fall of
man and the hero, named Tagtug, subsequently eats of the for-
bidden food, cassia, and so forfeits immortal life. But Tagtug is
no Noah, there is no flood, and cassia is not a forbidden fruit.
358
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
sonification of the “wide place " itself. Sometimes, this
Hades is a palace, with Ereshkigal and her husband Ner-
gal1 ruling there, but, however ruled, it is a place of mis-
ery, hard to get into and harder to get out of. Evidently
the Babylonians, like the Hebrews, believed that the dead
live not much changed from the form in life, for in the
Gilgamesh legend Enkidu is recognized at once; but the
formal descriptions in the later descent of Ishtar are not
in accordance with this older view. So, too, in Isaiah xiv.
gf. and Ezekiel, xxxii. 18f., virtually the Babylonian Aralu
is described and the dead kings and warriors appear crowned
and girded as in life. Brave warriors seem to live with
more life-spirit hereafter, as they show more spirit when
on earth — a notion often found among savages. But the
common dead are weak and do nothing; they talk but feebly
and are unable to provide themselves with food. Those also.
who are neglected during their last inoments live hereafter
as they die here, sorrowful and neglected. When Ishtar
descends, she finds the lower world encompassed by seven
walls and storms her way through them; but even she
has to submit to the removal of her crown, ear-rings, neck-
lace, clothes, etc., till she stands at last naked before Eresh-
kigal, who afflicts her with disease, while all fertility on
earth ceases. Ishtar returns by order of Ea, after being
sprinkled with the water of life. Certain gods called “re-
storers to life” are recognized, apparently gods of solar
origin who restore vegetation or perhaps raise from the
dead. In any case the examples are few and for ordinary
people there is no heaven or joy hereafter. Utnapishtim
and his wife are translated, as a few Hebraic heroes are
carried to heaven, but this pair do not go to heaven. They
are carried to a sort of resting-place in earth. There is no
paradise hereafter; when one dies one has no further con-
cern even with the gods, who are the gods of the living.
1 The god of Cuthah; hence “ Cuthah” occurs also as a designa-
tion of the underworld, being the home of Nergal (sun-), god of
death.
BABYLONIAN AND ASSYRIAN RELIGION
359
T
Y1
Y
Neither Babylonians nor Hebrews practised ancestor-
worship. In Babylonia a few kings are deified and wor-
shipped with sacrifice. But there is no general cult of the
dead. Likewise among the Hebrews we find Enoch 1 and
Elijah (perhaps Moses) translated to heaven, and vestiges
of a practice of offering viands to ghosts; but the belief
that the dead live hereafter and the practice of providing
them with food, or even that of putting implements and
toys into graves, are not indicative of ancestor-worship.
As already explained (above, p. 277), the worship of dead
kings does not imply a general worship of ancestors.
Sheol, where none praises God (Ps. vi. 63), may be one
with Babylonian shu'ālu, "grave”; it is described in Job
as a place so gloomy that even its light is dark (Job x. 22),
and the early belief of the Babylonians that the dead are all
ekimmu demoniac shades, alive but weak shadows of hu-
man beings,2 is reflected in Hebrew belief of the earlier
period. Later, however, the Hebrew view changed and
in the second century B. C., life hereafter was deemed a dou-
ble condition, for “ animals live below and men live on
high," or in other words only the spirits of men, in dis-
tinction from those of animals “go upward”; but the very
passage that suggests this view questions it (Ecclesiastes
iii. 21). The sixteenth and forty-ninth Psalms are more
hopeful. Again, in Babylonian mythology there was no
ethical factor, no suggestion that a man was punished or
rewarded hereafter for acts done in this life, as in the later
Hebraic belief.
The Gilgamesh epic is a congeries of unrelated legends
concerning the chief hero and others more or less closely
1 On Enoch as Etana, see Barton, op. cit., p. 266.
2 Shades are weak even when fed, but indignation makes them
angry, and if neglected and unburied the ghosts may become evil
demons on earth instead of resting underground. Fear of the dead
is implied by covering oneself in mourning and cuttings of hair
may be made to give the shades power (which resides in the hair).
Necromancy, oracles from the dead, implies a belief that souls could
be made to answer, perhaps even dragged up from below, but not
perinanently.
tinction from wegests this view quninth Psalms are more
360
HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
1
THE connected with him. Enkidu, for example, has no essential
office in this story and probably is taken from another tale
depicting how some first man, still savage and living with
animals, is won from animalism by the love of a woman.
It is too much to say that he represents Adam or that the
woman who tempts him is a form of Eve, but there are
points of similarity. Another figure of some interest is
that of Etana, mentioned above as being in the under-
world. He may be Enoch as well as Ethan (both words
mean "strong"). His son's birth is attended by marvels.
An eagle helps the child to be delivered and this eagle then
tempts Etana to mount on his back into the sky, whereby
the appearance of earth and sea below, as they ascend, is
described. After they pass the gate of heaven (Anu),
where they take a rest, they continue on their upward flight
until the earth looks small as a garden bed, when suddenly
they come crashing down and the next we hear of Etana
he is in the underworld. The eagle is punished by the
sun-god Shamash, who tells a serpent to creep into the car-
cass of a dead ox and destroy the eagle, when the bird
comes to eat it. In 1 Kings iv. 31, Ethan the Ezrahite is
cited as a type of superior wisdom.
Astrology has changed Ishtar into the planet Venus and
as such her part in the Tammuz legend has been altered
and it is as the planet that she is rescued from the under-
world rather than as the mother-goddess. At an early
period the greater gods were thus identified with planets,
Marduk as Jupiter, Ninib as Saturn, Nergal as Mars, Nebo
as Mercury. Astrology was especially favoured by the
Assyrians and by the Chaldeans. The sun in an agricul-
tural community naturally remained the chief god, Ninib
in Nippur, Marduk of Eridu and Babylon, originally Anu
of Erech. He is sometimes kind, sometimes destructive, but
always the just and righteous god. Shamash punishes
1 The lesser gods were identified with fixed stars. On the astral
side of the religion and its cxaggeration by Winckler and others,
see King, History of Babylon, London, 1915, p. 292.
BABYLONIAN AND ASSYRIAN RELIGION
361
crimes, pronounces judgment through the priestly judges,
etc. The moon-cult was more restricted, being associated
chiefly with Ur in the South, a Sumerian settlement, and
Haran in the North. The Moon is “lord of knowledge,"
or “luminary”; 1 his horns appear in the headdress of
Naram-Sin. He sails through heaven on a boat represented
by the crescent. It is when Ishtar becomes Venus that she
is made the daughter of the moon.
To find out the will of the Babylonian gods, recourse
was had to dreams and omens by a science of divination
which was Babylonian (rather than Sumerian). One form
of divination was based on the movements of the heavenly
bodies. One was based on the interpretation of the liver
of sacrificed animals, as the soul, which showed the soul
or sense of the god. This latter idea rests on the early
belief that the seat of emotion is the liver, as even in our day
to be “white-livered” means to be cowardly. Another
method of divining was to shoot arrows or throw them down
before an image of a god and get a response through the
position they assumed. Sometimes they were previously
marked. This was practised by the Arabs and may have
been the origin of the incident (1 Sam. XX. 29f.) described
as shooting arrows beside the stone Ezel, the fall of which
indicated whether one should stay or go farther on. Im-
ages or symbols of the divinity, such as were perhaps the
Teraphim, were also consulted.?
Another point in which Babylonian culture touches that
of the Hebrews is that of a taboo day. The Babylonian
1 The moon was worshipped under this name at Ur, as Shamash
was at Sippar. At Haran the moon is called Sin. Sin, Shamash,
and Ishtar make an old triad of Babylon.
2 In his Aspects of Religious Belief in Babylonia and Assyria,
New York, 1911, p. 145, Professor Jastrow shows that Babylonian
hepatoscopy, examination of the liver, on the part of official in-
spectors or seers, bârî, was carried to the Hittites and Etruscans.
Other forins of divination employ oil and water, the bubbles mark-
ing events, and the careful record of unnatural phenomena, celes-
tial and terrestrial, such as natural births as well as storms and
earthquakes, exactly as in China (above, p. 270).
362
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
shabatum designated the full-moon's day, when the gods
must be pacified, to interpret most naturally the equation
of pacification and shabatum. In Hebrew the equivalent
word designated a day of rest and refreshment, which grad-
ually assumed a holy character. In a sense it was a holy
(that is taboo) day to the Babylonians, as the pacification
of the heart of the gods was essential at the (evil) critical
“full-moon” period, to guard against ill-luck, incident on
the declination of lunar power. It is a good example of
the way the accursed and the holy unite.
The Hebrew Sabbath is often spoken of in connection
with the new-moon as a parallel lunar phase. Celebrations
at the middle of the month may revert to the original idea
of the Sabbath. But especially noteworthy is the fact
that in Babylon, on the “evil seventh day," the king might
not use food cooked over a fire nor ride forth, just as
the Hebrew is forbidden to light a fire or go forth on the
Sabbath (Ex. xvi. 29; XXXV. -3). This shows that the
Sabbath, too, was originally an unlucky day. The multi-
plication of Sabbaths is also not without a Babylonian paral-
lel, as special sacrifices were held on the 7th, 14th, 21st, 28th,
of the (lunar) month and the 7th and 15th were very un-
lucky. Probably the very natural division began as ane-
fas day, which would give it a rest-character. Character-
istic of the two Semitic branches is it that the Babylonian
regarded it as evil while the Hebrew hallowed it. But it
must be remembered that the Hebrew made little of
Sabbaths till after the Exile. Even as late as 800 B. C. the
Hebrew Sabbath was not what it became later, for exam-
ple in Is. lviii. 13f.
1 Purim is thus celebrated in the middle of the inonth, though this
is a Persian spring festival adopted by the Jews, in which Mordecai
and Esther represent an original Marduk and Ishtar, perhaps an-
other "king-killing” reminiscence.
2 This division of the month by moon-phases with sacred days at
the moon's halves and quarters is also Hindu; every “knot" day
being a taboo day, though usually only the new and full moon days
were observed as holy-days. Compare 2 Kg. iv. 23 for the grouping
of the two days.
BABYLONIAN AND ASSYRIAN RELIGION
363
New Year is inscribed marks theo
The most noteworthy Babylonian festivals were those
of the New Year, Zagmug, and the Tammuz festivals, when
Ishtar was wedded to her Lord at the vernal equinox and
mourned over him at his death. There was a Marduk fes-
tival, when a procession went across from Babylon to Bor-
sippa, amid general rejoicing. But penitential psalms also
accompanied this spring celebration (of ten days). As the
Jewish Day of Atonement marks the opening of the year,
when one's fate is inscribed for the year, so at the Baby-
lonian New Year. The tone of the psalms is at its best in
such an extract as this: “The sin that I sinned I know
not; my god has visited me in anger. I sought help but
none took my hand; I wept but none stood by my side. I
cried aloud and there was none that heard. To my god,
the merciful god, to the god I know not, I turn and pray.
How long, O Lord! O Lord, cast not thy servant away;
but turn my sin into a blessing; and may the wind carry
away my transgressions; seven times seven are they; for-
give thou them!”
The Babylonian hymns or psalms are for the most part
more magical than religious; yet even as incantations or
purificatory formulae they are not without an ethical ele-
ment. Purificatory rites are apt to pass from physical to
spiritual; taboo may be said to be the beginning of the
ethos, but even taboo connotes a spiritual defilement and
purification. So the Babylonian sounds a note leading to
the expression of inner purification when he says: “I
have washed my hands with pure water ... (washed off)
all that is evil in my body." There are also, as Professor
Langdon has pointed out, certain congregational hymns of
lamentation, which may be older than the private psalm,
and which we may perhaps regard as models for Jewish
lamentations learned on the spot. They appear to be very
1 This was originally a solar festival, like that of Shamash at
Sippar, in which the king represents the god. Nergal had a winter
solstice ceremony of mourning. The Babylonian festivals were thus
partly lunar and partly solar or agricultural.
364
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
2
old. In Assyria the ethical element is clearly connected
with divinity, more especially with Shamash, as the Sun
who is “judge” and whose daughters are Justice and Right.
It is before this judge that the Babylonian king Hammurabi
stands, and Shamash grows ever more a supporter of
morality, as he is the all-seeing god of divination.
Closer connection with the West is found in the hymns
of lament over Tammuz (Sumerian Dumu-zi), the early
dying vegetation mourned by the mother of all life, or, as
some interpret him, the spring sun, who is wept by the
women (Ezekiel viii. 14). This is the Adonis pictured by
Theocritus; in Babylon his sister was the “ lady-of-the- ,
field,” and she and his mother (sometimes one) weep for
him when the summer solstice brings an end to his life and
he “goes to earth's bosom," where Ishtar later seeks him.
His classical name is usually derived from Adon, “lord,”
though he is not a very lordly figure and is more the deliciae
than the master of Ishtar or Venus. Hence it has been
suggested that his name means “joy” (connected with
ndovn). In Babylon, Tammuz is sometimes a goddess."
The Babylonian and Assyrian form of religion, as has
been said, is intensely practical, but with a slight tendency
to ethical monotheism. This among the Hebrews resulted
in real monotheism, which was revived again by the Mo-
hammedans. The developed cult of these great sister na-
tions of Mesopotamia cannot, however, give us the prim-
itive Semitic form, already buried by syncretism and the
mingling of two kinds of culture. In Arabia, we find a
Semitic tribal society, not of a state but of a small com-
munity, and, since religion reflects social conditions, a
tribal or clan religion. Every individual in the clan must
worship the deity. There is no religious liberality in a
small primitive community. Before Babylon also the rule
1 Compare Kretschmer, Glotta, 1915, vii, p. 29f. The original
story may have been Sumerian. Elsewhere the god is lamented by
a husband-brother (so in the Osiris-Isis myth), while Tammuz is
bewailed by a sister-mother.
1
BABYLONIAN AND ASSYRIAN RELIGION
365
form of gove divinities, ma. But ther
was that every city had its god. But Babylon had many
gods from many tribes and towns. In a small tribe the
state and religion are one; the god himself is a member of
the tribe. As such he is the head or lord of the town,
as it represents a tribe, and often has no other name than
master, lord, or king, Baal, Melech, El (“mighty one”).
In Arabia, the primitive matriarchal or mother-headship
form of government was still reflected in the female char-
acter of the divinities, many tribes worshipping an Allat
(lady) instead of a lord.But there were also in each re-
ligion countless spirits revered or feared as local powers,
corresponding to the Jinrs of today, while stones and trees
were looked upon as in themselves divine and worshipped
by the tribe. Here a striking contrast presents itself with
the Aryans, whose earliest religion is a family religion not
a tribal one. It follows that not the hearth, as among the
Aryans, but the land is the centre of holiness. Hence too,
as we have seen, the worship of ancestors plays no part
in Semitic religions, whereas it is a prominent factor in
Aryan religion. The nucleus round which the whole is
rolled is different. Without the family cult there is no
worship of ancestors, no raising of ancestors to become
great gods; but the land is the centre, the spirit of the place
(the local nature-spirit) is the spirit of the clan. All are
related not only to him but through him to each other.
On the other hand, the clan-ancestor remains a hero, but is
not a worshipped god. Hence the mighty tribal bond of
clan-kinship; hence, too, the ethical teaching that blood-
brotherhood was a sacred tie 3 and that tribal hospitality
was a sacred duty; hence too, most important from the
1 So (obscured) in Babylonian mythology, the goddess Aruru
and the goddess Ereshkigal were respectively the prior creators and
rulers of the great underworld.
2 So in Babylon there is no family ancestor-worship but king
Gilgamesh becomes a national hero. This might have developed
into general “ancestor-worship" but it did not do so. Only kings
received divine honours (see above).
3 In mourning this blood-covenant is implied by cutting oneself.
366
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
religious point of view, the doctrine, not formally taught
but inevitably assumed, that the sacrificial meal was not,
as later, an offering of thanks to a god but a communion
of the clan with the god of the clan. In Babylon the food
of the gods is thus eaten by the people. Most of the
Arabian tribes locate their god in a stone or tree-trunk,
· and the stone becomes the altar because it was at first
divine, as the god. The Ashera or sacred groves of Scrip-
ture embody the belief in a goddess of vegetation parallel
to the figure of Ishtar. As with her cult, so with that of
the Ashera, which was apt to be a drastic and literal aid
to the spirit of fertility. It was not necessarily a female
figure that was thus revered. The masculine Athtar is
found in South Arabia, where the female principle has
become male; but in general the greatest divinity of the
Western Semites was the Magna Mater, as she was known
in Rome, who became for a time a world-divinity sacred
from the Euphrates to the Guadelquiver. In Canaan the
worship was like that in the towns ruled by Ishtar in the
Gilgamesh story. The goddess of fertility is served by
women slaves of the temple, whose ministrations appear as
a debauch of sensuality. In small places there was prob-
ably only the annual celebration of the spring-festival, but
the towns intensified the religious evil and it became a
scandal to the decent Westerners, whose own cult of sim-
ilar powers was more veiled, that the gods of the East
were mere profligates 2 and their service mere occasion for
gross excess.
Unmistakable affinity with Hebraic legends is shown by
those of Babylon, with which Palestine stood in some sort
1 Neither in the Ashera nor in the Ishtar cult is there any trace
of ethical dualism. The only dualism in Babylonia is the natural
opposition of sun and storm. Sun and vegetation cannot be re-
garded as more than sex-dualism in nature.
2 The sacred prostitutes, however, were not the only women
servitors of the gods. Some, like the entu, magicians and diviners,
were apparently chaste priestesses. Nabonidus appointed his daugh-
ter as chief of such a company of diviners.
BABYLONIAN AND ASSYRIAN RELIGION
367
-
123
of connexion at an early period. A Jacob lived in Bab-
ylon c. 1900 B. C. and a Jacob-town was known in Palestine
C. 1600 B.C. Abraham also is a West Semitic (Aramaic)
name known in Babylon at about the time of Hammurabi.
But all this does not prove that Palestine was colonized
from Babylon. It merely indicates that a Western Semite
named Jacob and one named Abraham were with the large
number of Amorites who took their way to Babylonia at
the time of Hammurabi. It is at this point that we get a
reasonable explanation of the resemblances between East
and West from the point of view of legends and stories of
the past. They had a common origin, not in Arabia sev-
eral millennia before 2000 B. C., but to the west of the
Euphrates, in the area where the Semites lived before they
became respectively Babylonians and Palestinians. The He-
brews took with them two different versions of the Crea-
tion story and perhaps two of the Deluge; the other Semites
knew still more. These other Semites preferred quantity;
the Hebrews preferred quality; and even what they had they
refined, just as they refined later the tales of other Patri-
archs.
On the ethical side, the discovery at Susa in 1901–1902
of the code of Hammurabi and the subsequent discovery
that this code reverts to a Sumerian model of circa 2500
B. c. show that this king, who was paramount ruler c. 2000
B. C. as far as the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean, gov-
erned a city-population far more complex than that of the
Hebrews of the Mosaic code, though his laws retain marks
of the old barbarities preserved in the Pentateuch (ordeal,
lex talionis). When this code was made, it was intended
for a commercial population and probably was not used
at all in the western dominion. At the time of the Exile
1 Compare Clay, A Sumerian Prototype of the Hammurabi Code,
Yale Oriental Series, i, p. 18f. The tablet, in the Yale Collection,
bases the law upon the authority of the goddess Nisaba and the
god Khani, patrons of writing and law. Hammurabi's code appears
under the auspices of the sun-god Shanash; the earlier code, under
Western divinities.
368
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
it was probably no longer in use, or the Jews would have
improved their own code by copying it. As it is, although
there are a few instances of correspondence between the
codes (not so many as has been asserted), the dissimilarities
and divergencies are much greater. And for a very good
reason. The Hammurabi code is made for a more ad-
vanced type of civilization. Hebraic law does not even
recognize the complex business life implied by the Hammu-
rabi code. Thus, in contrast to the Pentateuch, Hammu-
rabi regulates wages and prices, liabilities of agents, of
builders, and of physicians. He has rules for adopting sons,
for the treatment of the temple-women, a more complicated
law of inheritance, a more civilized divorce-law. He per-
mits imprisonment, instead of slavery, for debt and regu-
lates usury, while the Hebrews took another two thousand
years even to legalize interest on loans. Besides this, the
Hammurabi code has nothing to do with ritual and reli-
gion, the main concern of the Mosaic code. In a word,
the Hammurabi code is purely a civil code, while the He-
braic code is only incidentally a civil code, containing regu-
lations for a much simpler agricultural community. In
character, therefore, the Mosaic code is really more prim-
itive than that of Hammurabi. The few common factors
might easily have derived from a common stock of Semitic
law, developed in each case according to national needs.
So much has been said or implied above as to the su-
periority of the Hebrews ethically (they deserve the praise),
that an impression may have been given impugning by con-
trast the Babylonians and Assyrians. As for the Baby-
lonians, the code just discussed shows a mild and humane
monarch and the ethical character of the penitential psalmis
is high. From the palace of Ashurbanipal come also texts
inculcating ethics as a religious concern: “ Thou shalt 1101
slander; speak what is pure; speak no evil; speak kindly.
Shamash will punish him who speaks evil and slanders.
Let not thy mouth boast; when angry, speak not at once,
BABYLONIAN AND ASSYRIAN RELIGION
369
100 8. fact that, alth.s yet the
lest thou repent afterwards that thou has spoken in anger.
Approach thy god daily with an offering and prayer; and
come before him with a pure heart.” Again, in the same
text, it is said that one should not oppress the weak but
should give food and wine to the needy; one should seek
right and avoid wrong, "for this is pleasing to the god,"
and "he who fears the gods will live long."
It must not be imagined, however, that “from the pal-
ace of Ashurbanipal” necessarily implies Assyrian origin
or great antiquity. Ashurbanipal scoured the country for
interesting texts and made a museum of them; those in
foreign tongues his many learned scribes could do into
Assyrian for him. What we actually know of these texts
is that they are from about 700 B. C. and come from no one
knows where. Now it is a striking fact that, although there
are Babylonian flood-stories as old as 2000 B. C., yet the
Creation and Deluge legends which most closely resemble
those of the Hebrews come from this vague source and
date, so that for all we know to the contrary the Biblical
stories may actually have been composed before the crea-
tion and flood stories of the “Nimrod epic," as it has been
called, though it is not an epic and has no connexion with
Nimrod. Yet it would be too much to say that the Ashur-
banipal jumble of legends comes from Palestine. Prob-
ably Amorites and Aramaeans lived originally to the West
of the Euphrates, later spreading in two directions and
each taking a store of legend and a few simple rules of
conduct like “an eye for an eye." It was from this west-
ern land that Hammurabi, himself an Amorite, as were
largely the Hebrews, derived, and since in his “ First Ba-
bylonian Dynasty” five kings had already preceded him, it
had begun their course as early as the middle of the third
millennium B. C., or even earlier.
370
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
BIBLIOGRAPHY
L. W. King, A History of Babylon, London, 1915. -
· Morris Jastrow, Jr., Die Religion Babyloniens und Assyriens,
Giessen, Leipzig, 1905-12; Hebreze and Babylonian Tra-
dition, New York, 1914; Aspects of Religious Belief and
Practice in Babylonia and Assyria, New York, 1911; Civ-
ilization of Babylonia and Assyria, Philadelphia, 1915.
R. W. Rogers, The History of Babylonia and Assyria, 2 vols.,
New York, 1915.
George A. Barton, A Sketch of Semitic Origins, New York,
1902; Archaeology and the Bible, Philadelphia, 2nd ed.,
1917.
A. T. Clay, Amurru, The Home of the Northern Semites, Phil-
adelphia, 1909.
Lewis R. Farnell, Greece and Babylon, Edinburgh, 1911.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
THE RELIGION OF ZOROASTER AND ZOROASTRIANISM
ZOROASTER is the first of those few religious teachers who
have so altered received religion as to seem to be the find-
ers as well as the founders of the religions afterwards
called by their name. Yet, like all the others, he built his
religion upon a foundation which had existed from im-
memorial antiquity and which persisted long after the edi-
fice raised over it began to crumble.
When and where Zoroaster was born is not known. One
theory, supported by excellent authority, is that he was
born not far from Urumiah, near the Caspian Sea, in Me-
dian territory, where, according to native tradition, his
father, Purushaspa, lived, though his mother, Dughdhova,
is supposed to have come from Ragha (Rai), near Tabriz.
This district (Teheran) became the seat of the later faith
and it was generally believed that Airyana Vaeja (Iran Vaj),
that is, Atropatene or Azerbaijan, between Lake Urumiah
and the Caspian Sea, was where the prophet was tempted
by the Evil One. The literary data, however, point rather
to Bactria than to Media as, if not the birth-place, at least
the life-place of the prophet. It is this region that the
geographical statements in the Vendidad appear to indi-
cate and the language of the early Gathas, the only literary
remains imputable to Zoroaster himself, is so closely re-
lated to that of the Rig Veda as to seem like an Indic dia- .
lect.
We have already seen how close was the connexion be-
tween the Vedic and Zoroastrian religions. The speakers
of the two dialects must have lived near each other in
place and in time; the worshippers must have had a com-
371
372
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
Spirit of the Indra, wad the moreordes, wh
mon creed in many respects. The priests of both religions
bear the same name; the chief object of worship is the
same great Spirit; even the lesser spirits (gods) bear in
part identical names; both religions hold the Soma or Hom
plant in veneration; and in lesser details of the cult there
is often a verbal similarity. The religion of Zoroaster, the
Greek form of Zarathustra, was obviously built over a
prior religion closely agreeing with that of the Vedic poets.
But the deva or bright god of the Veda is the daeva or evil
spirits of the Zoroastrian; the dasyu-slaying Indra of the
Veda is one of these evil spirits, and the pagan dasyu he
slays in the Veda is the good people or district of the Zo-
roastrian (danhu, a settlement of the orthodox), as the
“demon nations" of the Chinese were their neighbours
on the north. We may imagine then that, as the two peo-
ples, originally contiguous, drifted apart, the distinction,
still visible in the Rig Veda, between the cult of the Wise
Spirit of the Holy Order and the cult of the lower nature
gods such as Indra, was accentuated, especially as the cult
of the Holy Order and the more spiritual religion became
the cult opposed to the nomadic hordes, whose lawless deeds
were themselves a reproach to the gods they worshipped,
as it is said, “Ye (nomads) cause men doing the worst
things to be called 'beloved of the daevas'" (Yasna 32).
The mere fact that the word for god became the word for
demon is not significant, since in India itself the word for
evil demon, originally meaning spirit, was at first applied
to a good god (Asura). The difference between one side
of the Vedic religion and Zoroastrianism is only partial.
Vedic hymns to the chief Asura are quite Zoroastrian in
tone and show that the Wise Spirit (Asura) had a cult in
India as well as in Bactria or Parthia, where Zoroastrianism
probably arose.
The date of Zoroaster can be neither that assigned to him
by Greek tradition (c. 6000 B. C.) nor by native tradition
and modern scholarship (c. 600 B. C.). Many scholars be-
lieve that Zoroaster was born in 625 or 660 B. C., that in any
RELIGION OF ZOROASTER AND ZOROASTRIANISM
373
event he belongs to the latter half of the seventh century.
Others hold that he was born about 1000 B. C. This at least
accords better with the linguistic closeness between Vedic
and Avestan early texts.
The oldest Vedic texts may date from c. 1200-1000 B. C.
When one thinks of the linguistic changes likely to have
taken place in an unlettered community in the course of a
few centuries, the date 660 for the Gathas seems quite im-
possible. Probably Zoroaster lived centuries before the
time to which he is usually ascribed. The current theory,
based on tradition regarding his life, considers him
a prophet patronized by a certain Hystaspes (Vishtaspa,
Gushtasp), the son of Lohrasp, king of Balkh, the scene
of his activity being in Seistan. It is believed by the faith-
ful that Lake Hamun in this district, just west of Afghan-
istan, still preserves his seed. Probably his sect was at
first a small and insignificant religious body. All the Per-
sians worshipped the Wise Spirit (Ormuzd), who is the
chief figure in Zoroastrianism; but this does not imply that
he was first worshipped in the Zoroastrian faith. Some
Medes were Mazdakas. The early Achaemenian kings do
not seem to know the prophet's name and Cyrus worshipped
any god (for example, Bel), just as the Assyrian king
Ashurbanipal recognized Ormuzd. A king worshipped any
god likely to be useful, politically or otherwise. Even Da-
rius, a Mazdaean who is thought by some scholars to have
been a real Zoroastrian, admits the existence of other gods
besides Ormuzd, as no real Zoroastrian would have done,
though to him Ormuzd is the “great god who made earth
and heaven and made Darius the one king over many." 1
Further legends regarding the prophet relate that Vish-
taspa was converted to Zoroaster's belief when the latter
was forty-two years old, after Zoroaster had been preach-
ing for a dozen years without effect save that he converted
1 Darius shows no acquaintance with the figure of Ahriman or
with those of the archangels; but the argument from silence here
has little weight.
374
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
his own cousin after ten years of instruction. This king
had two councillors, brothers, who supported Zoroaster as
they supported the king, and with their help Zoroaster (or
Vishtaspa) soon converted by force, in religious warfare,
the whole kingdom. At the age of seventy-seven the aged
warrior-prophet was killed in one of these religious wars,
while fighting against Turan, says tradition. Not much
besides this is related of the prophet's personal affairs. As
a court-favourite he married a daughter of one of these
councillors, Frashaoshtra, and his daughter Pourucishta mar-
ried the other brother, Jamaspa, traditional author of the
Vendidad, really a late priestly work. Tradition gives his
lineage and tells of three wives and several children. Like
the detailed account of the religious wars and conversions
of foreigners in India and Greece, these tales may be fictions
of succeeding generations.
But what emerges as important from the mass of tradi-
tion is the fact that we really have a double life of Zoroaster,
one the life revealed in his own words and the earliest texts,
another that invented by religious credulity. According to
the first, Zoroaster was a man of good birth, lofty aims, and
pure nature, but in no wise a supernatural being; according
to the second, he was a glorified and supernatural man,
whose conception was immaculate, whose mother was di-
vinely ordained for her holy office; at whose birth all crea-
tion laughed with joy 2 and evil demons fled aghast; who,
when grown, was conducted by an archangel into the pres-
ence of God, and in glory unutterable received divine reve-
lation; who, finally, after seven visions and after once being
tempted by the Evil One, died fighting for the true faith and
1 Zoroaster, like Buddha, was an aristocrat by birth, belonging
to the noble family of Spitama. Like Buddha also he (at twenty)
abandoned his family to study religion. He studied for ten years,
began to preach at thirty, and made one convert by the time he was
forty. His first vision or revelation came to him at the age of
thirty. Vishtaspa converted thousands by slaying the unconvertable!
2 Zoroaster himself “smiled when born." His spirit (soul) was
kept in the Hom till God's glory had purified his mother's body.
RELIGION OF ZOROASTER AND ZOROASTRIANISM
375
yet is not extinct; for in the fulness of time shall be born of
his seed, miraculously preserved in the Seistan lake, another
even greater than he, the Saoshyant or saviour, who shall
bring salvation and everlasting bliss to the pious, and utterly
destroy those that have opposed without cessation the com-
ing of the millennium. This view is quite different from
that of the Prophet himself who, as a mere man, wanders
disconsolate and cries :
To what land shall I turn, whither shall I go?
I am separated from relatives and from friends ; 1
The people and the rulers of the land, they treat me ill.
Unto thee I lament, O Wise Spirit, give help unto me.
Zoroastrian literature, which goes under the general name
of Avesta, perhaps “tradition” (Zend Avesta, meaning
“ Commentary and Avesta ”), consists of the Yasna, Yashts,
and the Vendidad, with some supplementary works. Old-
est and most important, the liturgical Yasna comprise songs,
Gathas, some of which may have been composed by Zoro-
aster himself, supplemented by minor litanies called Vis-
pered, “all lords." The Yashts, twenty-one hymns to an-
cient divinities and heroes, are in part old, so that they are
usually placed, together with the Haptanghaiti, an early
prose work, next to the Gathas; but some Yashts are quite
late, probably later than the Vendidad, another prose work
perhaps meaning “ against demons." Besides these, there
are minor prayers and fragments (Khorda, little, Avesta),
and this whole material is supplemented by late Pahlavi
texts (such as the Bundahish and the Dinkard), which con-
tain much valuable traditional matter, though they are them-
selves as late or later than the Christian era. Except for the
Gathas, of unknown antiquity, the literature included under
the headings Yasna, Yashts and Vendidad may date from
the fifth to the third century B. C., though its present form is
1 The exact meaning is doubtful but seems to show that he was
Magupat (leader of the Magi, Mobed) does not militate against,
but rather supports, the view that he was not a Median by birth.
376
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
in the edition of the third century A. D. In the centuries
preceding the Christian era there was a rapid decadence of
fạith and there was no early redaction of the holy books.
Alexander destroyed one of the “golden” copies at Samark-
and and Persepolis and the other was lost. Hence, it is said,
we possess only fragments of the original scriptures. But
the old texts were collected in the first century A. D., and the
first Sassanian king, Ardashir (226-240 A. D.), had them re-
edited under Tansar, a priestly scholar who was anxious to
purify the scriptures, so that he would not have introduced
foreign ideas into them. The dialect of the Gathas is very
like that of the Vedas, so that these hymns could not have
been forged, and they contain the gist of Zoroastrian be-
lief. Additions were made to the text under Shapur I (240-
271 A. D.), perhaps as late as Shapur II (310–379), and the
Pahlavi texts did not attain their present form till the sixth
century A. D.; but we are not dependent on these later texts
for our understanding of the early religion. With such
additions as all scriptures have, we may confidently believe
that the main outlines of Zoroaster's religion as we know it
have been preserved since the time of the Achaemenides
(559-230 B. C.).1
Zoroaster himself says that what he did was to purify the
old faith. That is, he did not create a religion but improved
it. He constructed his religion upon one that already recog-
nized a Wise Spirit and a Holy Order (of the universe), as
well as the cult of sun, moon, certain stars, earth, fire, water,
1 Darmesteter's theory, brilliantly expounded, that the body of the
literature dates from the period of the Sassanides (226-651 A. D.), is
now thoroughly discredited. He believed that the Logos theios
of Philo Judaeus is reflected in the Good Mind, and in the ideal ·
Fravashi he saw Plato's idea. But the Good Mind is far older
than Philo and the Avesta knows nothing of ideas of abstract quali-
ties or inorganic substances. All was in confusion in Persia from
the death of Alexander to the end of the Parthian period of the
Arsacides (250 B. C. to 226 A. D.), but the cult of archangels was
known much earlier. By 400 B. C. their names appear in the Cappa-
docian calendar. Artaxerxes was a Zoroastrian (465-425 B. C.) and
the Amesha Spentas are at least pre-Alexandrian (Theopompus or
Hermippus of Smyrna is authority for Plutarch, Isis and Osiris),
RELIGION OF ZOROASTER AND ZOROASTRIANISM
377
Y
and the Manes. Even in his new form of religion was still
preserved the reverence for the sacred moon-plant, which
he personally abhorred; he inherited also a stock of Vedic
legends regarding the Dragon-slayer, the conflict between the
powers helpful to man and those injurious to man. But into
these elementary religious notions Zoroaster introduced a
new idea. In religious belief prior to Zoroaster, each indi-
vidual spiritual power was good or bad only as it helped
or injured man. Zoroaster established a criterion other than
usefulness, to determine whether a power was good or bad,
by making an ethical distinction between the spirits. The
“ Eternal Order,” under whose sway stood even the gods,
was not enough; the Order, he insisted, was not only eternal
but it was moral; and the great Spirit was not only eternal
and wise but was also moral. Zoroaster himself practically
recognizes this one spirit as God, ignoring other gods. But
as these could not be ignored forever, since they were firmly
established among the people, all the world was soon divided
into friends and foes of this Order and Spirit, as good or
evil. All the old gods who could represent moral elevation
were thus grouped as servitors of the ethical ideal incorpor-
ated in the form of the great Wise Spirit; those incapable of
being ranged thus were set off as enemies of the Holy Order
and Wise Spirit. In other words, many of the Vedic divin-
ities in this way became demons and devils, while some re-
mained on the side of good. Over the universe then rose the
figure of the Wise Spirit himself, Ahura Mazda (Ormuzd),
who was in pre-Zoroastrian days the one pre-eminently
ethical figure of the old pantheon. Yet the Indic figure,
though ethical, was not consistently moral. He ensnared
as well as helped man; he was sometimes demoniac as well
as divine; he was also a close associate of immoral powers.
Moreover, the Indic pantheon as a whole had no ethical
1 With the word mazda, “greatly wise," compare what is said of
the Asura called Varuna · (Heaven Spirit) in the Rig Veda:
“Greatly wise was the nature of him who established heaven and
earth," etc., where dhîrâ mahinâ (janúnshi) translates, as it were,
Mazda. Mazdah Ahura is the old form or Mazda (h) alone.
378
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
standing, and even its highest representative was not freed
from his nature-form; he was still the material Heaven-god.
But the Wise Spirit of Zoroastrianism is no form of nature,
neither sky, nor moon, nor sun, but spirit only and withal
the spirit of truth, purity, and justice. The great advance
therefore made by Zoroaster may be expressed in two
words by saying that he made religion ethical and spiritual.
God is a spirit, not a nature-god; and God is good.1
Although the old gods persisted and were still divine, as
far as they could be retained, yet before the august form of
Ormuzd they shrank of themselves and served merely to
throw his greatness into stronger relief. And like him were
the attributes of Ormuzd, personified as spiritual powers of
God. Yet, as thus personified, they appear as real persons
and are regarded as archangels of God. Opposed to these
stood the evil powers of the universe, and in course of time
they too were grouped as a host headed by one supreme Evil
Spirit, around whom stood, battling for evil, spirits really
older than he, all the immoral forces of the world as they
were now conceived, many of them the degraded Devas of
the ancient order. Many, however, were but the personified
ills that flesh is heir to; for primitive thought first thinks of
ill as itself evil: hunger, drought, disease are not sent by
demons but are themselves demons. Famine is a demon
driven away by grain, because on grain being eaten Fanine
dies of inanition. The army of the Evil One thus consisted
partly of independent demons and partly of personified
qualities of himself, in exact counterpart to the army of the
Lord. At first this horde is rather indeterminate ; the demon
of rapine, Fury, leads them, under the Worst Mind (Evil
Mind), whose second self or representative is the Lie-
demon. This is clearly a mental antithesis to the Good
Spirit, the natural dualism of every primitive man, who
recognizes primarily a good synonymous with the pleasant
and an evil synonymous with the unpleasant, but elevated to
i Only in late texts is Ormuzd represented as wearing a tiara and
ring and carrying a sceptre; in some, as sun-god, he even has wings.
RELIGION OF ZOROASTER AND. ZOROASTRIANISM
379
the plane of the moral. Zoroaster's flock was a much abused
and outraged congregation and his wrath is divided between
hatred of his opponents as unbelievers and fear of them as
oppressors. One of our eminent Avestan scholars has said
that the most striking feature of Zoroaster's faith, as taught
in the Gathas, is dualism; but it is more than this. Dualism
of a sort is as primitive as savagery; the striking feature in
Zoroaster's faith is the application of an ethical dualism with
logical insistence to every aspect of existerice and the thor-
ough co-ordination of physical and spiritual elements into a
homogeneous ethical conception of life. Again, from the
religious point of view, there is in Zoroastrianism no attempt
to conciliate or propitiate evil spirits, with whom the ortho-
dox believer has no dealings; he fights against them without
remission.
The Evil One is of course personified, as all his 99,999
diseases are devils; but it is a question how far the personi-
fication went at first. In India, Fury, Fear, and Disease are
“ children” of Shiva, and so Fury is a child of the Evil
Mind, while Good Mind and Piety are, respectively, son
and daughter of the Wise Spirit; Righteousness is even his
“son by generation.” But all this is poetic or prophetic
imagery in great part. Even the renowned description of
Ormuzd and Ahriman in the Gathås is not necessarily more
than this: “ Two primal things (principles, neuter], a bet-
ter thing and a worse thing, in thought, word, and deed -
come together as twins, yet separate and independent, to
make life and death (not-life), to determine how the world
at last shall be, for the wicked the worst life, for the holy
the best mental state." 1 Of these, evil chose the worst;
1 This is Zoroaster's own definition of "Heaven," vahishtem
mano, the best mind. The personified “better thing" appears at
once as Spenishta Mainyu, the most holy mind. The two spirits
are described (Yasna 45) as agreeing in naught, “neither (says the
Good to the Evil One) do our minds, our teachings, nor our con-
cepts, nor our beliefs, nor our words, nor our cleeds, nor yet our
consciences nor souls agree in aught." There is no reason to sup-
pose (with some scholars) that in the above description the Holiest
Mind is not one with the Wise Spirit.
380
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
but the most holy mind, clothed with heaven, chose right-
eousness. The (neutral) Daevas could not determine which
side to choose; but at last the Worst Mind was chosen by
them and they rushed forth with Fury, as demon, to cor-
rupt human lives. Piety, guardian of earth, approached;
with her came Power, Good Mind and Right Order, and
Piety gave a body to the souls of men not yet incorporate.
When at last vengeance shall come upon these wretched sin-
ners, then, says Zoroaster to his Lord, Ormuzd, "then
thy kingdom (Power) shall come through (thy) Good
Mind (working in men), since the Good Mind (probable
subject) issues commands to those who shall deliver the
Lie-demon into the two hands of Righteousness (Right
Order), and may we be of those who effect this, the great
renewal, and make the world go on (to perfection); yea,
may we be as the Wise Spirits (plural of Ahura Mazda!),
even as Righteousness (the wise spirit) and the other wise
spirits. Then shall the blow of destruction fall on the Lie-
demon, but in the happy abode of Good Thought and of
Ahura Mazda the righteous saints shall gather."
Here, in this exiguous “system,” the conception of the
evil mind and good mind is that of personified principles.
The good mind is in man as well as in Ormuzd; all his
attributes, not yet grouped as personified archangels, are,
like himself, Ahura Mazdas. God is thus addressed by
Zoroaster as a plural or as singular (the plural, Ahura Maz-
das, appears again in Gatha, 31, 4). The Evil Mind is
also inherent in all its creations, as it enters into the per-
verted demons, who at first were neither good nor bad but
simply spirits. Zoroaster raises no question as to the com-
parative power of the Good and Evil Minds; he assumes
throughout that the former will finally overcome, with the
help of the good mind in man, all the hosts of evil. In
other words, Zoroaster is a monotheist of the strictest type.
He does not analyse, he is no metaphysician, no theologian;
he is a prophet; he teaches dogmatically and denounces solely
the "seed of evil ” (the Daevas). He feels himself God's
RELIGION OF ZOROASTER AND ZOROASTRIANISM
381
chosen scourge to be a terror to infidels. “When (he says
to Ormuzd) thy angel Faith came to me and said, Who art
thou? then, I, Zoroaster, said to her, (I am) he that tor-
ments the sinners and aver tes the righteous and I would
devote myself (so long as i'may praise thee and sing my
song) to thee and to the preparation for thy kingdom and
the laudation of the holy Fire. ... They said that I bring
only woe; but that will I do which thou has said to be
best.” Again he asks, praising God: “Who is the father
of the Right Order? Who gave to sun and stars their
path,-- who save thee? Who holds the earth below and the
clouds above, that they fall not? Who made the water and
the plants . . . and who inspires our thoughts? This I ask,
do thou tell me aright, О Spirit, who, as a skilful artisan,
madest the light and the darkness . . . who madest the
dawns and the noon and midnight ... and tell me how I
shall purify the faith of my people. All other (gods) save
thee I look upon with hate. How may I banish the Lie-
demon, thou father of the good mind, thou whose daughter
is Piety? ... Now come the Karpans and Kavis to slay us,
they whose own souls and consciences will cry out upon
them when they approach the Bridge of Separation; but in
the abode of the Lie for ever shall be their habitation. ...
Yet if among the Turanians there arise those who help the
settlements of Piety (who guards earth), even with them
shall the Lord have his habitation. ... Unto the Lord we
offer a sacrifice of meat and pray for thy Fire, that it may
be our help, but to those who hate us may it be a hurt even
as with weapons. . . . May I be thine, with thy righteous-
ness and thy good mind, and care for the poor. May I
declare thee (as a spirit) apart from the Daevas and (evil)
men. If really, O Wise Lord, thou art (one) with right-
eousness and good mind, then give me a sign that I may
approach thee more devoutly.' Only Thee do I know; save
me through thy righteousness. Teach me the path of right-
eousness trod by the good mind living in thy saints, that
path which consists in the precepts of the saviours of men.”
382
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
Zoroaster recognizes the existence of evil, expressed
strongly in the behaviour of those oppressors whom he de-
nounces. He also recognizes the spiritual power and angelic
character of the Good Mind, I ght (Righteousness), Faith,
and Piety, yet without including them in any group of the
Spentas (holy ones). In his devotion to the Spirit he
adores, in his assurance that this Spirit will lead him to vic-
tory, in his exultation over fallen foes, in his appeal to the
sword and grim determination to extirpate unbelievers, he
is a Mahommed of the Ayrans, certainly the most heroic
religious figure on the Aryan stage. In the extracts given
above almost all the theology of the Gathas is contained.
It will be noticed that Zoroaster hates all those who assume
to be gods besides Ormuzd; yet of course he does not deny
the existence of nature-spirits, such as the “evil wind”
and virtuous Sun, whom sinners repudiate and of whom
he speaks as of a spirit. He knows the Judgment Bridge
which rests on Mount Alborj, and reveres both. But he
cares not at all for any gods save God as manifested in his
Right Order, Piety, Good Mind, and coming kingdom. His
first is the prayer, “ Thy kingdom come; thy will be done
on earth as it is in Heaven." His first the conception of
heaven and hell as mental states, “ The mind is its own place
and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.”
God is within us; our first care is to attain God's good
mind, and our second is to relieve all suffering (moral and
physical) and shelter the honest poor. Thus he is first also
to make public service a part of religion.
Of liberal thought there is striking evidence in the lauda-
tion of Turanians who serve God; no chosen people is God's;
but each man as an individual must answer to God. On the
other hand, the heretic is no object of mercy. The Zoro-
astrian will shelter the “honest poor," but not the unbe-
liever; no heretic is honest, he is a son of the Lie. So, too,
in later days, if a physician wishes to try a new cure which
may be dangerous, he is enjoined to try it on a heretic not on
a believer.
RELIGION OF ZOROASTER AND ZOROASTRIANISM
383
The recrudescence of popular religion becomes manifest
even in the literature next following the expression of Zoro-
aster's own belief in the Gathas. The nature-gods, even the
Hom, which he would not even name but which he inveighed
against, rise again as spirits worthy of worship, and are
addressed in terms which show that they are virtually gods.
Then Zoroaster himself is revered. The Hostile Spirit,
Angra Mainyu, who appears only once so named in the
Gathas, becomes the substitute for the more indefinite Lie-
Spirit, which Zoroaster abhorred. Finally Zoroaster's Holy
Spirit is interpreted as but one aspect of God, as the Evil
Mind is another aspect, an idea that never occurred to Zo-
roaster, to whom the Evil Mind and Wise Spirit were anti-
thetic but only Mazda was immortal..
One of the first changes occurs in the schematic grouping
of the archangels. These formed at first no fixed group,
their number was indeterminate; they with Ormuzd made a
holy body, in which, however, it was uncertain whether
Fire was felt to be an "archangel” or not. The Gathas
mention them but not as a unit and do not confine the epithet
"good" to the Good Mind. But in the first literature after
the Gathas they appear as a fixed band with unvarying attri-
butes and places. They have long since been compared not
only with the Vedic Adityas, also a group chiefly of abstrac-
tions, and with Babylonian “sevens,” but also with the
Hebraic archangels of Tobit, xii. 15, and Apocalypse, v. 6,
“the seven spirits of God sent forth into all the earth."
The first is Vohumano, the Good Mind of God, who works
in man, concerns, himself with the flock and the faithful,
welcomes the good to heaven, and is half person from the
beginning. Later he has a special cult of his own. He is
aided by the Moon, in whom are the seeds of the flock.
Next comes Asha Vahishta, Best Truth or Righteousness, or
Right Order, who cares for Fire. Then comes Khshathra
Vairya, Desired Power, the Kingdom of God as his author-
ity which is to rule the world; but as an angel this being
has the care of metals, emblematic of power. These sit on
384
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
God's right hand; opposite to God sits Sraosha, Faith or
Obedience. On the left sit the female forms, Spenta Ar-
maiti, Holy Piety, goddess of earth, and the inseparable pair
called Haurvatat and Ameretat, Wholeness or Holiness and
Immortality, who together care for water and plants.1
These collectively are the “Immortal Holy Ones,” 2
Amesha Spentas, who appear as a group as early as the
Haptanghaiti or first prose. Plutarch (50–120 A. D.) knows
them as characteristic of the Magian cult and renders their
names into Greek as Eunoia, Aletheia, Eunomia, Sophia,
Ploutos, and (for Ameretat) “worker of good hap-
piness” (in Strabo as Anatotos, i.e. amardatos). The prev-
alence of Persian Arta-names (e.g. Artaxerxes) betrays
familiarity with the Asha, arta, idea of righteousness. In
the later texts, these angels are anthropomorphized enough
to ride horseback and have attendants, who are the old
nature-gods. These Amshaspands, as they are called later,
are also assigned to different days and months and each has
a peculiar flower and colour. Thus Vohumano has white
as his colour, white jasmine as his flower, one day of each
month is his (compare our saints' days), and he has one
double month under his especial charge. The later scheme
then assigns one selected demon as the special opponent of
each archangel.
The elements of later Zoroastrianism, partially recognized
by the founder, are further the “holy ones ” in general,
namely the Yazatas, worshipful ones (hagioi or hagnoi from
the same root), the modern Izads, a name which at times
includes Ormuzd but generally designates a special division
of holy ones below the archangels, of whom Ormuzd may
be regarded as the “greatest holy one." The Yazatas also
embrace the archangels and were naturally enough called
1 Sraosha may have been added later to keep intact the number
which was diminished by one when Ormuzd" himself was with-
drawn from the group, which originally merely represented the
Ahuramazdas as a body consisting of God and his attributes. Asha,
Vohumano, and Mazda are often grouped as a triad.
2 Spenta is etymologically "holy" but traditionally “bountiful.”
RELIGION OF ZOROASTER AND ZOROASTRIANISM
385
Uusually thenus Fire is thindra, as
gods by the Greeks. Thus Plutarch speaks of twenty-four
gods besides the archangels. The Yasna recognizes “three
and thirty lords” of the ritual (compare the three-and-
thirty gods of the Rig Veda). These Yazatas are the Theoi
Basileioi who have charge of different parts of the earth.
At first there is no fixed line between these semi-divine
beings. Fire appears as an archangel in Yasna 1, 2, and
in the Yasht dedicated to Faith this angel “sits with the
Amesha Spentas.” But usually the old nature-gods serve
as helpers of the greater spirits. Thus Fire is the helper
of Asha (Right) or Truth, who is opposed by Indra, as
Vohumano is opposed by Aka-mano. The third archangel,
Khshathra, Eunomia, the Power of God, is helped by Mithra,
being opposed by Saurva (perhaps Vedic Sharva, Rudra).
Spenta Armaiti, practical Piety, whose charge is earth, is
the Sophia of the Greek and as such is opposed by Taro-
maiti or Pairimaiti (Pride, Wrong Thought), as also by
Naonhaithya (the Vedic Nasatya). The pair known as
Haurvatat and Ameretat (Wholeness and Immortality) care
for water and plants, embodying the idea of the water and
tree of life, the later personified in the white Hom (Gao-
kerena), the Vedic Soma-plant.
The nature-gods thus included in the mythological scheme
are first of all Fire and the Sun, then Water and the Hom
(Moon-plant), which appear as most worthy of worship in
the Yasna, and then a number of other gods, some of which
are good and some originally evil. At the same early period,
possibly recognized by Zoroaster himself as Yazatas, the
Manes or spirits of beings become prominent. These are
the Fravashis (“confession,” souls of the dead), who help
men in battle, protect them through life, and accompany
spirits to the next world. They are treated in the texts as
if they were individual guardian angels of each living per-
son. In the creation they appear as the souls before they
are embodied, but their original identity with the souls of
1 Compare Darmesteter, Haurvatat et Ameretat, Paris, 1875. In
the earlier texts these two are scarcely personified.
Manes y recognized zginally evil. her gods, some
-
386
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
S
the departed is certain, though the Zoroastrian presentation
veils this conception. At death the Fravashi archetype
unites with the soul.
The number of angels is practically unlimited. One of
the Yashts, which are dedicated to the chief Yazatas, speaks
of ten thousand of them. Fire is the most important, as it
becomes the sign of the later faith and of the Fire-Wor-
shippers. Fire, the son of Ormuzd, as Piety is his daugh-
ter, is the life-heat and the “ glory" of kings. With him is
associated the (Vedic) Nairyosanha (Narashansa), the
angel bringing God's word to man, though in the Veda he is
the genius identified with Fire bringing man's praise to the
gods. Fire-altars, not necessarily in temples, were erected
all over ancient Iran. The cult may have been strength-
ened by the natural awe of naphtha-wells, but could not have
started with such a source. Water, too, and the heavenly
stream, Ardvi Sura Anahita, were objects of far-reaching
worship as the source of all life (Anahita was a Semitic
figure, the goddesses of productivity). Reverence was
paid also to the eye of Ormuzd, the sun, to the inoon, and
to the star Tishtrya (Sirius), as remover of drought (Apao-
sha, official opponent of this star). The genius of right as
justice, Rashnu, who with golden scales weighs the deeds of
the dead, is associated with Faith (Sraosha) and Mithra, as
three judges of the dead (compare Minos, Aeacus, and
Rhadamanthus, or Christ, Gabriel, and Michael), and to
them are devoted the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth Yashts,
while the fourteenth is dedicated to the personification of
the Demon-slayer (Verethraghna), who in the Sassanian
period, beginning in the third century A. D., as genius of
victory, attains his highest importance. Less important but
still venerable and actually worshipped are mountains, winds
(some winds are evil, however), heaven, earth, the native
abstractions, Daena (Din), “ Religion,” Manthra Spenta,
the “Holy Word” of Ormuzd regarded as an angel; End-
less Light, Aniran; and the Hom, to whom are dedicated
not only the twentieth Yasht but also Yasna 9, 10, and 11.
RELIGION OF ZOROASTER AND ZOROASTRIANISM
387
The ministers of the Yazatas come still later, such as Peace,
Glory, Blessing (Afriti), and there are other divine beings
not grouped with the Yazatas, the most remarkable of whom
is the three-legged ass, Khara, which stands in the earth-
surrounding sea, Vourukasha, and helps govern the world;
also a sacred ox, three birds of magical power, etc., all astro-
logical or mythological creatures retained in the net of the
popular religious sense and utilized by the faith, much as
pagan belief was utilized by Christianity. This whole class
of spiritual beings is of the highest significance. It implies
that already, in the earliest stage after the prophet, mythol-
ogy was again become one of the chief elements of the
religion..
Opposed to all the host of the Wise Spirit stands the host
of the Evil Spirit, who is at first the Lie-demon and then
becomes the Hostile or Harmful Spirit, Angra Mainyu,
Ahriman. In the first conception there are two abstractions,
the Best and Worst Thought, presented as spirits utterly
opposed and creating good and evil in the world under all
forms. Both are primeval. To Zoroaster this evil spirit is
always the Lie-demon, the evil thought as opposed to the
good thought or the wise spirit, Spenta Mainyu, who is
sometimes thought of as an attribute of Ormuzd and some-
times is Ormuzd himself. But Ahriman is never the equal
of Ormuzd. He is handicapped by possessing only "back-
ward knowledge"; he cannot foresee and hence cannot initi-
ate attacks on God. All he can do is to set up an opposed
power as often as Ormuzd invents a new means of attack.
Hence Ahriman is always too late, which shows that the
dualism is not one of equal powers but that one is fore-
doomed to defeat. In Zoroaster's own Gathas it is clear
that he expects the ultimate victory of the Wise Spirit, to
which he himself with every true believer would contribute.
Next to Ahriman the most striking figure on the side of
evil is Asmodeus, as he is called in the Book of Tobit, that
is Aeshma Daeva, named in the Yasna as a demon of wrath.
His name, from ish, “throw" or "strike," reminds one of
388
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
Diabolos, but he is not so much “the accuser” as the furi-
ous smiter, the especial foe of the Faith, the impersonation
of rapine and invasion, and the chief scourge of the faithful.
In Jewish lore he loved Sara and destroyed her seven hus-
bands. The Nasu, or corpse-demon, is also a popular evil
spirit. As already remarked, some ancient gods appear
here on the side of evil opposed to the archangels. Indra
and Nasatya (gods in the Mitanni inscription of 1400 B. C.)
represent to the Zoroastrian “Killing” and “Disobedience”
(Naonḥaithya, not a twin as in India). Agashi, the Evil
Eye, may belong to this daeva-group, of whom none is so
sinful as Aeshma, who is so inveterate a quarreller that, if
he cannot make trouble among his foes, he does not hesi-
tate to set at odds the members of his own community; as
Narada, the god-like seer of India, makes men quarrel if he
can and, when he cannot do this, rouses the gods to quarrel.
Abstractions such as envy, pride, old age, etc., in brief
whatever injures man physically or morally, whether dis-
eases or hurricane, drought, lust, or sloth, are demons born
of Ahriman's will and fighting for him. There are others
who are also not daevas but aiders of daevas, the Yatus,
In the land they mean them is
the Pairikas, a more modern creation, who are associated
with bandits and wolves. Pairikas are fair maidens super-
naturally endowed with evil, who work in the earth, the
plants, and the waters, bewitching the stars, so that they
give no rain. In the Yashts they appear as “worm-stars,"
combatted by Sirius, and they may have been originally
shooting-stars or meteors. One of them is Drought itself.
Later (Persian) mythology converted them into fair maid-
ens, sirens (English Peri). Among the beings opposed to
Ormuzd a conspicuous place is taken by the dragon, Azhi
Dahaka, whose home is in Bapel (Babylon), a Druj half
human, half beast, with three heads, who overcomes Yima
and rules a thousand years, possibly, as Darmesteter sup-
away by the fume of a dead fish (compare Paradise Lost, iv. 168).
RELIGION OF ZOROASTER AND ZOROASTRIANISM
389
posed, a reminiscence of Semitic control. This dragon
creates drought and disease. Planets, scorpions, snakes,
and frogs, and the mythical Ganderewa Upapa or evil spirit
in the water (Vedic Gandharva, also in water) are lesser
creations of Ahriman. Unbelievers, Kavis, Karpans, belong
to the general class of opponents of Ormuzd. Heretics are
always prominent, as if the religion of Zoroaster had never
been without its foes, as its practical teaching was in reality
never fully sustained. Thus in regard to the dakhma, tower
for exposing the dead, despite the strict injunctions against
burning and burying, the older (or usual) custom prevailed
in part and the erection of the dakhma was not universal.
The custom of exposing the dead was Median; Zoroaster
himself says nothing about it. It was probably a local
practice, such as is still found in India, America, etc.
The base of Zoroastrian morality is neither that of India
nor of the Semites. Every man is responsible for his own
deeds; every act of his is recorded; he alone is the architect
of his own future fate. The shibboleth of this belief is em-
bodied in the standing formula, “good thought, good word,
good deed”; “I practise good, and renounce evil.” But this
goodness does not rest with a negative avoidance of evil.
The practice of good includes justice, mercy, generosity, and
kindness in general. Practically it is shown especially in
business relations, for it emphasizes avoidance not only of
lying but of debts. What Herodotus (I, 133) says of the
Persians is true of all Zoroastrians: “They are not al-
lowed even to mention the things they are not allowed to do.
The greatest disgrace for them is to tell a lie; and next to
that to be in debt, and this for many other reasons, but espe-
cially because they think that one who is in debt must neces-
sarily tell lies.” Physical culture was extolled as good and
moderation in eating and in drinking intoxicants. Sexual
relations were in general on a footing appropriate to high
thinking and wicked women are cursed, sexual sin, seduc-
tion, etc., condemned. But it must be granted that, as asceti-
cism was tabooed, so there was no attempt to induce the
390
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
N
Zoroastrian to rise to a higher plane in relation to women.
Concubinage was allowed; polygamy was common; incest
was the rule. And it must be admitted also that it is not
religion alone which makes the Zoroastrian sober and mod-
erate. The race is sober and restrained, not given to ex-
cesses. How far the religion is from teaching ascetic prac-
tices may be seen from the statement that wealth and a
large family are signs of religious virtue (the poor man is
not so good as the rich man); the remark that “who sows
corn sows religion”; the injunction as a religious rule to
practise agriculture and slay vermin and raise dogs and
cattle. All this points to a practical morality, the aim of
which is to improve economic conditions as well as to fur-
ther religion. Compare Vendidad 4, 47–49: “He who has
children is far better than he who is childless; he who has
riches is far better than he who has none; and he who
fills himself with meat is filled with the good spirit more
than he who does not eat meat, for the latter is no better
than a dead man, and the former is better than he by the
worth of an ox, by the worth of a man," a statement in
striking contrast with the asceticism cultivated by the Mani-
chaeans.
This very practical religion teaches that to atone for sins
one may be purified by doing good, as well as by being
anointed with holy things or by being beaten. Thus, if one
has sinned, let him build a useful bridge or dig a canal and
so equalize the wrong with a good act, or go farther and
let the good outweigh the evil. It is necessary to know this
in order to comprehend the doctrine of that even state after
death which is neither heaven nor hell. In all cases, how-
ever, one must repent of the sin and confess it.1 Trivial
sins are many in number, such as going barefoot, combing
one's hair over the fire, etc., but this is due to the feeling of
1 It has been said that “The difference between Judaism and
Zoroastrianism is that though both have retribution after death,
Judaism insists on repentance.” The implication is erroneous.
Zoroaster insists on repentance.
RELIGION OF ZOROASTER AND ZOROASTRIANISM
391
great veneration for the earth and fire as divinities, and
what is trivial to us is of course not a norm in such cases.
The gravest sin in our eyes, on the other hand, is to the
Zoroastrian à law of conduct. This is legalized incest.
The marriage of the closest relations is not looked upon as
a sin but a duty, to keep pure the strain of blood. Yet this
again is not a religious but a racial matter, and it is need-
less to say that modern Parsis do not practise the custom
(common to Persia and Egypt).
The confession and prayer of repentance of the Zoro-
astrian religion show how fundamental are two points, faith
in Zoroaster and belief in the resurrection. The worship of
Mazda, the Wise Spirit, is bound up with the faith in the
prophet, and is now inconceivable without it. Thus the
confession says: “I am a worshipper of Ahura Mazda, a
member of the order of Zoroaster. This I confess, as a
praiser and confessor of the religion, and I praise aloud the
thought well thought, the word well said, the deed well done.
I praise the faith of Mazda, the holy belief which is the best
and most beautiful belief, the most beautiful of all religions
which exist and are yet to be, the faith of Ahura Mazda, the
faith of Zoroaster. Unto Ahura Mazda do I ascribe all
good and such shall be the worship of the Mazdayasnians
forever.”
The Patet Erani is a compendium of Zoroastrian belief:
“I doubt not the good faith, the faith in Mazda. I believe
in the good faith. I believe in the coming resurrection, in
the later body, in the passage of the Bridge of Judgment, in
a future recompense of good deeds, and in the punishment
hereafter of evil deeds; in the perpetual state of paradise
for the good and in the annihilation of hell, of the Evil One,
and of all the evil demons. I believe that Ormuzd will at
last be victorious and that Ahriman will perish, together with
| all the off-shoots of darkness. All that I ought to have
thought and have not thought, all that I ought to have said
and have not said, all that I ought to have done and have
not done, all that I ought to have commanded others to do
392
HIST
THE THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
and have not commanded, and all that I ought not to have
thought and yet have thought, all that I ought not to have
said and yet have said, all that I ought not to have done and
yet have done, all that I ought not to have commanded and
yet have commanded -- for every thought, word, and deed,
whether of the body or of the spirit, whether of earth or of
heaven, I pray for forgiveness and repent of every sin with
this Patet (repentance prayer).”
In the Chapter of Admonitions, the Zoroastrian is enjoined
! to let his light shine “in the name and love of the Lord."
How practical, not mystical, these admonitions are, appears
from the command: “Shine ever with the true light; in-
crease in wealth and in goodness; learn purity; be worthy
of praise; think good thoughts; speak good words; do good
deeds; be true to the Wise Spirit, obedient to the law, mod-
est, kind, not cruel, not wrathful, not shameful, not covet-
ous, not malicious, not envious, not haughty, not despiteful,
not lustful. Do not steal. Do not rob others of their wives.
Do good. Have no agreement with a wicked man. Combat
evil with righteousness; speak decently in assemblies of men
and modestly before kings; displease not thy mother; be
just; be pure; and may all the archangels send thee good
thought, speech, and deed, wisdom, sweetness, prosperity,
and fruitfulness.” The form is late, the thought is old; the
essence of Zoroaster's religion is in these words.
In accordance with the view of most races, the Aryans
all had the conviction that man existed after death. But
the Iranians added to this simple conception various modi-
fications, not entirely their own, since others also had the
same, but, as far as we can tell, self-invented and due wholly
to Iranian thought.
What we call soul is sub-divided into many different ele-
ments. It is recognized that after death the body passes
away, is burned or swept off by a flood, but nothing destroys
the man's soul. His spirit, Ahu, his thinking conscience,
Daena, his intelligence, Baoda, his soul, Urvan, and his
genius, Fravashi, abide. These are not all the elements of
RELIGION OF ZOROASTER AND ZOROASTRIANISM
393
the soul, since there are others like these or synonymous
with them, such as tavishi, power; but the point of special
importance is that all these parts of the soul are personal,
individual, separate from each other. They are in short
personified faculties, and it is not important whether they
include wisdom in one form or in two, as innate and ac-
quired, or take in or leave out thought, wish, word, and
other factors. In brief, the constituents are sometimes as
many as eleven; but of these the factors first mentioned
are the commonest and those without which no one can be
imagined by a Persian. The Fravashi, which is “ like a
well-winged bird," is the genius or the idea-soul that existed
originally in the mind of God, and it corresponds to the per-
sonality of the Egyptian Ka, except that it is not material;
but on the other hand it is like the ancestral, also winged,
spirit of the Hindu. There is no borrowing here from
Egypt, for in the Egyptian belief it is the Ba soul which has
wings and in Persia the idea of the Ba is represented
rather by the Urvan, that is the soul that wills. In Egypt
it is the Ab or heart which meets a man after death and
accuses him of wrong, but in the Zoroastrian faith the
Conscience, Daena, does this. The man dies, but his will
and conscience and guardian genius continue to exist. His
conscience meets him on the third day after death, in the
form of a fair maid or a foul hag, and as his conscience
accuses or acquits him, so he fares forth into the world of
spirits, accompanied by pleasant or unpleasant surroundings,
till the soul's deeds are weighed in the balance, and it is sent
to heaven or hell or purgatory. Such in brief is the out-
line of what the soul has to expect. The gods who act as
judges of the soul may be a later improvement on the bal-
ance-idea, and it is possible that still earlier the Bridge of
Separation itself acted as a sort of balance or at least acted
automatically. It would then be a parallel to the log over
which the American Indian has to cross to get to the
Happy Hunting Grounds. If an Indian has been brave
(virtuous, according to Redskin morality), the log lets him
394
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
a judge the sinner So
over, but otherwise he cannot pass over it but slips into
the foul swamp beneath, never to emerge. So possibly the
Cinvat Bridge turned down the sinner and let the good go
by, irrespective of a judge, being itself the automatic bal-
ance, while the later belief represented its narrowing to a
razor's edge as a result of the judgment. When the bridge
is first mentioned, there is nothing said of a judgment at
the bridge, perhaps the rainbow or Milky Way; it was but
a passage to heaven. The soul that was allowed to pass it
entered felicity and waited in heaven for the final judgment
with the coming of the saviour. The balance of later be-
lief is a pair of scales held in the hands. But the original
judgment was the one at the world's end; no sentence was
pronounced at first by Mithra and the other judges, nor were
the soul's deeds weighed, but Ormuzd alone judged it at the
last day.
The soul wills. On the choice of this willing soul, the
Urvan, depends the fate of the man. Animals also have
a measure of free-will. The author of the thirty-first
Yasna tries to determine why some animals are good and
some are evil. Ormuzd has not only determined the right
path for the cow, but also granted it some freedom of will
in following that path. Man, weak and wavering between
good and ill, is watched by the gods and finally brought to
account. Ormuzd is here the “father of the Good Mind,
the founder of Asha” (righteousness); he "opened the
way for the cow, whether to leave the husbandman or not,"
yet " chose for her the husbandman”; but for man Ormuzd
“ in the beginning formed his being and conscience and in-
telligence ... and gave him works and words, whereby he
might freely express his belief.”
The soul's journey after death is described in Yasht 22
and 24. Met by its own conscience the soul is heard and
judged by Mithra, Sraosha, and Rashnu, and then, if pure,
passes the bridge over hell and through the worlds of good
thought, word, and deed (stars, moon, and sun), and gets
at last to the sphere of eternal light, where dwells Ormuzd
RELIGION OF ZOROASTER AND ZOROASTRIANISM 395
in peace. Just opposite, as far below, the sinners who fall
from the bridge dwell in nethermost hell, where, though
crowded thickly together, each lost soul thinks he is alone.
Darkness, cold, and stenches characterize this “ home of the
Lie." But those who have done neither better nor worse
go to the spot called “equilibrium," Hamestakan, possibly
known, as a sort of mild purgatory, as early as the Gathas.
The suffering here is slight, being only the change from
cold to heat, inclement cold and burdensome heat following
one after the other. It is between the earth and the stars.
Still later, this purgatory has two compartments, one for
those who are a little better than bad, and one for those
i
inal idea, which simply provides for those who are not good
enough to go to heaven or bad enough for hell. The whole
theory, however, of Hamestakan may be derived from
Christian sources, as the description of it is given in texts
recognizing Jews and Christians.1
But hell is not eternal. When, born of the seed of Zo-
roaster, miraculously preserved, the saviour, Saoshyant,
Astvat-ereta, appears, at the end of time limited and the
beginning of time unlimited, he first raises the dead bones
that have been awaiting his coming and then each good
soul is reclothed with his old garment of flesh. Therefore
this is called the “ freshening” time, frashokarate (Yasna
62, 3), explained in the Vendidad (18, 51) as the day when
the word incarnate in man shall be given up by the angel
of the Earth at the day of the resurrection, and the Fra-
vashis shall cease to revolve in their sphere (Yasht 13, 58).
Saoshyar: is not the first prophet. The last Age, of 3,000
years, is that of Zoroaster and the two predecessors of
Saoshyant, Hushedar or Aushetar (Oshedar) and Hus-
hedar-mah or Aushetarmah (Oshadarmah). Each is born
and the anger
Oft andet. Innere
1 In Yasna 33, I, it is said: “Deeds most just will he do toward
the wicked, as toward the righteous, and toward him whose deeds
of deceit and righteous deeds combine (in equal measure)." Yet
the last part may be differently interpreted, so that this early refer-
ence to purgatory would fail.
396
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
of a pure maiden by immaculate conception 1 after she has
bathed in the sacred lake. For the Messianic idea, the most
important passage is the Bundahish 30, a work composed
long after the Christian era but supposed to revert to a lost
Avestan text. With the coming of this saviour comes the
end of the Kingdom of the Evil One, who is burned in
molten metal, which will overpour the whole world. But
to the good this will seem like warm milk, while it will de-
stroy the evil. Hell is thus purified and the world is then
renewed and made immortal. Friend will know friend
again and families recognize each other and rejoice for
ever in happiness. The purification will not be instanta-
neous but will last for fifty-seven years and there will be
fifteen men and fifteen maids who will help in the great
task. In some texts, the saviour is Zoroaster himself re-
born.
An earlier view of the future life may be represented in
the story of the Earthly Paradise. Hindu and Iranian
know Yama or Yima as the first man (Jemshid of Persian
legend), who is here fitted into the scheme of things as one
urged at first to take upon himself the task later assumed
by Zoroaster, but he is not spiritual enough, or is cajoled
by evil spirits, and feeds the faithful with beef, perhaps
to make mortals immortal. He is then commissioned to
build an enclosure, vara, where men may grow up secure
from the Evil One, who is already awake and eager to tempt
men to his side. The first conception is that of a past para-
dise on earth; it may be that it also implied a future para-
dise, which afterwards becomes incongruous with orthodox
eschatology. Yima received from Ormuzd the ring and
dagger of authority and ruled for three hundred winters;
he prayed earth to “increase a third” and again to increase
a third, during nine hundred years. Then there was a meet-
ing of the gods called by Ormuzd in Airyana Vaeja and a
1 The “glory” which fills the expected mother of the coming
saviour also fills the archangels who restore the world. This
"glory” plays a great rôle in Mithraism (see below).
RELIGION OF ZOROASTER AND ZOROASTRIANISM
397
meeting of mortals called by Yima. Then Ormuzd told
Yima that fatal winters and snow were coming; he should
build an enclosure and in it place the seeds of living things;
there sweet water will flow and birds sing, and food never
fail. And Yima brought there the seeds of the best, men,
cattle, and trees, two of each kind; and there was no im-
potent person there, nor poverty, nor meanness; he brought
in all a thousand and three hundred and six hundred seeds,
to the various squares and streets of the enclosure; and
stamped upon the earth and kneaded it with his hands and
sealed the enclosure and set a window in it (so much is
obviously of the past). And there a year is as a day and
there are lights created and uncreated. And once in forty
years are born a male and female to every couple; and
there men live the happiest life; and there is neither cold
nor heat nor death (this indicates a present paradise).
Later views made this paradise impossible; it was neces-
sary to get the blessed out, so they were given only a life
of one hundred and fifty years. The commentary, where
the text says that winters will come, has markush, rain,
which is an attempt to identify the legend with the Biblical
deluge story. Malkosh (Hebrew rain) thus introduced be-
comes a demon of storm and rain. This element and the
belief in a future deluge are found only in later texts. In
India, Yama's home is first a paradise in the sky and then
a home on earth where the wicked are punished; but even
in this later conception the palace of Yama himself is a
delightful place. Usener regards Yima as a future re-
newer of earth. Whether this legend and other Persian
views of a future life affected Christian ideas is matter of
dispute. Although the later view of the divisions of time
is not known even to the Vendidad, yet there was an early
belief in a spiritual creation, of which the late view is an
outgrowth. According to it, limited time is divided into
four periods of three thousand years each, during the first
of which Ormuzd strikes down Ahriman with the holy
word. In the second period Ormuzd makes the world, as-
398
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
sisted by the good spirits, and in the third, Ahriman, as a
serpent with his paramour Lust, afflicts creation with evil,
but at last he is driven back and heaven is walled in, while
the prototypes of men and animals die comforted in the
hope of the coming of Zoroaster.Yima is now born and
at last Zoroaster appears. The last period begins with
Zoroaster.
This fourth period continues till the judgment day at the
end of the twelve thousand years. This part of the theory
of cycles is known before the Sassanian period (c. third
century A.D.). Later belief also imagines a cosmic egg and
a three-fold heaven; it also makes Ormuzd "create the
world out of nothing” during six periods of a year each,
probably in imitation of Genesis. The seven zones as sub-
divisions of the earth thus created are of an older period
(compare the seven continents of the Hindus). The ques-
tion of time occupied philosophical thought in the later
period and caused two heresies to arise, one that of the
Zervanites and one that of the Gayomarts. The former
maintained that Ormuzd and Ahriman were antithetic forms
of Time or Fate as divine (God); the latter, that Ahriman
was born in a moment of weakness of Ormuzd. These
philosophical speculations, however, have nothing to do with
the religion of Zoroaster; they are late attempts to explain
the relation of temporal to absolute time. The Zervanite
position is interesting because of parallel explanations in
other philosophies and the Gayomart position because of
its uniqueness.
As we have seen, the second period of the religion, rep-
resented in the Yasna not attributable to Zoroaster, shows
already a recrudescence of nature worship, though the
1 These prototypes are called Gayomart and Goshurvan, against
whom the Evil One sets Death, the “bone-disperser." "Out of
these arise the future men and cattle, men in particular appearing
first in plant-form, whose two branches are brother and sister,
parents of twins from whom come seven pairs, as ancestors of
present human beings. Human monsters come froin another sprout
of Gayomart's seed.
RELIGION OF ZOROASTER AND ZOROASTRIANISM
399
adoration paid to natural objects, sun, stars, moon-plant,
etc., is carefully subordinated to that of the Lord. Yet it
is still a fresh vivid religion, without that substitution of
creed and cult for feeling and faith which marks the later
aspects of Zoroastrianism. But in the period now to be dis-
cussed, represented by the latest scriptures, formalism re-
places fervour. Such is apt to be the case in every religion,
and the higher the religion the more prone is it to suffer a
lowering of ideals. This is because its original greatness
is due to the intensity of the primitive faith; the more
intense this is, the harder is it to maintain. Decadence is
inevitable; it is only in the manner of decadence that dis-
tinctions occur. The first glow may pale out in indiffer-
ence and the religion merge with a faith at first alien to it;
or the later religion may exaggerate certain factors which
make for deterioration, such as the mystical or sensuous ele-
ment; or it may preserve its features and lose its soul.
In Zoroastrianism there arose an exaggeration of formal-
isin based on fear of the impure, the evil with which man
is ever in contact. The dread of this overpowered the
spirit of the old belief. The evil in the world is not now
so much the Lie as it is the unclean. The ideal of Truth
as righteousness becomes an ideal of purity. In the
establishment of a scheme of life for the avoidance of im-
purity there is little room for religion, but a great oppor-
tunity for religionism. Zoroaster was content to laud cows
and dogs as animals useful to the work of civilization, right
order; but the later Zoroastrian began to worry about other
animals. Where, for example, was he to place animals not
mentioned by Zoroaster? Scorpions and snakes, he ap-
pears to think, are clearly the work of the Evil One; but
how about the peacock, the hawk, and the domestic cock?
Can we be really religious unless we settle the status of these
creatures? The cock must be got into the scheme of things
or religion will go astray. This meticulous scrupulosity
begins to occupy the believer's mind; one point becomes as
important as another; physical and moral values are con-
400
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
fused; bodily purity is exalted as much as spiritual purity,
till the spirit of Zoroaster evaporates in the dry-rot of
ritualism. His fervid faith fades into formulas for the
preservation of corporal soundness. Of course the cock,
which hails the light of morn and is awakened by Faith, in
order that it in turn may awaken men to renew the fight
against evil, may be discussed and its status determined
with no great demoralization of the faith; but the discus-
sion is symptomatic. Still more so are the minute rules
regarding purity. In the first form of the religion, purity
was not very important. Ormuzd is not chiefly the pure
but the Wise and Holy (Bountiful) Spirit; the shibboleth
ashem vohu vahishtem means first “ Truth (or Right) is the
best good ”; later “Purity is the best good,” right being
truth or righteousness and this last becoming purity. In
the Persian form this is perfectly clear. The Lie, the old
original evil demon, is here the foe of order and the king
lives according to right: “Thus, says Darius the king,
Those countries which became rebellious, the Lie made them
rebellious, so that they deceived the people, but Ormuzd
delivered them into my hand. Thus says Darius the king,
Thou who shalt be king hereafter, be ever on thy guard
against the Lie. What I have done I have done by the
grace of Ormuzd ... Ormuzd and the other gods that
exist brought me aid because I was not hostile, nor a liar,
nor a wrong-doer, neither I nor my family, but according
to the right (righteousness) have I ruled.” The dualism
of the Gathas and of the Persian kings is that of truth
versus untruth (dushivara, deceit, or drauga, lie). The
right order, of the state as well as of heaven and the soul,
depends on truth. Zoroaster was an economist, the min-
ister of a king, and had in mind the orderliness of the state;
hence he lauds cattle and agriculture, as against nomadic
life. To speak the truth, plough the land, and tend cattle
are his highest virtues. The Vendidad on the other hand,
while it lauds all these, teaches that it is as sinful to remain
contaminated by touching something impure as it is vir-
i
1
RELIGION OF ZOROASTER AND ZOROASTRIANISM
401
tuous to speak the truth. All this may be due to the Magi;
it is, in any event, a priestly interpretation.
The later Zoroastrian of the Vendidad lived apparently
in constant fear of becoming impure; he lived also under
a scheme of life which regulated his whole existence. Pious
and perturbed, he was ever asking what he was to do in
case he came in contact with the smell of a corpse ten feet
away; and when he was answered, asked again what he
should do if he stood a hundred feet away. How many
blows, he asks, will remove the sin of a man who breaks
another's bones, for the first time, and again for the
second time? How many years must a inan remain in
hell if he breaks his contract concerning a sheep, how many
in case he breaks a contract concerning an ox? Is the man
himself or are his relatives, and if so how many, implicated
in this breaking of a contract ?1 And, with a new idea, to
how many generations are the sins of the father visited
upon his children? In how many places does holy Earth,
if contaminated, feel herself aggrieved and in which places
does she feel most aggrieved? When one has touched a
corpse, must one wash oneself fifteen or thirty times? The
Vendidad's letter is its spirit; it is expressed in one phrase:
“Next to life, purity is man's greatest good”; but the
purity here meant is that of purification effected by pun-
ishment enjoined by the Ratu or priest for violation of
rules. The passion, of Zoroaster is now converted into a
schedule of offences and expiations.
This fall from religion to law and ritual is embodied in
two prayers. The earlier is the prayer of Zoroaster:
“The will of the Lord is the law of righteousness.” The
later Zoroastrian substitutes for this prayer, the Honover,
the prayer: “ Teach me the rules (of purification) for this
world and the next." The natural concomitant of this
tendency is the stress laid on vain repetitions. Thus in the
Ormuzd Yasht it is said that if one pronounces the differ-
1 Here at least is one sensible question; typical of the mixture of
ritual and law.
402
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
:
ent names and titles of Ormuzd, one will be protected on all
sides from every form of evil.1
At this point it will be necessary to speak of the tradition
which connects Zoroaster with the organized priesthood of
the Magi, who, according to Herodotus (i. IoI), were a
war-like tribe of Medes, the names of whose early kings
may be corruptions of Zoroastrian conceptions (Phraortes
as Fravashi). We may well suppose that the degradation
of the religion into the petty scheme of penances in the
Vendidad reverts to a priesthood, not to the founder. The
Magi appear to have adopted Zoroastrianism and of course
Zoroaster is said to have been one of them. Possibly they
have affected the cult in some particulars and as priests of
the religion they may have been most instrumental in lower-
ing its tone. But all this is matter of speculation and recent
theories of the influence of the Magi in Zoroastrianism
based on the foreign character of these priests are not con-
vincing. The Magi were presumably Medes who assimi-
lated the more or less alien (Bactrian) Zoroastrian faith
and became its representatives and priests; yet alien not
so much in race as in spirit. As a matter of fact, the
Zoroastrians of a later day were as a body alienated in spirit
1 These titles are not strictly repetitions: Bestower of health,
holy, glorious, protector, creator, king-ruling-by-his-own-will, he-
who-does-not-deceive, he-who-is-not-deceived, weal, master of weal,
beneficent, energetic, great, wise, light, source of light, wisdom,
intellect, brilliant, majestic, best, most beautiful. Compare the
Mohammedan titles of God.
2 Professor Moulton in his Early Zoroastrianism, London, 1913,
argues that the Magi were non-Aryan Shamans, originally a slave
population (servant class?), against whom Zoroaster at first warred.
Being neither Aryan nor Semitic, they altered or rejected the
teaching which they did not understand. Exposure of the dead
also is due to this source in Professor Moulton's opinion, though
this is a Vedic (Aryan) custom. The Persians buried their dead, a
practice denounced in the Vendidad; but in the time of the Achae-
menides the later Zoroastrian view inay not have beeii prevalent,
or perhaps was not yet arisen. Other Magian practices too may
have been reassertions of old cistoms. Another suggestion made
by Professor Moulton is that a Gaotema mentioned in the Yashts
is Gautama Buddha, but no proof of such an extraordinary view
is given.
RELIGION OF ZOROASTER AND ZOROASTRIANISM
403
from the founder, just as many later Buddhists and Chris-
tians were no true disciples of their masters, not be-
cause they differed racially but because they differed men-
tally and spiritually. In sum, the Magi, so far as we know,
are an inherent part of the later religious body, who repre-
sented it to the ancient world, probably not without reason.
How old a constituent of that body they are, we know not.
They do not appear in the Gathas and, though their absence
there is not conclusive, in all probability Zoroaster had no
such priests. In the Yashts they are once mentioned, but
not in a passage above suspicion, and it may be that they
were not active till the fourth century B. C., about the time
the Vendidad was written.
Another legend of the Vendidad, from which comes the
story of Yima, is that of the temptation of Zoroaster. This
resembles the temptation-scenes in the life of Christ and
Buddha, with which, indeed, as explained below, it may be
historically connected.
The Evil One, Ahriman, first tries to kill the prophet
and then to make him give up his plan of destroying the
demons and Nasu. “Do not destroy my creatures, O holy
Zoroaster. Renounce the good law of the worshippers of
Mazda and thou shalt gain the lordship of the whole world."
But Zoroaster replies: “Never will I renounce the good
law, though my body, my life, and my soul should be dis-
banded." Then said again to him the Evil One: “By
whose word wilt thou strike and repel the demons; by
whose weapon will the good creatures repel my creatures?"
And Zoroaster answered: “The word of God shall be the
weapon; the word taught me by the Wise Spirit. By his
word will I strike, by his word will I repel the vile daevas.
Spenta Mainyu, the good spirit, gave it me; the archangels
gave it me; and by that word will I destroy the evil ones.”
And the prophet then uttered the prayer ever since repeated
by the saints of his religion: “ The will of the Lord is the
law of righteousness. The gifts of the Good Mind are for
him who works in this world for the Wise Spirit and wields,
according to the will of Ahura, the power given to him to
404
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
fied, casting the evil eye, the wicked daevas that do evil,
saying: “Let us gather together at the gate of hell (the
head of Arezura), for he, the holy Zoroaster, is born. How
can we slay him? For he is the stroke that fells the fiends."
The general scheme of church organization is simple in
Zoroastrianism. The adoration of Fire holds the first
LI
fice to thee, Fire, son of Ormuzd, and to all fires and all
waters and to all plants, for they are all made by God.”
The cult eventually became a worship of Fire as representa-
tive of all that is holy and pure. The ordinary sacrifice
was a libation of milk and hom and a meat-offering. The
priest was not an hereditary officer; he went from house to
house to offer sacrifice and also executed legal punishments.
The Ratu or Raspi was the guardian of the young, an as-
sistant to the chief priest, Zaotar. The priests had no po-
litical power before the Sassanian period, when a hierarchy
was established. Altogether it was a simple and devout
congregation, hampered less by priestly ambition than by
pious scrupulosity. The painful mysteries of Mithraism
seem, however, to have begun early, since in the Mihr Yasht
thirty stripes purge from sin; but fines might take the
place of strokes. Death, menstruation, and childbirth were
the greatest sources of impurity. At death the “ devil-
averting” dog must stand beside the dying. Purification,
washing of oneself and vessels, fasting, and penance were
means of ridding oneself of evil. Sacrifice was made to
stars and to Mithra. To Ursa maior, for example, because
this star-group kept off Pairikas; to Sirius, because it kept
off drought, and “is most beneficent when worshipped with
sacrifice and propitiated.” Ormuzd is represented as say-
ing of Sirius: “I have created that star as worthy of
sacrifice, as worthy of prayer, as worthy of propitiation as
myself” (Tir Yasht). The language used of Mithra is
of the same sort and prepares us for the later rise of Mith-
raism.
RELIGION OF ZOROASTER AND ZOROASTRIANISM
405
As compared with other religions, Zoroastrianism is more
ritualistic than Confucianism; more spiritual than Baby-
lonian religion; more practical and less speculative than
Hinduism. It is a sect, not a national religion, drawing its
adherents from all who are religiously minded. Its rise
was in great part due to conversion by conquest and it
throve only under political support.
The historical connexion between the Persian and Chris-
tian faiths is evident in one point, the heptarchy of angels,
and may be suspected in others. Raphael, the healer, pre-
sents prayers and heals earth when it is defiled, as Vohu-
mano receives the suppliants and hears prayers. Gabriel,
the man of God, mentioned in Daniel viii. 16; ix. 21 and
Luke i. 19, 26, and Michael, the “great prince" and guard
of Israel, Daniel x. 13 and xii. I, together with Uriel and
Azazel all belong to the post-exilic period and do not seem
to have been native Hebrew creations. The seventh chap-
ter of Ezra shows that the king of Persia was interested
in the service of the Hebrews and it is not a far cry to
Zoroastrianism when we see that the Hebrews were pro-
tected by a Zoroastrian monarch. The whole theory of
guardian angels, Matthew viii. 10, Acts xii. 15, may be re-
ferred to the same source. Yet on the other hand, with the
exception of Asmodeus, there is no linguistic parallel be-
tween the Hebrew and Persian spirits. Nevertheless, the
character of such angels as Gabriel and Michael seems
more of Persian than of Babylonian stamp. And when
we come to the eschatological side, the influence of Persia
seems predominant. We may say that the seven evil spir-
its of Matthew xii. 45 are as well referred to Babylon as to
Persia, and Revelations as a whole may reflect either source,
but when we turn to specific details, such as the lake of
fire and the thousand years of the reign of the evil Azhi
Dahaka, we are irresistibly compelled to draw the parallels
between the Christian and Persian rather than Babylonian
faith. Even though we grant that Babylonian effect upon
Zoroastrianism was greater and earlier than used to be be-
such aan of Bal side, the the se
406
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
lieved, yet it is not important from the Christian point of
view whether the influence came directly or indirectly from
Babylon, but whether we are to assume any influence at all.
In Matthew v. 25 and 28, the resurrection of the dead is an
event soon to come. The general doctrine was not confined
to Persia, but was known to Greece and Egypt, yet, as far
as Hebrew belief goes, it is not known in the earlier times;
while it is an essential belief of Zoroastrianism even in the
earlier times. The hope of immortality expressed in the
Psalms, xvi. 17; xlix. 63, is a trait not necessarily drawn
from Persia, but it is significant that there is no such hope
expressed till the Persian and Greek period. Under the
Sassanians, on the other hand, the influence of the Jewish
religion began to make itself felt in Zoroastrianism (com-
pare Darmesteter, une prière judeo-persane, Paris, 1891)
and it is possible that this happened earlier; just as it is
possible that Persian belief affected Babylon as well as
that Babylonian belief affected Persia. As early as the
seventh century before Christ and perhaps earlier the names
of Persian gods were borrowed by Assyrians.
The notion of a life after death is one found in many
religions and though it is possible that the idea of a resur-
rection may have been borrowed, it is not a necessary solu-
tion. At any rate the idea of the Jews was developed quite
independently, as it differs from that of the Zoroastrians.
Nor does'there seem to be any relation between the Bible
and the Avesta in the doctrine of retribution and the con-
ception of hell, which in the Jews' belief was a lake of
fire near Jerusalem, while in Zoroastrianism it was a place
cold and malodorous under the whole earth. The closest
resemblances to Christian belief are to be found in the Arda
Viraf, a late work in the vein of the Divina Comedia and
perhaps influencing Dante's description. In the earliest
1 On the relations between Babylon and Iran, compare ZDMG.
50, 43 (1896). In A112. Jour. of Theology, xxi. 58f. (1917), Professor
Carnoy seeks to prove that Varuna and Orinuzd derive from a
Babylonian prototype, but his argument is based on what seems to
the writer inconclusive parallelism (see above, p. 346).
s and of a live borront and p
RELIGION OF ZOROASTER AND ZOROASTRIANISM
407
Jewish belief there is no general resurrection, only of the
just or of some of the dead, whereas the Zoroastrians held
to a universal resurrection. Again, the Zoroastrian belief
implied a cosmic renewal of the world, which was not the
Jewish idea. The Messiah belief again is not part of earliest
Zoroastrianism, certainly not of the Gathic belief, in which
hell is only the "abode of the worst mind " and Vohumano
himself or itself is heaven (Gathas 30, 4, and 32, 15).
In the earliest texts the word saviour is applied to the
pious man who helps renovate the world; to the prince who
saves in the same way; and to others who, like the Amesha-
spentas, serve the good cause. It is only in post-Gathic
literature that the word designates a special saviour. But
by the time of the thirteenth and nineteenth Yasht the Mes-
sianic idea is well known, as in the Haptanghaiti the fire of
purification and final judgment are recognized. Yet no one
knows the date of these works, even approximately. They
have the character of later works, as compared with the
Gathas, and that is all we can say. So we have to rest with
this statement, that the significant elements of the later
eschatology are unknown in the Gathas, in which there is
no Messiah, no assembly of the dead at the last day, and no
reward and punishment in heaven and hell, only a cosmic
renewal of the world and the general notion of a resurrec-
tion. Whether there was a bodily resurrection recognized
before the time of Pahlavi theology is doubtful. Soeder-
blom thinks that in the Gathas there is nothing to prove or
disprove the idea. Nevertheless, we cannot ignore the fact
that Greek authorities of the fourth century B.C. (in all
probability, Theopompus ap. Plutarch) recognize the Ma-
gian belief in the cycles, in resurrection, and in purification,
when “ Hades" is overthrown and the more and more
spiritualized world shall become happy in universal felicity.
This corresponds to the later Avestan idea and seems to
point to the fact that even the later Avestan views are older
than our era, though a great deal of the detailed lore of the
resurrection derives from texts such as the Bundahish,
408
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
which in its present form is as late as the Mohammedan
conquest of Persia (651 A. D.), and the Bahman Yasht,
which is as late as the sixth or seventh century. From
these sources comes the completed Messianic doctrine, with
its account of the overthrow of Azhi Dahaka by Hushedar
(Hushedar's millennium begins with the decline of the Sas-
sanides) and the second millennium of Hushedarmah, which
is now in progress, culminating in the coming of the sa-
viour. This element in the new theology made vital
changes. These were the gradual lessening of the impor-
tance of the work of the pious worshipper and even of
Ahura Mazda himself in comparison with the work of
the dead by giving them the elixir of life, the flesh of the
sacred ox and the Hom juice. He toils for fifty-seven
years to raise them and they all rise, good and bad, to be
purified and to seem forty years of age if they died old,
or fifteen if young; but, according to another version, veg-
etarians are resurrected young and the eaters of flesh as
of middle life. Owing to this idea of universal purification
the old conception of a judgment by burning metal, though
retained, became superfluous. Ahriman is the only sinner
destroyed; even the Azhi Dahaka, who eats up Satan, is
purified at last (Bahman Yasht, 3, 57). The doctrine of
the Gathas, that piety increases righteousness, is also no
longer necessary.
Darmesteter's theory, already criticized, refers Zoroas-
trianism to Greek and Christian influences. The exaggera-
tion is here almost as, great as that of Mills, who thinks
that the Avesta is the source of all Jewish belief in regard
to Satan, the angels, and the last judgment. Philo is said
to have been the transmitter. The general and particular
are not sundered at all in Mills' review; many parallels are
utterly inept, such as the stress laid on seven, as if this
number had not been Jewish. Soederblom's work is much
more critical. He shows,. what is so constantly forgotten,
RELIGION OF ZOROASTER AND ZOROASTRIANISM
409
that the divergencies are quite as important as the agree-
ments and holds that, while there may be a general his-
torical connection between Jews and Iranians, there is no
such close dependence as is maintained by Mills. The fig-
ure of Satan and those of the archangels as princes of
earth and air are very probably of Iranian origin; while the
temptation may have been added to Zoroastrianism from
Christian sources, or, as a Christian story, drawn from Zo-
roastrianism or, a third possibility, each may have arisen
independently. There is still a fourth possibility, that both
western religions were indebted to Buddhism. Unsatisfac-
tory as is this non-solution, it is at present all that an un-
biassed historian can accept. The Jewish-Christian Judg-
ment is not that of Zoroastrianism and the general idea of a
life hereafter need not be derived at all, or it may have had
any one of many sources. The universal resurrection, the
Bridge, the three judges, form no part of the Jewish idea,
while the Christian "last trump" is not Zoroastrian. In
Edouard Meyer's view, that both Persians and Jews drew
the ideas common to both from Babylon, lacks a basis of
fact. Where in Babylon is found a Satan or a Wise Spirit
opposed to him, or an eschatology like that of the “bor-
rowers"?
Satan is not an early Jewish nor a Babylonian concep-
tion, but he is a perfect counterpart of Ahriman, who in
turn grows naturally out of Zoroaster's Lie. The seven
archangels are inevitable developments of Gathan thought;
Asmodeus is Aeshma daeva. Most of the differences in
belief are explicable as due to independent development
in detail. New Testament thought is a residuum of for-
eign and native ideas so long combined as to be at this pe-
riod purely Jewish; in the Apocalypse there might be a
reflection of Babylonian star-cult, as in the virgin-birth
mythology. But might is not must and in view of the great
410
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
uncertainty in regard to the date of later Avestan texts, it is
probable that we shall never know the exact relation between
Christian beliefs and Zoroastrian.
An eclectic mystical combination of Zoroastrianism, Baby-
lonian belief, and Gnostic Christianity arose in the third
century A. D. under the name of Manicheism; it was a
much needed reform. Mani's chief argument against Zo-
roastrianism was that it had become too formal. Not sac-
rifice but prayer and instruction were needed in religious
life. He would accordingly free the “light devoured by
matter." He appeared in 242 A. D. and was executed after
many years' work in the East. Three hundred years later,
in the sixth century, another sect, that of Mazdak, a disciple
of Mani, taught a socialistic community of goods, which
included even the common possession of wives; but other-
wise it was ascetic, the leader preaching the giving up of
meat and pleasure. The Mesopotamian Mandaeans (manda
is gnosis) also showed Persian Gnostic elements, such as
worshipping the attributes of God. Their scriptures,
though late, contain much older material. The modern
Guebers or Ghebers are the “ heretics” (Kafirs), as they
appeared to Mohammedans, that is a general term for Zo-
roastrian fire-worshippers. Under persecution, a remnant
of Zoroastrian believers settled in India and are still known
as Parsis (Persians). They retain the faith, the best prac-
tices, and the high moral tone of their ancestors.
But of all the out-growths from Zoroastrianism, that
which emanated from the cult of Mithra was the most im-
portant. It was not, however, a direct product of Zoroas-
trianism. It was rather an exaggeration of a cult which,
though maintained within the fold, was never really Zo-
roastrian. Mithra, not even mentioned in the Gathas, ap-
pears almost equivalent to Ormuzd as early as the tenth
1 Fragments of Manichaean works have recently been recovered.
The system was based on dualism and was in full force in western
Europe in the fourth century. Augustine was at first a Manichaean.
Mani regarded himself as a reincarnation of Christ and as God
incarnate.
RELIGION OF ZOROASTER AND ZOROASTRIANISM
411
Yasht. Mithra's cult is really that of the old Persian god
of light, popularly maintained and mystically interpreted.
Mithra as the kindly light of heaven, represented, as the
reviving sun, the beneficent creative power, and as the
“spirit of the middle sphere" he became also a mediatorial
god. The conception differs somewhat even in its earliest
form from that of the sun-god, who in the Vedas appears
carried by seven steeds, while Mithra is the light that
brings the day in a chariot drawn by four horses. Mithra
is the light celestial,' of day or of night. At night he
sees with his hundred eyes and hears with his hundred
ears, so that he becomes the god of truth and compacts.
But the sun as light of heaven is also Mithra, who gives
increase in progeny and cattle. As giver, too, he dispenses
peace, wisdom, and victory in battle, and in this capacity
his companion is Verethraghna, genius of victory. Above
all in giving victory he saves and then as saviour he saves
the soul from demons dragging it toward hell. In the Per-
sian religion he is combined (as Sun) with Anahita and
Ahura Mazda. When his cult spreads to the western world
he becomes Helios and Anahita becomes Artemis Taurop-
olis. The Tauroktonos Mithra slays the bull from whose
blood when sacrified spring wheat and the vine, originally
the Hon. He is represented as born of the Rock, i. e., the
sky; his birth is seen only by shepherds, who worship
him. At once he becomes the ally of the sun and slays the
bull from whom come all useful animals and plants, before
the birth of man. His devotee receives the blood of the
bull, in a symbolic rite taken from the Anahita cult, yet
not to revive physical life but to renew his soul. Mithra-
ism inherited from Zoroastrianism the general idea of the
soul's journey, but complicated it with a later theory of
ascents through seven spheres, each united with a planet.
Only the initiated could pass from one stage to another, as
they alone had the magic formula that served as password.
Mithraism also taught that when the evil of Ahriman has
destroyed the world, the dead will be raised again and, drink-
412
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
It lasted till the Apostatement in the third
ing of the blood of the divine bull, will receive immortal
life, while fire will devour the wicked, Ahriman and all.
Mithra, as mediator, emanated from God and, as demi-
urge, fashioned the world over which he watched. He was
identified with the Logos and his "glory” influenced the
deification of emperors. He gave the hope of a happy
resurrection, for he was the purifier and saviour of souls.
Beginning in Roman times to spread to the West, Mithraism
reached its highest development in the third century of our
era. Julian the Apostate favoured it as late as 331-363.
It lasted till the fifth century. The cult took a deep hold
upon paganism. It became a solar pantheism in which
Mithra represented all gods. His worshippers were for a
long time rivals of the Christians. As Cumont says: “ The
rites they practised offered numerous analogies. ... They
purified themselves by baptism; received by a species of
confirmation the power to combat the spirits of evil; and
expected from a Lord's Supper salvation of body and soul.”
In the Mithraic love-feast the Last Supper commemorates
the end of the god's labours for man (Mithra saved man
from drought, flood, and fire). Like the Christians, the
worshippers of Mithra were all “brothers "; they cele-
brated Dec. 25 as the “birth-day of the Sun," held Sunday
as a sacred day, and celebrated a sort of communion. Their
code was strictly ethical. They “regarded asceticism as
meritorious and counted among their principal virtues absti-
nence, continence, renunciation, and self-control.” Opposed
to Zoroastrian belief, they had celibates and a Summus
Pontifex (Tertullian). Their own order did not favour
female devotees, but they provided an outlet for feminine
devotion by allying themselves with the worshippers of the
Magna Mater (Cumont). They had about the same con-
ception of the destiny of man as had the Christians, admit-
ting the existence of a Heaven above, the honie of saints,
and a hell of demons under-ground. “They both placed
a flood near the beginning of history; they both assigned
as the source of their traditions a primitive revelation;
RELIGION OF ZOROASTER AND ZOROASTRIANISM
413
they both believed in the immortality of the soul, in a
last judgment, and in a resurrection of the dead, with a final
conflagration of the universe.” In the end the higher ideal
of Christianity won the day, but only after a momentous
strife. Mithraism had its ablest opponent in itself. Its
asceticism was cruel; it was pre-eminently a military cult;
its shibboleth was not gentleness but courage; it did not
honour women; it was weighted with a cumbersome theology
and liturgy, which failed to attract the western world.
Above all, in contrast with Christianity, it was unable to
appeal to history and was inferior in spirituality.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
James Darmesteter, Avestan Texts in Sacred Books of the East,
iv and xxiii; also Mills, ibid. xxxi. French translation by
Darmesteter, Paris, 1892..
E. W. West, Pahlavi Texts (1880) in Sacred Books of the East,
. xviii, xxiv, xxxvii, xlvii.
A. V. W. Jackson, Zoroaster, The Prophet of Ancient Iran,
New York, 1899. The best general work on the subject.
Volumes in the Grundriss der iranischen Philologie, by Geldner
on the old literature, West on Pahlavi, Jackson on Religion.
J. H. Moulton, Early Zoroastrianism, London, 1913.
N. Soederblom, La vie future d'après le Mazdéisme, Paris, 1901;
Les Fravashis, Paris, 1899.
Franz Cumont, Textes et Monuments figurés relatifs aux mys-
tères de Mithra, Bruxelles, 1899; The Mysteries of Mithra,
translated by T. J. McCormack, Chicago, 1903.
Carl Clemen, Primitive Christianity and Its Non-Jewish
Sources, Edinburgh, 1912.
A. J. Carnoy, Iranian Mythology, Boston, 1917.
1 Zoroastrian influence through the medium of Mithraism is still
felt in the Freemason-heritage from the Rosicrucians of the Middle
Ages, who preserved relics of the Mithra-cult. Compare Cumont,
Textes et Monuments and Mysteries of Mithra, cited below. The
above is an abstract of the chief points in this authoritative work.
CHAPTER TWENTY
THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL
WHAT is known in regard to the “ Children of Israel” (i.e.,
Jacob) before the time of David (circa 1000 B. C.) is pious
tradition rather than history. The religion of this period
was at first presumably that of nomads, until the tribes that
invaded Palestine entered a new economic environment,
which had already affected the religion of their Semitic
predecessors and now influenced Israel. The centralizing
tendencies of court life, beginning with the establishment
of the kingdom founded by Saul and David, modified the
form of religion still further. Political disaster then
brought material humility but spiritual elevation. After
life had become adjusted to its new conditions, religion be-
came crystallized in the Law, wherein, however, survived
much of the past.
Incidental to the internal development of this religion was
the effect produced by foreign culture, that of the Eastern
Semites, the Persians, the Greeks. From the first came
perhaps some legendary material and a new appreciation of
legal form. From Persia, certain mythological and escha-
tological beliefs. From Greece, new cultural and philo-
sophical ideas. Egyptian influence, except possibly in leg- .
endary material, is not patent, though such influence had al-
ready existed in Palestine prior to the Israelite invasion.
The Nomadic Stage: This is reflected in tradition, in-
ferable from survivals, and is in accordance with analogy.
rious daimonia, formless powers of evil or good, sometimes
located but generally vague as to nature and habitat. Sac-
rificial cult of some sort reverts to this period, for prophetic
414
THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL
415
denunciation of sacrifice is not enough to prove its absence
in the remote past. Probably the tribal god was worshipped
with a communion-service of blood; possibly several tribes
had for centuries one god. By analogy we may suppose
that the priest of the god was a magician, perhaps carrying
a magician's rod in serpent-shape; but this would not imply
(as E. Meyer has supposed) that the god was a serpent.?
The god of the Israelites, both of the southern and north-
Semitic groups, more especially to the Midianites. He was
the god of this people, and came from Horeb, the country
of the Midianites. Possibly the later cult was affected by
that of the moon-god Sin of Haran and Sinai; but this
depends in part on whether the Sabbath was a later moon-
festival. It may have been an old Semitic inheritance, a
day of pacification.2
Moses appears to have reunited the tribes after their so-
journ in Egypt (or Goshen). He may have reintroduced
them at that time to the god they had once known. The
exaltation of a tribal god from a spirit is in line with Semitic
tendencies (compare Chemosh of the Moabites, Melek of
the Amorites, and more remotely Ashur and Bel). Such
a god assumes all needed functions for the protection of his
worshippers,
A pronounced ethical trait is observable in Yahweh wor-
ship from the beginning, nor is this alien to the general
Semitic character. As we have seen, it appears at an early
date among the eastern Semites; it may have inhered in
other Semitic gods, later debased by agricultural environ-
1 For the curative power of the serpent, compare Num. xxi. 6f.
and the symbol of Aesculapius.
2 See above, p. 362. Professor Barton, Studies in the History of
Religions, New York, 1912, p. 203, thinks that Yahweh's primary
office was that of love and fertility. But it is more probable that he
was at first a general tribal god, who then acquired from successive
environments sundry attributes, becoming war-god, storin-god, and
fertility-god in turn, like Indra in India.
3 On a possible connexion with Haran and supposed Aramaean
influence on the Israelites, see Barton, op. cit., p. 200.
416
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
ment. For, as long as a tribe is a fighting nomadic entity,
its god reflects the simpler morality of its habitat; but a
change to agriculture introduces dependence on weather
rather than on war. The consequent cult of seasons, sun,
and moon, leads to the sympathetic magic of productivity,
and this in turn introduces new rites affecting morals and
religion. Thus the old Babylonian god was a clan-Power
rather than a natural phenomenon and the old Assyrian god
was, like Yahweh, a tribal war-god, while the early Phoeni-
cian and Syrian deities were also tribal (later city) gods
as Powers or presiding spirits of tribes. The difference
between Yahweh and Beelzebub is that the former, no
longer phenomenal, retains his tribal existence as a Power
akin to the tribe, while the latter is merely the sun as king
of flies or a power of nature under one aspect. The latter
is as unmoral as nature; the former as moral as the best of
the tribe.
The people probably worshipped other gods besides Yah-
weh; the Calf of Samaria and Golden Calf 1 were effigies
of agricultural powers rivalling Yahweh ať a later stage,
the serpent was kept till late in the eighth century B. C., long
after the people were civilized, just as the household gods
called Teraphim had been preserved as such till David's day
(Gen. xxxi. 30; I Sam. xix. 13). Their spiritual leaders
endeavoured vainly to make the Hebrews worship Yahweh
alone; but even they had no conception of monotheism, only
of monolatry.
Various nomadic traits have been assigned to the pre-
historic Israelites on the ground that Arabs today show such
traits; but many of these may as well belong to the second
or general Semitic origin.
2 The serpent in later times was preserved as adjunct of Yahweh
rather than as a separate god, till a finer religious sense prohibited
even this manifestation. Its destruction c. 720 B. C. by Hezekiah is
recorded in 2 Kg. xviii. 4 (“he called it Nehushtan”). A brazen
serpent of this sort has been found at Gezer.
THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL
417
stage, of agriculture. Belief in ghosts, as in other spirits,
was probably early. These are willing occasionally to help
men with oracular advice. But on the whole ghosts seek
blood and wander by night. The Passover, rites of mourn-
ing, ashes, and hiding, may show a desire to escape the no-
tice of unfriendly powers. There is no proof of primitive
Semitic totemism. Tatooing in honour of a god was prac-
tised in special cases (Ex. xiii. 9; Is. xliv. 5). Taboo is
shown in the distinction between clean and unclean animals.
The herem, or vow of destruction, tabooed everything; hence
the sin of preserving anything in Jericho (Joshua vii).
Some think that the notion of unclean animals was brought
from Egypt with the rite of circumcision. This rite was
probably part of a tribal initiation-ceremony, afterwards
performed at an earlier time of life; but it was not a Semitic
heritage, as it is unknown to the eastern Semites and to the
Philistines.
The worship of stones, trees, wells, and serpents may
have been agricultural or nomadic. So too of such traits
as fasting (Neh. ix. I); absence of the lex talionis (Gen. iv.
23); the practice of the Rechabites (Jer. XXXV.); the use
of bitter water as an oracle; the scape-goat, etc. These are
primitive, but whether nomadic or not is uncertain. The
ark may well have been a survival of nomadic life. It
served as an oracle and was taboo to the touch (1 Sam. iv-
vii.). It is said to have contained (meteoric?) stones. The
ark of Shiloh may have beeen the home of the Lord of
Shechem, Baal-Berith, afterwards identified with Yahweh,
1 Food for the dead is recognized in Deut. xxvi. 14 (not implying
worship).
2 Compare Ex. iv. 24f. ; Josh. v. 2f.
3 Such traits especially are referred to "the nomadic stage "
without sufficient cause. On the sanctity of the stone and tree,
terebinth, hyssop, cedar, etc., and survivals of wand-oracles (Gen.
xxx. 37; xxxv. 2f.; Joshua xxiv, 26; Judg. ix. 6; Ps. li. 7), see the
old but still excellent work of Carl Boetticher, Der Baumcultus der
Hellenen, p. 518 (1856).
4 Marti, Religion of the Old Testament, New York, 1907, ch. xi, is'
too ready to dub as nomadic traits possibly later,
418
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
Such an ark houses a second presence of a god whose
home may be afar, a necessary precaution for those fighting
away from home, and one taken, for example, by the Mex-
icans.
All in all, we know little of the nomadic religion of Israel,
though most of the religious traits mentioned belong to
this or to the succeeding stage, after Moses had brought
the Hebrews to Kadesh, south of Palestine. It seenis his-
torically reasonable to believe that Moses, like Mohammed,
united various tribes and made real an ideal not wholly
unknown before, in that he gave Israel its jealous protect-
ing national divinity. Improbable is the theory that David
as ruler imposed Yahweh on Israel after he had consoli-
dated the Israelites by conquest.
The question as to the historicity of Moses (not of his
authorship) raises the same question in regard to the Pa-
triarchs and other legendary figures of the nomadic past.
Their religious value remains the same whether they ever
existed or not, since to the later Israelites they were his-
torical characters and to us they embody, in any event,
important historical matter involving religious data, not to
speak of their value from ethical and literary points of view.
The purely speculative "interpretation” of the Parriarchs
as tribal heroes, local gods, or even as natural phenomena
(this last, however, never deserved consideration), ignores
traditional values and, apart from that, remains guess-work,
We may imagine Abraham to have been a parallel to the
heroes of culture-myths found in other religions or a local
god; yet the Patriarch, who is said to have come to Pales-
tine via Haran, may have existed, though it is historically
likely that he was an idealized hero. But we must at least
avoid statements too positive and incapable of verification.
Thus it is only partly true when Loisy declares that the
Patriarchs never existed, that Moses, Deborah, Gideon, and
1 Compare Loisy, The Religion of Israel, New York, 1910, D. 31.
2 For example, Cain as (Cainite) Kenite, the tribe of wanderers.
Compare Gen. iv. 14-16 (the land of Nod).
THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL
419
Samuel are largely legendary, that Adam, Noah, and the
traditions of Paradise, the Deluge, and Babel are myths ;
and that it was the Prophets who inspired the law and not
the law that inspired the Prophets. In this interpretation
the Mosaic revelation is a theological romance.
Myth, legend, and history are relative terms. The songs
of Lamech and of Deborah are perhaps the oldest frag-
ments in the Bible and the existence of these people, like
that of Gideon and Samuel, may be accepted as a fact.
Moses appears to be as historical as Buddha, who, too, has
been “interpreted” out of existence; his personality, how-
ever glorified, was real; it made history because based on
history. However legendary, such characters ought never
to be thrown together with the purely imaginary figures of
world-beginnings, which are probably a common heritage of
the Semites. The Deluge-story, as already shown (see p.
350f.) is found in Babylonian tradition and the figure of
Adam also may have a counterpart in that of Adapa (p. 352).
Compare also the Babylonian tale of which Professor Bar-
ton has recently (1917) given an account. Stories of
primeval monsters are probably heritage rather than loan.
Finally, that the Prophets inspired the law, depends on the
definition of law. When we speak of Jewish law, we must
first explain whether we mean the legal code or law in
general. There is no doubt whatever that the Prophets
knew a holy law, probably even many of the minute di-
rections afterwards codified in the Priestly Code. A code
is based on law not law on a code. An Israelite code of
some sort existed by the ninth century B.C. We may safely
assume that even in their nomadic state the Israelites had
laws; and from what we know of primitive people these
laws were probably in part due to oracular enunciation of
divine commands. On the other hand, they did not as
nomads have the code known as the Priestly Code (of the
Pentateuch), for this arose under agricultural, not nomadic,
conditions. Very likely the earliest law was that implied by
Ex. xxxiv, before it was affected by agricultural customs :
7) given heritage 1, depends we must
nsters are ets inspired the lawish law, we must
420
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
to have but one god and no images, to observe the Sabbath
and Passover, not to use leaven, perhaps to sacrifice, or
redeem, the first-born (this was a Canaanite custom).
The leaven was taboo because it implied corruption.
The Israelites made sundry tribes belonging to different
groups. The group of “Rachel-tribes” is supposed to
have entered Palestine from the east about 1200 B. C., after
a sojourn in Egypt. Three other groups of tribes invaded
the country, of whom the most important were the “ Leah-
tribes” who (including Judah), may have preceded the
Rachel-tribes by a century or two.2
The Israelites who invaded Canaan mingled with the
earlier population and gradually overcame them, though in
the process they became assimilated to the Canaanites.
Under David the Judaean tribes appear to have become
united into a body politic, the kingdom of David, which
eventually conquered the earlier kingdom of Israel in the
north (Samaria). The second stage of religion begins with
the entry of the Israelite into the fertile land of Palestine,
whose inhabitants had a more advanced civilization ? than
that of Israel and a religion based on agricultural life.3
1 The received view is that Samaria and Judaea were occupied by
tribes driven out of the desert, supposedly by such a famine as
previously, at intervals of half a millennium, had led to the emigra-
tion of other Semites, later known as Babylonians, Phoenicians,
Canaanites, etc. This is not history but speculation. The aboriginal
Semites may have been Africans, who spread into Syria and Arabia;
but the iminediate ancestors of Babylonians and Hebrews may as
well derive from the northern hills as from the southern desert.
The exodus of the Leah and Rachel tribes are ascribed to the time
of the XVIII and XIX Egyptian dynasties, respectively.
2 Solomon had to send to Tyre for Hiram the worker in metal.
The Hebrews had no smith in Samuel's day (1 Sam. xiii. 19; 1 Kg.
vii). Compare Judg. i. 19; iv. 13, on the use of iron by the Canaan-
ites in the thirteenth century.
3 The earlier inhabitants of Palestine were Amorites, who had
displaced a non-Semitic race, C. 2500 B. C., and remained in possession
till Hebraic times, though contending with the (Cretan) Philistines
and Canaanites, who entered the land about 1800 B. C. Palestine
belonged to Egypt in the fifteenth and thirteenth centuries B. C.
The Aramaeans (about 1300 B. C.) are spoken of as Palestinians.
THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL
421
This religion of Canaan was practically one with the
religion of the Phoenicians, that is to say, a religion already
exposed to the influence of Babylon and Egypt in addition
to the native Semitic cult, which, like the neighbouring
Semitic cults, differed from that of the Israelites in sev-
eral particulars. The chief divinity was Astarte, as mother
of life; scarcely less popular were Bel and Hadad; Egyp-
tian and Babylonian gods were worshipped. The Mother
of Life, as giver of produce was most honoured. Chief of
victims were the first-born and these included children,
whose bones have been found at many shrines and founda-
tions. Groves and hills were favourite holy places. Ash-
eras,1 tree-stumps, and Massebas, stone pillars, anointed
with oil, typified female and male divinity; originally they
were themselves divinities, but later they were placed about
the shrine of local gods. The land has passed from poly-
demonism and worship of stocks and stones to polytheism,
but retained the old, more or less understood, with the new.
Blood sacrifice was here an offering not a communion-
service. Earth and hewn rock altars (later forbidden, Ex.
xx. 25f.) were raised to many gods, but chiefly to the
mother goddess of fertility. The open rites in her honour
were naturally based on her functions, so that here, as else-
where, the more developed moral sense of man was higher
than the religious practice. Conscious excess, not naïve
nature-worship, marked the practice of the cult. The god-
dess called the “great one " was the chief Phoenician deity
by 1400 B. C. and this was probably the case in Canaan, as
in Syria "the goddess” was chief. With her was that
Adados, who appears as Adonis in Greece and Attis in
Between 1225 and 1215 B. C. Merneptah, the Pharaoh, exults that
“ Israel is desolated.”
1 Compare the Asher tribe, named from its god, like the tribe
Gad, named from the god Gad.
2 Religious conservatism retained rites ordinarily offensive to
decency, as in Greece and Rome. There is a difference between
naïve practice and religious sophisticated practice. The former is
not indecent (immoral) at all; the latter is decent only as it is
religious.
.
422
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
Asia Minor, usually regarded as personifying spring's brief
glory slain by the boar (at Byblos), representing summer
heat. Sometimes this god is identified with Rimmon (Zech.
xii. II). At Ascalon close to Canaan the goddess appeared
with a fish-body (Derketo), still as the deity of productivity
generally called Astarte, Astoreth, or Atargatis, originally
a form of Ishtar, whose love for Tammuz is referred to by
Ezekiel (viii. 14). Antioch and Lebanon, as well as Byblos
and Cyprus, were seats of the orgiastic cult of these fer-
tility demons raised to divinities, whose priests and priest-
esses mutilated themselves in honour of the goddess and
whose festivals were adopted by the Israelites till the eth-
ical vigour of their nation suppressed this religious abuse.
The symbols of the male power were many, bull, ram, boar,
eagle, as those of the female power were diversified as cow,
dove, fish, etc. The relation between man and this divine
power was sometimes that of filial devotion. Pious kings
and priests call themselves sons, brothers, and beloved of
Baal; but usually ordinary men are “ dogs ” (slaves) of the
Lord. This shows at least a sense of human dependence
on the divinity. But it must not be supposed that all the
western Semites were voluptuaries. There were strong
gods (Molechs) who had to do with laws as well as fer-
tility. The Moon-cult is here austere. The gods of Tyre
and Sidon were stern, exacting human sacrifice. Yahweh
was of this sort, a god of vengeance and fury (Is. lxiii.
3-6). The Lord of Phoenicia is a solar fire-god, Sharraph
(compare Seraph), with six wings (cf. Is. vi. 2).
Besides these chief figures were worshipped also “Chal-
dean” gods, sun, moon, stars, and gods of wind, of dance,
of mercy, and of fortune (Gad), known to Phoenician and
Canaanite alike. Towns such as Tyre, Sidon, and Tarsus
had each its city-god, as before the time of cities each tribe
had its tribal god. So in Judaea every city had its god.
Sometimes there is a reversion to the primitive demonism
which ignores sex. Thus in Cyprus an androgynous god
was worshipped. But usually the demon had become either
THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL
423
V71
a god or a goddess. Very rarely such a god is known, as
at Byblos, simply as El, that is a Mighty One, who had no
shrine, no priest, and no service.
Israel could not live in such an environment without
modifying its own religion. In Samaria, Baal-worship was
formally countenanced by Ahab, son of Omri, as a political
measure. The god Chemosh was recognized under Solo-
mon in Judaea. Compare Judg. viii. 33: “As soon as
Gideon was dead they went after Baalim and made Baal
Berith their god”; 1 Kg. xvi. 31f.: “Ahab reared an altar
for Baal in Samaria and made a grove”; 1 Kg. xi. 7:
" Solomon built a high place for Chemosh of Moab on the
hill before Jerusalem and for Molech"; and ib. 5: “Solo-
mon went after Astoreth of Sidon and after Milcom (Mo-
lech) of the Ammonites.” 2 Hezekiah suppressed the coun-
try-shrines in favour of the Temple (2 Kg. xviii.) ; but
Hezekiah's son Manasseh (seventh century) worshipped a
host of gods of sky and earth.
Thus for centuries the worship of Baalim held side by
side with that of Yahweh and was as popular with Israelite
as with Canaanite. Moreover, as the peoples merged into
one body, so the religions merged. Yahweh became god
not only of the Israelites but of the Canaanites, whose older
gods he ousted from their shrines, as at Bethel and Shechen.
Conversely, Canaanite cultus became directed toward Yah-
weh, who thus became an agricultural deity, and so entered
into competition with the native gods. In the north there
was a formal tournament of gods, to see which was the
better. The priests of Baal danced and cut themselves after
their manner but in vain, while the fire of Yahweh fell,
1 Though the various goddesses (and gods) of Ishtar character
(Astaste, etc.) are not the same divinity, they represent under vari-
ous forms and names the same idea to the various tribes, that of
the life-principle, a sex-cult retained till Mohammedan days and
surviving in the Mihrab and horse-shoe arch.
2 Chemosh is regarded as a real god (of the Moabites) in Judg.
xi. 24. His worship was later abolished by Josiah, who also put
down the cult of sun, moon, planets, and other hosts of heaven (2
Kg. xxiii; compare Jer. viii. 2).
424
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
icatio Thishe porte
after Elijah had repaired his broken altar. Then the
spectators of the tournament decided that Yahweh was God
(1 Kg. xviii.). Another contest took place betweeen the
divine ark and Dagon of the Philistines, a fish-god counter-
part of Derketo (above; cf. Judg. xvi. 23; 1 Sam. 5). The
cart carrying the ark “came into the field of Joshua the
Bel-Shamite," an indication that the worship of the sun,
Shamash, was popular. This polytheism was not easily
stamped out. It was really the popular religion of Israel
until after the Exile. One cannot read the accounts of
“Israel's adultery” throughout the Old Testament without
being impressed with the fact that Yahweh's strict wor-
shippers were only a small group in a great host of idola-
trous Israelites, who even admitted foreign gods into Yah-
weh's very tabernacle and were always ready to worship
Baal. So say even the Jews: “Excepting David, Heze-
kiah, and Josiah, all the kings of Judah forsook the Law of
the Most High” (Ecclesiasticus xlix. 4).
The establishment of a kingdom, first of Israel and then
of Judah, gave to religion the centralization of the court.
Any head of a family or the head of the tribe might orig-
inally make a sacrifice. But now priests 3 under the king
became official sacrificers at a city temple (instead of a
“high place”), which tended to become the only place of sac-
rifice. God himself was treated as a king (as a king was
1 Similar place-names in Palestine reveal the worship of Phoeni-
cian gods. The horses of Shamash are not recognized till 2 Kg.
xxiii. II, due to Assyrian influence.
2 After Saul had been made first king of Israel (1 Sam. viii-x. 24
and 2 Sam. v), David, in the next generation (c. 1000 B. C.), became
king of Judah and Israel, his capital being old Jebus, a Canaanite
town, regarded in the Bible as old Salem (Gen. xiv. 18). Here, at
Jerusalem, Solomon, imitating his neighbours, built the temple David
piously feared to erect (1 Chron. xxii, xxviii. 3). Solomon died
937 B.C. Under his son Rehoboam ten tribes revolted from Judah.
Then the city was taken by Shishak, king of Egypt, plundered by
the Philistines (c. 845 B. C.), and like Israel (842 B. C.) invaded and
overthrown by the Assyrians (Sargon and Sennacherib, 722 and
701 B. C.).
8 With the Babylonian bârti (diviners) compare the Hebrew
barîm, priests as seers, later inspectors of meat.
THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL
425
TY
almost divine, 2 Sam. xiv. 17). Yahweh had his palatial
home, became exclusive, was served by a certain class or
family (of Zadok). Yahweh, who had been especially the
war-god of the tribe, now had his agricultural festivals,
services, and tribute. The early Book of the Covenant (Ex.
xix-xxiii.) shows already wholly agricultural conditions.
The old new-moon feast and those of first fruits, vintage,
harvest (Feast of Weeks), were simply transferred from
the Canaanite Bamoth to the altar of Baal Yahweh; former
victims of the Baalim became those of Yahweh. The fes-
tival as a “ dance” still retained its force as “ dancing be-
fore the Lord” (Judg. xxi. 19f.; 2 Sam. vi. 16). The new-
moon feast may have been more feast than religious cere-
mony (1 Sam. xx. 5), but the feast of unleavened bread
and that of Pentecost (the fiftieth day after the Passover)
were harvest festivals.
Thrice a year, at the festivals of First Fruits, of Weeks
(Harvest), and of the Tabernacle (Vintage), all male
Israelites came before the Lord with their tribute of fruits
as gifts. The sacrifice was now one of tribute, as to a king.
The cultus became the chief religious factor and differen-
tiated this stage of religion most forcibly from the earlier
stage. The Canaanite Asheras and Massebas and even the
foreign Hierodouloi (also -ai) contaminated the Yahweh
cult. Yet Yahweh himself, as lord of all the land, became
more revered than any local Baal. The sub-divided Yah-
weh, indicated by a Yahweh-nissi at Kadesh or a Lord God
of Sabaoth at Shiloh, never really divided the conception.
Yahweh still remained one God and withal, despite Canaan-
ite influence, one moral God, whose worshippers must not
only sacrifice to him but follow his moral law. A loftier
conception of God was introduced by the gradual sup-
1 God of armies, a “man of war” (1 Sam. xvii. 45; Ex. xv. 3);
cf. Lord God of Sabaoth, that is of the armed hosts. Hence the
Prophets say (Amos v. 25; Jer. vii. 22) that Yahweh did not care
for (agricultural) sacrifices. As war-lord, Yahweh was commem-
orated in the old Book of the Wars of the Lord. Compare the war-
cry, Judg. vii. 18, “the sword of the Lord."
426
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
pression of the local shrines and though Yahweh was still
god of storm, of rain, of dance, etc., he was so not as a
phenomenal or departmental god but as the only God, mani-
festing himself in all phenomena. It is true that the old
tales, judged by modern standards, do not represent either
the worshipper or his God as morally perfect. Pharaoh is
shocked by Abraham's immorality (Gen. xii. Iof.). Yah-
weh himself is deceitful, not to say capricious and cruel.
There is a lying spirit of God (1 Kg. xxii. 21f.); God
deceives cruelly when he persuades men to sacrifice their
first-born (Ezek. XX. 25f.).1 Yet Jeremiah doubts if God
ever commanded the horrors perpetrated in his name. Jer-
emiah was right. Such service does not correspond to
the ideal of Yahweh as a God of mercy. Despite practices
adopted from the Canaanites and old tales, the God of
Israel tended ever to become morally supreme over the
nature-gods of Canaan. In this he reflects the state-con-
ception of morality as obedience. Yahweh thus delights less
in sacrifice than in obedience (1 Sam. xv. 22). This note
becomes the theme of the Prophets, the moral successors of
the Patriarchs, who also lived on speaking terms with God.
But before their religion is discussed, the literature known
to them must be examined.
The early Prophets do not appeal to the Pentateuch; they
probably did not know it. But it is probable that they knew
as authoritative moral lessons the early tales of Genesis.
The Pentateuch (later referred to Moses) is generally be-
lieved to be a compilation, the product of various writers
1 The Tophet-sacrifice was made to Yahweh Molech. Moabite,
Phoenician, and Israelite all offer to their gods sacrifice of children
(the foundation-sacrifice, I Kg. xvi. 34; cf. 2 Kg. iii. 27). Compare
2 Kg. xxi-xxiii; Josh. xv. 8; Jer. vii. 31; xix. 2f. The “ Tophet in
the valley of the son of Hinnom," south of Jerusalem was where
the Canaanites and then the Jews burned their sons and daughters,
though they burned their sons also on the high-places. Manasseh
still permitted this, but Josiah abolished the practice late in the
seventh century. Compare Ex. xxii. 29. Hinnom as Ge Hinnom
became Gehenna, the mouth of hell, typical of fiery punishment
hereafter.
THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL
427
during several centuries, who, however, made use of much
older legal and legendary material. The early writers of
the ninth and eighth centuries known as the Yahwist and
Elohist appear to represent traditions of the tribes of Judah
and of Israel, respectively. At a much later date (fifth
century) priestly writers are supposed to have combined
these earlier writings with their own contributions to what
is now the Pentateuch, after the Deuteronomic code had
been established. The Pentateuch as a whole would thus
be a work composed after the Exile. The difference between
the early Yahwist and Elohist is partly geographical and
tribal, partly a difference of style and method. The Judean
Yahwist assumes that Yahweh was the name of God from
the beginning, while the Israelite Elohist assumes that the
name Yahweh was first revealed to Moses. The northern
tribes probably adopted the name Yahweh at the time of
the covenant which was consummated at the sacrifice men-
tioned in Ex. xxiv. I-II. There is from this point of view
no historical contradiction between Elohist and Yahwist.
Each speaks for his own people in accordance with his na-
tive tradition."
The distribution of parts, according to the current view,
roughly outlined, implies that only fragments of the Elo-
hist's writings are utilized by the later compilers till Gen. xx.
(the story of Sarah); then, belonging to the Elohist, would
come the stories of Ishmael, of Abraham's covenant, of the
sacrifice of Isaac and his blessing, of Jacob's dream and his
service and children (the twelve Patriarchs), of the meeting
with Esau, and in part the story of Joseph. The (also
Elohistic) priestly writers three hundred years later (c. 450
B. C.) wrote the lofty first chapter of Genesis and much
of the genealogical and legal matter of the Pentateuch, one
story of the Deluge (the rain-bow covenant, Gen. vi. 9f.;
1 Compare Ex. iii. 1-14; vi. 3; Gen. xxxv. Iof.; but also the
Yahwist's statement, Gen. iv. 26. The Patriarchs (it is said in
Joshua) worshipped “other gods” and did not know the name
Yahweh.
7
428
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
ix. II), the covenant by circumcision, etc. The Yahwist's
account (thus divided) is much more naïve and picturesque
than that of the Elohist. To him would belong the stories
of the temptation and fall (Gen. ii. 5f.), of Cain, of the
“sons of God," of Isaac and Rebeka, the alternate Deluge-
story (Gen. vi. 7; vii. If.)," the story of Babel, of the rape
of Sarah, of the destruction of Sodom, of Esau's loss of
birth-right, and parts of the story of Jacob and Joseph.
In this (Yahwist) material there is implicit an antecedent
polytheism (Gen. xi. 7), showing that the author used still
older matter. He himself is inclined to a more anthropo-
morphic conception of God than are the later priestly writ-
ers. Even the earlier Prophets are, as regards monotheism,
less advanced than the later Prophets, Ezekiel and the Sec-
ond Isaiah. Yahweh is the Creator only in these later
writers. As late as the Priestly Code, the Creator is Yah-
weh rather than Yahweh the Creator.
1 Of the two Deluge stories that of the Yahwist is older; it is
more like the Babylonian story. The priestly writers make the
flood last a year; the Yahwist, only two months. For parallels to
the story, see Usener, Die Sintfutsag 012., Bonn, 1899. The Hindu
and (late) Greek stories may have been influenced by the Semitic,
though there are deluge-stories in many parts of the world. The
Biblical account may have been based on old material known in
Palestine before Judah entered it. This is more probable than
that it was taken direct from Babylon in the eighth century or first
written after the exile.
2 This trait as a belief in a plurality of deities, or forms of deity,
was preserved in Jewish Kabbalism. The Hebrews spoke of God's
“angel," of his Face, or Word, as an hypostasis of God, but other
Semites made such hypostases into separate gods. So in Palmyra
Mal-'ak-Bel, “angel of Bel," is a god.
3 That is (the Babylonian) Is. xl-Ivi (circa 550 B. C.). Some
assume a later Third Isaiah, Is. lvi-lxvi (circa 450 B. C.) of Jerusa-
lem, while the Priestly Code was forming in Babylon. Parts of Is.
xlii, xlix, 1, lii are of doubtful origin.
4 It should be noticed, however, that the results of the Higher
criticism, which, as above, divides the Old Testament stories into
various sections, are not universally, though generally, accepted.
Professor Edouard Naville contends that the earliest Biblical texts
were written in Babylonian cupeiform and the later books in Ara-
maic. Characteristic words and phrases separating the sections
would thus be due not to the author (Moses, who wrote the Penta-
teuch), but to the later translators. This would, for example, re-
THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL
429
The Elohistic Commandments of Ex. XX. reflect the
sterner ethical traits of the northern kingdom as compared
with the ritualistic agricultural environment of Ex. xxxiv.
In the later decalogue no ritualism remains; Yahweh de-
mands only ethical purity. This may be accepted as the
first fruits of northern prophetic reaction against the de-
based southern cult. It recognizes as the supreme spir-
itual power a moral God. At the same time it is not yet
monotheistic 1 and the moral law is external. Thou shalt
not swear falsely (take God's name in vain), nor commit
overt sins, murder, theft, adultery, casting the evil eye
(covet; compare Ecclesiasticus xxxi. (xxxiv.] 13: “God
hateth the evil eye; evil is the envious eye"). But even in
the later form there is no commandment of pure thought,
gentleness, lovingkindness. This inner morality comes later
to expression.
Religion of the Prophets: In the magnificent prose epic
which has come down to us under the name of Samuel we
are told that the prophet was originally called a seer. The
two functions are united in Samuel himself, who gives an
oracle and expounds the superiority of obedience over sac-
rifice. By enunciating the will of God, which was discov-
ered by lots or dreams or prophets, the oracle became a
law-giver. As sickness was a dispensation of spiritual pow-
ers, the prophet also had to do with medicine. To a certain
extent he had jurisdiction over litigation. But above all
else he was a seer, who without intervention of mechanical
means, lots, ordeals, etc., proclaimed the future as he pro-
claimed God's will.? This he did as inspired; he spoke in
store the unity of the Joseph story, and in general overthrow the
divisions made by the Higher Criticism. The hypothesis has its
weak side philologically, but merits attention.
1 Jeremiah, about 600 3. C., first declared that other gods were
non-existent figments of the imagination. The first commandment
implies the existence of gods in whom the Hebrews should not put
their trust (monolatry not monotheism).
2 Samuel was not a rabi (prophet) but a soothsayer. Previously
prophets were soothsayers (1 Sam. ix. 9). The soothsayer merely
revealed material matters and spoke by dreams or lots, at any rate
by "rule of thumb," not by inspiration.
430
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
and dance like
and in a somew
Eventua:1> pron
ecstasy. Prophetic bands with music and dance like mys-
tics roamed the land in a somewhat orgiastic manner.1
Eventua:ly prophetic fanaticism led to such symbolic per-
formances as those of Isaiah and Jeremiah, one of whom
went naked and the other wore a yoke, to show the fate
of Jerusalem and the necessity of submitting to foreign
rule, respectively. The prophets were always rather ex-
citable visionaries who sometimes had to be restrained by
the police. They were of political importance from the
beginning. They countenanced the secession after Solo-
mon's death. In Israel, Elijah quarrelled with King Ahab
because the king, as ally of Tyre and to defend himself
against Damascus, had married a Phoenician princess and
permitted the erection of an altar to Baal Melkart, though
Yahweh was retained as the national god. Jehu was set
upon the throne through a military plot supported by Elisha
and aided by the Rechabite Jonadab (" Jehu destroyed Baal
out of Israel," 2 Kg. x.).
Isaiah's assertion that Jerusalem could not be destroyed
(xxxi.) had a lasting effect on Jewish politics. Prophetic
activity had much to do with breaking up the local shrines,
as “sin of Dan," " sin of Samaria," etc. In the end this
concentrated the worship of Yahweh at Jerusalem and con-
solidated the union of church and state, which led to the
conception of a national instead of a tribal god. This in
turn was the first step toward the conception of a world-
god, who for his own ends could even permit Israel to be
conquered in order that righteousness might prevail at the
loss of Israel's prestige.
Politically the Prophets prevented the growth of Israel.
1 Loisy goes too far when he says that "Saul also among the
prophets" was due to the noise made by Saul (op. cit., ch. iii).
The text says that he joined the corybantic troop and prophesied
with them (1 Sam. X. Iof.).
2 Elijah goes clad in skins and affects the desert as his home;
he reverts to the nomadic Yahweh, avoids Jerusalem, and seeks
Yahweh at Horeb (1 Kg. xix), a strong contrast to the courtier
and politician Elisha. Elijah's worth lies in his insistence on ethics
versus ritual.
THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL
431
In an age when an alliance was necessarily religious as well
as political, they hampered every attempt to enlarge the
kingdom. Elijah objects as much to the Judaean agricul-
tural Yahweh as to Melkart. No confederation was pos-
sible with the neighbours who might have united with Israel
to defy Assyria so long as the implacable Prophets would
have no dealings even with their own kin, still less with
foreigners, who were idolatrous. They accepted political
defeat as a due punishment. They did not make the mag-
nificent resolution to sacrifice the state to God, nor did they
see that their own counsel had been instrumental in making
a martyr of Israel. But it is probable that if they had
foreseen they would not have swerved from their path. To v
them righteousness was the supreme issue. The moral and
spiritual gain was immense. What remained from their
former condition was still the inspiration, the call to speak
in God's name, and their speech was always the same from
that of Elijah and the shepherd Amos to Malachi: “Re-
nounce the sin of the Baalim; Yahweh demands righteous-
ness more than sacrifice; for your sin you suffer.” To this
the later prophet added the hope that the suffering would
suffice, that Israel would again be great and blessed. The
keynote of the earliest Prophets is voiced in Elijah's protest
against the cult; morality not ritual is Yahweh's demand.
To the forerunners of the Prophets is due the conception
of a national God. To the Prophets the world owes the
first conception of a purely ethical monotheism. For, feel-
ing their way, they passed from lower to higher imaginings,
until they raised Yahweh to the position of God. It was
indeed a new and startling thought that, as a moral Lord,
Yahweh might forsake his own people and become the God
of all nations, in the interest of the world's ethical advance.
Amos the moralist in the middle of the eighth century pro-
claims that Yahweh is not necessarily bound to Israel (ix.
7). This Prophet was the first to strike the note of mono-
theism, though the idea was not formulated till much later.
Nor was it thought at first that Yahweh's activity embraced
432
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
all nations (an idea first expressed in Jeremiah and the
Second Isaiah). The monotheistic ideal did not arise as
the result of a "narrow exclusiveness," but was implicit in
the inspired call and grew stronger with each succeeding
prophet.
The religion of the Prophets is national-ethical; it prac-.
tically substitutes morality for cult: “I despise your
feasts, I do not want your sacrificial gifts. I will not hear
your songs and harps” (Amos v. 21f.). “I desire mercy
not sacrifice” (Hosea vi. 6); "I have no delight in sacri-
fice ... I cannot endure the feasts of the new and full
-íñoon” (Is. i. Iof). Yet Isaiah recognized the necessity of
formal worship, only he would have a purified cult. Inci-
dentally, the Prophets' religion, particularly Isaiah's utter-
ances, had the effect of converting the previous idea of God
as national warrior-king or a Baal-Yahweh into that of the
mysterious Holy One whose tabernacle (temple) was now
the centre of holiness in a city of God (Jerusalem, the holy,
hence indestructible; cf. Is. xxxi. 5; 2 Kg. xix.).
- The Prophets broadened religion in two ways. Espe-
cially Jeremiah made of Yahweh more than a national god
and at the same time made religion an individual matter;
setting the individual against the state. Yahweh supports
the righteous man. The individual, of whatever nation, if
righteous, is saved by Yahweh, whose mercy is extended to
all nations. The political outlook doubtless suggested this
attitude. The material world-power of Assyria is reflected
in the spiritual world; Yahweh rules Assyria as well as
Canaan. God uses other nations at first as a means of
punishing Israel, but then with enlarged vision it is seen
that Yahweh is god of these nations as of Canaan. Amos
(c. 750) foresees a national disaster; he is a despairing
prophet of woe. Fifteen years later Hosea, thie“ prophet
of love," dares to hope that after this severe affliction at
the hand of the Assyrian God will show mercy to a puri-
fied Israel. This is the first vague premonition of a coming
1 Compare Jer. xvii. 10 and Deutero-Is. xlii. 1-6; xlix. 6; lii. 1o.
THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL
433
1
kingdom of God. Isaiah, the prophet of hopeful belief,
who saw Israel overthrown and dispersed by Sargon of
Assyria and Sennacherib, believes that a “remnant will
return,” ruled by a blameless king governing all people.
To him Israelites are not quâ Israelites the people of God.
Jeremiah definitely separated patriotism and religion. He
and Ezekiel (died circa 572 B. C.), the one in Judaea the
other in Babylon, taught the futility not of hope but of
political expectations. Israel must remain, yet not as a state,
but as a congregation of the Lord.
A distinction has been made above between the sooth-
sayer and the prophet, but it must be pointed out also that
the prophetic vision varies in different periods. The mys-
ticism of the “howling Dervish ” type of dancing, babbling,
noisy soothsayer is first replaced by the inspiration of Amos
and other “writing prophets," who feel the call or the hand
of Yahweh or see a vision, and speak in his name, often
in his very words. The first class is shamanistic; its rep-
resentatives are supernatural, quâ ecstatic, beings, magicians.
The second class is a band of sober but inspired writers,
pretending to no powers save the word they speak for God.
The later Prophets, beginning with Daniel, make a third
class. They have dreams and in trances see the future
after a period of fasting. This still later became a mere
literary form). They also speak under angelic dictation
and at times hide behind the names of older Prophets.
Jeremiah, the greatest of the Prophets if measured by
breadth and depth, bridges the gap between prophetic and
legal religion. His prophetic utterances began only a few
years before the discovery of the Deuteronomic code. This
code, based on the Book of the Covenant, contained in Ex.
xx-xxiii. was dramatically “ found” and established as
1 Compare the vision of Isaiah (vi), but not in consequence of
a trance, rather as Paul saw his vision. Ezekiel is even forced to
speak against his will, as if hypnotized. Hosea has no vision at all.
2 Modern interpreters of prophetic phenomena either stress the
ecstatic side of prophetic phenomena, or insist that the great proph-
ets were merely rational and ethical teachers.
434
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
the law of God under Josiah (621 B.C. compare the story
in 2 Kg. xxii-xxiii.). It was a valiant attempt to modern-
ize antiquated law. Thus it prohibited absolutely the for-
mer “high places" and local shrines, permitted by the
Book of the Covenant. No shrines save that at Jerusalem
were now recognized. Later, Ezekiel made their priests serv-
ants of the Temple. Also some older features of the law.
were humanely modified and the cultus was purified, but
by this code it was now legally established. As Isaiah had
seen, a religion could not live by righteousness alone; some
cult must give it, as the soul, the body necessary for its
earthly existence. This ceremonial side was over-empha-
sized by the later post-exilic law, embodied in Exodus, Le-
viticus, and Numbers. The Law of Holiness (Lev. xvii-
xxvi.), which was formulated about 500 B. C., probably at
Babylon, thus became part of the necessary religion. This
trend ended by making religion itself a question of legal
technique rather than of inner worth.
Jeremiah, who did not belong to the Jerusalem priest-
hood, says that the law was made in vain. He demands
change of heart not of form. In truth the legal ceremonies
which annulled the inwardness of religion soon became a
weariness (Malachi i. 13), while they certainly deadened
the spirit, though later Jews could still feel this spirit and
1 From the death of Josiah at Megiddo in 608 B.C. to the estab-
lishment of the priestly code political circumstances made a potent
factor in religious development. Jerusalem lay at the inercy of
Egypt till Nebuchadrezzar in 604 B. C. carried off many of the in-
habitants of the Holy City, finally burning the Temple (597-586).
The Exile lasted till 536, when Cyrus permitted some forty thou-
sand Jews to return, who rebuilt the Temple twenty years later.
Under Neheniiah (C. 444) the city walls were restored. It was not
till after this Exile that the Pentateuch was compiled (c. 400 B. C.),
while the final form of Chronicles and of the prophetic writings may
not be older than the third century. The Hagiographa, or other
sacred writings besides the Law, Histories, and the Prophets, are
post-exilic, in part even of the Greek period (e. g. Zechariah, c. 250
B. C.; Ruth and Daniel, circa 164 B. C.). To the second century B. C.
belongs a mass of apocalyptic writing, attributed to Enoch, Baruch,
Daniel, Solomon, etc. The Song of Solomon and Ecclesiastes were
not accepted as part of the canon till the second century A. D.
THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL
435
voice it magnificently, as in the Psalms. Yet in general the
Priestly Code led to the legalism of the Talmud. The code
was ratified by a formal covenant which was never abro-
gated. Nobles and priests as well as Nehemiah were sig-
natories. It was a state document which might well have
suppressed all further religious development. It is, in fact,
often said that future centuries added to religion a philo-
sophic theology and a mass of legal interpretation, but that
the upward course of the religion stopped in the fifth cen-
tury B. c.1 It is true that from this time onward theology
rested on the assumption that Yahweh had gradually re-
vealed both himself (as Elohim, El Shaddai, and Yahweh)
and his will, till Moses received the final exposition, and
that Israel had been assigned by Yahweh a permanent priv-
ileged position. All change in faith or form now became
taboo. Prophets became pretentious and were no longer
tolerated; they gave place to the Scribes, who from the
fifth century became transmitters of the law. For the mass
of returned Jews, these scholars preserved a purified reli-
gion which without them had probably been submerged
among the still active local cults. Yet the Scribes and
Rabbis did more than preserve. The Talmud (300 B. C. to
500 A. D.) shows a constant growth in practical religion, a
broader outlook, a more modern conception of the relation
between religious and social life. It is really in the suc-
ceeding centuries after the Exile that Judaism leads to the
ideals associated, perhaps too exclusively, with the daughter-
religion of Christ, which it must not be forgotten began as
a form of Judaism.
The Temple at Jerusalem, where alone sacrifice was of-
fered, was served by a horde of priests (20,000 in later
1 For the formal covenant, see Neh. x. 29. Ezra, who brought
the Priestly colle from Babylon C. 458 B. C., is recognized as the
founder of Jewish theology, as Nehemiah (thirteen years later) was
the founder of the church. Their reform was the logical continua-
tion of the work of Jeremiah and Ezekiel a century and a half
earlier. A similar covenant was made when Josiah promulgated
the law.
436
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
days), hereditary officers, supposed to be descendants of
Aaron. These in turn were served by the Levites, those
given to Aaron, divided into twenty-four classes, who
were merely servants of the priests. The Levites might
not officiate at the altar nor enter the inner sanctuary, but
acted as slaughterers of victims, door-keepers, and perform-
ers of other menial offices. They are supposed to have been
originally the Jewish priests of the converted local shrines,
who, when the shrines were discontinued, came to Jerusalem,
where they were at first authorized to continue their serv-
ices (Deut. xviii. 6-8). But, being unacceptable to the
city priests (2 Kg. xxiii. 9), they became mere servants of
the Temple (Ezek. xliv. II). After Solomon, the Zado-
kites (1 Kg. ii. 27–35; Ezek. xliv. 15) became the only real
priests, whose name may be preserved as Sadducees. Under
the High Priest (Zech. iii. 8) were soldiers of the Tein-
priests as a class had the income of the Temple, represented
by cash, first fruits, a share of sacrifices and bread. Only
the burnt offerings were entirely consumed and even of
these the priests took the skins. Meal-offerings, sin-offer-
ings, guilt-offerings became fees paid to the priest and his
underling the Levite. This resulted in an enormous in-
come, since, besides other services, vast multitudes flocked
to Jerusalem to celebrate the three great festivals, Passover,
Pentecost, and Feast of the Tabernacles. The priests were
in fact the plutocracy as well as the aristocracy of Jerusa-
lem. They formed a sort of caste and had all a Brahman's
scorn for common Jews. They had nothing to do but per-
form services and adorn themselves. Religious instruction
was no part of their duty.
The customary offering was the burnt-offering, to express
devotion. The Sin- and Guilt-offerings became flesh for
the priests to eat, only the fat being consiimed. The Peace-
offering, for temporal blessings or to express gratitude,
1 According to Num. iii. 6 and xviii. 6 they were appointed by
Moses.
THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL
437
was also a source of income to the priests, as in this case,
too, only the fat was burned. Besides these three kinds of
sacrifices were the unbloody sacrifices, of little account;
they were added to the burnt bloody sacrifices. The daily
burnt offering was a public sacrifice of an unblemished
lamb, offered at daybreak and in the afternoon. On high
festival days and especially on the Day of Atonement there
was an elaborate ritual. Psalms iii-xli. were composed
after the Exile for the liturgy; also instrumental music made
part of the daily service (2 Chron. xxix. 28). Solomon's
temple had. wooden and metal figures (Cherubim, 1 Kg. vi-
vii.) made by Hiram of Tyre; but figures were discontinued
from the time of Josiah. The later Temple was a great
structure of cedar and marble, faced with gold plate. It
had an outer court and a holy place, part of which made
the Holy of Holies, an empty room entered by the High
Priest once yearly on the Day of Atonement.This Tem-
ple was destroyed with the city under Titus, 70 A. D. Other
temples existed outside of Palestine, but only that at Jeru-
salem was recognized by the nation at large. Toward this
Temple, the shrine of their God and of their hopes, the
faithful Jews abroad turned in prayer, as did at first the
Mohammedans.
The new Jewish religion, as it may be called in antithesis
to the pre-exilic Hebraic religion, of the early law and
Prophets, was centred round the Temple as rebuilt in 516
B. C. By concentrating the cult it suppressed definitively
all remnants of clan and family worship, as it substituted
a formal and limited priesthood for the quondam local min-
isters. So long as any rock might serve as an altar, any
father of a family might make sacrifice anywhere. Re-
strictions at first had to do chiefly with the manner of sac-
rificing. One must not seethe the kid in its mother's milk;
one must not let blood flow from the sacrifice to the ground
1 The Day of Atonement (Lev. xvi.) was a late addition to the
cult, though retaining the scape-goat. It was instituted to cleanse
people and temple of all defilement. For details of the Temple,
compare Josephus, Wars of the Jews, v. 5, 5.
438
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
the abbare the
wzbje sajled
• (as it would go to the ghost rather than to Yahweh), etc.
Now, however, all sacrifice was prohibited apart from the
Temple, where Yahweh was (Hab. ii. 20). The peasant
who dwelt afar had to sell his victim at home and with
the proceeds buy another sacrificed at Jerusalem. The
movable feast adopted from the Canaanite became Yahweh
celebrations on fixed dates at Jerusalem. Harvest cele-
brated the “Exodus," the Feast of Weeks celebrated the
“ giving of the law on Sinai.” 1 Thus the Jews converted
nature-feasts into national praise of Yahweh.
After the Exile, fasting, the rite of circumcision, and the
observance of the Sabbath attained a prominence unknown
before. In exile they were the badge of faith; thereafter
they remained a proof of devotion and a means of salva-
tion. Isaiah (third?) even says that eunuchs and strangers
are blessed for keeping the Sabbath (lvi. 1-8). Ezekiel,
who may have been the first to substitute a weekly Sabbath
for the full-moon day, lays especial stress on this formal-
ity.?
More important were the changes of belief. From the
time when the Jews came into close contact with Babylon
and Persia new spiritual powers became prominent. Every
nation was now thought to have its guardian angel. Sun-
dry spirits as ministers had originally served God, some
of whom were giants or Benê Elohim, “sons of God”
(compare the strange old tradition in Gen. vi.). One of
these sons (Job i. 6) had the office of accusing men of sins.
As such he became an adversary (Zech. iii. I) and tempted
men to sin (1 Chron. xxi. 1), thus appearing as God's
1 For the dates of the Passover, Mazzóth (beginning of harvest),
Pentecost (the Feast of Weeks), and of the Tabernacle, see Deut.
xvi; Lev. xxiii; Num. xxviiif. These were already the Great
Festivals of the Jews. After the fall of the Temple, the three great
festivals, which began as nature-festivals and were retained as
pilgrim-feasts, were continued as seasonal celebrations in spring,
summer, and autumn, but designated as feasts of Freedom, Law, and
Joy, a generalized interpretation.
2 Ezek. XX. 12; xxiii. 38 and xlvi. I; compare Jer. xvii. 27. The
Priestly Code of course derived the Sabbath and circumcision from
creation and Abraham.
THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL
439
enemy, in which rôle he became the post-exilic Satan and
was identified with the ancient foes of God, such as Chaos,
Rahab and the Dragon (Is. li. 9). In the older belief, God
himself creates evil (Is. xlv. 7). The idea of a world-
power of evil is Persian. Its logical implication in the Sem-
itic myth of creation finds full and forcible expression in
the post-exilic apocalypses of the second century B. C.
Ezekiel especially tells of many spirits, some of whom
may be Babylonian gods. God is surrounded with a court
of angels and spirits, in part his “sons,” in part half-human
forms of old nature-powers. Thus the spirits of cloud and
lightning appear as winged Cherubim, whose office is to
carry the Lord or otherwise to act as guardians.” Instead
of God or a divine hypostasis of God's angel or face, real
angels, intermediaries, now speak for God to men (Daniel
and Zechariah). Raphael, Michael, patron of the Jews,
and Gabriel, warrior and revealer, are of doubtful origin;
Asmodeus is clearly Persian. There are also evil angels
who inspire false statements or bring disaster (diseases);
but they do so at God's command (I Kg. xxii.; Ps. lxxviii.
49). All these beings reflect the later feeling that God
is remote in Heaven. He no longer talks on earth with men
but deals with them through ministers, as a great king deals
with his people.
After the Exile also the state became a theocracy. All
power was in the hands of the priests. The High Priest
was virtually a ruler, as the Maccabean ruler (of priestly
1 The Cherub is thought by some scholars to have been the
Hittite griffin. But he seems to be only the anthropomorphized
form of storm-cloud and lightning. In Heaven and in the Temple
Yahweh is upheld by a Cherub or Cherubim-car (Ps. xviii. of.; civ.
3-4). Cf. Gen. iii. 27. The Cherub is later differentiated from the
Seraph: “The Cherub knows inore; the Seraph loves more."
2 The seven archangels described in Enoch (xx) are: Raphael
as lord of spirits of men, Michael (as above), Gabriel as lord of
Paradise, serpents, and Cherubim, Uriel “over the world and Tar-
tarus," Raquel who “takes vengeance on the luminaries" (i. e.
planetary spirits), Saraqâel who is “over spirits that sin spiritually,"
and Remici, “over those who rise." Azazel (ib. x) sinned through
teaching men the use of arms and other mysteries of heaven.
440
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
family) actually became quâ ruler the High Priest. There
was, however, no attempt to imitate the royal freedom of
Solomon. Monogamy became Jewish law.
Intercourse with the Greeks began in the fourth century
B. C. From 320 to 198 B. C. Palestine was under Egyptian
rule, thereafter under that of Syria, till Rome became her
master (63 B. C.). Meantime Jewish colonies had spread
westward as well as eastward and Alexandria had become
the centre of the dispersed, who built temples elsewhere,
though remaining tributary to the Temple. Hebrew was
retained as a holy language, but it was popularly ousted by
Aramaic; Greek became a second biblical language. Greek
writings like the Wisdom of Solomon enriched Jewish liter-
ature; the Torah was translated into Greek in the third
century. The Septuagint (seventy scholars translated it?)
became the book of the dispersed Jews (c. 250 B. C.), till its
adoption by Christians caused Jews to repudiate it.
This Hellenistic Judaism lost none of its native com-
placency. It claimed all the world's wisdom as originally
- its own. The Jews said the Greeks had learned all they
knew from Moses. A mass of apocryphal literature sup-
ported the unblushing propaganda and did much to make
the Jews disliked abroad, where their exclusiveness also
made them unpopular.1" In mediaeval Europe the legend
of philosophy being derived from Moses still sanctioned
the philosophic interpretation of religion after orthodox
Christianity closed the Greek schools in 529 A. D.
• Greece gave her philosophy to the Jews. Thence came
the idea of divine Wisdom and of God as working through
Powers and Ideas. This the transcendent God of Israel,
who by a word or by brooding created an orderly world out
of chaotic matter, never did, though the later angels of
Persia helped to make familiar the idea of intermediaries.
1 In Alexandria they claimed the privilege of living apart in a
quarter of their own, that they might not be contaminated by the
natives. The natives did not like this and rejoiced to kill them when
permitted to do so.
THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL
441
Philo, about the time of the Christian era, is “ Judaeus,"
but more Greek than Jew. Yet his Neo-Platonism had more
effect upon Christianity than upon Judaeism, which, withal
rather late, as already explained, does attain to the idea of
a creative universal God, but rests' more contentedly in the
thought of Yahweh as patron deity of the Jews, ever inter-
vening directly in their behalf; as he directly (without Logos
or dynameis) created heaven and earth. This is a concep-
tion suited to the concrete thought, averse from abstrac-
tions, characteristic of all Semites, from Moses to Mo-
hammed. The newer conceptions appealed only to those
Jews who had been imbued with Hellenistic thought.
The most important of these newer ideas; however, was
native. Hosea in the eighth century foresaw a future
reconciliation between Yahweh and Israel; Isaiah looked
for a reign of justice;? Jeremiah imagined a saving rem-
nant under a son of David; Ezekiel pictured religious Jews
living round the Temple untroubled by Gentiles; and Deu-
tero-Isaiah even included the Gentiles as partakers of this
felicity. Finally Zechariah (ix. 9–10) or perhaps a Deu-
tero-Zechariah, describes the Messianic king. The advent
of this Messiah, at first near, in seventy years, is postponed,
for seven times seventy years, as he fails to appear. He is
not at first divine, but a king, yet endowed with superhuman
attributes; then he becomes the “heavenly man” (Ps. of
Solomon and Enoch, 125 B. C.) There will be a great strug-
gle with evil, an idea strengthened by apocalyptic writers
who drew on Babylonian myths. Then the Messiah will
bring earthly prosperity. As such, he was expected till the
time of Hadrian, when Bar Cocheba appeared in this rôle
and was accepted as Messiah by the Jewish priesthood.
1 Isaiah's visions date from 735 to 691 B. C. On pre-exilic Messianic
hope, see Barton Journal of Biblical Literature, xxxiii. 68f. Marti,
op. cit., p. 214, gives a list of Messianic passages supposed to have
been inserted into the prophetic documents (Amos ix. 13-15; Hosea
ii. 23; Micah iv. 4; Is. ix. 2-6; etc.). There seems to be no cogent
reason, however, for supposing that the Messiah idea is wholly
post-exilic. Is. xlv. I regards Cyrus as the anointed Messiah, who
is to save Israel.
442
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
Hope of happiness hereafter for the people was grad-
ually united with the hope of individual happiness after
death. Like other Semites, the old Hebrews believed
vaguely in a future life, not for the soul or breath of God,
which at death returned to its source, but for the animal
life which lingers in the grave, Sheol, and is not without
intelligence, as is shown when Samuel as a power, elohini,
rises oracularly from the grave. The Lord bringeth down
to Sheol and bringeth up (1 Sam. ii. 6). Yet ghosts were
really outside of God's dominion and to attribute an immor-
tal soul to a man would have been thought as impious as
absurd. Only those really lived hereafter who by God's
special favour were caught up and carried away bodily,
like Moses, Elijah, and Enoch. Men in general had no
bodily resurrection and no spiritual hope beyond the grave.
Peace in the tomb, where the ghost lived as a shade, was all
a man expected. “ Shall a man deliver his soul from the
hand of the grave ?” asks a Psalmist (lxxxix. 48). “In
death," says another, " there is no remembrance of God”
(Ps. vi. 5; cf. Is. xiv. gf.; Ezek. xxxii. 22f.).
But the Zoroastrian idea, that those soldiers of God who
sleep in the dust shall awake to share in the happiness of
the purified world, was one to appeal to the Jew who had
learned to look for the coming of a Messiah. In the second
century B. C. (Daniel xii. 1-3) this thought is expressed in
a modified form, “some shall awake." Yet the idea of a
resurrection was never thoroughly Jewish. The soul itself
as a psyche may have been taken from Greece. The Jewish
priesthood, represented by the Sadducees, rejected the resur-
rection, as did the Samaritans, and it is absent from the
genuinely Jewish thought found in Tobit, Baruch (disciple
of Jeremiah), and the Maccabees. It was a belief adopted
by the Pharisees, possibly, as already explained from Zoro-
astrianism. For neither universal resurrection nor a final
judgment belonged to early Israelitish belief. Ezekiel's
eschatology (xxxvii. 11f.) was built upon the new idea of
resurrection; even later was the belief that man had an
THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL
443
immortal soul. The Sadducean belief of the second cen-
tury B. C., as voiced by Ben Sira, is that the dead “las no
hope” (xxxviii. 21).
The later religion under Persian and Greek influence
brought forth its optimists and pessimists, Job, c. 400 B. C.,
and Ecclesiastes, c. 200 B.C.; also a philosophy of life
neither strongly optimistic nor pessimistic, the Wisdom of
Solomon and of Ben Sira, Ecclesiasticus, C. 180.2 In-
creasing individuality, as well as freedom from the law
(as in Job), marked the progress of this phase of religion,
which is voiced in many of the late Psalms.3 With the
advent of a State whose head pretended to be also High
Priest (second century B. c.), the church itself became mili-
tant and began to suffer from the strife of contending
parties, whose differences were partly political and partly
religious.
The first division of the church, however, occurred earlier,
perhaps in the fifth century. Ezra and Nehemiah had rec-
ommended that true Israelites should repudiate their for-
eign wives. This did not please the Samaritans, who seceded
from the Temple and took as their sanctuary Shechem
(Mount Gerizim). These protestants accepted neither the
canonicity of the Prophets nor the Hagiographa and, as
just stated, they rejected the novel doctrine of the resur-
1 Compare Is. xxvi. 19; xiv. gf.; Job xix. 25f. Sheol in Job iii.
17 is a place where the weary may rest. Ps. lxxiii. 24 speaks of
man being received into heaven in glory and ib. xlix. 15, xvi. Iof.,
xvii. 15 express belief in a bodily resurrectioni. Daniel' (loc. cit.)
speaks of eternal shame as the lot of sinners; (Trito-) Isaiah de-
scribes the fate of the damned, whose worm dieth not and whose
fire is not quenched (lxvi. 23f.). Later Judaism accepted the idea
of a purgatory but in general it spiritualized the life hereafter,
though retaining belief in the Judgment.
2 Here first appears a discussion of the problem of free will.
Ben Sira xv emphatically rejects the idea of cleterminism. Texts
of the OT support both views, for the early Hebrews had not yet
raised the question.
3 The Psalter for liturgical use consists of iii-xli, to which were
later added the books xlii-lxxiii and lxxxiv-lxxxix, the latter sup-
posed to express patriotic enthusiasm incidental to Persian tyranny
in the fourth century B. C.
444
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
rection. Their temple, destroyed in 120 B.C., may have
been erected by that rival of Nehemiah, Sanballat, whose
son-in-law had been ejected from the Temple (Neh. xiii.
28). Samaria had long before been depopulated by As-
syria and probably in the fifth century the Samaritans were
not pure Israelites. They represented a ritualistic mono-
theism and regarded as canonical only the hexateuch; but
their “ Joshua ” is not that of the Bible.
The inner strife at Jerusalem was based on tendencies
long operative but not productive of classes officially recog-
nized till they became incorporate in the persons of the
Sadducees and Pharisees, whom with the Essenes Josephus
calls the "three philosophical sects” of the Jews. The
Sadducees were the priestly aristocratic party, composed,
however, of diplomats and soldiers as well as of priests.
They represented political ambition and foreign ways but
not ideas. The Pharisees were a comparatively small body
of "separatist" Puritans, successors of those called Assi-
deans or Holy Ones, who were indifferent to the success of
State politics but intent on the operation of religious require-
ments. Like all purists they looked with scorn on the
common people as unclean (John vii. 49). They were, as
regards ideas, liberal, though respected more as religious
guides than as national leaders. They were a party not a
class, while the Sadducees were a class rather than a party.
The first actual rupture between Sadducees and Pharisees
occurred toward the end of the reign of John Hyrcanus in
the second century B. C., when the Pharisees as strict legal-
ists opposed the Asmoneans because the Maccabees assumed
(illegally) the high priesthood. To understand the dispute
it will be necessary to recall the history of the Jews imme-
diately preceding.
In 168 B.C. Antiochus Epiphanes of Syria had insulted
and outraged the Jews, even going so far as to dedicate the
Temple at Jerusalem to Zeus. Judas Maccabee, the son
of the Asmonean Matathias, carried out a successful revolt
and after three years the Temple was purified and services
THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL
445
were renewed (first Feast of the Temple, 165 B. C.). The
Pious Ones of that day, though devoted to their deliverer,
were satisfied with religious freedom. But Judas and his
friends (represented by the aristocracy or Sadducees) con-
tinued the struggle,1 getting Roman help. Judas was suc-
ceeded by his brother Jonathan (161-142 B. C.) and the
latter by Simon (142–135), whose son John Hyrcanus (135–
105) was an object of suspicion to the Pharisees, pietists
more than patriots, because he paid attention to the good
of the State rather than to the good of religion. The Sad-
ducees, on the other hand, supported John and after much
trouble including murders and civil war the Pharisees lost
their power and the Romans annexed Judaea (63 B. C.).”
Herod the Great, who was more a Greek politician than
king of the Jews, supported the Sadducees and was opposed
by the purists. Yet the religious conscience of the people
was prevailingly Pharisaical and in the end the Sadducees
and Maccabees lost ground while the spirit of the Pharisees
steadily gained. They were less conservative than the Sad-
ducees, who denied the non-legal doctrine of the resurrec-
tion and the popular belief in angels and evil spirits, while
the Pharisees had adopted all these novelties (Acts xxiii.).
Josephus, a doubtful authority, says that the Sadducees de-
nied the influence of Fate, to which the Pharisees allotted
some activity.
1 The Sadducees hoped to restore David's kingdom by force of
arms; the Pharisees looked for the advent of a heavenly Messiah
and did not favour the introduction of foreign power into Judaea.
The Maccabees revolted as Jews against Syrian power but when
they had established their own kingdom they tried to maintain it
by foreign aid. Hence the Pharisees at first sided with the Macca-
bees and then renounced them. Jewish expectations during the
Maccabean revolt are voiced by Daniel and Ps. xc-cl, representing
the beginning and end of the revolt.
2 On this date, 63-64 B.C., Jerusalem was captured by Pompey,
who dared to enter the Holy of Holies. The Maccabean monarchy
ended with the accession of Herod, 40 B. C. Herod rebuilt the
Temple (20 B. C.), but he slew those who cut down the gold eagles
with which he had defled it. He also built a temple to Apollo and
in other ways showed that he had no sympathy with Jewish ideas.
446
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
The Essenes, the third sect mentioned by Josephus,
formed a communistic religious order, chiefly celibate, de-
voted to rules of peace and purity. They lived in monastic
settlements and are referred to as early as 150 B. C. They
resembled the nomadic Rechabites, except in being agricul-
turists, but their principles were those of an exaggerated
Pharisaism tinged with Greek philosophy (they believed in
"a pure spirit, immortal, but imprisoned in the body”).
They had, however, their own scriptures and different
classes of initiates. They scorned the Temple, but hon-
oured Moses, and observed the Sabbath very strictly. They
fled the world, and did not proselytize. They were prob-
ably mystics but of what sort we cannot tell. Oaths, except
their initiation-oath, they abhorred and taught the blessing
of poverty.1
The controlling power in the later Jewish government was
in the hands of a senate, Gerousia, afterwards called the
Sanhedrin, a council headed by the High Priest. After
the destruction of Jerusalem, the Sanhedrin met at Jabneh
or Jabneel (Jamnia). It is first mentioned in the time of
Antiochus the Great (223–187 B. C.). This board had con-
trol over all the local councils; it gave legal decisions and
made administrative regulations. It also had spiritual pow-
ers and had jurisdiction in cases of blasphemy and other
transgressions. In its guard was the oral law, which, ac-
cording to tradition, was instituted by Moses and passed
on by Joshua. It is this oral law, transmitted by Scribes
and Pharisees, which was represented at the time of the
Christian era by the schools of Hillel and Shammai, later
1 See Josephus, Wars, ii. ch. 8; also W. D. Morrison, The Jews
under Roman Rule, London, 1890, p. 346. The Essenes show no
trace, of Persian or Buddhist origin nor, apparently, did they influ-
encal Christian religion. Other Jewish sects are chiefly of late
growth, such as the mediaeval Karaites (eighth century A. D.) who
opposed tradition, reverted to Essene and Sadducean principles, and
adopted from the Mohammedans the allegorical method of interpre-
tation; and the Dorsitheans, who were a sect of earlier origin con-
nected with the Samaritans and active in the second century A. D.
Another sect called the Falashas were also a late Abyssinian growth.
Ty
THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL
447
by Gamaliel, and was finally committed to the Talmud."
The institution which more than anything else held the
Jews together during the Exile and after the destruction of
the city and Temple was the Synagogue. It was a house
for prayer and edification erected anywhere, usually near
water for ablution, and was preserved and exalted by the
Scribes. Like the Temple, it was lighted by a perpetual
lamp, but its other furnishing was merely a reading-desk
and a chest of law-scrolls. Its head was the archisyna-
gogos or Ruler of the Synagogue, usually a Scribe. Open
daily or at least thrice a week, it served as a meeting-house
of prayer, where the Scriptures were read and a sort of
creed (“ Hear, O Israel," etc., the Shema, Deut. vi. 4f.)
was recited, followed by a lesson from the Pentateuch,
which was thus read through every three years. Seven
men conducted the service. Hebrew was translated into
Aramaic, to be “understanded of the people.” The Proph-
ets, as less sacred than the Law,2 were read next and this
lection was followed by a lay sermon, at which point the
audience might discuss or dispute any point. A benedic-
tion pronounced by a priest closed the meeting, which was
evidently the model of the later Christian church service.
This service kept the Jews in touch with the vital truths
of their religion and gave them when dispersed a sense of
religious fellowship. They learned in the Synagogue the
binding rules and traditional sayings (Halaka and Agada)
which, built up into a mass of edifying erudition, unveiled
all mysteries, explained tradition, and became the volume
of legendary lore called the Midrash, as opposed to the
legal lore preserved in the Doctrine or Talmud. The Tal-
mud is divided into the Hebrew Mishnah and Aramaic
Gemara, that is, repetition (instruction) and expositio
1 The two schools of Hillel and Shammai represented liberal and
conservative elements, respectively. In general the former accepted
and the latter opposed Hellenism.
2 The Jews generally regarded the Law as more sacred than other
Scriptures. But by the time of the Christian era Old Testament
writings are cited (by Christ and Paul) as if equally authoritative.
448
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
spectively. The former began with the Scribes and was
continued by the Tenaim or doctors in the second century
B. C. Their writings were codified about two hundred A. D.,
while the codification of the Gemara of the Amoraim or
Speakers was not made, for the Jerusalem Talmud, till the
fourth century and not till the fifth or sixth century for the
Babylonian Talmud - a huge work in sixty-three tracts,
treating of agriculture, festivals, women, civil and criminal
laws (“ damages "), sacrifices, and purifications. The Geo-
nim or Rabbinical teachers of Babylon and Egypt continued
to fix tradition till the tenth century A. D. Thereafter tra-
dition passed into the hands of European Talmudic com-
mentators, such as Solomon Bar Isaac of France and
Abraham Ibn Ezra of Spain, in the eleventh and twelfth
centuries, respectively. In the eleventh century, Isaac of
Fez (Alfasi) wrote a guide to Talmudic law and in 1180
Maimonides 1 published the Jewish code called the Strong
Hand. Finally, in the sixteenth century, Joseph Caro com-
piled and arranged the whole law under which orthodox
Jews still live.
In regard to the authority of Talmudic tradition, it was
accepted by all except the Karaites, who held as authorita-
tive only the words of the Bible. Unauthorized beliefs were
held nevertheless by the later Jews. Thus in the ninth cen-
tury a number of Jews believed in metempsychosis. Mys-
ticism came strongly to the fore as a reaction against the
legalistic attitude of Maimonides and is a marked feature
of mediaeval Judaism. Its roots may be found in early
Jewish sects or still earlier in the men who walked with
God and spoke in his name. Yet on the whole mysticism
of the rapt ecstatic sort was not Jewish, as it was not Semi-
It tended both in Hebrew and Mohammedan forms to
become a mere juggling with letters or magic.
Religion as Law has been the prevailing Jewish concep-
1 This Moses Maimonides was called the “second Moses." A
"third Moses” was Mendelssohn, who in the eighteenth century
was instrumental in einancipating the Jews.
THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL
449
1:
tion of religion since the day of Bar Cocheba in the second
century A. D. Yet the Law is but the formal expression of
what was conceived as answering to divine requirements.
The basis of the law has always been the belief in the na-
tional God and the practice of devotion, sobriety, charity,
and domestic purity. Mysticism has rarely degenerated
into sensuality and such emotional licentiousness as arose
among the Chassidists of the eighteenth century was op-
posed by the Talmudists. Mediaeval Judaism had its poets
and philosophers, such as the poet Ibn Ezra of the eleventh
and twelfth century and the philosophers Saadia of Sura
and Gabirol of Spain; but the latter cannot be said to have
originated new philosophies. Gabirol was the most original
mediaeval Jewish philosopher, but his Fons Vitae is based
on Neo-Platonic ideas.1 Till the tenth century Babylonia
remained the seat of Jewish culture. In Europe, Moham-
medan thought, as well as Greek, formed the basis of Jew-
ish philosophy. These philosophers, however, are impor-
tant as their works affected Christian philosophy. Thus
Thomas Aquinas is affected by Maimonides, who reverts to
Ibn Daud, who in turn is chiefly concerned with harmon-
izing Aristotle and Moses. Later mediaeval Judaism re-
nounced philosophy and reverted to Kabbalah mysticism.?
Judaism has never been dogmatic; its chief dogma is to
have no dogma; no creed-test excommunicates. Hillel said:
“Do not to another what thou thyself hatest; this is the
chief law.” Dogma as a test of membership in the church
was attempted by the Karaites and by Maimonides, but the
1 He was a mystic and regarded God's will as mediating between
God and the world as a sort of Logos; hence he was even called
a " Christian Jew."
2 Kabbalah, “tradition," is in general a theosophic mysticism
part Neo-Platonic, perhaps referred to as early as Ben Sira
second century B. C., and known to Gnostic writers. It
popular in Europe after the tenth century. It teaches metempsy-
chosis and makes God, as "dwelling-place of the universe," create
by wisdom and become manifest through wisdom, insight, power,
etc. See, for example, B. Pick, The Cabala, Chicago, 1913, and the
Jewish Encyclopedia s. v.
450
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
add belie Judgment. W is accepted be
1
11
test was never confirmed by authority. Generally, however,
as proof of orthodoxy, is accepted belief in God, revela-
tion, and Judgment. Modern attempts to formulate dogma
add belief in God's immanence, in man's immortality and
responsibility. Atonement is made by fasting, prayer
(praise and petition), charity, and purification. Modern
Jews celebrate the first day of the seventh month (New
Year's Day) as the beginning of a penitential period end-
ing with the Day of Atonement. The Purim has become a
day of charity or a childish celebration, innocently re-
placing the original parallel of a Saturnalia. Another cele-
bration originally of the Maccabees and called a feast of
lights, Hannukkah or Chanuka, is now interpreted as a feast
of enlightenment.
Zionism is a form of Messianic hope with the Messiah
left out; it is a late effort to return to Palestine and appeals
to the conservatives. Liberal Jews interpret Judaism as a
means of enlightening the world. · They follow the hint
of the later prophets that the people of Israel is the Mes-
sianic Son of God. They have modernized the religious
service and rejected as unessential many ceremonial laws.
In reviewing Jewish religion one cannot fail to be struck
with the contrast between it and other Semitic as well as
non-Semitic religions. Judaism refined not only old laws
and legends of the Semites but it refined itself. Patriarchal
improprieties, for example, were retold ethically by the
priests, who preferred expurgated and hence instructive
narrative to shameless accuracy. Monotheism was , not
enough; it must be united with morality. Thus a domi-
nantly ethical strain appears throughout the religion, both
in its legal and prophetic expression. On the whole the
Proin is civic" rather than individualistic. It is clannish
this regard resembles that of the early Greeks. Kin-
1 At the Purim the usually abstemious Jews might intoxicate
themselves and play at niasquerades. It celebrated the destruction
of Haman and the deliverance of the Jews through Esther (Ishtar?)
and Mordecai (Marduk?), that is, a late travesty of the Babylonian
myth, according to Nöldeke. See above, p. 362.
THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL
451
1
ship with the deity and clan-morality characterize both."
Judaism is a bridge leading directly to Christianity.
If the last aspiration of the Jew was “ Thy kingdom come "
in Palestine, it was also able to enabrace all nations in its
purview. Moreover its God was not only a judge but a
God of loving-kindness, not only a king but a Father in
Heaven: “ Call me Father; I am merciful” (Jer. iii. 19;
ix. 24; xxxi. 9). Hence this religion also is one of love
as well as of fear (“Love the Lord — fear the Lord,” Ps.
xxxi. 23; xxxiv. 9; cf. xci. 14). Finally, Judaism is not
one-sided; it is a religion of fear but also of joy, not only
of joy in the Lord but of cheerfulness. “Do not worry;
joy in the heart is life to a man,” says Ecclesiasticus. Puri-
tanic in the meticulous observance of religious rules, the
Pharisaic side was offset by Sadducean hatred of gloom.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
S. A. Cook, Religion of Ancient Palestine, Chicago, 1908.
Karl Marti, The Religion of the Old Testament, New York,
1907.
Alfred Loisy, The Religion of Israel, New York, 1910.
J. P. Peters, The Religion of the Hebrews, New York, 1914.
A. Kuenen, The Religion of Israel, London, 1874.
R. H. Charles, The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old
Testament, Cambridge, 1913.
W. Bousset, Die Religion des Judenthums im neutestamentlichen
Zeitalter, 2nd ed., Berlin, 1906.
Isaac Husik, A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy, New
York, 1916.
1 In Greece marriage was a religious sacrament and the laws
concerning homicide have a religious basis. In Greece also divine
vengeance and mercy are united, and the divine nature is held up
as a model for man.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
THE RELIGION OF MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDA NISM
As' in the case of all “ founders' religions," we have to dis-
tinguish in Mohammedanism between the personal faith
of the founder and the beliefs of the later body of the
faithful. Mohammed was the logical and historical suc-
cessor of the old prophets of Israel. He believed that he
was carrying on their work; that God had appointed him
as an apostle to the Arabs, as the Hebrew prophets had
since Mohammed's God was the God of the Hebrews, it is
difficult to see why one should hesitate to recognize in Allah
the same Deity as in Yahweh, attend a mosque as a church
of God, or accept Mohammed as the prophet through whom
at least his people were led to God.
The Koran of Mohammed, “the Praised," is, in the be-
lief of himself and his followers, the word of God trans-
mitted to the Prophet by Gabriel. It was revealed at a
time when the Arabs needed correction and when the Jews
and Christians of Arabia were imbued with the same super-
stitions as were the Arabs. Previous to the birth of Mo-
hammed, 750 A. D., the religion of the Arabs had been a
mixture of primitive nature-worship and corrupt Babylo-
nian star-cult. The chief objects of devotion were Jinns
(spirits of the mountains and desert), and tribal deities.
Some tribes worshipped the female deity, Allat; the acacia
is a form of the love-goddess ; Zafa and Marwa were
ins holy in themselves and having holy images; holy
also was the Black Stone in the wall of the Kaabah, which
afterwards became the chief shrine of Mohammedanism.
But Allah," the god," was already recognized by more
than one of the tribes as “ God most high," but beside him
452
THE RELIGION OF MOHAMMED
453
were set gods in human and animal form, and the worship
of sacred stones and trees was general. Mohammed re-
tained in his own religion the belief in Jinns, in predestina-
tion and fatalism. Mecca, “the synagogue," built about
450 A. D. around the Kaabah, and long before held sacred, re-
mained to the Prophet also a holy city.
The race from which Mohammed sprang was character-
ized by strength, both in vice and virtue. It was brave,
hospitable, clannish, haughty, poetical; it was given to rob-
bery, murder, and lust; it was cruel and superstitious; its
governing power lay in the hands of the boldest; wealth
and bravery made a man chief both in politics and in reli-
gion. In Mohammed's own case, according to tradition,
the religious chieftainship of Mecca, which had been in his
family, had been lost through poverty. At the age of
twenty-five he married a rich widow fifteen years his senior.
Visions inspired him to believe himself (at the age of forty)
a prophet, sent to Arabs as of old Abraham or Jesus had been
sent - to each folk its own prophet. Mohammed's first
converts were a few of his own family and familiars, women,
slaves, his cousin Ali, a merchant, Abu Bakr, and a soldier,
Omar. Opposition to him was based mainly on the feeling
that he was an infatuated or deceitful “sorcerer," to which
his way of life and oracular utterances lent probability,
but also on hatred of his teaching, not indeed of mono-
theism but of the practical results of opposing polytheism.
Mecca was a town of plutocrats ruling an equally material-
istic populace. No one cared whether Mohammed taught
monotheism; abstract theology has never annoyed Orientals..
But the city got wealth from its cult of gods and even
Mohammed was at first inclined to temporize and admit the
possible power of the local divinities. He soon rent
this “suggestion (whisper) of Satan,” however, and his
1 Religious ardour leading to ecstasy was inspired by preliminary
seclusion, in which the sorcerer, wrapped in a blanket, induced the
feverish excitement which preceded the oracular outburst. It is
probable that Mohammed practiced this mode of inducing spiritual
possession.
454
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
renewed activity led to persecution on the part of the Kore-
ish family of Mecca to which his own family belonged.
Some of his earliest inspirations were little more than im-
precations against his family and townsmen. He and his
then took refuge with Abyssinian Christians, whose refusal
to give up the refugees favourably inclined him at first to
Christians till he found that he could not convert them.
His attitude toward Jews and Christians in later life was
consistently one of disparagement and antagonism, because
they did not believe in monotheism, but (as he thought)
Christians made of Jesus and Mary two gods besides God,
and the Jews “made Ezra the son of God." Yet as most
of the Jewish tradition was in line with Mohammed's teach-
ing, he accepted it in the distorted form known to him
(Ishmael, for example, assumes Isaac's place), but he
rejected God's “resting” on the seventh day, and any im-
plication of association with God of other powers as co-
gods, sons, or daughters (angels).
Mohammed, like Zoroaster, accomplished little for ten
years and finally prevailed not by argument but by force.
Deserting Mecca and his own people, who generally re-
jected him, he had recourse to half Jewish tribes who, ex-
pecting a Messiah and disliking Mecca, accepted the Prophet.
Mohammed with Abu Bakr fled to Yathreb, “two against
many," as the latter despairingly said; but “three " said
Mohammed, “for God is with us." This Flight, Hijra or
1 God's day is a thousand or fifty thousand years (xxxii. 4; 1xx.
4). [Present references are to Suras of the Koran.] God “sent
apostles and followed them up with Jesus and gave him the gospel
and placed kindness and compassion in the heart of his followers"
(lvii. 25 f.); but Jesus “never said that he and his mother were
two gods" (v. 113). "If God has a son I will be first to worship
m int join none with God” and “say not Three. God is only
One iv. 169; lxxii. 20). Later, Mohammed says of both Jew and
Christian as preachers of “Shirk" (association of others with
God), “God fight them, how they lie!” (ix. 30). For paracletos,
John xvi. 7, Mohammed believed that Jesus said (periklutós or its
equivalent) Ahmed, which in turn means Mohammed (praised,
celebrated): “Jesus said, I give you glad tidings of an apostle who
shall come after me, whose name shall be Ahmed ” (lxi. 6).
THE RELIGION OF MOHAMMED
455
Hegira, fixes the date of the Mohammedan era as June 16,
622. The week-day on which Mohammed entered Yathreb
became the Mohammedan holy day, Friday; the town itself,
largely Jewish, becoming known thereafter as the Prophet's
Town, Medina. There he built a mosque, regulated the
simple rites of his religion, and appointed the first crier
of prayer, muezzin. The Jews, however, soon parted from
Mohammed and as already explained he regarded them
thenceforth as enemies, turning now to Mecca not to Jeru-
salem in prayer, and instituting the fast of Ramadhan to
take the place of Jewish fasts. He began to preach a "holy
war," put a Jewess to death, exiled a Jewish tribe (they
perhaps deserved their fate), robbed a Mecca caravan, sub-
dued several Bedouin tribes, and by constant fighting caused
himself to be recognized as an independent prince, till in
630 he was able to return to Mecca as its master; whence
he instituted raids and united his followers in the hope of
booty in this life and beatitude in the next. He died June 8,
632.
Mohammed was the first and greatest of sundry Arabian
prophets. He succeeded in his efforts to establish a new
religion partly because of his genuine enthusiasm and strong
personality, and partly because of his political sagacity.
His aims were directly opposed to the material interests of
his people, and his religion from the beginning broke up the
tribal unity which was the key-note of the Arabian state.
As the Dionysiac and Orphic cults in Greece undermined
the religious and political conditions, so Mohammedanisni
substituted a religious unity for a political group. From
the economic side it substituted prosperity through conquest
and rapine for the commercial prosperity which had made
Mecca a well-known mart. Mohammed, however, preached
nothing new to his countrymen, who had long been ac-
quainted with the doctrine of the Judgment Day anthe
idea of divine unity. Yet to reassert an old trut b
originate again. Mohammed's originality lay in his
ence on the truth of a judgment to come and its implication

456
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
i
of the necessity of an ethical improvement on the part of
those who were to meet it and to be judged by a Creator
who held men responsible for their belief in a moral God
and for conduct consonant with that belief. He did not
deny that there were spirits (worshipped by the Arabs),
but he forbade their association with God. He did not do
away with the fetish-stone, but sanctified it; he did not stop
the pilgrimage, but made it an adjunct to the worship of
the One God. Ethically he taught justice and truth, repre-
hended pride and envy, and exalted filial devotion and
charity.1 Orphans, mothers, and wives were subjects of
his special consideration; he denounced the current practice
of female infanticide, improved divorce laws, restricted
polygamy to the possession of four wives, and then only
if the husband could treat them equitably, and forbade
trading in slaves. He also tried to abolish the blood-feud
and opposed the use of intoxicants and gambling. A pure
heart and good works as concomitants of faith in One God
and the Judgment Day became the ethical ideal.
Not less firmly did Mohammed believe that he was God's
apostle and that his oracular utterances as at first revealed
to him were words of God, a graded and continuous illumi-
nation of divine truths. These utterances, revealed piece-
meal during twenty-three years as the Koran (reading or
recitation) are in rhymed prose containing 114 chapters or
Suras, in which the “inspiration," judged by style and
matter, varies considerably. But to the believer all is
equally inspired: “God taught the pen” (xcvi. 5). Ga-
briel appeared twice to him, once on the occasion when he
made a miraculous night-journey from Mecca to Jerusa-
lem and once on the first revelation of the Koran (liii. 5).
His opponents said that he was “possessed by a Jinn";
but he indignantly denies this, as he charges, on the con-
trar that these opponents worship angels and Jinns in-

a
Bentleness of Mohammed's teaching is not perhaps without
al basis. He is described as a man inclined to melancholy
and unable to endure the slightest pain.
THE RELIGION OF MOHAMMED
457
stead of God (xxxiv. 40–45). Of Mohammed's early hon-
esty there can be no doubt. He pretends to nothing save
his inspiration. “I am but a mortal like yourselves; I am
inspired that your God is only One God” (xviii. 110).
it his revelation is but a jumble of dreams or a forgery;
but Mohammed says that he has no sign other than the
truth: “We hurl the truth against falsehood and truth
crashes into it and falsehood vanishes" (xxxi. 5f.). And
God says, “I will show you My signs, but do not hurry
prophets of old and his environment with theirs. Thus he
says that Noah and the rest proclaimed “ No God but God”
and the great men of that day said, “This fellow is only a
mortal like yourselves, who wishes to have dominion over
you; if God had pleased he would have sent angels (not
Noah, to warn you); he is only a man possessed," exactly
the language used of Mohammed (xxiii. 25). So of old,
says Mohammed, they called The Day (of resurrection) a
lie, saying: “ There is only our life in this world; we live
and die and shall not be raised” (ib. 39). Again and
again Mohammed simply and earnestly insists that the
Koran is "a revelation brought down by Gabriel (the
Faithful Spirit) in plain Arabic ” and foretold in the scrip-
tures of which it is a continuation (xxvi. 193f.). But the
Arabs said that the Pentateuch and the Koran were both
works of sorcery which backed up each other and declared
“We disbelieve in all" (xxviii. 48); to which the Prophet
replied: “Then bring a better revelation and I will follow
it.” Elsewhere he cries: “God has sent down the best of
legends . . . it is a grand story, yet ye turn from it”
(xxxviii. 59; xxxix. 24).
Mohammedanism, however, would never have become im-
portant had it not been for military success. Many repudi-
ated the faith as soon as Mohammed died and, as before his
death so now, orthodoxy was upheld only with the sword.
Islam means resignation, but only with God's will; it does
458
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
not imply patience with infidels who oppose the faith. Ag-
gressive unbelievers must be made resigned; submissive un-
believers were at first unmolested, afterwards they too were
reduced, not to belief but to submission. To reduce op-
ponents to tax-payers rather than to converts was the aim
of the body politic, which became the church militant imme-
diately after the Prophet's death.
The soldier of the church as the soldier of God was not
permitted to commit suicide or to become an ascetic, as
that would be to desert his post. He must be resigned to
fate as apportioned by God. But this fatalism of Islam
was not yielding to fate as chance, only to the predetermin-
ing will of God.
Thus Mohammedanism differed from the exclusiveness
of the Jewish religion; it received all into its fold. But it
differed also from the Christian in substituting submission
for mission. At a later stage it drew from Christianity
the practice of celibacy and asceticism, foreign to its earlier
spirit, and also taught that a soldier might be a soldier
allegorically, a merchant for example, fighting against evil
impulses. But the early church was essentially militant in
a literal sense. At first toleration was the rule. “There
is no compulsion in religion” is said to have been said by
Mohammed and he gave freedom of service to the Chris-
tians of Najran (in Yemen): “No image or cross shall
be destroyed; they shall not be oppressed.” But success
brought intolerance. The Prophet of Mecca became the
Prince of Medina, no longer a "plain warner” but God's
Apostle, in whom as in God the faithful must believe and
to whom heretics must pay the price of conquest. Power
acquired through faith “ in God and His Apostle” of course
impressed him as added proof of his divine mission. His
religious feeling was still genuine but his religion more and
more included himself and he appears in later life to have
utilized his revelations to the good of the Prophet as well
as to the glory of God. In general, however, Mohammed
is sincere.
they shathe Prophet lain warne
• THE RELIGION 459
ICION OF MOHAMMED
MOHAMMED
OF his TEN (1x ne te
Thus he confesses, by implication, that he was wrong
owing to a suggestion of Satan (xxii. 50 f.), in propitiating
the Koreish by admitting the sanctity of their gods; and on
one occasion when he had snubbed a poor man, who had
interrupted him to get instruction, he admitted his fault
and records in the Koran the rebuke he deservedly re-
ceived (lxxx.). Only an honest and good man would have
done this. Mohammed professed himself to be a late but
true prophet of God, as much inspired as was Abraham
(whose religion was also his) to teach pure religion and
undefiled to those who worshipped idols and ignored or
denied a life to come. But his revelation is better than
Abraham's, who condoned idolatry (ix. 115). Nor, in
Mohammed's teaching, does God require the Jewish sacri- .
fice: “I have created man and Jinn only to worship Me;
I do not desire provision from them, nor do I wish them
to feed Me. Verily God is the provider" (li. 56). A lib-
eral simplicity marks Mohammed's creed: “Those who
say our Lord is God and then keep straight, there is no fear,
for them” (xlvi. Iof.). As in Zoroastrianism, the believer
is a helper of God. “God will help him who helps Him"
(xxii. 41); “ So be ye helpers of God, even as Jesus' apos-
tles said: 'We are God's helpers'" (lxi. 14; cf. iii. 45).
These phrases imply that the believer “helps" by battling
with the misbeliever, as is clearly said in the late Mecca or
Medina Sura (xlvi.): “When ye meet those who mis-
believe, strike off their heads or hold them (for ransom);
those slain in God's cause shall not go wrong; if ye help
God He will help you.” In the earlier period the note is
not so militant as ethical and religious: “Blessed are they,
for they shall inherit Paradise, who believe, who are hum-
ble, who do not talk vainly, who are charitable, who are
blameless as respects women, and who observe their pledges
and covenants and guard their prayers" (xxiii. If.).1
“ Believe in Him and He will pardon and save ” (xlvi. 30).
1 Blameless means chaste except for lawful intercourse with
wives and slaves (owned by the believer).
0
1ST
)
460
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
Rare is the higher injunction to do good for evil: “Re-
pel evil with what is better" (xxiii. 97). An approach to
Indic phrase and thought may be observed in the likeness
of life to a mere pastime as compared with the real life
hereafter: “ The life of this world is but sport and play;
the abode of the next world is (real) life" (xxix. 64).
Indic too is the repeated phrase, “ No burdened soul shall
bear another's burden; who errs, errs only against his own
soul” (xvii. 16; liii. 39). Compare too (lii. 22): “Every
man is pledged for what he earns," that is, every one is
pledged for his conduct and redeems himself if he does
well. This individualistic view, however, is modified by
the doctrine of divine mercy and grace. “God gives His
grace to whomsoever He will; God is Lord of mighty
grace" (lxii. 4). This mercy may be extended at the in-
tercession of the Prophet (see below). In general, how-
ever, Mohammed taught a religion of fear, not of love, and,
until modified by the Sufi element introduced later, it was a
religion lacking in two regards, that of the conception of
the Fatherhood of God, the milder aspect, and that of the
irrmanence of God, the universal aspect. There are
phrases which countenance both aspects and they have been
taken by later Mohammedans to authorize both. Thus the
mercy of God (as above) is dwelt upon by Mohammed, who
also speaks of God as within man and nearer than his
jugular vein; but these are not the views usually presented,
and though the Koran is full of contradictions the trend of
teaching and the teaching accepted by carly Mohammedans
show that Allah is rather the older Jewish Yahweh, a
transcendent God, fearful rather than kind.
The fundamental teachings of Mohammed as expressed
in his own words bear the same relation to the theology of
Moslem scholars as Christ's words bear to Christian theol-
ogy. Mohammed himself was no scholar; nor was he in
any way a metaphysician. He has no speculation and very
little logic in the Koran; what little there is seems to be
remarkably naïve. “How can one believe in niore than one
THE RELIGION OF MOHAMMED
461
God? If there were more than one, each would take his
own creation and some would have exalted themselves over
others" (xxiii. 93). “How can one fail to believe in the
raising of the dead? Did not God create you once? How
then should he not create you a second time? Twice-born
and twice-slain is every one" (xl.). “We (Allah) have
made waters from the cloud for you to drink, when we
might have made it unfit to drink (pưngent), and We have
tree? Why then do ye not praise Me?” (lvi. 67-70).
“God sends lightning for fear and hope (of rain); He sends
his thunder - which celebrates His praise -- and therewith
smites whom He will; and yet they dispute about God!”
(xiii. Iof.). “Do they (who are misbelievers) not re-
gard whatever thing God has created ? Its shadow falls
to right or left, shrinking up in adoration of God ... then
will ye not fear Him?” (ibid. and xvi. 50f.). This is
obviously the language not of a metaphysician but of a
prophet; so also is that in which appeal is made to the past.
“Will ye not fear God? Remember that He once changed
men to apes because they fished on the Sabbath” (ii. 60f.).2
Of subordinate importance are those teachings which im-
plicitly or explicitly express belief in a mass of legends
1 Practically the same argument as is found in the Rig Veda, in
American, and even in African religions: God is demonstrated by
his activity; effect proves cause. It is quite reasonable to suppose
that the first idea of a Heavenly Spirit (in distinction from vague
potencies, discase-devils, etc.) arose from this source, recognition
of an active power above as Jupiter Feretrius, the smiter, etc. Due
to later contemplation is the logic which argues God, from the
orderly processes of the heavens, as Right (Order).
? Tradition says that this happened in David's time; hence the
respect for the Sabbath. Another (ibid.) example is given by the
legend that a mountain was held over the people to frighten them.
Possibly a cloud is meant (compare cloud as mountain in the Veda),
as it is said elsewhere that God sends down mountains, that is,
clouds, from the sky to give rain (xxiv. 42). Here, too, is the ·
suggestion that men should praise God since even the birds praise
Him. In xxix. 64, it is said bitterly that men in ships call upon
God to save them, but, when He has saved, "they worship others
with Him."
462
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
uffice to imoled bits of Fellows of
gathered from Jewish and Arabic tradition. Mohammed
accepted such of these as suited him and used them for
illustrative instruction. To us they are either parts of
Jewish literature or amplifications thereof more curious
than valuable. As in the case of the substitution of Ishmael
for Isaac, they show that Mohammed relied on a loose pop-
ular version of tradition liable to historical error. A few
examples will suffice to indicate the use made of these leg-
ends, with which are mingled bits of history from recent
times, such as the destruction of the Fellows of the Ele-
phant at the hands of the Lord, who overthrew them with
stones hurled by birds (cv.). Thus instruction is derived
from the tale of the seven sleepers, who passed three hun-
dred and nine years in a cave with their dog; from that of
El 'Hidhr and the water of life; from that of the two-
horned Alexander; and from that of Gog and Magog
(xviii.). Moses burned his tongue; Aaron was his vizir
(xx.); the queen of Sheba worshipped the sun; the hoopoe
was absent among the birds assembled for Solomon and
was threatened with his anger (xxvii. 20f.). When Peter
converted Antioch the shout of Gabriel destroyed a host
(xxxvi. 28). Gabriel bade Job strike the earth with his
foot and there sprang up a healing fountain, bathing wherein
Job was cured and his wife became young and beautiful
(xxxviii., also legend of Solomon's ring, ibid.). Noah said
to his people, “ Ye shall surely not leave your gods, neither
Wadd, nor Suwajh nor Yajhuth nor Ya'uq, nor Nasr, who
have led many astray” 1 (lxxi. 20f.).
On the other hand, one cannot dismiss as unimportant
those teachings which, instead of looking back upon earth
(pseudo-historical), look up to the world unseen and on
to the fate of man, for they give the intellectual environ-
ment in which alone could spring up to fruitfulness the
teachings of Mohammed based on belief in the resurrection,
1 These were Arabian gods of Mohammed's day in the form of
idols, representing the sky-god as a man, a woman (earth-god-
dess?), a lion, a horse, and an eagle, respectively.
THE RELIGION OF MOHAMMED
463
in a judgment to come, and in One God. Had these been
left vague outlines, they would not have had effect. It
was necessary to describe God and His works, to paint viv-
idly the day to be expected, to relate in detail the sorrows
and joys hereafter. We may reduce the frequent repetitions
on these themes to one collective statement.
God is One without a second. His face is the East and
the West. “Adore not sun and moon but God” (xli. 37).
He created the seven heavens and the earth and all between
and the seven hells (hell with seven doors) and Adam from
clay and Iblis (Satan) from smokeless flame. And because
Iblis would not bow to Adam, seeing in him only clay, he
was driven from heaven, and he and his devils still are
pelted by angels (with shooting stars), whenever the devils
listen at the under side of heaven seeking to learn what is
to be, that they may mislead mankind (lxxii. 9, etc.).1
There are many spiritual powers but they are not associates
of God (not real gods). Some are those who are gods to
the unbelievers; some are God's servants as angels, who are
not “ daughters of God” (as unbelievers say); some are
flame-born Jinns, to whom it is a sin to pray. Avoid the
abomination of idols (xxii. 32). Think not that God is
afar merely; if three whisper together God is there as the
fourth (lviii. 8).3 He is nearer to man than his jugular
vein, though so great that He created heaven and earth
in six days without weariness (i. 15f.). He is at his busi-
ness every day (lv.). He is God; save him there is no
God; he knows the unseen and the visible; he is the Merci-
ful, the Compassionate, the King, the Holy, the Peace-giver,
the Faithful, the Protector, the Mighty, the Repairer, the
Great. Celebrated be his praise above the praise of all
jected him (1xxii. I).
2 There is little indication that Mohammed objected to statues
and paintings, as is generally assumed. Idols and false gods are
synonymous terms with him and he objects not to the portrait but
to the worship.
3 Compare in the Atharva Veda: "If two men talk together in
secret, god Varuna is there as the third.”
464
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
(others) joined with him. He is God, Creator, Maker,
Fashioner; His are the excellent names. Whatsoever
things are in heaven and in earth celebrate his praises, for
God is the Mighty, the Wise (lix., a Medina Sura). God,
there is no God but he, the living, the self-existent. Slum-
ber takes him not, nor sleep. His is what is in the heavens
and what is in the earth. Who intercedes with him save
by his permission? He knows what is before them and
what behind them, and they comprehend naught of his
knowledge except he pleases. His throne extends over the
heavens and earth, nor does it weary him to guard them,
for he is high and grand (the "verse of the throne," fre-
quently inscribed in mosques, also a Medina passage, ii.
256).1
There is little specifically Moslem in the story of creation
except the insistence on the fact that God did not rest on
the seventh day (i. 37) and the synchronous creation of
Iblis 2 from flame and Adam from clay. The earth is made
for man. Clouds let down water for him; God made the
sea and the camel of the sea (ship) for him; night and
day were made for him to sleep and work; trees subserve
his needs; animals are for his use. It is an anthropocentric
material creation. But man himself God created "only to
adore God” (li. 56). God burst apart the originally united
mass of heavens and earth and flattened out earth for
1 Only twenty-four of the hundred and fourteen Suras (sections)
of the Koran are from the later Medina period; the others are
sojourn in Mecca, froin the first to the fifth year, the fifth and
sixth years, and from the seventh year to the Hegira; but the evi-
magnificent “verse of the throne," above, the earliest period is in
general represented by greater humility and more personal feeling;
the later by a more mechanical style with a growing sense of power
and more princely tone on the part of the prophet.
2 Iblis or Satan is not the accuser but the “Whisperer" of evil
suggestions (cxiv). As God created him; so the believer prays:
"I seek refuge from the Whisperer" as also “I seek refuge in the
Lord of light from the evil of what He has created, and from the
evil of the night and witches” (who blow on knots, cxiii).
THE RELIGION OF MOHAMMED
465
man's needs, pegging it down with mountains, which are
sometimes regarded as weights to keep the earth from fly-
ing off. Otherwise there is no peculiar view in regard to
earth itself and we may pass on to the consideration of
heaven and hell.1
At death “a driver and a witness come with the soul,”
which the angel of death gently releases in the case of the
believer but violently tears out in that of the unbeliever (1.
20; lxxix. If.). Each then receives his account-book, which
is preserved in the “high-places” or in the “prison ” of
hell (lxxxiii. 5-20) and is presented to him to read, in the
right hand if he is pious, in the left bound behind his back,
if sinful (lxxxiv.). This book will be brought forth by God
on the resurrection-day. Two attendant spirits have in-
scribed it with every act committed in life, though every
man's fate (literally bird, augury) has been hung around
a man's neck from the beginning (xvii. 15). The book and
the balance (ci.) seem to imply a difference of methods; in
the latter case the sinner is weighed and found wanting, a
simpler means. When judged, the pious is led to heaven, a
garden of bliss, where he will lie for ever, dressed in green
silk, satin, or brocade, on green cushioned couches, facing
others similarly blessed, all wearing silver and gold brace-
lets, and enjoying “ fruit and forgiveness." The forgiven
and blest will eat bananas and other fruits without indiges-
tion and drink without subsequent headache milk and honey
and wine, which is carried about in silver goblets by youths
and is tempered with streams from the rivers and fountains
of Paradise, so that camphor and ginger and tasnim add to
its taste. For further enjoyment there will be chaste, well-
grown, large-eyed maids of the same age as the believer.
1 That mountains hold earth steady, is also a Vedic idea. In the
Koran it is said that God cast mountains upon earth lest it should
move (xvi. 15; xxi. 32; xxxi. 9). They are like stakes to the
couch of earth (lxxviii. 6). On the last day they will move about
(lii. 10). God outstretched earth and threw upon it firm moun-
tains (1. 7).
2 Written " on his forehead,” in the late view (taken from India).
466
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
It is a place where there will be “no folly and no lie.” 1
The sinner in hell alternates between flame and boiling
water, has a dress of flame, and drinks boiling water and
pus. Even the bitter tree of hell called El Zaqqun, whose
head is as it were a sheaf of devils, is regarded as providing
a “boiling” food which the sinner has to eat or drink. No
torments save heat, maces, and the implied beating, are de-
scribed, unless the fact that sinners are bound together be
regarded as torment. Hell is not guarded by devils but by
nineteen angels (lxxiv. 30). The sinner is described as
“neither dead nor alive" in hell fire but ardently and vainly
longing to end his eternal torment. Conspicuous for its ab-
sence in the Koran is the sensual element. Paradise is sen-
suous but not sensual. Its tone is not that of passion but of
“Peace, peace”; its joys are those appreciated by desert-
riding toilers, cool comfort and ease, the pure water and
green shade to which the thought of the Bedouin naturally
turns. The maids of his Paradise are modest maids “re-
straining their looks" (xxxvii. 45-50), and the water is
without “insidious spirit” (ibid) or, if wine is enjoyed, it
does not intoxicate.
The particularity of description is greater in respect of
heaven than of hell. Besides green cushions, the believer
will have green robes of silk or brocade (xviii. 30; here
Paradise is Firdaus, 105f.). Apparently all must pass
through hell: “Not one of you who will not go down to
1 Compare Suras xxxvii. 40f.; xlvii. 16f.; ly and lvi; 1xxvi. 5f.;
1xxvii. 40; lxxviii. 35; 1xxxiii. 26.
2 For the torments of hell, compare xiv. 19, 50; xx. 75f.; xxii.
20; lxxxiv; for the infernal tree, which grows where even the
stones are red-hot, xvii. 62; xxxvii. 6of.; xliv. 45. According to
xliii. 75, unbelievers in hell are chained to devils and "there is no
end of hell for them though they cry on Malik” (keeper of hell).
In lxix. 31, the sinner with his book in his left hand is first fettered,
then broiled, then forced into a chain of seventy cubits as punish-
ment because “he believed not in God nor fed the poor." The
length and purpose of this chain is unique in the Koran, as is the
statement in the same chapter that on the last day the heaven shall
be cleft asunder and God appear on a throne borne by eight
(angels).
THE RELIGION OF MOHAMMED
467
it. Then We will save those who fear Us, but we will
leave evil-doers therein on their knees” (xix. 70). But
some take this to refer to the passage of El Aarâf, the bridge
between heaven and hell. The intercession of intercessors
profits not in hell such men as have not prayed, nor given
to the poor, but have plunged into discussions and called the
Judgment-day a lie (ibid. 34). Minor sins, called abomina-
tions of Satan, are wine, games of chance, and divining (v.
93). As believers enjoy bliss for aye, so sinners suffer for
ever: “On those who die misbelieving is the curse of
God, and of the angels, and of mankind together; to dwell
therein for aye (cf. xxxix. 55) ;; the torment shall not be
lightened for them, nor shall they be respited (or looked
upon”; ii. 156f.). In the Chapter of the Believers (xxiii.
IOI) it is implied that some (Arabs) believed in metempsy-
chosis: “When death comes to any one he says, ' My Lord,
Send ye (plural of respect) me back (to life) that haply I
may do right in what I have left ; but no! Behind him is
a bar (till the resurrection)." 4
Of the seven “solid” heavens (lxvii. 3; 1xxi. 141; lxxviii.
Iof.) and seven hells we learn little in the Koran itself, only
that the former were created in stories in two days and God
adorned the lowest with stars like lamps and furnished it
with guardian angels (xli.). Later tradition gives the names
of the seven, partly made from epithets applied in the Koran
to heaven in general, such as “(We have made them) an
1 Probably the whole conception had filtered to Mohammed
through a late Jewish and Christian medium. That every one must
go to hell was also Jewish belief (but not Zoroastrian). In Hindu-
ism the idea that a good act could balance a bad act (and so save
the sinner from punishment) was not entertained. Every bad act
was punished in hell even if committed involuntarily.
2 In ii. 216, Mohammed says that there is profit and loss in wine
and the game of chance here alluded to; but the disadvantage is
greater than the advantage. Divining is done by arrows. The list
mentions“ statues ” also, supposed to be chess, which some Moham-
medans therefore renounce.
3 In lxxviii. 24 hell is a place in which "to tarry for ages." .
4 Saadia (ninth century) says that some Jews believed in metem-
psychosis.
468
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
abode of peace” (or “garden of pleasure"), partly from
the names Eden and Firdaus. Still less individuality is to
be found in the seven hells, Gehenna, flaming fire, scorching
fire, etc., ending with the abyss. It is clear that the resur-
rection is the great stumbling-block to the unbelievers.
Over and over again Mohammed rallies them with the cry,
“If God could create you originally, cannot he create you
again? As you came out of death or not-being into exist-
ence by stages, as the embryo evolves, can you not come
out of death after life?" But what the soul is doing be-
tween death and Judgment is not explained. The unbeliever
mocks (xxxvii. 15): “Shall I when reduced to dry bones
become alive again?” Mohammed retorts, with the only
trace of humour he shows, “Wait till The (Judgment) Day
arrives and you will find out!” At least one passage (lxvii.
25-29) seems to show that the Day was not far distant:
“When comès the Judgment only God knows; but ye shall
soon know who is mistaken” (Mohammed or the unbe-
liever). The usual Mohammedan belief is that the good
rest at peace till the Judgment Day, but the wicked are tor-
mented even in their graves.
The religion of Mohammed is not one of form but of
faith and good works. He commends pilgrimage to the
Old House (xxii. 30) and the attitude of devotion, bidding
the believer turn to Mecca (originally to Jerusalem) and
hear the voice that calls to prayer, and come to the mosque,
leaving traffic, on the Day of Congregation (lxii. 9, Fri-
day). He also substitutes (viii. 35) four sacred months
for Jewish fasts, making especially a fast the month of
Ramadhan when the Prophet received the revelation of the
Koran. Yet if one is ill the fast may be postponed till an-
1 Mohammed says that the early part of the night is "more up-
right for speech” and recommends spending half the night in
prayer (1xxiii. 6). In v. 9 he tells his followers to wash their
faces and their hands before they pray and wipe the head and
feet, but if more convenient they may use sand for water. Prayer
is here substituted for the “whistling and clapping hands” (viii.
35) which characterized the worship of idols.
THE RELIGION OF MOHAMMED
469
other time or one may redeem oneself by feeding the poor
(ii. 180f.). Pork and food offered to idols are forbidden,
but Mohammed makes his religion on the formal side an
easy one. "God desires for you what is easy not what is
difficult” (ibid.). So too the believer need not puzzle over
the dark sayings of revealed religion, but "read what is
easy of the Koran” (lxxiii. 20). As to sacrifice he says,
“Sacrifice camels to eat in the name of the Lord, saying Bis-
millah; their meat and blood will never reach to God but
your piety will reach to him" (xxi. 30f.).
+ Much more important than form is the religion of good
deeds. “Paradise is prepared for those who expend in
alms, for those who repress their rage and pardon men;
God loves the kind” (iii. 125f.). This is said in connexion
'with the injunction to beg forgiveness of God for wrong and
not repeat the wrong, for God forgives the repentant.
“Righteousness is not that one turns his face to East or to
West, but that one believes in God and the last day and the
angels and the Book and the prophets and gives one's wealth
for love of God to kindred and orphans and the poor and
the son of the road (wayfarer) and beggars and captives,
that one is steadfast in prayer and gives alms, and abides
by one's covenant and is patient in poverty and distress and
in times of violence; these are they who are faithful be-
lievers ” (ii. 173f.). “Wealth and children are an adorn-
ment of the life of this world, but enduring good works are
better with thy Lord, both as a recompense and as a hope"
(xviii. 44). "Free the captive, feed the orphan and poor,
believe, encourage others in patience and mercy" (xc. 15f.).
“What one loans to God one will find again with God”
(1xxiii. 20f.). At first this “ loan” was an alms, afterwards
it became virtually a tribute or tax for holy wars, etc., but
it remained “as an insurance for the soul” (ii. 265f.).
Kindness to women and children is an especial trait of Mo-
hammedanism. Against the infanticide of his day Moham-
med is inexorable: “When the girl that was buried alive
shall ask for what sin she was slain, the sinful soul shall
470
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
know what it has done!" (1xxx. 9). He enjoins that “ be-
lieving women” shall not be given back to their unbelieving
husbands from whom they have fled (1x. 10); also that the
purdah or curtain shall be used except when a woman con-
verses with fathers, brothers, sons, and nephews (possibly
not before the Medina period, xxxiii. 55).
It is perhaps only fair that a prophet should be judged
by his acts as well as by his words. Mohammed's attitude
toward his old first wife was always admirable. His anger
because Ayesha 2 was the object of scandal is natural, but it
was perhaps too personal a matter for "inspiration ” on the
subject, though the Prophet's “ curse on all those who impute
evil to chaste women” is justified. In the later Sura on
this matter (Medina, xxiv.), Mohammed prescribes the dress
and adornment suited to good women; they shall not display
ankle-ornaments; they shall pull a kerchief over the bosom;
they shall not display their ornaments except to the hus-
band, father, etc. There is nothing about covering the
face. On the other hand, Mohammed's marriage with the
wife of his adopted son Zaid and his connexion with a
Coptic girl called Mary (xxxiii. 36; lxvi.), can scarcely be
called admirable. “Inspired” verses to palliate the Proph-
et's self-indulgence seem to the outsider a profanation.
Mohammed was now a prince and thought himself entitled
to special consideration as God's apostle; yet it is difficult
always to believe in his complete sincerity. In other re-
spects it may be granted that success convinced Mohammed
more than aught else that his side was that of God and that,
religion consisting at a time of war in being helpful to God,
he held more and more to the militant attitude, which in-
1 Mohammed taunts the Arabs with ascribing daughters to God
and then being angry when they themselves have daughters (xvi.
59; xliii. 15). The so-called “ daughters of God” are (xxxvii and
passim) angels created by God as servants. They have wings
(xxxv. If.) in pairs or threes or fours.
2 Ayesha, after the death of his first wife, was the most influ-
ential member of Mohammed's harem. She was the daughter of
Abu Bakr.
THE RELIGION OF MOHAMMED
471
cluded recourse to trickery and cruelty. God himself meets
the wiles of his opponents with cleverer tricks and strata-
gems, as of old when the Jews were crafty “and God was
crafty, for God is the best of crafty ones ” (iii. 45f.; cf. vii.
97,“ secure from the craft of God”). It is a believer's
duty to overcome rather than convert the foes of God. Yet
those who have not actually fought against the true faith
may be taken as patrons and one must act righteously and
justly toward them (lx. 8f.). Considering the mockery and
abuse to which Mohammed was exposed, the treachery with
which he was encompassed, the only wonder is that he
could at any time speak kindly of unbelievers. He discrimi-
nates in the later Koran between Jews and Christians, say-
ing that the latter are more lovable than the former, though
both pervert Scripture. Mohammed's wrath is most un-
bridled against those of his own race and family who re-
jected him and some of the earlier Suras are, as said above,
little more than curses against such opponents. With
waxing power this gross personal abuse was modified or
rather it gave place to an arrogant assumption of power.
Yet the Prophet was careful not to encourage flattery.
“ Think not that ye oblige me by becoming converted; God
obliges you by directing you to the truth” (xlix. 15f.). In
this chapter he warns against the too facile “ we believe"
of the desert Arabs. True believers show their belief by
their conduct and do not backbite (compare civ., “woe to
the slanderous backbiter "). All believers are brothers and
should fight for the faith, “with wealth and person, believ-
ing in God and His Apostle." Mohammed, despite his igno-
1 Instead of saying Es salâm 'halaika (“peace upon thee") they
used to say to Mohammed Es sâm 'hailaika ("mischief upon thee").
When he spoke of Judgment, they asked where their fathers' dead
bones had risen, etc. (lviii. 9). They also mocked at his “old
folks' tales, written and dictated by others" and said that if revealed
the Koran should have been revealed all at once (by Michael, not
by Gabriel piecemeal). Compare xxv. 34 and ii gof, “who is an
enemy of Gabriel?” They also effected to believe that “the Lord
the Merciful” implied two gods (xvii. 110).
2 His own people planned to murder him before he fled to Yathreb.
472
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
rance, is remarkably free from superstition. To "avoid the
door" and enter one's house by a hole made in the rear on
returning from Mecca, he says is folly, although popular
practice. Phases of the moon are not ominous but“ merely
indicate time” (ii. 185f.). It required courage, too, to re-
fuse to pray to the Jinn of the dark valley when one actually
believed the Jinn was there, as did Mohammed. Of his
social reforms something has already been said; some rested
on a religious basis but others were purely ethical, such as
his condemnation, as “fellows of hell-fire,” of money-
lenders (ii. 276f.).
Whether Mohammed was acquainted with any non-
Semitic religion may be doubted, though he alludes to Per-
sian literature, but only as legends invidiously offered the
people as more entertaining than the Koran, and mentions
Loqmân (Aesop, xxxi.). His general judgment of the
"blue-eyed sinners” or Greeks, is not without keenness:
“ They know the outside of life but heed not the hereafter”
(XX. 102; Xxx. 6). Probably he could read, though, as in
the case of Akbar, this has been questioned. But he ap-
pears to have known the Pentateuch only at second hand,
much as he knew the local legends, in which, however, he
believed as surely as he did in the Scriptures.
Later orthodox theology naturally endeavours to make
more precise the teaching of the Koran but does not question
its authority. God (the God, Allah) is defined under
ninety-nine names as the Merciful, Compassionate, Pro-
tector, Creator, Provider, Destroyer, Wise, Loving, Exalted,
etc. He is eternal, indivisible, formless, comprehending all
but comprehended of nothing. His angels are sexless, pure,
created of fire; they neither eat nor drink nor have issue.
Chief of them are the archangels, Gabriel, who revealed the
Koran; Mikail (Michael), the guardian; Israfil, who sounds
the last trump; and Azrail, the angel of death. Malik is
the angel presiding over Jehennum (that is, Moloch over
Gehenna). Razan presides over heaven and Munkir and
Nakir are two angels who torment infidels in their graves.
YN
He is eteired of nothing eat nor drink who re
THE RELIGION OF MOHAMMED
473
Every man has two récording angels. Iblis is Saitan, a
fallen angel become a devil. Jinns, born of smokeless flame
and living especially in mountains and deserts, are usually
malevolent but sometimes benevolent. Hell and heaven each
contains seven divisions (as explained above). Until the
resurrection the good repose at peace but the wicked suffer.
Before The Day there will appear a guide, Mahdi, who
will fill earth with righteousness; but there will be no prophet
after Mohammed, who, next to Jesus, is the Spirit of God
(Ruha 'llâh), as before Jesus came the three great prophets,
Adam, Noah, Abraham, and sundry minor prophets.
The practical duties of the Mohammedan are, as they
have always been, the profession of faith, which originally
ran, “ There is no god but the God (Allah)," but even in
Mohammed's day the present form was adopted: “ There
is no god but God and Mohammed is His apostle "; further,
repetition five times daily of a formula of prayer, while the
worshipper bows and faces Mecca, after suitable ablutions,
as explained above; fasting, especially during Ramadhan;
almsgiving; 1 and pilgrimage, if possible, to Mecca, which
includes the saluting and kissing of the Black Stone and
sacrifice of animals. This pilgrimage is really a relic of
pre-Mohammedan days. It is called the Hajj. The Jews
also made a feast (hagg) after going into the wilderness
(Exodus x. 9) and it was this harking back to Abraham
which made it possible for Mohammed to include in his
ritual the pilgrimage to Mecca. He intended his religion
for his own world of Arabia, but probably before his death
he had already envisaged its wider growth.
On Mohammed's death, as he had no son, his friend Abu
Bakr became the first Caliph, “successor,” soon succeeded
by Omar, who defeated the Persians and destroyed the
Byzantine empire in Syria, and then by Othman and Ali,
1 The formal alms, as explained above, is interpreted as a tax
(about two and a half per cent of one's property) for military (or
State) needs. It does not exclude charity, and the Mohammedan is
herit proper the Mohammedanos
as apt to give alms as is another.
474
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
both of whom were assassinated. The history of these few
years reveals the political ambition of Mohammed, whose
own ideas were of course carried out by his intimate com-
panions, and the change from a religious to a political ideal.
The first three Caliphs represented the Koreish family of
Mecca. The true succession, however, lay, according to the
Shiah, or Party of Ali, with the son of Fatima, Mohammed's
daughter, who had married Ali, himself cousin of the
Prophet. This son was Hosain, whose slaughter at Ker-
bela (Oct. 9, 680) is still bewailed by the Shiites for ten
days. The Omayyad governor of Syria became the candi-
date of the Othman clique at Damascus and retained power
till the middle of the eighth century. Islam had already
begun to divide itself into political and religious parties.
The Omayyads were a liberal theocratic faction devoted to
Mohammedanism as a conquering worldly power quite as
much as a religious ideal. The Shiites or Aliites opposed
them because they would not admit the divine succession of
their candidate. But, opposed to both, there soon arose a
party of Aliites who were pietistic and puritanical and dis-
satisfied with the worldliness of both the Shiites and Omay-
yads. These were the Separators or Kharejites. They held
that works were more than faith and inner purity more than
external cleansing and though long since become of no po-
litical importance they still retain these fundamental charac-
teristics. To them the Caliphate was an office to be be-
stowed only on the worthiest man, irrespective of family;
they especially opposed the Omayyads and later influenced
the Berber tribes against this hated family.
The Aliites claimed that the divine spark had passed to
Ali and their representative and that the Koran as God's
word was the Way of truth, but no authority rested in
Mohammed's companions. Hence they separated from the
Sunni, those who later claimed that not only this norm but
that of the immediate companions and followers of the
Prophet made the Way or Sunna to be followed by the
faithful. The Shiahs or Shiites are in general to be found
1
THE RELIGION OF MOHAMMED
475
in Persia and Africa; in India they make only a tenth of
the sixty millions Mohammedans, of whom the mass are
Hindus by race (sons of converts) and more than a third
Bengalis. In Persia royal blood united with that of the
Prophet through the marriage of Hosain with a Sassanide
princess. It is impossible here to review the many divi-
sions of Islam, past and present, but the religious signifi-
cance of one division cannot be passed over. Opposed to,
and eventually triumphant over, the Syrian house of the
Omayyads, arose in 750 the Bagdad Caliphate of the
Abbasides (Abbas was Mohammed's uncle), who secured
also the Caliphate of Cairo and eventually passed their re-
ligious pretensions over to the Sultan of Turkey. The
change of power from Omayyads to Abbasides resulted in
Islam becoming a world-religion instead of a national Ara-
bian religion and did much to further the interest of Per-
sian culture. It was this more liberal party that gaye
approval to Mutazilite rationalism (see below). Out of
this party grew also the mysticism which began within a
century of Mohammed's time, but found its best soil in
Persia, where God became a God of love and man became
God. In such a school blossomed the great Persian poets,
believers and non-believers, who were indeed scarcely to be
distinguished. Opposed to this Caliphate was that of Spain.
Although the Koran has always been the ultimate author-
ity for all Moslems, a saying attributed to Mohammed,
namely, that “whatever has been well said I have myself
said," made it easy to add " tradition ” to the generally plain
1 It is questionable how far the monotheistic tendencies to be
seen in the Kabir and Nanak sects of India revert to Moslem (or
Christian) influence. Akbar's religion was a liberal Sufism ct Per-
sian forn of Islam. Like the first Caliph he had a Christian wife,
but it is unlikely that either of them suffered his harem to mould
his creed.
2 This Abbaside Caliphate raised Nestorian Syrians to high office
and it was these Syrians, thus patronized, who translated Greek
science and philosophy into Syriac and Arabic (e. g., Hippocrates,
Galen, Euclid, Aristotle). The Arabs received, assimilated, and,
bettering their Syrian instructors, became in turn the teachers of
Europe in the thirteenth century.
476
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
and quite circumscribed teachings of the Koran. The tra-
dition, as to the Way of Mohammed, soon included that of
his close companions and what they taught or did became
authoritative to the orthodox (Sunni) as the right Way or
Sunna and was accepted as Hadith (authoritative tradition),
just as Tradition in India soon became almost as authorita-
tive as Revelation. The Koran itself was not edited in a
definitive form till about 650. But it was freely charged
that certain Suras were forged, as certain “tradition” was
forged. Not till the tenth century could orthodox Islam
come to any agreement as to what was orthodox. Then,
however, the varying opinions were sifted and there thus
came into existence the formal Ijma or Agreement, which
since then, because Mohammed said that the community
could never agree in error, has been the third work recog-
nized as authoritative. The fourth work in the religious
literature is a body of reasoning in regard to doctrinal
points. There was from the beginning more or less dis-
agreement as to the interpretation of verses of the Koran,
the earliest probably involving the question as to man's free
will. This was not altogether a purely theological point.
Kadar or fatalism was upheld by the Omayyads of Damas-
cus as a principle conducive to obedience; the powers that
be are the powers divinely ordained. By a lucus a non those
opposed to fatalism were called Kadarites, while those up-
holding this doctrine were known as Jabarites, believers in
blind compulsive power. The Kadarites represented, how-
ever, a pietistic strain, not wholly political nor intellectual.
The question of free will ? was one of several arising from
discussions coming into the church after the founder's
death. Another of similar sort was the question wlecher
1 The Kiyas: Books of practical instruction (Fikh) were based
on this larger literature.
2 God leaves it to man to follow His guidance; who forgets Him
He forgets and abandons. One should pray "guard and guide me.”
Man's dependence on God is implied. Mohammed's earlier view
inclined to free will but later, according to Grimme, he believed in
greater dependence, eventually adopting the view of crass predesti-
nation. But see the next note.
THE RELIGION OF MOHAMMED
477
in
God himself was free, or so bound by justice that he was
obliged to submit to limitations. The early (eighth cen-
tury) Mutazilite school argued that God was under the neces-
sity of sending prophets to save man; that pious people must
be recompensed for their suffering; and that even animals
were to be recompensed hereafter; in short, the justice of
God limits His power. Virtually, therefore, they taught that
while man was free 1 God was not. God's will is not good
as such; He must command what is good. The same reli-
gious philosophy derided the anthropomorphism of vulgar
belief in God's hands and feet, etc. Mutazilites thus opposed
the Hanbalite religious doctors, who represented the ex-
treme wing of conservatism and to whom a purely spiritual
God was contradictory of Mohammed's words (taken lit-
erally). Other later problems, discussed by the philosophers
of the eighth and ninth centuries, were whether God had
attributes and whether there was a natural law. In the
tenth century, the Asharites renounced the rationalism of
the Mutazilites and since the twelfth century the views of
the latter have been given up by the orthodox. Thus
the view of al-Ashari (832–933), who followed Hanbal,
still prevails, according to which laws of nature are really
habits; the absence of sunlight is not what makes a shadow,
but it is a thing created. “A blind man may stand in
China and see a gnat in Spain”; the eye may perceive a
smell or a sound as well as see. The chief points held by
the orthodox, Sunni, who follow al-Ashari, are that God's
word is eternal (uncreated) and that there will be a cor-
poreal resurrection. Asharism also holds that the individual
is not wholly free nor absolutely fated; God is omnipotent.
They deny the Mutazilite notion of a place hereafter be-
tween heaven and hell.
.
1 Texts of the Koran (xviii. 28; xxxviii. 25) allude to "him who
will believe” and “clesire leading astray.” On the other hand, x.
100 says that none may believe except with · God's permission.
These are all Mecca texts. The last is a statement of fact; the
first two are casual allusions from which only a theologian would
draw any theory of free-will.
478
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
: In contrast with Judaism, the original model of Islam,
every man is his own priest and deals directly with his maker,
supplicating God for assistance and for forgiveness. Mo-
hammed himself taught that he, and other apostles, could
mitigate God's justice by appearing as an intercessor and
this doctrine was but the prototype of the later intercessory
character of saints, to whom Mohammedans in general are
as devoted, and of whom they make the same substitute for
divinity, as other religionists. As the Sicilian or Russian
invokes his patron saint and as such a saint is sometimes
only a new form of an old god, so the patron god or saint
of village and province becomes to the Mohammedan the
divine power whom he invokes for rain or safety. Yet no
need is felt for priestly mediators and no sacrifice is required
except as part of the ancient Hajj. As contrasted with
Judaism also Islam recognizes no chosen people; it is a demo-
cratic religion making converts everywhere. As a matter
of course many Mohammedans nowadays neglect devotions
and may go to the mosque but twice a year; but few reli-
gions can count so many genuine devotees.
Islam is as different from Mohammedanism as modern
Christianity is from the teaching of Christ. A whole millen-
nium of new ideas has been grafted upon it. Mohammed
himself has been converted into a sinless being who per-
formed miracles. The Sunna of the first three centuries is
admittedly authoritative, but the orthodox school rejects
the “ degenerate” teaching of later days adopted by the
Shiites, who, in accordance with their view that Ali received
and passed on the divine succession, incline to a mysticism
which has led to a pantheistic nihilism. A paganism nodi-
fied by Gnosticism has inspired this branch of the church.
The Nusairiah sect even treats the holy family of Islam as
nature-gods. A marked feature here is the absolute obedi-
ence demanded of the religious community to its head, sim-
ilar to the Guru-cult of India, the head being regarded as
representative of, or even identical with, God. Thus the
notorious Assassins yielded implicit obedience to their Old
THE RELIGION OF MOHAMMED
479
Man and the modern Babis and Bahis regard their founders
as divine. In part, this has come from an early adoption of
Christian asceticism and celibacy, which introduced into
Islam the pious ascetics called Wanderers, “male and fe-
male," 1 whose exaggeration of confidence in God led to an
attitude of indifference and quietism. Clothed in suf, coarse
wool, these ascetics, who soon became mystics, were known
as Sufis. As early as the seventh century they adopted
un-Mohammedan (Neo-Platonic?) ideas, became “ drunk
with divinity," identified the individual with God, gave
themselves up to religious ecstasy and contemplation, and
interpreting the Koran allegorically, appeared virtually Indic
or Hellenic rather than Mohammedan. With the Kalenders
or Dervishes they reject moral laws and even court disap-
proval. Ethically these heretics “pass beyond good and
evil”; to them,"love alone is true religion.”
Before the tenth century the protest had been made that
“ dirt is not religion.” Although physical dirt was meant,
moral dirt might have been intended. All this mixture of
late philosophy and its resultant pantheism was repudiated
once for all by al-Ghazali (died 1109), who had himself
been a philosopher and Moslem doctor but is known to his-
tory rather as the “ destroyer of philosophers." He op-
posed both the dogmatism and hair-splitting of the Sunni
schoolmen and the gross heresy of the Sufites, in that he
rejected their pantheism, though he admitted into orthodox
belief a certain amount of ethical mysticism. He thus be-
came known as the Regenerator of Religion. His real serv-
ice was that “he turned the church from theological wran-
gling to the spirituality of a unifying faith,” and gave it on
its orthodox side something of Shiite liberality. On the
1 Compare the Buddhist “Wanderers," who may have served as
models, though Christian examples were not lacking. Sufiisi re-
flects different “sources," because they teach the same thing. No
historical connexion has been proved with Indian thought, but it
may have existed. Balkh was then a seat of Buddhism.
2 The Agreement (above) had already given binding force to a
mysticism foreign to the founder, a cult of saints, which he re-
480
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
other hand, the Shiites have two traits which lead them far
afield from Mohammedanism. They have long given up
any effort to make Islam's missionary spirit express itself
by submission of its foes and have themselves adopted as
their motto “ caution," or submission to alien authority even
to the extent of pretended apostasy (taught as a virtue),
that is, the twelfth or hidden Imam, who disappeared in the
ninth century and will appear, a shadowless, sinless, infalli-
ble, incarnate, deity. A sect of Shiites called Ismailites end
the visible line with the seventh instead of the twelfth Imam.
They founded the African Fatimite dynasty in the tenth
century. Philosophically they taught that each revealer
(“ speaker") of truth surpasses the last, so that there is a
gradual revelation of the world-spirit; consequently that their
Imam Ismail (died 762) surpassed his predecessor Moham-
med. They too interpreted the Koran allegorically and re-
garded literal believers as heretics. Prohibition of wine,
fast, and pilgrimage are thus nullified. Their belief that
the Fatimite Caliph Hakim would reveal himself as God
incarnate is still held by the Druses of Lebanon. The Kho-
jas of Indian (under Agha Khan) represent this sect; they
moderate Shiites derive from Zeid (tenth century), great-
grandson of Hosein; they recognize any active Aliite as an
Imam and are tolerant of the Sunnis. They are still found
in southern Arabia under the name of Zeidites. The Shi-
ites in general do not oppose Sunna but define Sunna as the
traditional Way of the Prophet's family, not of his compan-
ions and their later adherents. Later religious modifica-
tion sprang up on Arabian soil and was developed by loans
pudiated, and an extreme asceticism adopted from without. The
Ijma today still holds the Moslem world to polygamy, facile divorce,
concubinage, and slavery, in all which the Prophet's own teaching
improved the ethics of his people but could not anticipate the higher
views of today. Yet polygamy is allowed only to those able to
afford it and slavery' affects only war-captives, whom it is a merit
to set free.
THE RELIGION OF MOHAMMED
481
from Aryan sources. Although the Shiah party represents
that freedom from literal interpretation and from received
belief which makes it “liberal," it is, as Goldziher has shown,
an error to suppose that its character arose in reaction from
a narrow orthodoxy. The Shiites arose as a political party
and when in power were more intolerant than the Sunni. At
the present time not the Sunni but the Shiites take Sura ix.
28 (which speaks of unclean unbelievers) literally, some of
them even “wash the eyes polluted by seeing Europeans.”
The Aliites known as Metawile, around Baalbek, destroy a
vessel touched by a Christian. On the other hand it cannot
be said that the Sunni have failed to respond to modern
liberal views. The Malik school 1 upheld public utility as
against the normal law and thus made possible the introduc-
tion of banks and insurance as well as intercession of saints,
all of which are forbidden (see above) by the Koran. The
fact is that Bida or innovation if enduring enough becomes
custom, so that “it became Bida to oppose Bida.” Thus
Mohammed's birthday festival was opposed as late as the
fifteenth century, but was finally adopted as orthodox. The
most conservative Mohammedans today are a recent sect
called Wahabites, of central Arabia, a reactionary body op-
posing the use of the rosary, tobacco, coffee, etc. In gen-
eral Islam is today a tolerant religion and its fatalism
rightly understood is the expression of resignation to God's
will. It is of course pessimistic, but so is Christianity.
Both believe that the world is evil.
The value of Mohammedanism lies in its influence with
rude races. As it represented God to the Arabs, so today
i This and the Hanbal school already mentioned are not sects
but schools of religious law, of which four are orthodox, the
Hanifites, Malikites, Shafiites, and Hanbalites. Traditionally Islam
has 73 sects but this is only to make it superior to Judaism and
Christianity which, according to the same mytli, boast 71 and 72
sects.
2 According to Hurgronje, the "faithful" may even include non-
Moslem people. The Moslem Church never had an Inquisition
though more liberal philosophical thought coincided with greater
intolerance. This is ascribed to late Zoroastrian influence.
482
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
it is an effective means of betterment to those who stand on
a low intellectual and ethical level. Its prohibition of in-
toxicants and simple creed make it a useful educator in
Africa; its monotheism stands in pleasing contrast with
Hindu polytheism. It is at its best when it has least politi-
cal power.
Far removed from Mohammed is the “Mohammedan”
Babi movement. It reverts to the theory of gradual pro-
gressive revelation. Mirza Ali Mohammed of Shiraz, b.
1820, believed he was the Imam and Bab (door) of salva-
tion. He adopted the mystic combination of letters taught
by the earlier Hurifis, preached the brotherhood of man and
equality of woman, and was put to death in 1850. He was
followed by the Bahi, who died in 1892 and was succeeded
by Abbas Effendi. While the Bab is, in a way, a reform of
a sect of Islam, the world-religion of the Bahis has no claim
to be anything except a Persian form of mixed religious
creeds, mystic philosophies, and social reforms. Similar
tendencies have produced Mahdi religions in India, such as
the Ahmediyya, a modern sect aiming at universality.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
E. H. Palmer, The Qur'ân (Koran), translated in Sacred Books
of the East, vi, ix.
T. Nöldeke, Geschichte des Qorân, 2nd ed., Leipzig, 1909.
Ignaz Goldziher, Mohammed and Islam, translated by Mrs.
Seelye, New Haven, 1917.
D. B. Macdonald, Aspects of Islam, New York, 1911.
C. Snouck Hurgronje, Mohammedanism, New York, 1916.
T. W. Arnold, Preaching of Islam, 2nd ed., London, 1913.
H. Grimme, Mohammed, Münster, 1895.
R. A. Nicholson, The Mystics of Islam, London, 1914.
E. G. Browne, Materials for the Study of the Babi Religion,
London, 1918.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
GREEK RELIGION
ABOUT sixteen hundred B. C., Greece was over-run by Cretan
invaders of higher culture (Minoan), who in turn were
overcome by tribes of Aryan origin (Achaeans) from about
1500 to 1100 (Dorian invasion). The original inhabitants,
“ Pelasgian," formed a third element. Another stream of
Aryans passed from the North into Asia Minor, and many
northern tribes conquered by Achaeans or Dorians may
have been their Aryan predecessors. It is impossible to dis-
tinguish the Pelasgian from the Cretan Mediterranean type.
The latter, and probably the former, had idols and wor-
shipped a great mother-goddess of productivity rather than
a sky-god, while the Ayrans worshipped the sky-god as
chief deity and were less advanced in religious art. Both
races probably worshipped ancestors. In general, the Medi-
terranean type of religion was more magical and mystical;
its spirits were, as compared with the Aryan type, less frank
and human. By the former, divinity was worshipped more
as a goddess or life-potency; by the latter, as a superhuman
man; to the former, the divine was of earth; to the latter,
of heaven. After settling in Greece, the Achaeans adopted
many of the deities of the conquered, who may have in-
cluded tribes of the Achaeans' own race, as subordinate fig-
ures, though it was a long time before the Cyprian goddess of
love, the Thracian god of war, and the goddess of agri-
culture felt quite at home on Olympus, where the Aryan
sky-god lived with his court. The Aryans as they set-
tled down adopted magical rites to aid agriculture, in
which as a host of invading soldiers they at first felt little
interest, probably deeming farming the task of women and
483
484
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
slaves. More interest was shown in herding and their chief
productivity-gods were of this type, Apollo, Hermes, and
Poseidon, whom they brought with them from northern
Greece, as they did Dionysos, the god of general fertility.
As such the last was not at first esteemed very highly out-
side of his Thracian home, though afterwards, adopted as
god of mystic madness induced by intoxication, he was
converted into a “son of the sky-god." In the earlier
period, the sky-god himself was all the god the Aryans
needed for agriculture, as he sent rain, so that he united the
conception of a god ruling in the sky with that of one gov-
erning life underground.1
Since the mystery-religion of Greece and the worship of
female powers came earlier than the Aryan religion, Greek
religion as a whole is often mistakenly represented as evolv-
ing from the lower to the higher form. No greater mistake
can be made. There was no such evolution. The Aryan
invaders, Achaeans and Dorians, simply adopted and adapted
some of the lower elements native to the race they conquered,
or long since brought into Greece from Crete, some parts
of which may have come originally from Egypt. No fetish
or ghost ever developed into Zeus. It is characteristic of
the Achaean religion that it had neither totemism nor
tribal initiation, nor did its worshippers stand in fear of
ghosts and ghouls. It was a virile man's religion, recog-
nizing women-deities of love and domestic art, not as dark
earth-potencies, but as shining celestial spirits. There is
not the slightest evidence that it came from Crete like that
of the preceding race in the Peloponnesus. But Zeus,
though originally so, was no longer the “bright” Sky, any
more than the Teutonic Thor was Thunder. He had al-
1 Hence Zeus georgos (like Poseidon georgos, below), whence,
eventually, “St. George."
2 For various conflicting views as to the aborigines see Ridgeway,
Origin of Tragedy, Cambridge, 1910, who believes that the Greek
aborigines were akin to the Lycians (the Achaeans being Celts);
Farnell, The Higher Aspects of Greek Religion, London, 1911;
and Leaf, Homer and History, London, 1915. Zeus was a moun-
tain-god of Olympus and elsewhere as well as a god of the sky.

GREEK RELIGION
485
ready become a family-man and chief of various clan-
gods. The naturalized Achaeans set beside him as his
“wife" the dethroned female deity of Argos, Hera, arche-
type of monogamous union as “sacred marriage.” As his
brother they took Poseidon, who in his own place and for
some time after his adoption had been as important as
Zeus. Less clear to the Achaeans was the form of another
“ brother,” called Hades, to whom was assigned the under-
world, about which the Achaeans troubled themselves very
little. But to this brother of Zeus they gave as wife
Persephone, daughter of the corn-mother, Demeter, who
may have been an Aryan-renamed goddess native to the orig-
inal inhabitants, or an original Mother Earth, interpreted
after the fashion of the farming population. She, too, was
not originally an Olympian but as goddess of the earth and
tilth and above all as Mother she became the lofty type of
wifely motherhood; 2 until her image, spiritual and material,
blended with that of the Christian Mother.
As Ares of Thrace and Aphrodite of Cyprus were called
son and daughter, respectively, of Zeus, so Apollo,“ dear
to Zeus," was made his son, whose sister, like Apollo armed
with bow and arrow, was Artemis, goddess of life and
death. As daughter of Zeus also is recognized Athene,
goddess of art and skill at home and in the field, chief deity
of Troy as well as chief goddess of the Achaeans and of
Athens. Kronos, an old god of field and harvest, later con-
istian spirit the loft
1 A. B. Cook, Zeus, vol. i, London, 1914, seeks to show that the
Greek Zeus was still the sky as in dios, évoios. He is more success-
ful in proving that Zeus was not originally sun or stars. As family-
man Zeus is associated with the family-cult as guardian of the
home.
2“ There is nothing greater than a mother," says a poet of the
fourth century. Family-life is religiously guarded. On the sacred-
ness of marriage and the possibility of a mystic religionis element in
the early rite, see Farnell, op. cit., p. 30f. Adulterers sinned against
Zeus and Hera and were excluded from religious precincts. Zeus
guarded the honour of the family and the father's right.
3 Artemis is a type of the vague female potency of life anthropo-
morphized as goddess but remaining ever unsullied. She has no
organic connexion with Apollo. With her were identified others of
her type, Britomartis, of Crete, Mâ, of Cappadocia, etc.
486
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
fused with Chronos, was made father of Zeus. The figure
of Hestia (hearth, hearth-fire), who scarcely has personality
in Homer, becomes in Hesiod the daughter of Demeter and
Kronos. Hephaistos, called son of Zeus, was the local fire-
god of Lemnos, though representing the forge-fire rather
than the hearth. While the nature-elements in Poseidon
and Hephaistos are veiled, nature-worship comes out more
clearly in the direct worship of natural objects such as
water in springs and rivers (the Alphaios, etc.), or of
(the muses) hills and springs, in Thrace and Boeotia. Pan
in Arcadia represents a cult of land and herds introduced
quite late (fifth century) into Athens. Holy stones and
posts, destined to become idols and gods, were perhaps
adopted from the original inhabitants, such as the stone
Hermes, originally a figure not unlike that of Priapos.
Dryads, who die with the trees, are later personifications
of sacred trees, such as ash, oak, and cypress; especially the
laurel in Tempe and the palm in Delos. In Boeotia, the
aboriginal cult of serpents was connected with that of
Asklepios, also with the souls of the dead. Zeus himself,
affected by these lower cults, takes the forms of animals,
as Dionysos takes the form of a bull or goat, and other
gods either take animal forms or have animal characteristics,
Apollo being associated with the dolphin, Demeter appear-
ing with a horse's mane, etc. In such phenomena, the
bull-form is regarded as the god himself, and in the
case of aboriginal deities, this may have been the first
form.
Among the Greeks a tendency is observable to regulate
groups of spirits by extending the reach of the sacred num-
ber three. Three days of mourning and a threefold invo-
cation of the dead give a sacred character to the number,
which is then applied to sacred or divine characters. So
arise groups of three Graces, Fates, Eumenides, Hours, and
thrice three Muses. These triads are usually female though
sometimes male, but they never lead to the conception of a
trinity. Thus Homer has three great brother gods, Zeus,
GREEK RELIGION
487
Poseidon, Hades. Zeus, Hera, and Athene or Apollo make
a triad of a family (Hera takes the place of Dione, Juno).
But the advent of the high Olympian gods introduced by
the Achaeans reduced most of the earlier local goddesses to
mythical, quasi historical characters. Cassandra and Helen
were perhaps originally, or later took the place of, such local
goddesses, with temples and images of their own. Others,
as has been said, became forms of greater goddesses, as
Kallisto, the Bear-maid, became a form (name) of Artemis
Kalliste, just as local heroes were either absorbed in or be-
came titles of great gods, Zeus Agamemnon, Meilichios,
Philios, etc., unless, indeed, their legend was too savage to
be adopted, when, like Tantalos, Sisyphos, and others, they
became mere types of barbarism, historic characters meet-
ing a deserved fate. Some of these were perhaps actual
survivals of Cretan dominion in southern Greece.
Like the Roman Indigitamenta, there were also Powers
of one office, whose duty was later absorbed by the higher
divinities. Increase, Auxo, Thallo, Karpo, and such genii
of fruitfulness found among all the Indo-Europeans prob-
ably belong to Achaean as well as to Mediterranean cults.
Some appear as heroes, like Triptolemos, the ploughman or
Erechtheus the ploughman, connected with Erichthonios,
hero and father of fruitful Kekrops, a serpent-tailed hero
as god of crops. Iphigeneia is by name (the spirit of)
animal fruitfulness, whose cult was lost in that of Artemis.
Probably older than Apollo are thus Iatros, Paian (puri-
fier), and Iason, and the Thessalian Chiron. They are
simply " the healer” in one form or under one name or an-
other, possibly original hero-spirits in some cases. In some,
there is only the personification of emotion (Fear, Love) or
abstractions, Ploutos, Wealth, Hygieia, Health; Tyche,
Fortune; Eirene, Peace; Themis, Justice. These powers
tend to become mere attributes of gods of greater calibre, as
local gods merge with and help to amplify the names of
great gods, for example, Zeus Lykeios and Apollo Lykeios,
who through a misunderstanding unite Zeus with the god
488
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
called Lykos in Boeotia and Arcadia.' An excellent exam-
ple of such a combined divinity is the death-goddess of
Homer, Persephone, who was united with Despoina and
with Hekate and even with Artemis as local goddesses of
the same sort current in Arcadia, and yet was united as well
with the Maiden (Kore) or vegetable divinity. Environ-
ment again makes of a tribe's chief god another character
when the scene shifts. For this reason the fertility- and
water-god Poseidon coming from the north, like Apollo,
becomes a sea-god when the tribe worshipping Poseidon
comes to settle by the sea. Early epithets name him georgos
and phytalmios, an agricultural plant-god, and his “horse"
form is derived not from billows as sea-chargers but from
the cultivation of horses. His cult even in Laconia, where
he is Demeter's husband, was older than that of Zeus and in
Athens older than that of Pallas Athene, the culture-goddess.
Hera herself was a goddess of cattle and of well-watered
meadows, for which reason she is a water-goddess in Argos
and still bears in Homer the title “cow-eyed,” while the
pomegranate, emblem of fertility, is sacred to her, and Hebe
(Spring-time) is her daughter. Some scholars, however,
think 2 that she originally represented the moon as a horned
goddess, patron of agriculture, and a deity especially of
women, as the moon often is. More probably she was the
greatest female-power of her state and as such became
“wife” of Zeus (in place of Dione) as well as moon.
The animal-form of a god is, if anything, ruder than the
vegetable form, as cattle-raising usually precedes the settled
life of agriculture. Hence some of the rudest religious
types belong in this category, such as that of Hermes, al-
ready mentioned, a god of animal productivity. The
Homeric hymn sings him as a thief of cattle; he is also the
slayer of the herdsman Argos; early art represents him with
a ram's head. Herodotus tells us that the symbol of pro-
1 Lykos is the wolf (god), but lykeios is light-god (lyke).
2 Miss Harrison suggests that Hera is the same word as English
Year! Leaf, op. cit., p. 262, note.
GREEK RELIGION
489
kadia. Probi. hence his crot of riches
He
ductivity was especially his. He was to Argos what Pan
was to Arkadia. Probably he was originally a local god of
productivity in general; hence his chthonic character, his
office of psychopomp, and his control of riches (metal
wealth) found in the earth. He guides and guards. He
guards both graves and paths and marks, with his Hermes-
stone, the paths dividing property. As God of wealth also
he is god of the market-place (Mercurius to the Roman)
and of cleverness and trickery. As a tricky god he fathers
Autolykos, grandfather of Odysseus, who inherits his sly-
ness. The later athletes also honoured him as god of the
tricks helpful to wrestlers. In many respects Hermes is
thus a little counterpart of Apollo, also a god of shepherds
and cattle-raisers and fruitfulness, whose relations with the
nymphs (like that of Krishna in India) date from this con-
ception of him. An early symbol of Apollo is the goat or
ram, whence he is identified with Karneios, a local ram-god.
But he is also an agricultural god, who introduces or favours
fruit-culture and bee-culture. He overcame Hyakinthos,
that is, his cult took over that of a local god of that name.
He became also a sea-god of fishes typified as the dolphin-
form known in Crete and brought from Crete into Elis as
the Delphinios Apollo, whose title was taken by Delphi,
where Apollo assumed the oracular powers originally be-
longing to the earth-goddess, and killed her snake-guardian
Pytho. Finally in Delos Apollo became a sun-god, so that
the cult of the older Helios is lost in that of Apollo, as was
that of the medicinal god Phoibos and other local gods.
Apollo's rise to the position of sun-god stands parallel to
that of his sister Artemis to the position of moon-goddess
from the earlier status of a goddess of animal-productivity.
Apollo came to Rome as "healer," medicus, that is, as
Phoibos.
It is clear that the early Greek divinities do not arise from
moral contemplation. They are themselves in story im-
moral or unmoral. They are not abstractions, nor usually
Numina, but are anthropomorphic deities. No idea is ap-
490
parent of a god who omnipotently and justly rules the world.
The gods themselves injure and deceive men. Yet in the
conception of divinity foreshadowed by Moira, Fate, there is
a rapid growth toward that of an over-ruling Providence.
increase the grandeur of that figure and with the growth
of ethical ideals the idea of a god corresponding to those
ideals begins to emerge. As receiver and absorber of the
benefits thus bestowed upon the gods by more civilized men,
Zeus, the guardian of the town, stands foremost, as his po-
sition at the head of the pantheon made it natural that he
should be most prominent ethically as he was physically.
He is themistios, the god of right order. He is not above
orders the world, sees all, notes wrong and right, upholds
the family, befriends the stranger, aids the suppliant, and
is the saviour and purifier of men, as he is the giver of life,
happiness, and power. Later, Zeus becomes a world-prin-
ciple; in the third century he is even “ interpreted ” as a
ghost (doctrine of Euhemerus), but in the earlier religion
he is a humanized spirit of nature, moral as man.
In Homer, the cult of such gods as he recognizes appears
to be one of great simplicity. Every feast was a sacrifice.
Temples and shrines were known, but the former might be
a mere grove or a mountain-top and the shrine was not nec-
essarily in a fixed place. Anywhere one might build an
altar and sacrifice animals to a god. Altars, idols, and sym-
bols of divinity belonged also to the Cretan cult, as did the
worship of trees, stones, and animals. There was no
Achaean priesthood, though professional priests existed;
later came also priestesses. Priests were prayer-makers
and prophets, holy men, but not celibate; there was no
priestly caste. To honour the gods, communicate with them,
and to win their help or avert misfortune were the objects
of prayer, from which at first the formal elements of thanks-
giving and praise seem to have been absent, though at a later
date fully recognized. Even the great gods acted as house-
GREEK RELIGION
491
T
guardians, as in India (not in Rome). Sacrifices were an-
nual and occasional. Human sacrifice, to Zeus and other
gods is mentioned in legend 1 and in early times was common
to the mainland, to Crete and to the islands of the Aegean,
where children as well as men were dismembered and de-
voured in magical rites to increase the strength of the god.
Wine was also poured out to a god on taking an oath, at
meals, and on other special occasions. The early gods were
not supposed as a class to be concerned with moral acts,
but by the seventh century purification was demanded by
them in the case of murder; and ceremonial purification was
also religiously expected after childbirth, or when one was
initiated into religious mysteries. Sacrifice, scape-goats, or
water-ablution were the means employed for purification,
which was at first only ritualistic. The will of the gods was
ascertained not only by oracles but through victims, dreams,
flames, birds, snakes, bones, etc. In classical times the
priests were State officials and the State religion was largely
a formal observance of rites, including the oath and curse
(which was rather magical than religious).2 Months and
days were dedicated to certain gods. Thus the first and
seventh day of every month were Apollo's. Yet there was
no intimate connexion with the Olympian gods. Even
later, “ to love God would be improper," says Aristotle.
Morality was supported more by appeals to the right order
of the universe or the right way (Themis, Dike) as abstract
divine powers, than to the gods of Olympos. Only the
Fates, even in Hesiod, are moral punishers of crime. The
1 At the funeral of Patroklos (11. xxiii. 175) Achilles sacrificed on
his pyre horses, dogs and Trojans, apparently to accompany the
shade into the next world. Yet the worship of the dead belongs
rather to primitive civilization than to that of the Achaeans.
2 The curse operated without divine interference; but it was itself
a sort of spirit, as a potency which could be invoked. It belonged,
however, especially to the powers below, though in the care of Zeus.
3 Sin in Homer is chiefly a violation of ethical rules, failure to
honor parents or guests or suppliants or to keep an oath ; sin against
the gods comes from neglect in serving them, but violation of ethics
brings divine punishment.
492
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
chief crime was hybris, insolent over-stepping of one's rights.
In Hesiod, Justice includes regard for others' rights and
morality is based on this as a divine power. Justice is called
the daughter of Zeus. So to be law-abiding, says Hesiod, is
the best thing to pray for. Later, the gods became the ideals
born of advanced civilization. The State came into being
out of a union of clans (the beginning of this is already
Homeric), and accordingly the gods themselves became
more universal, though clan-, club- and family-gods were
retained. Even in Homer's time, Zeus and others had be-
come general Greek gods and various clans united in wor-
ship at one temple, which drew around it the beginnings of
a town. Thus the city was felt as a whole religiously; its
god was regarded as citizen of it, sometimes as its ances-
tor. Each religious centre had its own individuality as had
the clan. Later State-worship, with its temples, proces-
sions, statues, etc., gave a united religious aspect to Greek
political life, and this conception of a religious State made
easy the expansion of religion into a broader, universal
religious brotherhood.
The community-religion of the Greek made it possible to
allow one victim to represent the whole community in a
vicarious sacrifice and it gave patriotism a religious signifi-
cance. Who defended his land, defended his gods; con-
versely, who kept out foreign gods, was a patriot. But when
the Persian war made Greece conscious of itself as a whole,
Zeus became Hellenios, a moral god of all Greece now pro-
claimed as such. The Delphic oracle, too, helped to make
all Greece one religious community. The Homeric divinity
was already a protector of the suppliant and stranger and
the god of friendship. Mercy and justice and compassion
were his traits, as humanity and art were dear to Athene,
and as Apollo inspired music and patronized philosophy.
Thus religion, which had affected Greek life from the be-
ginning, grew even more intimately connected with it, in-
separable from its art and its philosophy.
On the other hand, the old cult of lower gods and ghosts
GREEK RELIGION
493
was taken os of riddance the former asus festiv
in
was taken over by the State but was modified by it. Apo-
tropaic rites (of riddance) were made part of a higher cult
of tendance by retaining the former as only part of the lat-
ter. A rite of fear became a joyous festival. Yet the
chthonic spirits could not be wholly avoided. The savage
view persisted. They were identified more or less with
heroes as good ghosts, or were, as evil ghosts, placated with
offerings and then sent away by the use of pitch and buck-
thorn or a good beating (as in Greenland, etc.). Sacrifice
was made to them at night by persons dressed in black;
while, to serve the Olympian gods, sacrifice was made by
day by worshippers in white.
Sacrifices to the upper gods were based on the notion that
they would gladly share in the meal of their worshippers and
that to offer good things to them would coerce them
to do good to the worshipper in turn. This is the pre-
dominant mixed note in the Homeric sacrifice. Slaughter of
animals, bull, goat, sheep, or swine, was for the purpose
of providing such a common meal. But the victim also
imparted to the worshippers who ate of it communion with
the god. The rites differed according to locality, but in
general the victim was adorned with flowers and fillets and
its horns were gilded. An altar-brand was plunged by way
of consecration (communion) into a basin of water and all
were baptized with this holy-water. Barley-groats salted
were passed around and strewn on the victim and thrown
into the fire, where also was thrown hair cut from the vic-
tim's brow and dedicated to the god. In solemn silence
the victim's throat was cut; in the case of an ox or other
large victim it was stunned first. The blood of the victim
was thrown on the altar and part of the flesh was burned
for the god; libations were made of wine, milk, and honey.
The sacrifice to the lower gods, to heroes, and to the dead
was made by pouring the blood into the earth (a trench)
and the entire victim was burned or buried or got rid of by
casting the body into water. Animals unfit for food, such
as dogs, were sometimes slain for this sacrifice; in any case
494
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
the worshippers did not partake of the food of the dead.
For ghosts, beans and eggs cast on the ground served as
sacrifice and pigs cast into a pit fed such ghosts materialized
as serpents. As the backbone of a man was thought to be-
come a serpent, snakes were generally regarded as new
forms of defunct men. Offerings of fruit, honey, milk,
especially cakes shaped like animals, were made to the lower
powers, to whom usually no wine was offered, as this was
reserved for the Olympians. At some altars only bloodless
sacrifice was made. A repugnance against all bloody sacri-
fice manifested itself by the seventh century and became a
trait of Pythagorean and Orphic religion.
Omens were taken from the thighs of the victim, wrapped
in fat and consumed. Oracles were supposed to be divine
utterances at certain places, the best known being that of
Zeus at Dodona 1 and of Apollo at Delphi and Delos.
Some heroes also had oracular shrines, such as Trophonius
at Lebadeia in Boeotia ; Amphiaraos near Thebes.
Chief of the earth-goddesses was Demeter, whose cult, to-
gether with that of Dionysos, both strange to Homer, in-
troduced new elements into Greek religion. The Demeter
cult, perhaps derived from the Mediterranean cult, which
exalts a Mother-goddess, began probably with sympathetic
magic (ce kúe), but became a sort of sacred drama in which
were enacted scenes from the life of the sorrowing god-
dess, who mourned her lost daughter (the vegetable life
of the world), Kore or Persephone, the worshippers sorrow-
ing with her in a spectacle, carried out in darkness. She
descended into Hades to find the lost Kore, whose re-
vival in spring vegetation typified to the worshipper a
resurrection, in which he came to share, as the idea of
union with the divinity was imposed upon the primitive cult.
This later idea, however, originated in the Dionysiac cult,
which under Orphic influence became spiritual and ethi-
cal. Association of Bacchus with the Eleusis cult was
1 Here Zeus himself gave oracles from his oaks (compare the
Druids). The oak itself may have been the first god.
0
GREEK RELIGION
495
ation by means of a festival of Apolis June at the
a secondary stage. The whole cult included, besides,
the more primitive animism of the natives, which had
intrenched itself in the life of the people too deeply to
be given up. For the most part the old rites of riddance
were therefore, as has been said, turned into decent reli-
gious rites in honour of respectable gods. Thus in its
primitive form the “ Diasia of Zeus” was a March “ fes-
tival” of cursing, marked by killing pigs at night for ghosts.
It is doubtful, however, whether the Anthesteria of Dio-
nysos in February-March was originally, as some think, a
placation of ghosts raised by prayer (an All Souls' Day).
The first fruits were offered to spirits in May-June at the
Thargelia, supposed to be a festival of Apollo but really a
purification by means of a human scape-goat called the
pharmakos. There was a rite wholly for women in Oc-
tober-November called the festival of the Thesmophoria,
in which pigs were cast into a chasm in honour of Euboulos,
who had vanished underground with Demeter's daughter.
The remains of the pigs, such as had not been eaten by the
snakes (i. e. ghosts), formed a sort of fertilizer, being placed
on fallow ground to make crops grow with a “fair birth."
These festivals rid house and town of the spirits after
they had received their annual tendance. They correspond
to the Roman placation ceremonies called Feralia and
Lupercalia, in which, as a fertility-charın, women were hit
with the skin of goats, animals sacrificed to spirits. Evil
spirits impair fertility and purification is to be pure (free)
of spirits. The Achaeans showed no regard for such rites
at first, yet they gradually absorbed them, as they did the
local gods. The two cults, of kindly Olympians and of
frowsy ghosts, trees, and serpents, both revert to prehis-
toric times. Probably the reverence paid to trees, running
water, sky-stones, and similar phenomena was an element
common to Achaean and Mediterranean religion; while
reverence paid to heroes of the past was certainly not con-
fined to the latter, though a settled people holds in longer
remembrance the local monuments of their dead. Mediter-
496
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
ranean burial, as opposed to Achaean cremation, was also
a factor of importance. It is perhaps too commonly as-
sumed that burial implies greater regard for life beyond the
grave than does cremation; but India teaches that both
methods of disposing of the dead may be practised syn-
chronously, withal at a time when great regard was paid to
the life hereafter. Yet the material presence of a grave,
in the shape of a mound over a body known to be buried
there, conserves a memory for centuries and tends of itself
to convert a dead hero into a living divinity.
Other ghosts regarded as spirits have been exposed by
modern scholars.1 Thus the Erinyes have been shown to be
at first avenging spirits, demanding vengeance, not food.
Bird-like ghosts are Sirens and the Keres. Other spirits
are doubtful. Thus the Winds are sometimes treated as
perturbed ghosts, for whom black sacrificial animals were
buried, such as Harpies, and sometimes as heavenly spirits,
to whom white sheep were sacrificed. Stormy winds natu-
rally appear in one rôle; kindly breezes in another. So in
India (and in Zorastrianism) “good” and “bad” winds
were recognized. Pigs that root in the ground naturally
belong to ghosts, who fertilize land covered with the flesh
and blood of swine. Sacrifices to the dead and to under-
ground spirits are found among savages and must be dis-
tinguished from fertility-rites based on sympathetic magic.
These latter hold up to nature what is to be imitated, at
first drastically, then more symbolically, realistic action yield-
ing to implication; lewd behaviour and language taking the
place of magical performance.
All the lower spirits, like the higher, tend to beconie less
animal in form. The Erinyes lose their wings and become
one with the goddesses, ministers of justice, called the
1 See especially Jane Harrison, Prolegomena to Greek Religion,
Cambridge, 1903. Miss Harrison's later (1913) work, Themis
(from magic to Olympus), assunies too inuch and shows less judg-
ment than her Prolegomena, though this work also is based on an
implied evolution of a feministic religion into a cult of male deities
(a decadence, as Miss Harrison regards it).
GREEK RELIGION ..
497
Semnai and Eumenides. Artemis appears no longer with
scales like a fish, Demeter no longer with a mane like a
horse. The forms of gods honoured by the Achaeans
tended to make ridiculous the animal-forms revered by the
natives. Finally the concept of divinity was raised to a
height where even the humanized gods of the Achaeans,
still more humanized by the statues that represented them
as mere men and women, were too gross for philosophy.
The poets mocked anthropomorphism; the early philoso-
pher of the sixth century said, “There is One God, not
like men in mind or body; all of him sees, thinks, and
hears.” 1 This is the “ Zeus however called," who is not a
man but the spiritual power of the universe.
Concerning man, we hear, at first in Hesiod, of the five
ages of deterioration through which he has passed from a
former diviner state. His soul becomes a shadow after
death in a shadowy world. Man neither fears nor hopes
much beyond the grave. Only the very wicked are tor-
mented hereafter; only a few heroes of old dwell in Elysium.
But even this is a grace of the gods, a prediction of a later
salvation by grace. There is as yet no recognition of man's
dual nature, earth-bound but fitted for divinity, purified by
loosening the bonds of flesh through asceticism; no idea of
sin inherited from a prenatal state; no close relation be-
tween the moral and the divine.
Hesiod reflects not only Homer's lore but the mythology
of Crete and of the world, so to speak. His “birth of
Zeus” pictures the sword-dancers of Crete and his contest
of gods and Titans is like an echo of the conflict with
Tiamat. But such contests are too general and universal
to make necessary the assumption of a “loan." The old
order changeth everywhere and the Titans' strife is merely
a poetic version of the change from savagery to civilization.
The perpetual strife is then between the gods above and the
1 This (Orphic) pantheism becomes a belief in a vague Power
like the primitive potency (without individuality) which character-
izes the mana-belief. But the mana-belief is not a belief in a úni-
versal, but in an individual, potency. See above, p. 18.
498
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
TI
powers below, the death of vegetation and of all life, when
dark and cold oppose light and heat. This drama, too, ap-
peared in Greece and as an actual (acted) drama of the
country was introduced into Athens when the country-
population began to drift into the town.
After the age of romance and chivalry associated with
the feudalistic type of society portrayed by Homer, religion,
as revealed by literature, is a reversion to the homelier side
which had been more or less ignored. At the same time
questions arose as to the nature of gods and their relation
with right and justice. So we get cosmologies and a crude
ethical religion in Hesiod, but these beginnings at least
paved the way to later religion by introducing a spirit of
inquiry. On the other hand, the emotional element in re-
ligion, which had remained hidden among the rites of the
wilder northern tribes and is almost ignored by Homer, be-
gins to attain more prominence. Thus religion develops
along two quite sundered lines, the emotional and the philo-
sophical, till the former by becoming spiritualized blends as
mysticism with the latter.
The first movement away from the traditional gods of
the aristocratic class was incidental to social change, esteem
for country life and plebeian gods and the gradual intro-
duction of country rites into city life. Two cults, as has
been said, united in the later Eleusinian mysteries, that of
Demeter, as carly as the seventh century, whose loss and
recovery of her daughter represented the death and revival
of vegetation, an early tribal mystery afterwards adopted
by all, and that of Dionysos, the life-giver, whose Thracian
worshippers, of unknown antiquity, were wild drunken
devotees seeking union with the god by delirious orgies in
which they, largely women, devoured the raw flesh of vic-
tims they had dismembered and identified with the god,
1 This is probably not wholly due to literary chance. Doubtless
the homelier religion existed before it was exploited by Hesiod,
but also economic conditions aided then for the first time the cul-
ture of fields and of the deities of the fields. So in India agricul-
tural gods are late because, agriculture is later than cattle-lifting.
1
GREEK RELIGION
499
whose very body they assimilated and to whose immortality
they thus became entitled. By the sixth century a deeper
significance of this cult, by way of Orphism, was evolved.
This substituted an enotion of the spirit for the exciteinent
of the body; purity of soul for bodily purification; mysticism
for sensuous feeling. This religion was open to all, even
to slaves, and consolidated the worshippers, men and
women, into a sort of church. It was a personal religion;
the worshipper was intent on a future life of bliss rather
than on worldly welfare such as that given by the Olym-
pians, a life attained by assimilation to the divine nature
of Zeus as the universal god whose son is Dionysos. Those
uninitiated must go to a foul hell, till purified they are
born again. How to overcome death was shown at
Eleusis; 1 how to become divine was shown by Orphisin.
This popular Orphic religion, which was not, like the
Eleusinian mysteries, adopted by the State, soon became
rank with quackery but its essence was pure and its effect
lasting.
Greek philosophy was incidentally ethical and religious
from the beginning. The poets had given cosmologies and
divine origins. Thales, c. 600 B. C., derived the universe
from water and declared that God was the “intelligence of
the world.” Anaximander derived the world from the In-
finite. Pythagoras, of Doric stock and spirit, combined a
deepening of moral consciousness with metaphysical inquiry.
He founded a religious-philosophical school, perhaps the
first of those religious secret societies which attacked the
naive Achaean Zeus-religion from within the Greek world.
Behind matter he sought that which gives it form and pro-
portion and found this in number, which alone, giving di-
mension, makes a harmonious whole. He predicated num-
ber not as the type but as the essence of things, the thing
1 The initiate was moved by the spectacle rather than instructed;
"blest is he who has seen these rites.” The rise of the deity from
the underworld became symbolic of life which arose again after
burial. The original rite was a magical cult preserved in the invo-
cation “rain, conceive!” Two jars represented heaven and earth.
500
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
cacing Beifing alon Polytheism.es, a foli
itself; all is number; the soul and music are numbers.
Later was ascribed to him (probably falsely) the ipse dixit,
“Unity is Deity." From Orphic circles he adopted the be-
lief in metempsychosis and invariable rotation of activity,
later a doctrine of the Stoics. He first spoke of the body
as the prison of the soul; he advocated moral life, purity,
non-injury to animals; and founded a religious colony at
Crotona in Italy, perhaps in the seventh century. In the
sixth to fifth century Xenophanes, a follower of Anaximan-
der, railed at current polytheism and opposed it with the doc-
trine that Being alone is the Ultimate; the Deity as all-em-
bracing Being is One. Yet Xenophanes recognized the
reality of plurality and becoming. In this system, which
predicates the unity of the world, the immanent cause may
be called God; it is a pantheism rather than a theism.
Xenophanes also founded a school in Italy, at Elea, whence
he and his two successors are called the Eleatics. Parmeni-
des, the first of these, reduced the One and Many to the
Eternal and Becoming; only that which can be can be
thought; there is no non-being; all thought is of Being.
This Being, one with thought, has no plurality or change;
it is infused with creative heat, called light (symbolically
represented as a female power governing all and mother of
Eros) opposed to night. The third Eleatic, Zeno, called
the "inventor of dialectic” might be called the first Sophist;
he denied plurality and change (becoming). Movement is
impossible; Achilles can never catch the tortoise; the arrow
cannot move, etc.
Opposed to a school which had thus argued itself into
such a denial of change or becoming, Heraclitus (c. 460)
denied Absolute Being. All is Becoming, all flows; or, as
Buddha also said, all is burning. Original energy, expressed
by constant change, is both Being and Becoming. Empe-
docles of Sicily (440) made love and hate two forces
operative in eternal matter, which, as he was first to state,
is composed of four elements. In the same century De-
mocritus assumed atoms acting from necessity as sufficient
GREEK RELIGION .
501
to explain the universe, which he regarded as godless (he
degraded gods to air-demons). The atomic theory he took
from Leucippus and the idea of necessity from Pythagoras;
he himself indulged in no cult of demons (as did Pytha-
goras), but held to a world evolved without divine agency.
Anaxagoras, who may be said to have planted philosophy
at Athens, where he was a friend of Pericles and Euripides,
first set beside matter a divine Intelligence, Nous, as primal
causality, though he left this Nous inactive thereafter, as
the philosophic Hindus leave Brahman, who having created
has done his part and rests. It remained for the Sophists
to recognize mind as something permanently higher than
matter, though the Sophists were not of one school, some
remaining agnostic, some denying an intelligent governing
principle.
But, as regards the people at large, apart from philosophy,
there were, on the one hand, the vulgar, for whom Solon's
religion doubtless sufficed, “Honour the gods and respect
your parents "; and, on the other, those neither vulgar nor
metaphysical speculators. To them, the cultivated honest
men, there were two moral laws, one given by legal enact-
ment or ancient custom and the other the unwritten law of
nature, which together taught ritual purity, formal service,
and ethical behaviour. In choosing between the two, the
conservative chose ancient law; the liberal, natural law, as
their guide. But the older credulity was gone. To the
lyric poets, Zeus was vague; to Thucydides, oracles were of
doubtful value. The chief bond between gods and men
ethically was the maintenance of sobriety, especially in avoid-
ing insolent assumption of power and wealth when acquisi-
tion involved unethical behaviour. Even the idea that the
gods humbled the fortunate because they were too happy
(quite apart from ethics) lingers on in Herodotus. Above
all there is a doubt as to the governing power in the world;
it may be, as Euripides says, the evil Necessity of the phi-
losophers; it may be human intelligence, perhaps as part
of the universal Nous. No one knows. There is no infal-
502
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
lible authority; no revelation; no inspired Word. None of
the poets or would-be philosophers of the fifth and sixth cen-
turies has any fixed ethical base of action. Most of them
question old beliefs; some doubt the existence of divinity.
Pericles in his great speech has not a word to say in the
way of religious consolation.
Meantime the various Mysteries were influencing popu-
lar opinion. A sentimental religion, deriving from a sen-
suous mysticism, inspired hope of future life for the initi-
ates, who as such, irrespective of their morality, were en-
titled to happiness in this world and bliss in the next, while
those not initiate would fail of happiness here and sink in
slime hereafter. Out of the religious mystery arose the
drama which gave a new power to religious (and irreligious)
truths uttered before a popular assembly. Symbolic inter-
pretation of old tales also affected religion. The divine in
man was revealed in the tale of the Titans. They devoured
Dionysos and were in turn destroyed by Zeus, but they had
absorbed divinity and their ashes kept it still. The old
Homeric idea of hell (Hades) as a place of torment for
sinners was now quite generally united with that of trans-
migration, as in India. Zeus, to the thinker, became the
supreme lord of the world, from whom in accordance with
justice come good and evil. The rule of the gods became
1 Cretan, perhaps Egyptian, influence may have been at work in
the Dionysos-Demeter (later “ Year Demon") cult. Elysium has
been compared with the Egyptian Aall, whither he goes who being
pure has escaped condemnation at the hands of Ra of Amenti
(which becomes Rhadamanth-us). Miss Harrison, who believes
in this etymology as an indication of Egyptian origin, also (Prol.
421) derives tragedy from tragos, “ spelt,” spelt wrong for trugodia
“ wine-lees.” The etymology is false, but Dionysos's connexion
with tragedy is assured. Professor Ridgeway has lately sought to
show that all tragedy arises from ghost-cult. But tragedy (and ,
play-acting in general) has more than one root. The “ Year-
demon," or better the season-strife, is clearly dramatized in primi-
tive cults without reference to ghosts.
2 An evil principle is not recognized by early Greek thought.
Later philosophers and Orphics, however, referred evil to evil
demons. The earlier ghosts were not evil by nature, though if
neglected they might do evil to man. Still, demoniac powers were

GREEK RELIGION
503
.
the world-order. The poets recognize the old gods but
accept the new ideas. Pindar erects shrines to Pan and
Cybele, statues to Zeus, Apollo, and Hermes; but to him
the gods are moral powers and he believes of them only
the tales which exhibit them as all-seeing spirits who honour
truth and right; de deis nil nisi bonum. He also teaches
that a human soul may free itself from bodily bonds and
find rebirth. Sophocles teaches that a man must follow the
lead of the gods as beings superior to him in judgment of
right. Undeserved misfortune by Aeschylus, who believes
that the universe is moral, is explained on the principle
of wisdom through suffering. To him all gods are names
of one All-Being. Euripides (480-406 B. C.) taught that
gods exist only if gods are good; divinity exhibits itself as
reason and justice, whether one call it aether or intelligence;
also he adopts the mystic standpoint enough to imply that
inspiration more than knowledge brings wisdom. The in-
tellectual life of Athens in the fifth century agrees with the
popular religion and with the philosophers in postulating a
higher divinity than that of old and in making man a di-
vinely affected spirit. Socrates definitely expressed reli-
gion in terms of ethics, which finally led Plato (428–347)
to the thesis that, as God is good, so the Good is God, and
that man's nature is divine; since the human soul partakes
of divinity in that it is eternal and immortal, like the Idea 1
which it can apprehend. For a time the belief in the old
gods reasserted itself in condemning those publicly accused
a popular belief, Ephialtes, the demon of indigestion, bogeys like
Lamia and Mormo (to frighten children), etc., and "man-demons,"
who may have been ghostly spirits, as avengers, alkestores. To the
philosophers these were still more or less real, though Heraclitus
says that a man's character is his daemon. The wicked demons of
Empedocles who suffer metempsychosis for 30,000 years are, how-
ever, human souls.
1 The Idea unites the noumenal and phenomenal. God is here
transcendent; the world is shaped by demiurges according to the
Ideas; they make the gods and the gods make the rest of creation.
The world itself is aútofwov, and evil by Necessity. Plato is the first
to argue that the soul is an immortal substance; the prison-house
notion he took from Pythagoras.
504
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
Thigh is alre, may every
fairly metared B. C. All forms of one of al
of impiety. Socrates was slain as an unorthodox wor-
shipper as well as a corruptor of morals; Anaxagoras before
him had to flee for his life. It is a mistake to assume that
Athens was wholly liberal-minded; but the populace con-
founded Socrates with the Sophists, who had indeed upset
with casuistry all the grounds of ethics and religion, while
Anaxagoras's blunt statement that the popular gods were
base or were mere matter (the sun is a stone), was to the
mind of the pious mere blasphemy.
In Orphism, the soul may eventually become divine; in
Plato's system, it is already divine, needing only to escape
its prison. This it does not emotionally but rationally. Al-
though Plato condemned the quackery which arose in the
train of Orphism, he borrowed much from it. Orphic ideas
fairly metamorphosed the old Zeus-religion from six to
three hundred B. C. All divinities were here looked upon as
nourishing and saving forms of one potency: “ Zeus is
one, male and female, the breath (soul) of all. Sun, moon,
stars, and sky are all Zeus." Each man is supposed to have
a guardian spirit that accompanies him (fourth century).
The world is imagined as coming from a cosmic egg (as in
India). Eros and Dionysos were now held to be cosmic
principles; divine love replaced passion; the principle of
life and spiritual ecstasy took the place of Bacchantic mad-
ness. Old rules received new interpretation. Formerly
beans were avoided as food of the ghosts; now one must
avoid be-ans as a form of be-ing.1
It must not be thought, however, that the old country
religion was suddenly given up. On the contrary, as late
as the fifth century Pan was brought from Arcady and es-
tablished at Athens, as Asklepios was brought thither from
Epidauros. But, from Plato's time on, Orphic thought satu-
rated philosophical religion, as it had greatly influenced
1 Such sacred puns were no joke to the ancients; the name had
a religious significance. Compare (Professor Lamman's version)
the Hindu rule against eating meat: “Me cat will he, prām sa,
whose meat, mūmsa, I eat." The Greek rule, Kuámous dià Thu KÚTOLP,
is rendered as above by Miss Harrison.
GREEK RELIGION
505
people and philosophers for two centuries before him. The
best man is now the one “nearest to God." Incarnated
again and again, a man frees himself from grossness till
(by a combination of purgatory and metempsychosis) he
becomes his true self, divine. Soul and body make a dual
nature, the latter hindering and imprisoning the former.
Means of release in this life are, besides knowledge (Plato's
emphatic modification), abstinence from meat, eggs, beans,
etc., and a discipline more or less magical. Empedocles re-
counted his “ former births.” Pindar, Euripides, and Plato
were Orphic adepts. Plato in fact lived for some time at
Croton in Italy, where Pythagoras was cultivated as a di-
vine founder of a school, one of the numerous brotherhoods
which took an important part in disrupting Greek religion.
They were partly philosophical and partly religious congre-
gations devoted to the service of special gods, generally for-
eign gods like Sebazios, and having their own rules and
sacraments.
The importance of Aristotle (384-322 B. c.) as a reli-
gious teacher was not felt till the Middle Ages. In oppo-
sition to Plato he taught that Ideas were not realities, but
that there was a real and intelligent Cause, setting the world
in order with a view to its predestined end, this cause being
God in Nature. God does nothing without purpose; order
and purpose testify to Mind or God, who in the last analy-
sis must be identical with Nature, as ultimate matter is one
with what Aristotle calls the Form as God. But the philos-
opher is not wholly consistent with himself, since he also
holds that God (First Cause and Pure Thought) is not
mixed with matter but immaterial, like Plato's Idea, tran-
scendent, not immanent in matter, so that his system is logi-
cally dualistic. The Nous or soul in this system is divine
(eternal and immortal) 2 as it is the creative, reasoning part
of man. Thus the way is prepared for Stoicism and its
1 That is food fit for ghosts and demons.
? So Janet and Séailles, A History of the Problems of Philosophy,
London, 1902, vol, ii. pp. 355 f., as opposed to Zeller, who denies that
the human voūs of Aristotle is immortal.
506
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
teaching that man has a moral nature. The Stoics 1 taught
that the soul shares the appetites of the animal and the reason
of divinity. The aim of life is to develop this moral nature;
virtue is man's highest pursuit and virtue is intelligence,
discretion, courage, and justice, which they summed up as
knowledge, thus identified with virtue, as Socrates identified
the two. Man's will must be brought into accord with
nature; he must be dominated by reason, which is the active
principle in the material universe. This reason, theoreti-
cally material, is actually regarded as God (World-Reason),
immanent in matter, not transcending matter though it may
be called Zeus, "from whom men derive, the author of all
nature, guiding all with law.” To the Stoic, evil is com-
plementary to good, as is dark to light; the soul, if wise
(thus Chrysippus), survives death till the end of the age,
when the world through a conflagration comes to a practical
stop (it actually continues through new cycles of involved
existences). . One of the most significant doctrines of Stoi-
cism is that of the brotherhood of man, all men possessing
part of the universal Reason. That all men being divine
are born equal and that all gods except God as Reason are
allegories, may be said to sum up the view of the Stoics.
Naturally, Stoicism became chiefly a moral philosophy,
since it had discarded personal gods. Its doctrines, when
received at Rome, had a great influence on the religion of
the future..
Reviewing the course of Greek religion thus far, we find
that the idea of divinity, already enlarged by political acci-
dent, as clans rose to State, was elevated by Orphism, which
interpreted the divine not only mystically but morally. The
moral element was an addition to the older (ritualistic)
purity of the mysteries, but it was present in the Zeus-relig-
ion. Resurrection, also was not new. All Greece had local
1 The chief Stoics were Zeno (340 B. C.) of Cyprus, Cleanthes, and
Chrysippus. They assumed two active and two passive (receptive)
elements, fire and air versies earth and watcr; but their fire is a
reasoning energy, the seed of being and thought and the ethical
principle (“Zeus").
GREEK RELIGION
507
1
heroes, who lived after death; ghosts, too, returned to earth
to injure or benefit man; and vegetable-resurrection was
celebrated as a divine return to life of a spirit-power.1 To
these ideas of revival the Orphics added that of the human
soul destined to suffer and be rewarded hereafter, which
infused into Greek religion the belief in the torments of
hell for every sinner, as every pure soul might be blessed
in the next life. Homer's pessimism as to the next life
becomes optimism; but on the other hand his optimisın or
joy in this life becomes pessimistic; the material world is
now essentially evil (so even Plato argues). The germ
of moral disease is to be seen here. Spirituality carried
to the point of seeking riddance from the body is not
sound. No healthy animal desires to die. So long as
Orphism remained a cult of philosophy and of a few mystics
it was not dangerous. In the sixth and later centuries the
great gain for religion was its humanitarian aspect. Re-
ligion is open to all and man's nature is recognized as the
same everywhere. “No good man is alien to me," says
Menander (fourth century B. C.). God is a spirit discerned
by mind: “ The light of the mind is to gaze upon God.”
But as Athens declined in power her intelligence weakened.
Finding that the old gods could not help her, her thinkers
turned to magical mysticism and to the cult of foreign
gods; though probably the mass remained as true to the
old gods, nymphs, spirits, and ghosts as masses always do.
But Tyche, Fortune, an uncertain substitute for Zeus, be-
came the refuge of the Greeks by the third century B. C.
The cult of Fortune was indeed taken so seriously that
UL
1 Some modern scholars speak of this Year Daimon, as if he were
the chief god of Greece! But this Daimon is only a late anthropo-
morphic form of the spirit of vegetation (Demeter-Dionysos). To
the Hindus, the Year Divinity was one with the Father of Life but
also one with Death.
2 Plato denied the real existence of matter (only the Idea exists),
but ascribed sin to the soul's admixture with matter. Aristotle ob-
jected to Plato's Ideas as being meaningless nietaphors, abstractions
without individual existence. The essence cannot be separated from
that of which it is the essence. Both the tortures of hell and the
view that earthly life is evil were passed on to the Christian world.
508
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
Tyche was made one with the Logos or Nous. Epicurus
(341 B. C.), who was born six years after Plato died, scorn-
fully said that he would rather be the slave of the old gods
than of such a deity. Chrysippus, the Stoic, who died about
208, says that in his day men worshipped Sun, Moon, Stars,
Law, and deified human beings. This is a peculiarly inter-
esting statement in showing that the Olympian gods, who did
not include sun, moon, and stars, were quite dead and that
people had reverted to a more primitive ghost- and nature-
cult with an ethical tinge. But those who now called them-
selves philosophers turned to Oriental occultism. They
worshipped the elements; substituted the Maid of the Mind,
Sophia, for the Maiden Kore; adored the seven planets, as
spheres full of spirits; admired the harmony of the uni-
verse; and mystically identified the spiritual planets with
elements, stoicheia, which in turn designated vowels, also
seven, so that these became signs of the planets used in
magical formulas. The months were divided into weeks,
a day for each planet, Sun, Moon, Ares, Hermes, Zeus,
Aphrodite, Kronos. This is adulterated Greek. Astrology
with its pretence of prophecy became rampant as early as
the time of Alexander, when Berosus exploited the “ Chal-
dean” thirty gods of counsel beneath seven planet-gods,
angel-stars, the Twelve Masters (Zodiacal signs), and all
the rest, later Babylonian wisdom brought to Cos and thence
spread over Greece. Professor Gilbert Murray calls this
era the Stage of Failure of Nerve, as distinguished from
those of Primitive Foolishness, Classical Olympians, and a
final Stage of post-Christian religion. At any rate it was
a stage which marked the decay of the old belief that Zeus
was in his heaven and all was right with the world, though
it takes perhaps as much nerve to renounce happiness as to
expect it. But all this later rubbish, of the angel-stars, etc.,
1 Gad, the Palestinian god, is personified Fortune. In India, Time
as Fate, also became a god of fortune, but he was identified with
Brahma.
2 Still preserved in Mardi, Mercredi, etc.
3 Four Stages of Greek Religion, New York, 1912.
GREEK RELIGION
is only part of a logical reversal. The name philosopher
deceives. Magic-mongers and astrologers made a great
noise at this time, but religion was really advancing despite
this foreign magic-philosophy, which masqueraded as reli-
gion. For though condemned by Epicurus, who was a ra-
tionalistic naturalist (practically atheistic),” the Stoics
adopted the new religious thought and went their way with
it to create a very noble religion. The Orphic mysticism
revels in thoughts of harmony and its “I am become God”
and "I am your fellow star" reflects a real belief, yet one
not so influential among the people nor tending to advan-
tage them so much as does the Stoic aphorism,“ God is the
helping of man by man and this is the path to eternal
glory.” Even the Epicurean negation, “God is naught to
fear; death is naught to feel," 2 is not indicative of a failure
of moral fibre. But, in any event, philosophy has little to do
with the religion of the masses.
Greece was now over-run with foreign deities, Isis, long
worshipped at Delos; Cybele, Bendis, Adonis, Sabazios, all
over the country. In 271 B. C., Ptolemy Philadelphos and
his wife were formally deified, as Alexander had previously
deified himself. This deification of man differs from the
unconscious lapse of regard into worship which charac-
terizes the cult of heroes and it was not acceptable in all
cases. Aristotle was exiled because he deified a man. On
the other hand the line between human and divine was not
so broad as we draw it. Homer's heroes are "god-born”
and Plato was spoken of as “ divine." But in the case of
new deities, Greece was always catholic, or she would not
have received the Cyprian goddess so easily, or so easily
have recognized divinity abroad. Alexander worshipped
Isis and the Jews' god from policy, but also because every
place had its god and Greece recognized the fact. Hence,
when Greece became a greater name, a Greek would worship
1 He taught that the gods lived without relation to man, who has
no inmortal soul.
2 Murray, op. cit., p. 152.
510
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
he could bring into Greece any god and worship him or her,
when once he had realized that a god is not like a ghost, a
spirit of one locality. Love is ever the same; hence Aphro-
dite rules everywhere; the spirit of life is ever the same,
hence Cybele can be worshipped in Hellas as well as in Asia
Minor. We must add the spread of the idea that all gods
are forms of One and we have the explanation of the reli-
gious syncretism of the time, which was marked also by so
many foreign figures.
There passed forth from this period into the coming
greater religion of the world many streams of thought and
cultural practices. The idea of a world-religion, of the
brotherhood of man, the missionary spirit (in Orphism),
these were all pre-Christian. Bloody sacrifice had been con-
demned by the Pythagoreans and by Heraclitus. The ac-
ceptable sacrifice was already a pure heart. The thought
that man was of God and that God was one, was current be-
fore Christian theology began. The Church incidentally
converted some old gods into harmless saints. The adora-
tion of images replaced the use of idols in the Greek
world, an image of Demeter was in fact worshipped as
a saint as late as 1801! — as did the use of incense in the
Church that of incense at the altar of the temple.1 St. Paul
based his arguments as to evil communications on the words
of a Greek comedian, as he cited a Greek philosopher to
show that men are children of God, and his knowledge of
the Greek mysteries lent a mystic tinge to his interpreta-
tion of the Christian mystery
After Greek philosophy became united, at Alexandria,
with Jewish thought, there arose a new mysticism charac-
terized by a belief in a God of whom nothing save his pure
existence can be predicated. He creates only through sec-
ondary powers, chief of whom is the reason or wisdom
called Logos. It is not possible here to discuss this combi-
1 Homer's use of sweet savours and scented wood led to the
use of incense (in the seventh century); but this incense-idea came
from the East.
GREEK RELIGION
511
.
nation of Platonic and Jewish belief further than to point
out that according to it, as taught by Philo, in the first cen-
tury A. D., knowledge and virtue are gifts of God, and conse-
quently salvation is an act of grace, an idea which also
amalgamated with Christian doctrine. The Logos doctrine
is an attempt to bridge the chasm between Absolute Being
and the world of phenomena. Later Neo-Platonism also
tries or tends to make dualism monistic, but it bridges the
chasm by means of two intermediaries and yields itself to
ecstasy and theurgy rather than to logic. Based on Plato
and the Stoics and, as its name implies, considering itself
the interpreter of Plato's thought, it is in fact a philosophy
of feeling rather than of thinking.
At first Neo-Platonism was a revolt against the Sceptics,
who had contended, against the Stoics and Epicureans, that
knowledge was impossible. Opposed to such a negation,
Plotinus, the pupil of Ammonius Saccas, who also taught
Origen and Longinus, and other Neo-Platonists felt a long-
ing for absolute truth, which they satisfied by mystical exal-
tation, an immediate beholding or intuition, only to be at-
tained when there is no distinction between the knower and
the known. The soul must feel itself illumined by the
Absolute in pure rapture; objective knowledge and dialectics
are of no use. Not reason, which distinguishes thought,
thinker, and object, but something higher than reason must
be the Absolute, which stands above being as well as above
able, undefinable. Out of it emanates the world-intelligence,
out of which again emanates the world-soul (a Pythagorean
conception), which, permeated by reason as world-intelli-
gence, actualizes it in an outer world. Except for the
series of emanations, this system is at one with that of the
dualistic. The world as emanation presupposes monism and Neo-
in one being. But it had inherited a dualism it could not get rid
of, physical and moral; its conscious objective was to get rid of one
half and keep the other,
512
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
earlier Upanishads of India (c. 600 B. C.), before the doc-
trine of illusion was introduced into it. The teaching,
though opposed to Christianity, had a marked effect on it.
Plotinus taught at Rome in the middle of the third century
A. D., where later his work may have converted Augustine,
from Manichaeism. He believed in asceticism, for one
becomes diviner through becoming less human; by losing
man one becomes God. But Plotinus also upheld poly-
theism, the gods being spirits between God and man, and he
maintained rites, making a dangerous alliance between his
theology and magic, in that he held to a secret power in
the soul and in nature, whence also he derived support for
mantic inspiration. Here, too, we have contrasted good and
evil spirits. He was followed by Porphyry, a vegetarian
and Puritan polemical writer adverse to Christianity, as
Porphyry in turn was succeeded by Iamblichus, whose reli-
gion was a curious mixture of godliness and magic. In this
reversion to magic, Greek religion went back in its old age
to the childhood-stage; though one must remember that
native belief had been infused for centuries with foreign
thought and most of the later inagic is an importation from
the Orient.
The living religion of Zeus as anthropomorphic god
faded away in Greece under the light of philosophy and the
concurrence of foreign cults. But probably its disappear-
ance was influenced even more by lowly native thought than
by higher or foreign beliefs. Thus the hope of a future
happiness for the masses, the divine nature of man, the
immanence of the divine, were all outgrowths of Grecian
thought. These in their beginnings, are crude enough and
in part (as Thracian) are not what we usually think of as
Greek, though Thrace was really Greek and probably the
1 Tutelary angels and malignant devils. Some of the latter are
diseases as demons. Worship is paid to the good spirits.
2 Porphyry wrote in defence of vegetarianism and against Chris-
tianity. He opposed all amusements and objected to “injury of
animals." Worship is not performed by sacrifice but by knowledge
and godliness -- no new idea, however, in Greek thought.
GREEK RELIGION
513
Dionysos of the first wild cult was racially an Aryan god,
however opposed to Achaean or Athenian. How much this
cult was affected by Cretan thought and ritual we cannot
say, nor how early it and the Demeter cult began to broaden
the old Zeus-religion. One point, however, should be kept
in inind. The old religion was not one of mere form and
ritual. It was ethical to a high degree even in Homer
and not even the brotherhood of man is an idea quite un-
known to its earlier stage. Its ethics did not coincide with
ours. For example, to be chaste and not to steal or lie are
not rules included in pre-Orphic religion; but it is no little
achievement for a polytheistic nature-religion, even before
man began to dream of a heavenly reward for earthly virtue,
and with no authoritative scripture or word of authority,
to demand mercy, kindness, forgiveness, care of the stranger,
the sanctity of the suppliant and of marriage, the inviola-
bility of an oath, and to teach that the prayers of men are
heard as entreaties or as curses by heavenly powers.
We have no right, however, to stop with this. We must
recognize the purely Greek nature of Stoic theology and
ethics, the Greek acceptance (if not origin of the idea of
spiritual purity, and the Greek character underlying the
idealistic monism of Plotinus. On the other hand, we are
apt to idealize somewhat both the sunny religion of the
earlier Greeks and the philosophic acumen of the later, for-
getting that the earlier religion was compact with the gross-
est superstition, much nastiness, and no little savagery, and
that the latter reeked with magical practices. Nor can we
suppose that the works of philosophers were ever conned
by the masses who, however, were well acquainted with
magic, and remained superstitious to the end.
The religion of Greece is the only great religion — there
are but seven -- which is built upon human thought without
appeal to inspired authority. The oracles were supposed
to be divine revelations, but they constituted no religious
1 The Thracian Getai believed that the dead lived with their god
in a paradise below earth. Herodotus iv. 94.f.
514
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
system, and the Delphic oracle rather appealed to philosophy
than attempted to govern it. The religion, in so far as one
can speak of it as one religion, was not hampered by dogma-
tism. The utterances of one teacher were stoutly but safely
denied by another. There was no authoritative sacerdotal
orthodoxy to hinder free expression of opinion, though oc-
casionally the mob objected violently to impiety; but it was
the mob and not the priests who were illiberal. The reli-
gion of China might be considered a parallel; but prac-
tically Chinese religion, inspired by Shang Ti, was dictated
also by authority, and discussion was limited to ethics, at
least for a thousand years. Brahmans, Buddhists, Zoro-
astrians, Hebrews, all those who had an intellectual reli-
gion, held it subject to orthodox approval." Heterodoxy
was overthrown in Egypt as soon as it arose. Babylon had
no ideas, or not enough to provoke heresy; Rome never
thought for herself. After Greece, Europe believed along
received lines or hid her belief. Apart therefore from the
clarity and logical brilliancy of Greek thought, apart also
from the beauty which has transfused all she received and
created, there remains the unique character of her genius,
which united ethics and metaphysics into a religion based not
on superstition but on philosophy, not on faith but on logic,
yet in which due place was given to emotion. It is a very
wonderful creation, though the very lack of authority re-
sulted in the demolition of this edifice of the mind as soon
as the mind itself began to fail; for the image of every god
falls when its foundation crumbles.
1 As has been shown above, all Brahmanic philosophy had to be
based on the divine word of the Veda; 110 Buddhistic sect but
based its creed on Buddha's own teaching; no Zoroastrian sect but
emphasized its belief in Zoroaster's creed. It is often said that the
State in China did not persecute heresy, but the Confucian books
were burned as soon as the State found them objectionable and all
those who taught them were buried alive (see p. 227). At a later
date religious persecution in China drove out all foreign religions
(p. 266).
GREEK RELIGION
515
BIBLIOGRAPHY
J. E. Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion,
Cambridge, 1903.
H. Munro Chadwick, The Heroic Age, Cambridge, 1912.
L. R. Farnell, The Cults of the Greek States, Oxford, 1896
1909; The Higher Aspects of Greek Religion, Hibbert
Lectures, London, 1911.
Arthur Fairbanks, A Handbook of Greek Religion, New York,
1910.
0. Gruppe, Griechische Mythologie und Religionsgeschichte,
Müller's Handbuch, Munich, 1897.
T. D. Seymour, Life in the Homeric Age, New York, 1907.
E. Zeller, A History of Greek Philosophy, London, 1881.
Gilbert Murray, Four Stages of Greek Religion, New York,
1912.
C. H. Moore, The Religious Thought of the Greeks, Cam-
bridge, Mass., 1916.
See also the works mentioned above, p. 484, note 2.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
THE RELIGION OF THE ROMANS
0
THE question whether Roman religion in its earliest known
form represents the mixed religion of two races, one re-
flected in the beliefs of the plebeians and the other in that
of the patricians, is and probably always will be impossible
to answer. There was doubtless a native population, Ligu-
rian, Pelasgian, or otherwise called, overpowered by a for-
eign immigrating host, such a host as in Greece demarcates
Achaean from “ Pelasgian" elements. But the Greek hy-
pothesis applied to Rome is not easy to substantiate. The
mixture remains more theory than fact. Rome, as we know
it, consisted of a native population closely related religiously
to other Italic settlements and, very near the beginning of
its history, united with the neighbouring Sabines, whose god
Quirinus was soon identified with the Roman Mars.
From the first, Rome was a State of families and clans,
agricultural but bellicose, yet controlled by law, which con-
fact, as India may be said to be religion incarnate, and as
Greece is beauty and philosophy, so Rome is war and law.
Its earliest religious expression is found in legalized and
ritualized war-dances and lustrations under the care of the
war-god. "The earliest conception of the sky-god is that
of a State-god who kills, Jupiter Latiaris and Feretrius.
The agricultural community depended for its security on the
war-god, who was conceived therefore as a god of fruits
and fights. Before the discussion of other aspects of Ro-
man religion, the whole character of that religion may best
recognized by it.
516
THE RELIGION OF THE ROMANS
517
Rome's civic religion consisted at first in the strict ob-
servance of duties toward Mars and other political spirits
under the supervision of the king, who was the civic high
priest; as in each family the pater familias was the chief
priest of the family spirits. But as Rome itself never pro-
duced a philosopher with new ideas, so it drew its civic cult
from its more civilized neighbours, the Etruscans, through
whom were filtered foreign notions, in regard to art, archi-
tecture, the ritual (games, scenic shows), and even the gods.
It had, according to tradition, no religious institutions at
all till they were established by the Sabine Numa half a cen-
tury after the city was built. It is significant that Numa
was first of all a legislator; to the Romans, the State-reli-
gion was a legislative measure, a legal matter, not a matter
of feeling or of philosophy. As a back-ground to the civic
religion may be imagined such primitive ideas as are both
the property of other uncivilized races and the implied in-
heritance of Rome, taboos, still operative for the priest,
such as of knots and iron and wheat, the first because knots
through sympathetic magic interfered with a smooth reli-
gious line, the last two because iron and wheat were once
novelties, condemned ipso facto, since religion is conserva-
tive and dislikes innovation. At birth and death also there
were taboos, such as are found generally among savages.
Places struck by lightning were of course of religious inter-
est and there was a disposition to regard odd numbers as
lucky (numero deus impare gaudet), so that the first and
third days of the month were more suited for gods' days
than the second and fourth, a superstition still current
(“there's luck in odd numbers "). Sympathetic magic may
also be revealed in the slaughter of animals to procure rain
and crops, the use of images transfixed to produce a like
effect upon a foe, the swinging-rite, the magic ever prac-
ticed by old women at child-birth, and perhaps the use of
1 More remotely, the Etruscan art of divination was in part Baby-
lonian, perhaps by way of Minoan culture. Racial connexion be-
tween Minoan and Etruscan civilization in the Bronze Age is sus-
pected but not certain.
518
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
amulets and other charms, such as incantations or spells,
carmina, some of which have been incorporated into the
State-ritual. On the whole, however, the State religion dis-
couraged the practice of magic, though it retained old con-
servative objections to novelties which were really based
on a magical foundation,
It is sometimes maintained that all this antedates religion
and that the great Roman gods are a later stage of a reli-
gion once consisting wholly in magic and animism. But all
such statements are based on the a priori conviction that
magic must precede religion, whereas as a historical fact
magic makes no step which converts it into religion in Rome.
From the beginning great gods are there, as well as little
gods and those animistic sexless spirits which are in truth
merely vivified things and actions. Yet even among these
some from the first have personality, and it is questionable
whether the host of these Numina (Powers) was not largely
the result of later systematizing thought. What is true is
that even the greater spirits show little myth-making thought.
Mythology is poetry, due to imagination, and even the Poly-
nesians had more religious imagination than the Romans.
Consequently, when the early Romans had raised a Door-
power to a Power representing any entrance or beginning
in place or time, that is when they changed a janua or janus
(door or gate) into a Janus, looking two ways, whose dou-
ble door was always open except in times of war, they
made no myths about him. They invoked him at the be-
ginning of a prayer, because he was the beginning-spirit, and
associated him as Matutinus Pater with the Dawn (of day
and of life, Mater Matuta), and as Portunus with ports, be-
cause a voyage begins there. But until the later poets got
hold of him and Augustus made his gate famous by boast-
ing that the Janus doors had thrice been closed (indicating
perfect peace) under the emperor, no one paid him more
1 The priestess of Jupiter called Flaminia Dialis was not permit-
ted to wear leather shoes of the usual kind, just as the Flamen
Dialis was subjected to taboos in regard to eating beans, wearing
iron, contact with a corpse, etc.
But until e famous
THE RELIGION OF THE ROMANS
519
than perfunctory honour; he was unknown to other Italic
settlements. The first month may be named for him. He
is called divom deus, but only as god of firsts; he had no
carly temple and no early inscriptions are devoted to his
cult. As Door-spirit he is paired with Vesta the Hearth-
fire.
Janus (Janus-pater, but also fem. Jana), the apotheosis
of the Numina, has a cult old but mechanical, though he is
the highest of the indefinitely varied Roman host whose
members are all personified abstractions, such as Silvanus,
the wood-power, Faunus, the wild-animal power, Terminus,
the boundary-power, Fons and Flora, spring- and blossom-
powers. In contrast with Janus, Mars called Father, Mars-
pater (-piter), was not simply Roman but Italian (Oscan,
Umbrian, perhaps Etruscan), and from the beginning he
was no mere sexless Power. The first month of the older
year, beginning in March, was called by his name in Rome
and elsewhere. His name was taken by men. The very
old Brotherhood called the Arvales invoked him to keep evil
from the inhabitants (herds and flocks). The priests called
the Salii danced in his honour as the high-stepping (Gradi-
vus) god of war, and war-arms made part of their furnish-
ing, while a war-steed was sacrificed to him when the war-
season was over in October. His sacred animals were
fighting wolves and woodpeckers, after whom some tribes
called themselves (Hirpini, Picenti). With him was asso-
ciated, near the temple of Mars at Porta Capena, the cult of
Honos and Virtus (bravery) and his energy was represented
as a personified Neria (cf. åvýp and Sk. nar=vir); also as
1 Some ancient and modern writers falsely interpret Janus as
sun-god or sky-god; but he is nothing but a door, gate, beginning.
The rex sacrorum was especially his priest, as religious ceremonies
began with him.
2 Mars is the only god whose name is used as a human proper
name; perhaps, too, as month-name (Janus and Juno are doubt-
ful).
3 This October-horse is often cited as a proof that Mars was
originally a vegetable-spirit; but see below and compare the combi-
nation of war-and-fertility god among Mayas, Hindus, etc.
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
Bellona, to whom a temple was erected B.C. 296. His
Sabine form, Quirinus, has left faint traces of a separate
cult, but was generally looked upon as one with Mars, per-
haps as his more peaceful side, until the later Romans made
Quirinus a name of Romulus. The Campus Martius had
an early altar to Mars at which the suovetaurilia sacrifice
of boar, ram, and bull, was offered, partly to thank him for
sacrifice made every five years, after the sacrificial animals
had encircled the people drawn up as an army. A similar
sacrifice occurred with a corresponding circuit of the fields,
and this also has given rise to the idea that Mars was origin-
ally a god of vegetation. But primitive tribal gods were not
confined to one specialty. The god of a tribe saw to the
tribe, whether in war or peace, increasing their crops and
their strength alike. The war-like Romans made Mars more
warlike than agricultural and, had we to choose, the god's
paraphernalia would make us prefer as starting point at
least for Rome the conception of war-god. At any rate, to
Rome he was at all time god of war, though at first equally
god of agriculture. The country-folks kept his agricul-
tural side; the martial townsmen and army preserved him as
war-god. At first he was simply clan-god, who protected
his clan against foes spiritual and human.
If Mars was the nearest god to the Roman, Jupiter (Um-
brian Jupater) was the greatest. In his case also we have
to do with a god who was more than Roman. Yet the con-
ception of Jupiter (or Juppiter) was not exactly that of
his Grecian parallel, a celestial being on a hill or in the
clouds. Jupiter was rather the sky itself (“sub jove
frigido”), less person than personified phenomenon. In
other parts of Latium he is known as Diovis or Jovis and
the meaning of his name is clearly “shining” sky (Diespiter,
Dianus, Lucetius). Sometimes, however, he is not the day-
sky but the dark night-sky, when as Summanus he receives
dark instead of white animals in sacrifice. As Latin god,
he is called Juppiter indiges and he is in fact, after Janus,
THE RELIGION OF THE ROMANS
521
the first of the Indigites, that is, the native gods in distinc-
tion from the Novensides or immigrant settler gods, such
as Minerva, Mercurius, etc., afterwards imported into Rome
from Etruria and Greece.
The temple of Jupiter was on the heights nearest to the
sky, whence as Feretrius (smiter) he sent his lightning.
As god of the sky, too, he was revered as the power giving
rain and fruitfulness or fulness (Liber), which caused him
to be called almus and frugifer and liberalis, whence later
came his aspect as Libertas, still later understood as liberty.
As Liber, the vine was his care and the feast called Vinalia,
like the Pithoigia of the Greeks, a feast of wine-cultivators.
His day was the full-moon day (Ides) of every month,
when light lasts all hours. But it was especially as a civic
god that he was honoured. The god of right and victory em-
bodying the Roman ideals was the Capitoline Jupiter called
Optimus Maximus (his best and greatest form). There,
on the Capitoline, a temple was built to him and there was
his earliest altar as a god of victory. Afterwards this
aspect of him as victor caused the creation of an abstract
Victoria, a goddess to whom a temple was dedicated B. C.
294. Jupiter himself, as Victor and Stator, had been hon-
oured in the same way the year before. His emblenı is the
thunder-bolt stone (silex), which gives him the title Jupiter
Lapis. But we need not imagine that Jupiter was originally
either an oak, because it was his tree, or this silex, and then
a god holding a stone (bolt), as is sometimes taught. For
the history of the god shows clearly that he was from the
beginning a sky-god. This stone, perhaps originally a di-
vine thunder-stone, was carried by the Fetiales, a college of
.
i No one has yet attempted to show that Zeus-pater, Ju-piter,
and Dyaus-pitar, are not the same “bright (sky). father," the
most incontestable and important fact in the history of Aryan
civilization. But many scholars who, on a priori grounds, assert
that Sky cannot be a primitive god, assume that the oak and silex
were divine before the sky and that therefore they are the real god.
The obvious conclusion, however, would be that, if previously di-
vine, they became, with the advent of the Sky as god, his interpreters,
not that Jupiter was originally a tree or a stone.
522
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
priests, whose duty it was to make and preserve treaties
under religious sanction, and the god they revered was
Jupiter Fidius, from which conjunction also, as in the case
of Victoria, was evolved a goddess Fides. As god of oaths,
right, and faith, Jupiter was the chief political god of the
Republic, but also in private matters a god of troth (wit-
ness-god in weddings, etc.), to whom, under the name Ter-
minus, boundary-lines were entrusted. But always the fun-
damental meaning of the god reappears. The augurs, who
studied the sky, were his as interpretes Jovis. · In drought,
natrons with bare feet and loosened hair took part in the
Pluvialis, on the Aventine. As concomitant and cause of
rain he was also called Tonans, even Fulgur, lightning and
rain coming together. Being god of all Latins he was cele-
brated as Latiaris Jupiter on Mt. Albanus, in a sacrifice
without wine and marked by a swinging festival, such as is
found in India, to increase the power of the sun. His
"wife," Juno or Jovia, was an Italian goddess, known to the
Umbrians as Lucina and Regina (like Belit, Our Lady
Queen). She was also conceived as armed with lightning ; but
she generally appears as the feminine side of Jupiter, the
power especially concerned with women. Hers were the
strips of goat-skin, which caused fertility when women were
struck with them in the rite called Lupercalia. Her day
was the first day of each moon (month) and certain aspects
of her cult make it possible that she herself was originally
the moon. In Greece also, Dione (Juno) was the older
as a State-goddess. She may have come from some neigh-
bouring town, perhaps as Latin goddess of Veii. Goddesses
were more powerful out of Rome than in it, perhaps owing
to a difference socially in the power of women or to the
fact that matrilinear rights had been given up by the Ro-
mans. The strongest point in her character as Moon-god-
dess is her connection with women as Lucina of the Kalends;
but this is not decisive. She may have been to Jupiter as
THE RELIGION OF THE ROMANS
523
Moles and Neria were to Mars, merely the feminine side or
the power as feminine. Women swore by Juno, their own
feminine power, as men by their virility, Genius.
The history of Jupiter reflects not only the enlargement
of Rome politically but its religious growth. He is grouped
with Mars and Quirinus and this indicates the period of.
union of the first three communities, with Rome as the most
important; but this group soon yields to that of Jupiter,
Juno, and Minerva, which marks the first Graeco-Etruscan
influence. There was originally only one goddess of great
importance at Rome. She was Vesta, the Hearth-fire (in
distinction from Volcanus, destructive fire), who was
paired with Janus, as Door and Hearth, and like him was
intimately, as well as publicly, revered. Her relationship
to the Greek Hestia is obvious, yet she was not borrowed
from Greece. To Vesta offerings were made after dinner
by the household; as a State divinity she was served by vir-
gins and her sacred fire was renewed yearly on the (old)
New Year's Day. Her cult was in charge of the Pontifex
Maximus and any Vestal who violated her vows was buried
alive, as happened in 217 B. C., in the Punic war, when
other victims suffered the same fate, but as offerings to the
lower gods. As spirit of the hearth, Vesta was associated
with the Di Penates, Numina of the pantry or food-supply,
and with the Lares, spirits, who may have been ancestral,
presiding over the family in a larger sense, including the
fields and the house (Lar Familiaris). The little spirits of
the fields and woods, such as Flora and Silvanus, or for
the garden and cattle, Pomona and Bubona, were of im-
portance to the house-holder, but only Consus and Ops and
Saturnus became great, withal because they represented the
1 In India the god Indra (war-god) is called "lord of power"
and soon Power becomes his “ wife," helped to that dignity through
the fact that “lord” also means husband. Juno, however, was not
“wife of Jove," but a Latin goddess carried to Rome after the
Romans conquered the city where she was chief divinity.
2 Vulcan is the lightning (incendiary) fire. The volcano is Vedi-
ovis, who lightens and thunders from below, associated with the
Manes. See Frothingham, Am. J. Phil. xxxviii. p. 370.
524
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
harvest-store and sowing of grain, as publicly recognized
in State ceremonials. There was also an insignificant water-
spirit called Neptunus, who first became important when
the Romans identified him with Poseidon. The later Ro-
mans made a list of functional spirits, that is, spirits repre-
senting mere functions, such as Edulia, Potina, Domiduca,
Eating, Drinking, Home-bringing, etc., but many if not
most of them were probably later abstractions, like the ab-
straction Roma, eventually deified.
Among the primitive Roman gods must be reckoned also
the Genius and Di Manes. The Genius was a man's own
creative power, which was regarded almost as a separate
entity, even as the marriage-god. Later, every family and
tribe or town had its genius, so that by 200 B. C. we find
reverence paid to the Genius of the Roman People, as if it
were a guardian spirit. The Genius of a man was fêted
on his birthday. The departed spirits, called Di, were hon-
oured (compare the Eumenides) as good, Manes, kindly
disposed, or were so named that they might be kind. Though
called gods, they were recognzed as spirits, which had
gone down to the earth-deity or later to Orcus under earth."
Persons represented them with masks at funerals and to
them, on the tenth day after the funeral, gifts of food were
made. They were also supposed to return through the
mundus, an opening in the ground in the Forum. The dead
man was carried feet foremost through the door and his
house was then purified, as if to prevent his return. In
May the old Lemuria rite made it necessary for the house-
father to offer the ghosts beans and bid them go; but in
February they were honoured with kindly services at the
Parentalia and Feralia. In this double cult there was doubt-
less retained the view of ghosts as evil spirits together with
the more advanced or super-added view of the family spirits
as protecting powers. It is possible that, as suggested
1 The cult of underworld gods is due to Greek thought. The
primitive Italian population thought little of the underworld but
had an earth-deity.
1
THE RELIGION OF THE ROMANS
525
above, the Lares were also originally conceived as larvae,
ghosts, since Laverna was goddess of the dead. But there
was no real worship of the dead. They were thought of as
massed spirits only, not as individual heroes, as in Greece.
Mother Earth, Tellus Mater, was revered as a fostering
mother in conjunction with the crop-making Ceres, though
also as a goddess associated with the Manes, who vanished
through a hole in the ground and were received by her, as in
Celtic belief. But in general the Romans did not pay much
attention to the dead or to a life to come, till Greek rites and
philosophy taught them to hope for a happy hereafter.
Even then the view of the learned was often that of Pliny,
who says that man is an animal like other animals and
ought not to expect a future for himself different from that
of other animals. Life was enough for the Roman; his
main concern with the dead was to treat them properly
and then be rid of them. Originally he regarded them
merely as a swarm of evil-minded ghosts and maltreated
them, somewhat as he did other spirits whom he suspected
of evil intent and kept away by hacking at them and sweep-
ing them out of the house, as did the Greeks and as do the
Eskimo and Shaman today.”
Naturally, to an agricultural community, the spirit of good
crops was of prime importance and among the early tem-
ples of Rome one was built by Servius Tullius to such a
goddess, under the name of the fertile, Fortuna. This god-
dess was later identified with the Greek goddess of fortune
as good luck and became the greatest of those abstract fe-
male powers, such as Virtus, Concordia, Pietas, who re-
ceived not only poetic recognition but a practical service
with an altar and cult. She may have been a Sabine deity.
With the growth of Rome, new divinities, absorbed from
neighbouring states, began to be recognized, such as Diana
of Aricia, a goddess of the wild, whose cult was taken over
by Rome when Rome became head of the Latin league and
1 The burial of ordinary Romans was merely casting them into a
pit. Only distinguished Romans of the Republic had special tombs.
526
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
later became one with the cult of Artemis (431 B. C.). It
is probable also that Minerva was not originally Roman but
was received from Falerii, perhaps the local goddess of
handicraft, afterwards goddess of wisdoin, identified with
Athene. Her festivals came in March and June and she
has been thought to be Etruscan; but Etruria was a land
through which Greek divinities came in altered form to
Rome and she may have been Greek from the first. By
way of Etruria and lower Italy, which was Greek, came
other religious innovations. Castor and Pollux and Hercu-
les came thus as gods of merchants, who also introduced
Hermes as Mercurius (trade-god). All these gods had
their days of celebration 2 as they had temples (Castor's
temple as early as 485 B. C.). They first became Italian
and then thoroughly Roman, thus paving the way for future
immigration from Greece. Yet the feriae or festival days
show that the old gods were for a long time the main reli-
gious factors of Rome. It has already been remarked that
all Ides were sacred to Jupiter and all Kalends to Janus
and Juno. The principal festivals in old days were agri-
cultural and military. The first month was sacred to Mars,
who remained the chief deity in the lustration of fields, from
which he kept off evil. Agricultural interests are repre-
sented also in the next month, when cows were sacrificed, as
instruments of fertility, to Earth, and Ceres was revered.
Then too firebrands were tied to foxes let loose over the
fields, to scare away crop-injuring demons, and Pales was
1 The fact that she made one of the triad, Jupiter, Juno, and
Minerva, shows that Greek influence was already felt.
2 The year was divided into days fit for legal business and other
days, though some days were “split," fissi, half profane and half
sacred. Days were thus fasti, fit for business, or nefasti, that is,
holy, because it was wrong to conduct business on such days.
Vergil says that there is no divine or human law against doing
some work festis diebus (Georgics 1. 268). The holy days were
ļog in the year, generally days counted as lucky (odd days). Dies
religiosi were vitiosi, days on which no undertaking, religious or
profane, might be begun, such as days devoted to the cult of the
dead or days of public misfortune.
THE RELIGION OF THE ROMANS
527
worshipped by shepherds, also by the State, as god or god-
dess of productivity (the feast was called Parilia, from
pario?); but the most striking feature of this festival was
that men and cattle were passed through or over fire as a
means of purification. Shortly after this, red mildew was
propitiated, as Mars, by the sacrifice of a red dog (Robi-
galia, April 25th). In May, came the Lemuria or rite of
expelling ghosts (above) and the Fratres Arvales or broth-
erhood of ploughmen undertook to keep evil from the crops
by their lustration, a purificatory ceremony consisting in
dancing along the boundary lines and making offerings of
the suovetaurilia with an apotropaic litany against pests.1
Consus and Ops, the harvest-horde deities, were honoured
in August. A formal sacrifice was made to them at an
underground altar in the Circus Maximus, where grain was
stored (as usual in cellars), whence the goddess Ops became
associated with underground powers; they were honoured
again in December, when Saturnus, the Sowing-god, was
celebrated with the well-known laxity of harvest times (the
Saturnalia). In October occurred the armilustrium or
purification, when the army rested from its annual duties.
This was of course a festival of Mars and (as already
stated) to him at this time was sacrificed the war-horse.
In the same month came a fountain festival, Fontinalia, and
a wine-festival, when diseases were healed by drinking. At
the former, garlands were flung into springs and the god-
dess or nymph Juturna (Diuturna) was worshipped. She
was a Latin goddess whom later myths made wife of Janus,
as the latter was made father by her of Fons, to whom a
temple was given (231 B. C.).? Of all these rites the
Saturnalia on December 17 has lasted longest in after-ef-
1 Later, faces of Bacchus suspended to trees were used for the
same purpose, to secure fertility (Georgics, 2, 388).
2 The fons or spring in these cases is universalized. Every spring
was a holy medicinal power. Probably Juturna was originally a
special spring whose name like Arethusa (“flowing”) was localized.
Vergil makes Juturna sister of Turnus.
528
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
fects, since from it derive several Christmas customs, such
as gift-giving and candle-illumination. At the end of this
Sowing rite came one in honour of Tellus and Ceres, Earth
and Grain-goddess. December over, the month of Janus
celebrated the goddess of new birth (beginning of the year)
called Casmenta, originally a lymph (nymph), whose name
suggests the connexion between prophecy and the Muses or
singing water as an oracle. She was a prophetess of birth
rather than a birth-goddess. In the purifying month Feb-
ruary, at the end of the old Roman year, were performed
rites in honour of the dead (Parentalia, Feralia), preceded
by the Lupercalia, in which survived a magical practice
probably influenced from the beginning by Greek thought.
The participants were smeared with sacrificial blood from a
dog and goat, wiped in wool dipped in milk, and after laugh-
ing were clothed in goat-skins of the sacrifice, when they
feasted and then ran around the Palatine, striking women
with strips of the goat-skins to induce fertility. This festi-
val was dedicated to Faunus (“Pan"). It was a wolf-
resisting (lup-arceo) rite, according to the Romans them-
selves and most modern scholars, though both etymology
and meaning are doubtful. Probably the rite was at first
for possession of the herd by the Luperci, the “wolf-
warders.” Faunus is god of the rite to whom the goat is
offered (not piacular); there is no sign of totemism in this
or any other Roman rite. The chief act originally was the
amphidromion, which implies the magic circle, especially
when performed by naked or nearly naked people. Hitting
the women was a secondary trait introduced in the third
century. This is one of the few rites in which blood is a
prominent feature; its presence and removal show that the
rite was then understood as purificatory. It is not, as Mann-
hardt thinks, a vegetation rite, but a mystery in which the
purificatory wool (a februum) soaks up the symbol of death.
The (obligatory) laugh indicates the joy of the purified.
These are Greek ideas, which may have been introduced
THE RELIGION OF THE ROMANS
529
1
.
circa 200 B. C., when the rite was enlarged and its charac-
ter changed. Its classical form is a composite.
There were several minor feriae stativae or fixed festivals,
such as the Blessing of Children, Liberalia (March 17), the
Matronalia, Vestalia, and Matralia, in April and June, the
feast of Bona Dea, attended only by women, and later the
feasts of foreign divinities, the Megalesia (feast of Cybele,
April 4), and that of Castor and Pollux (July 15). In the
same month occurred the feast of Neptunus as a sea-power.
At Paestum-Poseidonia there was a Greek colony who hon-
oured him as sea-god. The later New Year's day in
honour of Janus was celebrated January 9. The old New
Year's day was celebrated with gross liberty in honour of
Anna Perenna, the year-goddess. To the simple celebra-
tions of old days were added, through foreign influence dur-
ing the Republic, games, introduced at first to celebrate a
triumph, which became popular, and later to these games
(of horse-racing, etc.) were added wrestling, dancing, and
dramatic scenes, all as religious functions.
These new elements, circus and drama, marked the wor-
ship of Greek gods, whose cult was introduced at an early
date. Before turning, however, to the incursion of Greek
influence, it will be necessary to indicate the process by
which the field of religion was kept fruitful. All public
rites of religion were performed at public expense for the
people under the supervision of the tribes or the representa-
tives of the State. Sundry brotherhoods, before any formal
colleges of priests existed, had the conduct of certain rites
and these were retained through the historical period, though
their importance varied at different times. Such were the
Salii and Aryales and Luperci already mentioned, all of
whom were originally priests of Mars. About 200 B. C. were
added the priests of Cybele called Galli, but no Roman
might become such a priest. But under Etruscan influence,
1 See Fowler, Roman Festivals, London, 1899, and Deubner,
Lupercalia in Archiv für Religionsgeschichte, 1910, pp. 481--508.
530
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
as early as the sixth century B. C., there were formed State
colleges of priests, the chief of whom were the Pontifices
and Augures, who had charge of the whole public religious
life of the people. The Pontifices administered ecclesiasti-
cal laws which concerned marriage, adoption, testaments,
expiation, etc., prescribed forms and ceremonies, kept the
archives, composed the calendars and annals, inaugurated
magistrates, and punished persons guilty even of private
religious offences, on the ground that even a private crime
violated the pax deorum. This college kept a stock of re-
ligious formulas useful for any occasion and it was they
who drew up the lists of invocations called indigitamenta.
Till 300 B. C. they and the other priests were all patricians.
That some Etruscan divination is of Babylonian origin
has already been mentioned. Yet this does not apply to all
divination. The Augures or auspices divined signs sent by
the gods by means of birds and animals (inspection of the
liver), and interpreted omens, such as lightning, sneezing,
etc., much as did other Europeans. Besides other less im-
portant colleges, there were also one of the Fetiales, insti-
tuted by Numa and presided over by the Pater Patratus,
which had treaties under religious observation and acted
as guardians of the public faith. It was their office to con-
clude treaties with religious formality and to demand resti-
tution when necessary. Their aid was required also in de-
claring war. In the course of time the Pontifices became
more secular than religious and the office of Pontifex
Maximus became politically important. Other religious of-
ficials were special priests in the modern sense, whose aco-
lytes have been preserved as a feature of the Christian
church. Of these special priests, the most notable were the
Duoviri afterwards ( 367 B. C.) increased to Decemviri, by
which name they are generally known, though later made
a college of Quindecimviri,” sacrorum or sacris faciundis,
1 This number was raised to sixteen by Caesar and even to more
than twenty by the subsequent emperors, who kept the college till
the fourth century A. D.
THE RELIGION OF THE ROMANS
531
· YY
whose sole business was the care of the Sibylline oracles
and the rites thereby enjoined; the three Flamines of Jupi-
ter (Flamen Dialis), Mars, and Quirinus; and the Vestal
Virgins. These Vestals were appointed to care for the
State fire. They were chosen by the Pontifex Maximus at
the age of six to ten and served thirty years, as initiates,
servants of the sacred flame, and teachers, one decade for
each office, after which they might marry. They had pe-
tacles, freedom from parental control, the right of way even
with the Pontiff. They wore white and did not sacrifice.
Their whole office recognizes Fire as a god of purity.1
The connexion thus indicated between religion and
morality appears also in the old legal requirement that sin-
ners were sacri to the gods, that is, it was left to offended
gods to punish sin, possibly implying an earlier stage in
which sinners were sacrificed, though there is no certain
indication that the Romans countenanced human sacrifices.
It is true that the gods do nothing (as Cicero says) to make
a man moral; they only make him healthy and wealthy; yet
their attitude was not immoral, as was that of the Greek
on a scrupulous regard for truth and faith. This religious
scrupulosity is usually presented as the most striking fea-
ture of Roman religion. The vow must be kept in letter
and spirit, whether a private or a public undertaking, and
to ensure this there was the most meticulous regard in pre-
serving forms. This is extended to all dealings with the
gods and religion thus becomes a sort of heavenly book-
keeping, in which obligations are entered and met with dry
exactness. But it is possible that this aspect has been un-
duly emphasized. In the first place, verbal accuracy in
things divine is not unique, for it is exactly the attitude of
the Brahman, to whom a mistake in pronunciation of a
word ruined a religious ceremony, and fidelity to the vow
1 Analogies in Ireland and Peru have been noticed above (pp. 114,
131). But the Vestals also to do with fertility-rites.
532
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
TY A
belongs to the Negro, whose fetish-vow is as rigidly ob-
served as the Roman's votum. But more than this, we
know Roman religion mainly through its appearance as a
State-religion controlled by priests, who have their own
way of being religious by form. Vows made to the gods
were of course, always a way of winning favours desired.
Thus, as the State promises something if the gods will help,
so the farmer does also. Yet there was no book-keeping
in the gay but religious revelry of harvest-thanksgiving and
New-Year or spring-time ritual. Nor in private life was it
perhaps wholly mechanical observance when the pater
familias offered his daily gift to the house-hold gods and
his yearly tribute to his ancestral spirits. Probably the act
of Feretrius inspired religious awe at all times and though
the religious rites at fixed seasons seem to adjust relations
with this or that god for the year, and so to be rid of him
for another twelve-month, yet all feriae stativae appear to
do this. There are even some Christians who seem to re-
member Christ only on Sundays and Christmas Day.
The religious festivals do show, as has been observed by
others, that the Romans had passed beyond the stage where
man is uncertain of the Powers. These Powers were now,
so to speak, under control. If the State fulfilled its recog-
nized obligations, the gods could not but fulfil theirs. So
much for so much. The Roman State might sleep peace-
fully when it had secured the divine blessing, for it was to
morally responsible gods that the Romans looked for a fair
exchange of values. Yet even this is more a logical than
an historical induction. Beneath the contract and its fulfil-
ment, which lie open for inspection, there was doubtless the
feeling, not revealed by, documentary evidence, that the gods
were not bound by any contract which ignored religion in
a deeper sense. The wild religious expedients adopted in
the Punic panic, when men and women were buried alive,
a rite unknown to ordinary occasions, the frequent recourse
1 Compare Vergil, votis vocare inbrem, as advice to the farmer
who wants rain.
THE RELIGION OF THE ROMANS
533
to other gods, whenever the state was imperilled, all show
that the martinet character of Roman religion was mainly
on the surface. The Roman said "I thank the gods ” on
every occasion. It is true, however, that the Roman, who
had no fear of hell hereafter and no “sense of sin" and
was neither so imaginative nor emotional as the Hindu and
Greek, appears to have taken his religion very calmly on
ordinary occasions and that, as a State-affair, it was looked
upon as something outside the province of the individual.
Whether the private man went to a feast prepared by the
State for a god, was in the old days a matter of indifference.
If he observed the holy day, he was not obliged to appear
at any public religious function; the priests did his public
religious duty for him, as his bailiff might worship the fam-
ily-god for him. He had, so to speak, to keep Sunday, but
he did not have to go to church. Gellius cites the say-
ing, one must be pious but not too pious, that is, super-
stitious. The early Roman, too, was not artistic, a great lack
in building up cults. He did not even build temples till the
Etruscans taught him how. His templum (derived from
the Etruscans) was the sky as he saw it, divided into regions,
where Heaven might show signs, and his first earthly temple
was merely a space of earth marked out to correspond.
The song and flight of birds were his oracles, voices of the
gods as clear to him as the obvious voice of Jove in thunder.
Grecian oracles 1 and lots were foreign devices, adopted
later, and studying the entrails of animals to learn the future
was an ancient form of divination (haruspicium) brought to
him by the Etruscans or Greeks, to whom he owed also, as
already remarked, the introduction of various other reli-
gious novelties. Yet these aspects must not blind us to the
fact that a grateful piety really expressed the religious atti-
tude of Rome, as contrasted with the base fear of spirits.
The Roman at all times recognized a supreme directing
Power, which was a moral force in his life and in that of the
State. He attributed to it his own sturdy character, up-
1 Compare habitae Graiis oracula quercus, Georgics, 2. 14.
534
HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
.
THE holding truth and hard duties of every sort. The Romans
surpassed all nations in the worship of gods, said Cicero;
he meant that Roman religion produced a better State, which
to a surprising extent had banished magical superstition
in favour of moral religious powers. And Cicero was
right, for, with the exception of religions about which he
knew nothing, Roman religion, though not profound, was
the cleanest and highest of classical antiquity. It had no
such scandalous divinities as the best known to Homer. It
had indeed its unclean under-side, but in general it was a
religious structure built by earnest upright men, who had
made their gods in their own image and whose lack of
mythology, though it may have been due primarily to a
lack of imagination, resulted also in a safe lack of familiarity
with the gods. Communal feasts with divinities played
little part in Rome, though found in the Feriae Latinae and
festivals like the Fornacalia, a communal feast of those
using the same oven. Sacrifices generally were honorific
or piacular. Men did not presume to know their gods;
often they did not know by name the divinity to whom they
prayed. Their relations with them if stiff were dignified.
Until the praetorship was established, in the fourth cen-
tury B. C., the Pontifices, whose chief absorbed the powers
of the old Rex Sacrorum, were practically a law-court as
well as a religious college (eventually of fifteen members)
and the Pontifex Maximus became the judge and arbiter of
1 Cicero is contrasting it with Greek, Egyptian, and Oriental cults.
2 The State-sacrifices were either for lustration, that is accom-
panied with prayer for protection, or piacular, that is a gift as a
sin-offering to atone for some reinissness in observing the “sacred
law.” Vegetables, beans, corn, cakes, fresh fruits, and animal sacri-
fices with milk, wine, and incense, were offered in fire from the
first recorded times as daily offerings by private individuals; but
there are indications that wine was regarded as something new;
some sacrifices expressly omit it. Of the begarlanded animals
(sex, age, and colour were important), the gods received the care-
fully examined erta (heart, lung's, liver, gall) and the priests con-
sumed the viscera. The suovetaurilia, boar, ram, and bull, was the
greatest sacrifice; the boar or pig the commonest. The lower gods
received black, the upper gods, white animals.
THE RELIGION OF THE ROMANS
535
all affairs divine and human. That is, the activities of the
people were directed by interpreters of the divine will, who
controlled their conduct in all the acts of their life.
It is very difficult to say when the old Roman religion
began to change. If we compare what has been called the
religion of Numa (early Roman) with the religion of the
third century B. C., we find it as a civic phenomenon greatly
altered. Greek gods and Greek ritual submerged what was
old Roman. But while the time, even the year, can be
stated in which this or that Greek god was introduced, we
cannot tell how early a more insidious intrusion of Greek
ideas began. Even in the Lupercalia, Greek thought ap-
pears to dominate; even in the introduction of Minerva as
one of a triad, Greek arrangement seems to lurk; and even
in the country rites of Flora or Fauna, which elements came
from the Roman and which from the Greek is hard to
specify.
Before speaking of those Greek gods and rites regarding
which there is no question, we may pause a moment to lay
more stress on the importance, for the understanding of
Roman religion as a whole, of some of the little celebra-
tions, to which only a passing allusion has been made. In
every religion these seemingly unimportant factors are apt
to be underestimated. So we tell of the great gods of India
and their ritual and flatter ourselves that we have described
the religion of that land, while as a matter of fact the real
religion of an ordinary Hindu was probably mainly con-
cerned with spirits and beliefs which have left but fugitive
traces in the literature. Or in modern days we may de-
scribe the cult and belief of the Church and call it the re-
ligion of a Sardinian peasant, whose real religion is scarcely
touched by formal cult and acknowledged belief. We must
make allowance for this factor in judging of Roman reli-
gion. Of course the great gods and their cult as prescribed
were recognized; but probably the Roman's real religion lay
closer to him. We have spoken of the pretty rite of crown-
ing with garlands the beneficent fountain and offering a
536
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
share of the daily meal to the household gods. But all
Roman life was full of such artless devotion 1 though in
our uncertainty as to Greek influence spreading naturally
north from Hellenized lower Italy, we cannot say certainly
how the elements of the simpler cults should be analysed.
But, admitting the possibility of early Greek influence, it is
more important for us to realize what the Roman thought
and did than to know whether all he thought and did was
his own invention.
The number of rustic rites, some of which afterwards
became adopted by the city, is too large to describe indi-
vidually, but their import may be seen in one or two exam-
ples. So the offerings and devotion paid to Mother Earth
appear in a simpler form addressed to Dea Dia, the "god-
dess” par excellence, whose personality gradually vanished
dess Flora was worshipped in spring, that she might guard
the growing grain, though it was not till 238 B. C. that a
Roman temple was erected to her, withal at the behest of
the Sibylline oracle. The form of worship was not refined.
Dances by naked women and coarse mimes celebrated the
goddess of fecund nature, as was to be expected, and Greek
influence is discernible in the State performance. But be
the rite Greek or Roman originally, it was Roman enough
by the end of the third century B. C. to be regarded as an
exposition of Roman religious feeling and probably it was
not all Greek. Flora is Italian, revered by Sabines and
Oscans as well as by Romans; 2 her cult is essentially that
of a Venus, unrefined, native. Another popular festi-
1 Thus the rite in honour of Ceres described by Vergil has no
sinister union with that of Tellus, as an underground divinity, but
the peasants “ dance and sing to Ceres," make to her offerings of
rustic goddess of the harvest (Georgics I. 347).
2 Flora was worshipped by the Fratres Arvales and had her early
obscene fertility-rite at the shepherds' feast Parilia (April 21)
with the fire-lustration (above) belongs to this class of religious
rites. “Worship” here is largely magic.
THE RELIGION OF THE ROMANS
537
val was the harvest-feast of Consus, the divinity of the
harvested grain. First fruits were offered to the god; ath-
letic contests were held by the shepherds; the farm animals,
allowed a day of rest, were garlanded with flowers; and
there was a mule-race. The feast of Saturnus, originally
of purgative character," was formally altered to a Greek
rite in 217 B. C., when Saturnus was identified with Kronos.
As a last specimen of the real religion of the ordinary
Roman we may consider the goddess Fauna, Bona Dea,
and her cult, which was probably affected by Grecian
worship, but by the Romans was felt as quite indi-
genous, though the form of worship in the third century
may, as has been thought, have come from Tarentum (272
B. c.). That she was not all Greek, however, is shown by
the fact that the Umbrians and Picenti also had a Cupra,
or Good Goddess, identical with Bona Dea Fauna. In the
city cult this local deity was identified with the Greek Damia
and her rite was doubtless changed accordingly. However
that may be, the worship at Rome in the third century was
a picturesque ceremony. All night long women sacrificed
and danced in honour of Bona Dea; a pig and wine satisfied
her not; she had to have music and the dance. She was
looked upon as a healing power and only women might serve
her; among whom, in the city cult, were the Vestals. A
curious circumstance, indicating antiquity, is that, though
wine was used freely, it had to be called milk, vinum lac
nuncupetur. Connected with her city temple were the heal-
ing serpents of Aesculapius and she was especially invoked
by women in sickness; but the country cult shows no indi-
cation of this (Greek) combination. Her very general
designation made it possible for various local Good God-
desses to be identified with her. Another country goddess
was Venus or Frutis, the goddess of garden and vineyard,
1 Human sacrifice may have taken place at this rite, when the
ills of the year were disposed of through a scape-goat. Reaction
from apprehension of accumulated evil is always expressed by
"saturnalian” abandon, though primitive people require little excuse
for laxity.
that may bee was doubtlevas identified a Dea Faur
538
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
who was brought from Ardea and had a Roman temple as
early as 295 B. C. She was later (287 B. C.) identified with
Aphrodite of Eryx and her worship was set for August 17,
her formal day. Later, under the designation felix, she
was regarded as Fortuna; but her original Roman rôle was
that of a fruit-goddess rather than goddess of general
fruitfulness and fortune.
Other divinities played in the religious consciousness of
Latium and Rome a part not to be overlooked, Volturnus or
Tiberinus Pater, the “ rolling” river and Volcanus, to whom
were made many shrines and offerings, for, as has been said,
he was destructive Fire (afterwards Hephaestus as god of
smiths) and received such fearful worship as was given to
pests. Maia or Maiestas was his “ wife," as Moles is wife
of Mars, his power. Furthermore, many gods or spirits
are known, whose fanes remained much longer than their
divinity and whose names even are sometimes in doubt.
Such were the goddesses of birth, either of the year, when
the Divalia honoured Diva Angerona, or of birth and death
of man, Mana ; deities corresponding to the phallus, Mutunus
and Tutunus; or again the Dea Febris or spirit of disease,
more particularly Tertiana and Quartana, the personifica-
tion of the third and fourth fever days (malaria), and
Mefitis, the power seen in mephitic exaltations, who had a
grove and temple.
Tarquin the Proud, according to tradition, dickered with
the Sibyl, an Apollo oracle at Cumae, till he came into pos-
session of the oracles called Sibyllina Remedia. They were
acrostics, not intended to give oracles in regard to the future
but to explain what remedies should be applied in case the
State was in danger. They were kept at Rome but never
used except by permission of the Senate. Soon after Tar-
quin's death a famine at Rome suggested a consultation of
this Sibylline wisdom and in consequence was introduced,
for the first time formally, the worship of Greek gods,
Apollo, Leto, and Artemis leading the way, followed by
Demeter, Dionysus, and Kore. Probably Apollo was intro-
THE RELIGION OF THE ROMANS
539
duced as healer and Demeter (496 B. C.) as grain-goddess.
As healer, Apollo was called Medicus and a temple was built
for him in 423 B. C. Hercules, also as a healer, was brought
into Rome in the same way in 399 B. C.; later, his image was
exhibited in the first recorded lectisternium or procession of
gods reclining on couches in pairs. But in general not much
addition of this sort was made to the pantheon through the
fourth and fifth centuries, though Aesculapius was called in
to heal another pest, and in this case the Romans sent an
embassy to Epidaurus to get him (in the form of a snake)
in 293 B. C., as later Hygeia (Salus) came in at command
of the Sibyl in 180 B. C. Again, in 249 B. C., Dispater and
Proserpina appeared, in Latinized forms of Pluton and
Persephone, to still the fear of an ominous lightning-stroke
and of war. Then, in 205 B. C., the Sibyl recommended the
introduction of Magna Mater, that is, the Phrygian Cybele
with her cult of the Asiatic goddess and her maimed lover
Attis, who was subsequently associated with Tanith, the
Carthaginian Dea Caelestis. Meantime the Sibyl had also
managed to bring in the cult of Venus Erycina and of Bona
Mens (Sophrosyne), to offset military disasters in 217 B. C.
To anticipate, Sulla on his own account brought in a com-
panion goddess to the Magna Mater deum Idaea when he
brought back from his campaign in Asia Minor the cult of
Mâ (as Bellona), whose wild priests were called Fanatici, a
term applied as well to the priests of Isis. She also was
adopted by Sulla, but was looked on with suspicion till after
the Christian era, when a temple was built for her at Ronie.?
The long list of the Greek and Oriental deities flooding
Rome from the third century includes also the Dea Syria
or Suria, a form of Atargatis (and Hadad), and other
forms of Sol Invictus. Sol was no old Roman god (he
had a temple on the Aventine in 182 B. C.), though he was
worshipped by agriculturists; but as a foreign deity he
1 Isis first had temples at Puteoli (c. 100 B.C.) and Pompeii. At
Puteoli there was also a later Syrian congregation who worshipped
" Jupiter of Beyrout," that is Baal of Heliopolis (c. 100 A. D.).
540
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
played a great part, especially when identified with Mithra,
and even before this, when the mad emperor Elagabal made
all Rome worship his black stone for three years. The em-
peror Aurelian built a temple to Sol (274 A. D.) and gave
him a Roman college. Trade and the foreign legions also
brought into Rome numerous Asiatic gods whose worship-
pers were foreign soldiers and traders. These gods were
called Jupiters with their qualifying local title, such as Jupi-
ter Dolichenus (from Doliche in Syria), or Jupiter Da-
mascenus, i.e., the god of Damascus worshipped as Jupiter.
Mithra himself, well known to Plutarch, was patronized
by Commodus with Isis in the third century A.D. In the
second century A. D., Jupiter Sabazios, of Phrygia, was
confused with Sabaoth and was thought to be the Jewish
god.
This deluge of gods did not destroy the Roman State-cult,
but it destroyed the simplicity of the old Roman religion,
first by bringing in new gods thinly disguised under Roman
names, then by lowering the idea of divinity, through exhibit-
ing Greek idols as gods in human form in temples and in the
lectisternium, and thirdly by introducing not only the
Graecus ritus but all the strange ideas underlying the cult
of Dionysus, Demeter, and other mystic gods. Now for the
first time were the Romans taught ecstatic communion with
deity, and were vexed with problems of the life hereafter.1
Now first they set out an epulum Jovis as part of the Ludi
Romani and exhibited twelve gods in pairs in a lectisternium
(217 B. C.). Now first they had new forms of Supplica-
tiones, as ordered by the Sibyl, in processions of girls (ad
omnia pulvinaria), who visited the couches of all the gods.
In 207 B. C., the Decemviri headed a procession of maidens
who went about singing choric songs to Juno and dancing,
inges, then thg in nosi
1 In 249 B. C., the Etruscans introduced the Ludi Saeculares or
Tarentini with the cult of chthonic divinities and the more sombre
tone associated with this cult. The inystery of religion in the
Greek sense had not till then been operative. The first deities in-
troduced were mainly for healing purposes, like Apollo himself, but
even he was identified with Vediovis, the underground (volcanic)
form of Jupiter.
THE RELIGION OF THE ROMANS
541
07
as they hung on to a connecting rope. This exhibition was
nothing in the world but a Greek Panathenaea projected
upon wondering Rome by the Greek Sibyl to offset a strange
prodigy. One other important object was attained through
the new rites. They popularized religion, the cults being
such that all citizens might share in them. To the Romans
the new religion also made an aesthetic appeal comparable
to the effect produced on plain people by gorgeous pageantry.
Pestilence and the fear of Hannibal were the chief rea-
sons leading to this Hellenizing of Rome. But more influ-
ential than Grecian cults were the Oriental religions in-
ported into Rome. At first, the Megalesia rites of Magna
Mater and her followers opened wide the door to every form
of religious orgy. From the time when Rome gave herself
to these cults, the old Roman religion existed only as a sub-
ordinate survival. The real religion of Rome was now
built on debased Greek 1 and Oriental superstition and mys-
ticism, to which was added Greek philosophy. For with
the Greek gods came to Italy Greek metaphysics. Euhem-
erus and his interpretation of gods as merely men became
familiar through the works of Ennius (200 B. C.). In vain
old Cato sought to revive the ancient superstitions and
rustic religious formulas. Ennius himself said that, though
divinities existed, they cared not for men. Varro, in the
first century B. C., tried to save the life of the deities by in-
terpreting them allegorically, but neither Epicurean nor
Stoic philosophy could restore the dying gods of Rome,
which had converted even its Jupiter into a political rather
than a religious aegis and now supported its old State-ritual
merely as part of the administrative machine. Plautus
1 It must be remembered that the Greek religion absorbed by
Rome was mainly that of c. 200, when it was far removed from its
original form. When, for example, the Romans received the cult
of Egyptian Isis they took it from Delos, where Isis had been wor-
shipped as early as 300 B. C.
2 The allegorical interpretation of gods was familiar to the Greeks.
Theagenes of Rhegium, five hundred years before Christ, said that
Homer's gods expressed faculties or natural elements. Vergil
(after Chrysippus) calls Aether the omnipotent father.
542
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
(254–184 B. C.) publicly ridiculed the genealogies of the
gods and in the same era Cato already dared to express
wonder that one augur could meet another without laugh-
ing. Religion, in its received form at least, was regarded
as hypocrisy or as a legitimate pretence, to disguise from
capable of receiving.
By the time of Lucretius (98–55 B. C.), all the gods had
become mere figures of speech to the learned. Venus to
Lucretius was neither the genuine Italian god of gardens
and vineyards nor the Aphrodite with whom she had become
officially identified, but a cosmic power. His great poem
De Rerum Natura was essentially atheistic; his endeavour
was not to uphold religion but to crush superstition. Along-
side of this Epicurean heterodoxy, which, expelled from the
State in a short-lived spasm of orthodoxy in 173 B. C., had
returned again, there flourished also the mysticism and cre-
dulity which passed under the name of Pythagoras, whose
system had been foisted upon the state by forged documents
in 181 B. C. and had been officially rejected, but among
the people had made great progress by its appeal to the
unknown and its tempting doctrine of metempsychosis.
Yet no Greek philosophy had so great and lasting an effect
at Rome as that of the Stoics. Epicureanism, while it elimi-
nated emotion as contrary to reason, also eliminated the ob-
ject of emotion, the gods. Pythagoreanism, in the form
brought into Rome from south Italy, appeared only as a
maze of unfounded speculation too mystic for the hard-
which itself had absorbed what was best from the Academy,
appealed to the Roman because it laid great weight on moral
virtues under the allegorical interpretation of gods as ethical
powers. As early as 140 B. C., Panaetius of Rhodes had
taught Scipio and his intimates the principles of the Stoics,
that the universe is the orderly product of mind inherent in
matter, that what we call God is within all forces, as the
sum of existence; Jupiter exists as reason in a material uni-
THE RELIGION OF THE ROMANS
543
verse, which reason man alone shares, and man may realize
himself in communion with this sum of existence called
God; when he does so, he perceives that man's law is but a
form of God's law.
No doctrine could please a high-minded Roman, naturally
law-abiding and morally inclined, better than the material-
ism thus subtly disguised as religious philosophy. From
about 200 B. C. to 200 A. D. it may be said to be the Roman
philosophy par excellence. Cicero adopted Panaetius as his
own and edited him under the form of (the first) two books
entitled De Officiis. At the same time the Oriental religions
tended to inculcate a popular polytheism in which all gods
represented one (pantheistic) principle.
But the philosophers of Rome, at whose hands religion
was reduced to speculative morality, represented only a
class. Had her practical statesmen remained religious in
the old sense, there would still have been a large body of
influential men whose beliefs would have been felt as a re-
ligious force by the people. But this was not the case. On
the contrary, the practical statesmen converted the priestly
colleges into political clubs. Sulla made himself master of
Rome through using these colleges as part of his political
machine. He could do this very easily, as most priests might
hold public office and the priests as a class had complete con-
trol of the State. They put the ban of religion on what they
disliked and oracularly proclaimed their own desires as the
wishes of the gods; they could declare war and prevent it;
they could elect and reject as they would; there was always
a prodigy or augury at command. All the members of the
Pontifici and Augures were put in office as political tools
of the demagogue, who was himself the head of Rome's re-
ligious world. There was no further need of “ Sibylline
Books " to debauch Roman religion when once Sulla had
determined to become dictator.?
1 Ambrose later based his De Officiis on this model.
2 The year before this happened the Sibylline books were destroyed
by fire, when the Capitol where they were kept was burned (83 B, C.).
The later “ Sibylline" texts included even Jewish writings.
achinei lic office. They ar
544
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
There has been space here only to show the general result
of importing foreign gods into Rome. Roman religion dif-
fers from the religion of Rome. The latter still retained
the old forms, as it retained largely the old names of gods.
But the Roman gods for the most part vanished under Greek
names. On the other hand, Roman religion did not vanish
in form but changed in spirit. For, despite the atheism of
philosophy and the hypocrisy of politicians, there was of
course a mass of people neither philosophers nor politicians
who believed and felt something, not only during the hys-
teria of the Punic wars and the machinations of the civil
disorders but after excitement was quelled and life had
resumed its usual course. We may perhaps envisage this
popular religion best in two phases, before Hannibal and
after Sulla.
The first intrusion of Greek gods had no great effect;
they did not come into the country in large numbers till
Hannibal frightened the people into groping for new forms
of divine assistance. Up till then we may say that religion
was chiefly a matter of form rigidly adhered to on the lines
of a legal contract between men and gods, though the deities
were thought of as kindly protective spirits and there was
not lacking a respondent human sentiment of cheerful grati-
tude. But Greek religion not only changed the conception
of deities and made them much more human in figure; it
affected too the conception of the relation of man to divinity.
We are accustomed to speak of Greek mysteries and orgies
together and it is true that the orgiastic side of Dionysos
worship, especially when reinforced by the grosser Oriental
cults, did much to affect unfavourably the purer religious
morality approved by the Roman State. But at the same
time the mystery, which was not necessarily orgiastic in
expression, introduced an entirely new idea, that of a life
purified within, rather than without, and devoted to a god
with whom man might abide in communion all his life if
he would, and with whom he might be united after death.
This was, in sum, the one tremendous change introduced
THE RELIGION OF THE ROMANS
545
by foreign cults at Rome. How large a circle it affected
we cannot know, but it was an entirely new presentation
of religion and, so to speak, it accorded religiously with what
had been taught philosophically by the Stoics, so that emo-
tion and intelligence met in a new sphere of thought destined
as it chanced to have much influence on the religion of the
future. Another element also is to be noticed in the new
religion of Rome. It is logically to be obtained both from
the philosophy of the Stoics and from that church-idea
which enveloped the brothers of the mystery. For when
religion became personal instead of political and the wor-
shippers felt themselves bound together not as a clan or
town but as companions in a service to a god, there was
bound to arise a new idea of kinship, a spiritual brother-
hood quite different from the Fratres of the collegia. This
in turn led, or might easily lead, to a feeling of human
brotherhood, a note not altogether rare in antiquity but lead-
and perhaps to the gentle spirit nowhere so perceptible as in
the verse of Vergil.1 Thus a kindly sympathy was added to
the religion of hope and to the spiritual conception of man
accented by the mystery-religion. These new elements,
united with that ingrained sense of duty which was natively
Roman and that love of order and dignity which exhibits
itself in the Roman ritual, all combined to prepare the world
for a religion in which every one of these elements is promi-
nent, so prominent in fact that it was easy to turn the stately
Roman lustratio into the lustration-ceremony of the Ro-
man Catholic Church, to substitute for observance of the
into saints, and adopt bodily such ritual practices as the
1 Vergil, perhaps influenced by Augustus, still clings to the genuine
Roinan gods in his poetic lectures on farming. Ceres, Pales, Sil-
vanus, Vesta (who guards the Tibur), and Saturnus are recognized
by him as deities to be worshipped by the farmer and shepherd, as
well as rain-giving Jupiter, though he also favours the cult of
Bacchus and other Greek gods. To Mars he alludes only as the
“impious" god who destroys the farmer's peace.
546
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
use of acolytes, of incense and holy water, and the reverent
remembrance still potent on December 25th.
With the fall of the Republic, religion, while it still
reached after new cults, reverted also to old forms. One
movement, however, was untrammelled, the other was dic-
tated by authority. Augustus, namely, having converted
a rotten republic into a precarious empire, sought to guide
his people into safe pastures, where peace and prosperity
would appear as imperial trapping. We need not inquire
how religious was the emperor whose scepticism is as well
known as his piety. It was his to bring back a people, long
harassed by internal dissensions, to quiet stability and to
impress upon them the right of Augustus of the gens Julia
so to do. He set up his own Genius to be worshipped beside
the Lares of every city vicus; he practically invented Julius
as his family god; he made the world acknowledge Augustus
to be a divinity. At the same time, he urged a return to
old simplicity and country life and withal to old religious
ideas, rebuilding the temples of moribund gods and reviv-
ing the old religious machinery, such as the ceremony per-
formed by the Fratres Arvales. He himself became Ponti-
fex Maximus (12 B. c.) and took charge therewith of the
cult of Vesta; but made it a cult of his own Vesta or house
(as Vesta Augusta). Of the Greek gods, he made most of
Apollo, because this divinity had saved him at Actium, and
Mars he worshipped, but as Ultor, because this divinity had
avenged Augustus; while he built quite new temples to these
gods and also to Venus as mother of Augustus' family. He
encouraged the Mantuan poet to turn the people from poli-
tics to agriculture with the Georgics 1 and with the Aeneid
to imbue them with the Venus-Augustus legend of an em-
pire fashioned in heaven and brought to earth by the divine
man, with whom the regenerated world should be born anew;
1 Vergil admits the divinity of Augustus in the Eclogues, deus
nobis haec otia fecit. In the first three centuries of our era this
"Roman peace” was an important factor in the growth of Chris-
tianity, as it produced a cosmopolitan equality which levelled old
class and race distinctions.
THE RELIGION OF THE ROMANS
547
for which purpose he dictated to another poet the substance
of the Carmen Saeculare (17 B. C.). Ovid, to please him-
self, made the gods ridiculous and, to please the emperor,
wrote the Fasti. The evil Augustus did lived after him.
Human gods continued to be made of dead and living em-
perors, who sometimes also deified their women and even
their favourites (Hadrian thus deified the youth Antinous),
till there were nearly forty of these monstrous gods besides
the bizarre Jupiters that streamed into the city from every
point in the Orient, who were really not Jupiters at all but
local Oriental gods worshipped by the various soldiers and
merchants quartered at Rome. The objections felt against
the Bacchus-worshippers, which had led to a decree against
them in 186 B. C., and against the Chaldaeans, a general name
for Oriental astrologers, which had led to their being ex-
pelled from Italy in 139 B. C., had given place to enthusiastic
welcome, so that Caesar himself restored the Bacchic cult,
withal mixed with Oriental excess. Thus, even when no
welcome was extended, no further objection was felt to for-
eign cults, which remained unmolested, provided the liberal-
ity which permitted their worshippers to practise their own
religion was met with a spirit liberal enough to worship also
the god of Rome. It was a surprise to the Romans to find
that Christians would not do this, as it was a shock to Au-
gustus to find that his godhead, recognized by all the world
besides, was not accepted by the Druids and the Jews.
The Roman world at this time was in sympathy with a
belief in one divine power, a God who embraced in himself
numerous forms of different gods; but the Christian mono-
theistic idea excluded all gods save one, which proved a
stumbling-block to polytheist and pantheist.
All through the time of the early emperors, however,
despite the overwhelming sea of new cults, the old rites
remained in force, till Theodosius in the fourth century put
an end to the private worship of the Lares, Penates, and
Genius. There were occasional outbreaks of zeal against
Christians, who were persecuted by the mad boy Nero
verwhelminheodosius in te Lares, Penat against
548
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
comand relifectuiresaplich
(54-68 A. D.), and philosophers, who were banished from
Rome by Domitian (81-96 A. D.); but these were personal
sporadic whimsies. M. Aurelius (161-180 A. D.) reinstated
philosophy, which even under Nero was embodied in such
teachers as Seneca and Epictetus. In this era too the peri-
patetic philosopher became a sort of household priest and
comforter, in whose conversation and precepts the living
found relief and the dying hope. Philosophers wandered
about as lecturers and preachers, like the beggar monks of
India and the Capuchins, among whom of course there were
charlatans justifying satirical attacks. To these philoso-
phers, however, religion was not so much a matter of meta-
physics as of practical ethics. Closet philosophers, too,
taught that man should be sacred to man and an object of
pity and love, so that it has become a question whether
Seneca was not really influenced by Christian belief, as the
circumstances of his life made quite possible.
Plutarch in the second century i discussed the relation of
man to God like a Christian theologian. In the next cen-
tury, the cult of Mithra almost submerged Christianity. As
Sol Invictus his festival led to the Christian celebration of
Christmas on December 25, while Mithra-worship itself was
a quasi monotheism with rites closely resembling those of
the Christian church. As a popular Roman religion it be-
came in fact the forerunner of Christianity, which later in
1 St. Paul was tried before his brother; but many scholars oppose
the idea that this “heathen Christian” was really influenced by
Christian thought.
2 Plutarch (50-125 A. D.) is an instructive example of the union
of high and low in the religious atmosphere of this period. While
an eminent theologian, teaching “not different gods but one divine
Reason, Providence," he believed in dreams, oracles, and such mani-
festations of the divine will, as strongly as any old peasant. Prob-
ably superstitions lasted longer than religion with many Romans.
Pliny says that most Romans including himself repeated.charms and
spells to protect themselves against accidents. It is doubtful whether
Vergil really believed in the Stoic Divine Mind. He says: “Some
say that there is part of a divine mind even in bees, and there is
no place for death," viva volare omnia, but this is what quidam
dixere (Georgics, 4, 220f.).
THE RELIGION OF THE ROMANS
549
turn became the religion of Rome. It emphasized morality
and made every man a soldier of a church militant. It ab-
sorbed sun-worship, otherwise recognized (when Elagabalus
brought to Rome the black stone symbol of his sun-god at
Emesa), but made the sun merely a symbol of divinity; it
adapted the already popular worship of Fortuna to its own
ends, and even made the State-religion a matter of concern
to women by combining with itself the cult of the originally
licentious Mother-goddess, although it appealed at the same
time to those who demanded ethical purity as a condition
of membership in its secret organization. It was at once
a religion, a philosophy, a school of morality, and a secret
society, and many of its elements remained permanent fac-
tors of Roman religion even after the downfall of Mithra-
ism itself. In this syncretism of all religions at Rome it is
not strange that the new religion of the Christians was rec-
ognized officially. The pious cousin of Elagabalus, Alex-
ander Severus (d. 235 A. D.), who conciliated all religious
parties and revered all gods, built a temple to Isis and wished
to build one to Christ, but the auspices prevented him from
accomplishing this intention. His own private religion ap-
pears to have consisted in the worship of his own ancestors
and of the great benefactors of man, some of lower order
such as Vergil and Cicero, others of higher rank, among
whom were Alexander the Great, Abraham, Orpheus, and
Jesus Christ. Here, truly, may be said to end all Roman
religion, though Severus' attitude differed less in spirit than
in form from the worship of the Manes and the Lares,
the kind ghosts and helpful spirits of Rome's early regard.2
1 This seeming paradox is solved by the fact that the orgiastic
religions of the East fell on unfruitful soil in Rome as far as their
native erotic character was concerned. Thus Oriental cults gradu-
ally adopted Roman morality, and were influential nainly as a
spiritualizing force in pantheistic form. Isis, C. 150 A. D., is the
divine power in the world, called the Mother Goddess, Venus, Juno,
etc., pure divinity. So too the Mother-cult was concentrated on the
idea of resurrecton (symbolized in the Hilaria of March 25th).
2 Later emperors, however, like Diocletian, persecuted the Chris-
elemas concent Venus, "Subice
550
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
Theronstantine ion but the Roma reverted
There was only one step further to go and that was taken
by Constantine, when he not only admitted Christianity as
a Roman religion but gradually gave it his preference among
the confused cults of the Roman empire. In the years 361–
363 A. D. Julian the Apostate reverted to the doctrines of
ancient days and built temples to the old gods, who were,
however, already dead; but in 392 Theodosius put a formal
end to all pagan cults.
But though therewith the cults of Rome were banished,
Roman religion persisted; first, in its lower forms as super-
stitions still potent in their native habitat, though perhaps
these may be said to be universal rather than Roman. But
at any rate they were preserved, from a primitive Italian
origin, after passing through the Roman mind. Then, in the
forms of those remote analogous gods who through Roman
military influence had been identified with Roman originals,
fugitive forms, which exist only as echoes, like the Hercules
Magusanus of the Batavians. Thirdly, in the saints, as
well as in the ritual observances already referred to as in-
herited by the Christian Church, and above all in the Roman
realistic religious spirit, which appears in the early Roman
Church fathers, whose systematizing tendency conceived of
religion ethically and legally rather than metaphysically and
idealistically. So, although what has been said by an emi-
nent scholar seems to be true, namely, that the Romans if
well-advised would have feared the Greeks bearing gifts and
that, after they had renounced their gods, they won the
whole world but lost their own soul, yet in very truth the
spirit of Roman religion was not wholly lost nor was the
gift of the Greeks wholly destructive. What was finest in
the Greek religion as in that of the Orientals entered into
Rome, which, however, still preserved its own indomitable
tians generally, as they had been persecuted sporadically by Nero
(see under Christianity).
1 Some Roman and Greek deities have become saints. Venus is
a Sicilian saint dancing before the Lord! Augustine tells us that
memorial services in honor of the martyrs virtually relapsed into
heathen worship.
tjare unde Roma? dancimeona
THE RELIGION OF THE ROMANS
551
spirit, the spirit of St. Augustine, to whom religion was
primarily law, though tempered with mystic emotion.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
H. R. Hall, Aegean Archaeology, New York, 1914.
W. W. Fowler, The Religious Experience of the Roman People,
London, 1911; The Roman Festivals of the Period of the
Republic, London, 1899.
Georg Wissowa, Religion und Kultus der Römer, Munich, 1912.
J. B. Carter, The Religion of Numa, London, 1906.
Gaston Boissier, La fin du paganisme, Paris, 6th ed., 1909.
A. Bouché-Leclercq, Histoire de la divination dans l'antiquité,
Paris, 1879-1882.
Gilbert Murray, The Stoic Philosophy, New York, 1915.
F. Cumont, The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism, Chi-
cago, 1911; Astrology and Religion Among the Greeks and
Romans, New York, 1912.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
THE RELIGION OF CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY
thers farscendants, so embraced In each,
THE religion of Christ stands to Christianity somewhat as
that of Buddha to Buddhism. In each, interpretation be-
gotten of speculation embraced alien thought and bore
hybrid descendants, some harking back to original features,
others far removed from any likeness to the founder. In
other regards also the two religions are similar. As Buddha
has been resolved into a sun-myth, so Jesus Christ has been
explained as cosmic truth in legendary form,'a Gilgamesh
or other divine hero. The wisdom of Buddha has been re-
ferred to Zoroaster and to Moses ; that of Jesus to Seneca
and Epictetus. Finally, the life, temptation, miracles, para-
bles, and even the disciples of Jesus have been derived di-
rectly from Buddhism. In general, these speculations are
based on similarities too slight to consider, or too rare to
affect a general judgment. It was not till the second cen-
tury that Buddhistic teaching affected the story of Jesus.
Within almost a generation of his death, the words and
activities of Jesus and of his immediate followers were com-,
mitted to writing. The account is too near the event to
justify doubt as to the historicity of Jesus. He was no
myth. His birth, in current opinion, occurred a few years
(perhaps six to eight) before the usually accepted Year of
Our Lord. It is not spoken of as a supernatural event by
the author of the oldest Gospel nor by Jesus himself; nor
by any of his disciples in their conversations is it referred to
as a proof of his divinity. Paul, too, is silent regarding it.
But as an early article of faith it was introduced into the
opening chapter of Luke and the introduction prefaced to
Matthew.1
1 The synoptic Gospels appear to derive from precepts compiled
552
THE RELIGION OF CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY
553
Apocryphal writings, some of which were at first regarded
as authoritative Scripture,1 show that many impossible tales
soon gathered about the personality of Jesus and his mother.
His life was a centre lipon which converged religious specu-
lation. Some have thought that for this reason his per-
sonality must be fictitious. But because myths gather about
a person it does not follow that the person is a myth. On
the other hand, no one who knows history, especially Ori-
ental history, will doubt that the heirs of the founders of all
religions have framed their portraits in golden legends, such
as the tale of the mediaeval Kings of the East. To see how
one such history was made shows how other history may
have been made. This myth of the kings was invented
piously to honour Christ and it is not without its inner
truth, for it strikes the note, made resonant by Paul, that
the Glad Tidings concerned not the Jews alone, but all the
known world.
In its first form the legend says that wise men of the East,
presumably Zoroastrian Magi, were led to the cave where
the Child was born. This was the cave, one of the Church
Fathers tells us, in which the venerated Mother-goddess of
the heathen bore her divine child. It was centuries before
the sages became “Kings of Orient." Epiphany also, taken
from the cult of Dionysos, became a day (Jan. 6) more
celebrated than Christmas, which latter date (as Dec. 25)
was indeed not fixed till the fourth century, when it was
about the time of the greater Pauline epistles (50-60 A. D.) and
from anecdotes reported by Peter. The oldest Gospel is that of
Mark (c. 75 A. D.). The present Gospels of Matthew and Luke
revert to a source designated as Q by Biblical scholars. In Mark
the precept-side gives way to the emphasis laid on the power and
authority of Jesus; Matthew and Luke lay more weight on the
teachings of Jesus. The basis of Acts xvi-xxii may be dated c. 62
A. D. According to R. W. Husband, The Prosecution of Jesus,
Princeton Press, 1916, the trial of Jesus took place Friday, April
3, 33 A. D.
i Conversely, Hebrews (written 81-85 A. D.) and Revelation were
still held as un-scriptural in the second century, though Hebrews
was “edifying." Montanus (see below) may have caused Revela-
tion to be looked upon with suspicion,
554
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
taken from the Mithra-cult. The first step made the Magi
three in number, representing Europe and Africa as well
as Asia, whence in mediaeval art one is represented as a
Negro. Western tradition of the second century fixes the
number of Magi as three, but Syrian writers assume twelve.
They did not become kings till the sixth century, doubtless
that the Scripture might be fulfilled (Ps. 1xx, 10).
Palestine, long distressed, had many would-be Messiahs,
some deluded, some imposters, trading on Jewish hope.
That the Messiah was divine, that the earth was made by
him in a pre-existent state, was now the conception of the
Jewish world (see 2 Esdras, vi. If.). Jesus was persuaded
that he was the Messiah (Christ), yet he looked not for a
worldly kingdom, nor for the realization of the later Jewish
ideal, which was built on the Law and saw God afar off ;
but, with the early prophets, he conceived of God as present,
speaking now in the heart. At the same time he was not
uninfluenced by that wider idea of God which came after
the worship of Yahweh as a national deity. He is not the
son of Yahweh but of God; yet he saw God as a Father
in heaven, who loved his children and demanded obedience
in inner life rather than in outer form. He accepted also
the later teaching in regard to the soul and resurrection.
It has been imagined by some scholars that Jesus was in-
debted to the Essenes (above, p. 446) for his teachings.
But their ideal was utterly opposed to his. They fled the
world; he consorted with all; they did not proselytize; he
sent out missionaries; they emphasized ceremonial purity;
he cared little for it. His antecedents were rather those
old Hebrews whose disdain of cult in comparison with spir-
itual religion found an echo in his own teaching. There
had also been great spiritual progress among the Jews for
a century before Jesus." It is well to realize that Jesus, the
last of the Jews, that is, of the great Palestine Jews, even
in his words is closely linked with his people's past, both
1 See especially Enoch, the Book of Wisdom, and the (Saddu-
cean) Ecclesiasticus, in the centuries just before Christ.
1
THE RELIGION OF CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY
555
remote and near. Thus with one Psalmist he promised that
those who loved God should find joy in him (Ps. V. II), and
with another, who said “the meek shall inherit the earth"
(Ps. xxxvii. II), he was in full accord. As the Psalmist
cries, “I will love thee, O Lord,” and again, "God is the
father of the fatherless ” (Ps. xviii. 1 ; lxviii. 5), so he taught
that God is the heavenly Father whom man should love.
The“ poor and fatherless ” (Ps. lxxxii. 3) were ever in his
thought and with the cry, “ Thou art my Father, my God,
and the rock of my salvation," words that revert to Psalmist
and the Song of Moses (Ps. lxxxix. 26 and Deut. xxxii),
he comforted himself in trial. From this source was drawn
the tender image of the nestlings under brooding wings
(Ps. xci. 4). The humility of man, the greatness, yet the
love, of God as Father, are all pre-Christian elements, as
they are outstanding features of the religion of Jesus,
who, however, taught his law of love and love as a law
more surely, because more explicitly and more serenely,
than did his remote ancestors or his immediate predecessor,
John the Baptist. In fine, he freed the gold from the dross;
in his teaching he took the best and truest ideas handed
down from of old and made them the supreme test of a re-
ligious spirit. What they implied, he expressed: if God be
Father of all, then shall each son be brother to each. It is
this which created the “ beloved community" and gave the
Church its unifying power.
Jesus is represented as performing miracles, some of
which would be accepted today as due to the curative power
of a strong spirituality, while others came in response to the
usual Eastern demand for marvels, which have always been
required of a religious leader. Jesus himself deprecated
such signs and the Biblical narrative intimates that they
were often the result of subjective belief: Mk. vi. 5: “He
could there do no mighty work"; because of their unbe-
lief, Matt. xiii. 58. Paul, too, never mentions miracles as
a proof of Christ's divine power. But he may not have
heard of them; or he regarded them as the inevitable ac-
556
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
companiment of spiritual potency, which in the popular
apprehension might manifest itself as easily in multiplying
fishes as in curing disease or expelling devils.1
Paul's reticence is eloquent also when he tells the story
of the resurrection, which interested him more than any
event in the history of Jesus, for he omits some of the strik-
ing details given by the synoptic gospels, which are, indeed,
not in complete accord as to the time (whether the resur-
rection occurred on the third day or after three days).2.
At this point it is thought by some scholars that there
has been fusion with the much older resurrection-story
which long before Jesus' day had held the East enthralled.
As in the later contact with the Mithra-cult, it is not pos-
sible to say definitively whether the later religion borrowed
from the earlier; but as the two traditions cover the same
time and same territory, and present unusual similarity, no
historian has a right to ignore the striking resemblance of
the general faith with that resurrection-faith which began
with Peter and Paul, when they made the crucified Jesus as
resurrected Christ an Avatar of God. The cult of Cybele
and Attis coalesced in some regards with that of Mithra.
Its Megalesia were rites of the spring equinox. They began
1 Curing blindness, stilling storm, walking on water, turning
water to wine, are miracles mentioned also of others, by Jewish
and Greek writers. Turning water into wine is a miracle of
Dionysos, whose epiphany was thus marked on Jan. 6. Compare
Bousset, Kyrios Christos, Göttingen, 1913, p. 72 f. For Buddhist
parallels, see above, p. 195, note.
2 So the author of the fourth Gospel (c. 100) omits the tempta-
tion and the eucharist at the Supper. This Evangelist differs from
the others not only in introducing the interpretation of Christ as
the manifestation of the Logos, divine Reason, but also in seeing
Jesus more remotely, in making him active at Jerusalem rather
than in the country, etc. Paintings of scenes from this Gospel are
found as early as 180 A. D. It may have been in use in Rome at the
beginning of this century. The Logos of "John” is not that of
Philo Judaeus; it is the One Logos as contrasted with the many
“powers" and logoi of Philo. The two probably drew from the
common stock of ideas current at the time. “After three days,"
in the Roman Gospel of Mark, may reflect the older resurrection-
story of Attis-Osiris-Dionysos, originally one.
THE RELIGION OF CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY
557
1
with the carrying of reeds, among which Attis, like Moses
and Sargon of Akkad, had been exposed, and continued with
a fast of nine days. At the end of this fast was portrayed
the "procession of the tree," with lamentation and self-
inflicted mutilations, initiating the “ day of blood,” which
represented the god's death. Then, after three days, came
the “ day of joy," which represented the resurrection of the
god, and was celebrated with glad cries of " Attis is risen."
A weak Greek version of the cult lingers in Theocritus' de-
scription of the Adonis festival at Alexandria. About 200,
Clement of Alexandria was initiated into these Cybele mys-
teries before he became a Father of the Church, and Ter-
tullian joined a sect which was founded by an old Cybele
worshipper. The mysteries, it will be remembered (above,
p. 541), were brought to Rome c. 200 B. c. But, though
the idea of a risen god was common, that of a god suffer-
ing for us, that of the “ blood shed for us," was new.
Paul, before whose death, 64 A. D., the new religion had
spread over the Roman empire, was the founder of Christ-
ianity in distinction from the religion of Jesus. His Chris-
tology is not drawn from the apocalyptic literature of Pales-
tine but from the Wisdom literature of Alexandria. He
saw the Gospel-story in the light of his knowledge of Greek
and Alexandrine philosophy and of the divine mysteries
current in Greece, and thus gave a new interpretation of
Christ, who, as the risen Lord and Spirit of God, fills the
believer and makes him one with the Lord. In so doing
he discarded his own earlier apocalyptic interpretation of
Jesus (as Jewish Messiah). In Paul there is still vibrant
the spirit of Jesus (love, meekness, joy, faith inspire it);
but this spirit is already over-laid with intellectualism. His
preoccupation is not with the life and words of Jesus, but
with the spirit of God revealed in the resurrection of Christ.
Converted by a Christophany, he saw Christ ever above the
1 Admixture of other cults such as that of Osiris is historically
possible. Later Ephesian Mariolatry probably owes much to ab-
sorption of the local Artemis-cult, of which Paul speaks.
558
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
earth. Scholar and student of Gamaliel, the pupil of Hillel
(above, p. 447), but also a student of the older Wisdom
(Tarsus where he was born was a seat of philosophy), he
desired to prove his faith to the Gentiles. Paul does not
dwell on, though he recognizes, Jesus as the teacher of a
new religious life and ideal; rather he cites his resurrection
as a proof of life after death. For he that believes in the
risen Lord becomes also immortal.2 Paul even uses O. T.
phrases of the Lord Yahweh as if they were of the Lord
Christ.
The statement of Ben Sira (c. 180 B. C.), that "from a
woman was the beginning of sin and because of her we all
die " (xxv. 24), appears in Paul in the form that death and
sin entered the world through Adam and man inherits death
and sin till Christ dies for man. Jesus says not a word of
this origin of sin, and the old Prophets, who talk much of
man's depravity, do not suggest it. Paul also extends the
idea of the new man possessed by Christ to the Church,
which is the body of Christ. This conception at a later
date greatly strengthened Church authority. Paul's chief
theological features are justification by faith, atonement,
opposition to legal Judaism, and the mystic idea of the Spirit
of Christ possessing man (thus driving out the evil spirit
obsessing him) and making the believer able to cast out
devils, speak prophetic words, etc. In close connexion with
this mystic view, baptism drives off evil spirits and so may
be performed "for the dead” (to free them from evil
spirits, I Cor. xv. 29). Moreover, as sacrifice to devils
brings fellowship with devils (I Cor. x. 20), so communion
through sacrifice gives divine power.
Whether eventually Mazdean or Babylonian, the eschatol-
ogy of the first century is a direct inheritance from Judaism.
Jewish conceptions as to Paradise and Abraham's Bosom,
1 As genuine epistles of Paul may be conservatively recognized
the First to the Thessalonians, Corinthians, Galatians, Romans,
Philippians, Philemon, Colossians (and Ephesians?). Some extrem-
ists hold that all the Pauline epistles are spurious.
THE RELIGION OF CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY
559
the new Jerusalem, with the four and twenty elders, the
angels of the gates, etc., present nothing new.
At the beginning of the second century (to which period
may be referred the epistles to Timothy and Titus, the Gos-
pels of John and Peter, the second epistle of Peter and those
of Jude and John, of Pseudo-Barnabas and Ignatius, the
Didache, and the Shepherd of Hermas), Gnostic philos-
ophy attempted to absorb Christianity and give it out again
as a cosmic scheme. Nature-religions still opposed the
faith. Jewish Christians perverted it. Imperialism con-
fronted it with the one universal worship (that of the em-
peror). Episcopal power was now beginning to form,
though the Church was still regarded as a body of be-
lievers rather than as a united organization. Pseudo-Bar-
nabas broke with the Jews through his teaching that the old
Law had been not a preliminary preparation but a pun-
ishment for their obstinacy. Clement of Rome conciliated
the apostolic contention as to faith and works; he depre-
cated sects. “ Love (he says) knows naught of schism."
In the West, Rome began to show its authority, as seat of
Peter and Paul. “Rome, in a presidency of love, our
teacher,” says Ignatius sweetly. He exalts the bishop as
representing God, though he recognizes no apostolic suc-
cession or priestly function of the clergy. He condemns
Gnosticism for overwhelming Christian truth and (the
Docetic) heresy, which made Christ's sufferings only ap-
1 Compare Ezek. xlviii. 39f. and Rev. xxi. 12f. and see Clemen,
Primitive Christianity and its n011-Jewish Sources, New York, 1912,
P. 102f. For Paul's language reflecting Greek thought, see 2 Cor.
xii. 2f. and Gal. vi. 17. The descent into hell is a refinement of a
Mandaean mystery.
2 Ignatius (c. 115?) first speaks of " Christianism” (Christianity
as a body and as a state of mind), of “eucharist," and of the
“Catholic" Church: “Where Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic
(universal) Church.” He is also the first to mention the virgin
birth (outside the N. T.), and to speak of Jesus as iatros, a mys-
tery-term used with soter (Asklepios).
3 Docetism was an old doctrine. Helen's “imaginary life" formed
the basis for the earliest Greek “recantation” of heresy (the
Palinode). Docetism is also found in Buddhism.
560
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
parent. He has no trinitarian formula (that in Matthew is
late) or theory of transubstantiation.
The Didache, perhaps C. I20 (possibly before the second
century), enjoins baptism (for adults) which is performed
in living (running) water after a two days' fast, immersion
preferred; if this be impracticable, one is sprinkled, with
cold or warm water. The Love-feast (later abandoned)
here appears to be one with the Lord's Supper, at which the
formula was: “We thank Thee, our Father, for the life
and knowledge which Thou hast made known to us through
Jesus, thy servant." 1 The Didache recommends confes-
sion of sins in the church and communistic fellowship in
property. Polycarp, reputed pupil of John and teacher
of Irenaeus, in the middle of this century reviles a “son
of Satan" who may be Marcion. This Marcion, the
first reformer, eliminated from “Scripture" everything
except Paul and an expurgated edition of Luke. To Jus-
tin also (martyred between 163 and 167) Marcion was
an advocatus diaboli. Clearly strife was already rife in
the Church. To Justin, Christ is Son of God (but " in the
second place") made manifest as the divine intelligence,
hitherto shown less decidedly in Moses, Socrates, etc., who
also were forms of the Logos. Acceptance of Christ with
Justin is acceptance of his message, not of him as a meta-
physical proposition. Every man according to his actions in
life receives eternal punishment or salvation. Sin is for-
given when one fasts, prays for forgiveness, and is baptized.
Within a few years of Justin's attack on Marcion (139–
140), the Shepherd of Hermas shows a lenient attitude
toward teachings inclining to Gnosticism (the author con-
1 The post-exilic Isaiah uses of the martyred people the phrase
cbed Yahweh, “servant of God," translated rais Ocoő, hence ülds
Oeoī, as mais means son as well as servant. This is Paul's con-
ception of Jesus as the pre-existent Christ, yet, though Lord, the
suffering servant of God. The conventional ideal of Matt. xi.
25–30; xxiii. 34-39 is drawn from Alexandrine Wisdom literature.
2 Marcion's denial that Jesus was the Messiah led to the baptismal
formula which afterwards produced the “ Apostles' Creed."
THE RELIGION OF CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY
561
fuses, as did Paul, 2 Cor. iii. 17, the Son with the Spirit)
and teaches that works of supererogation win glory. For
generations this work was regarded as Scripture (it was
appealed to as authority for keeping Easter on Sunday).1
Yet “ John” had already formulated the creed to be:
Christ was the Logos, Creator, God. “The Word was
God.” All else was matter of definition. In point of fact,
it was no longer a question whether Christology, the doc-
trine about Christ, or the teachings of Jesus were the kernel
of religion. Christology had won. Those who denied the
metaphysical doctrine became unchristian.
Yet sundry heresies arose in this period, which has been
called that of the Defenders of the Faith (Apologists).
Not only did the Jewish Christians, chiefly Ebionites, deny
Christ's divinity (other Jewish sects were the Elkasites and
Nazarenes), but there sprang up in the second century
the Alogoi, a Christian sect that denied that Christ was
the Logos. Besides doctrinal difference, extravagance in
discipline occurred. About 150, Montanus, a Cybele priest
of Phrygia, became converted and wandered about drum-
ming up recruits with two female companions, proclaiming
himself to be the Spirit of Truth (John xvi. 13), who had
come with a new discipline better than that of Christ, as he
was a prophet superior to Christ. This discipline was
strongly tinged with Cybele-elements, ecstatic manifesta-
tions and extreme self-mortification, in order to meet prop-
erly the second coming of Christ. Montanus nade great
use of Revelation ; his religious phase was distinctly re-
vivalistic; he and his women with their exhortations and
music must have had a Salvation Army effect. It affected
the fiery African Tertullian, who became suspect on account
of his allegiance to Montanism. The sober Church depre-
cated its extravagance, as it also opposed the roaming
1 By this time, although the collection of the N.T. was not settled
till the third or fourth century, the Christian belief in the trinity,
in Christ born of the Virgin Mary, as son of God, in the resurrec-
tion of the body, and the doctrine of atonement was fully estab-
lished.
562
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
“ prophets,” who tramped through the country begging for
gold but unwilling to work for a meal. The Didache warns
against them: “If they will not work, give them nothing."
Asceticism did not become a marked religious factor till
the fourth century.
Two great teachers of the West appeared at the close of
the second century, Irenaeus of Lyons, who wrote against
heresies (181–189), and Tertullian of Carthage (c. 150
225). Irenaeus believed in the speedy coming of Christ.
He believed also that Adam had made mortal what God
had made immortal and that Christ re-made man immortal,
thus redeeming him. Redemption generally in the East (the
Church was still practically Eastern) meant not from sin
but from death. Tertullian, a greater man, who founded a
sect of his own in Africa, opposed the “mottled Christi-
anity" (mixed with philosophy) of Antioch and Alexandria.
Christianity to him meant a change of heart, "new law, new
promise," not a theory of Christ's nature. Tertullian first
lised Latin as a medium of Church teaching; he also showed
the Latin spirit and appealed to Church tradition as author-
ity and guardian of truth. He had a deep sense of sin and
of the need of salvation, which is won largely by good
works. Confession and self-mortification follow baptism
as means of grace. Unforgivable sin (e. g. adultery) leads
to excommunication. In all this the doctrine of the later
Church is anticipated. Tertullian (against Praxeas) first
used the word trinity in its present sense and anticipated the
creed of the next century. But his view that the Church was
the body of those who had experienced a change of heart,
was not that of the Bishop of Rome. (Kallistus, c. 220),
who treated adultery as forgivable and regarded the Church
as a body of the baptized, that is, a corporate group of me-
chanically admitted members, which group served as an ark
of safety. Rome, whose founders, Romulus and Remus,
now gave up their places on the calendar of feast-days, to
Peter and Paul, as founders of the new Rome, was already
becoming authoritative. She stood alone in the West, while
THE RELIGION OF CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY
563
the Eastern Church had several schools, none of which
would yield priority to another. In the third century the
Western priesthood became organized, mediating between
man and God; as the Supper became the Mass, a sacrifice
performed by the priest.
Gnosticism, to which Tertullian objected, did not oppose
Christianity but professed to interpret it. First of all, the
Gnostics believed in development, not in creation. Irenaeus
declares that “God alone can make something out of noth-
ing” (de nihilo fecisti coelum et terram, says Augustine),
but the Gnostic regarded nihil ex nihilo as axiomatic. The
world is evil; 1 it is “made" only by an evil being opposed
to God and man's soul, which is now bound by planetary
spirits and can be released by Christ's knowledge of the
mysteries. Paul's use of stoicheia and kosmokratores (Gal.
iv. 3; Eph. i. 21) is Gnostic (compare allusions to prob-
able Gnosticism in I Tim. i. 4; vi. 20; 2 Tim. iii. 6–8).
Knowledge, not faith, saves ; Christ frees entangled but di-
vine Wisdom in the soul. Salvation is open only to the
wise or spiritual, the elect. This doctrine, essentially Or-
phic, is built upon the hypostasis of attributes (Wisdom,
etc.). Docetism (see above), taught by Simon Magus, ex-
plains Christ's humanity as unreal.
Gnostic elements entered into Ebionitism and its fantastic
spiritism 2 affected the Alexandrian Christians; but it led
to the result that Christianity, which to Gnosticism was a
theosophic myth, was obliged to define itself, examine its
1 Evil is due to an antagonistic spirit or is inherent in matter or is
"absence of light,” according to different Gnostic views. In the
0.T. and early Greek philosophy, God is not "light"; this is a
Gnostic idea. Gnosticism is older than the second century, when
it first developed powerful schools, such as those of Basilides and
Valentinus, C. 130-160.
2 Not to be overlooked is the admixture of magical elements in
the interpretation of Christianity, the notion that Christ came to
save the world from the devil, who wished to prevent the sun
from rising, etc. These vulgar and ignorant views prevailed among
the common people from the fourth to the sixth century. They
derive, however, from the old mystery-element, the struggle against
the powers of darkness, which Christianity had absorbed.
564
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
own documents, and ethically to insist on moral rules disre-
garded by the Gnostics, who “calmed the spirit for philoso-
phy” by repression or by indulgence (Nicolaitan view, like
that of the Hindu Tantrists). Owing to Gnostic misuse of
the texts, the Church had to determine its canon. Thus
Irenaeus already cites the four gospels as fundamental,
" like the four winds or four quarters” (c. 186). Tatian
(pupil of Justin), who held Encratite views (condemning
gospel, Diatessaron, used for three centuries in Syria. This
process of definition and exclusion, however, led again to
authority to the Church, giving it power to decide orthodox
doctrine, as against any individual interpretation.
Origen at Alexandria (200-250) tried to reconcile science
and religion. Like his predecessors Justin and Clement
(c. 200), Origen held that God was always educating man.
Whatever is most perfect in humanity is divine. Christ is
the culmination of a progressive manifestation; in him the
divine Fatherhood is freely realized. “Whatever has been
rightly said among all men belongs to us Christians; all wise
men previously have dimly seen the truth through the
Logos-seed implanted in them” (Justin). Clement taught
the immanence of God; men are akin to God. He also was
the first clearly to assert the doctrine of free-will. Love of
God to him is apprehension of the good, a knowledge higher
than faith. His follower, Origen (Egyptian by birth and
name), unfortunately combined with Christian theology a
mass of occult Gnostic teaching: sin is due to obsession by
evil spirits; the body is inflicted as punishment for sin (man
has a pre-existent soul); stars are intelligent beings; all
rational existence will be merged at last in one unity, em-
bracing Christ and Satan; and (Universalist doctrine) all
1 Clement of Alexandria, head of its school of religion, succeeded
there the Aramaean gospel of Matthew. The iminanence of God
is also a Stoic doctrine (see p. 542). Plotinus lived at this time,
whose spirtual enthusiasm affected Augustine.
THE RELIGION OF CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY
565
souls will finally be saved. Salvation comes from illumi-
nation. Christ's blood is a ransom, paid to Satan to free
souls from the evil power. The blood of martyrs is also a
redeeming power. But Origen's fantastic ideas, like his
allegorical interpretation of Scripture, are of little account.
What is important is his liberality. He based Christianity
on the history of man, not on dogma. As a scholar, he is
noteworthy also for having first made a critical edition of
the Bible. He declared, too, that the son was homoousian
(of the same nature) with the Father, though he made
Christ a “second God," a God subordinate to The God. In
face of a cultured scepicism, it was the task of Origen to
prove that the God-man exists as such; only thus could the
hesitant world of scholars be brought to the faith. The
Logos-doctrine thus won a practical as well as a metaphysical
value. It not only declared that Christ was the Logos but
maintained that the Logos was Christ, giving a philosophical
foundation to Christianity.
Origen went to Rome but was disheartened by two things:
first, the vice and venality of Roman Church officials, and
second, the prevalence of the Noetian heresy, which denied
the three persons of the trinity save as manifestations of
one. This led to the Patripassian or Monarchian view, that
God suffered in Christ's person (below).
The Bishop of Rome in the middle of the third century
says that the true creed will not divide the monad, divine
unity, nor make Christ a creature. But he says also that
within the Church some believe that Christ is an emanation
(Sabellian heresy); some assume three hypostases not of
one substance; and some make Son and Spirit creatures of
God. Paul of Samosata (Bishop of Antioch, where Arius
lived), and Sabellius rejected the “three persons.” Christ
1 Justin's soul had welcomed martyrdom but some Alexandrine
fathers evaded the test when Decius' furious persecution came. If
the blood of martyrs did not redeem, it strengthened the Church,
which their death was intended to weaken. Under Nero, Domitian,
Decius, and Valerian, 250–259, the blood of the martyrs was indeed
the "seed of the Church.”
566
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
to God is as light to the sun; Logos and Spirit are, respec-
tively, illuminating and enlivening powers or modes of God.
Origen says: “Some affirm that the Saviour is God.
Though we do not affirm this, yet we ascribe authority to
him as the Logos, Wisdom, Justice, and Truth of God.”
Thus began the dispute, the settlement of which at last
formulated the Nicene Symbol (creed). Arius, born 256,
imbibed at Antioch the view that the Son was subordinate,
not autotheos, very God, co-eternal with God; "there was
when he was not." Christ is a creature, God's agent in cre-
ating the world.1 Eusebius, Bishop of Nicomedia, sup-
ported him. Constantine, who after the persecutions of
Decius, Valerian, and Diocletian (250–303) had granted
the Church toleration, found it necessary to settle the mat-
ter by an ecumenical council of some three hundred dele-
gates of the Church, the first general council. Under im-
perial pressure Arius was at first condemned, but the con-
test lasted for fifty years, led by Athanasius, successor of
Alexander, who had opposed Arius. Eventually both par-
ties appealed to Rome, where Athanasius was recognized as
orthodox; but the Bishop of Rome in 350–355 lost his po-
sition because of imperial disfavour, and Athanasius was
condemned by the Milan Council. Yet Basil the Great,
Gregory of Nyssa and Gregory of Nazianzus still supported
him and, with this backing, it was at last decided that Christ
was not of similar nature but of the same nature with God.
Many maintained that this view was heterodox. Arius was
about to be reinstated as orthodox, when he died (336).
Trinitarian metaphysical orthodoxy at any rate was estab-
lished against a respectable body of protestants, and it seems
to have been due mainly to imperial will that one side suc-
ceeded in enforcing its belief.2
1 He is thus one with Yahweh, as was held by Clement, Irenaeus,
Tertullian, and other theologians against the Gnostic view that
Yahweh was an evil spirit (because creator).
A belief in the trinity (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) was held
by all Christians; but just how the members of it were related to.
each other was first decided at Nicaea in 325.
THE RELIGION OF CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY
567
The Antioch school held in general that God dwells apart
from his world and that the Son is a creature; the Alex-
andrian, that God is immanent in his world and that the
Son is not a creature. Under Theodosius in 381 the first
Constantinople Council reaffirmed the Nicene Symbol. But
Arianism survived long among the Goths, Burgundians,
and Lombards. It is not identical with Socinianism (Faus-
tus Socinus, 1539–1604); for Socinus explained Christ as
mere man, while Arius made him neither man nor God.
Modern followers of Arius were Milton, Newton, and
Locke, and the early American Unitarians, like Channing
(who believed in a pre-existent Christ), while English Uni-
tarians of the eighteenth century were rather Socinian. At
present, Unitarians, like Athanasius, emphasize Christ's hu-
manity, though, to quote Chadwick, they make the propo-
sition general and say that all men are both divine and
human.
At this point must be mentioned a matter historically more
important than metaphysics. At the Council of Arles (314)
were present English Bishops of London, York, and perhaps
Lincoln. Patrick was born about 389. Pelagius (who may
have been English or Irish) disputed with Augustine, c.
400, at Rome. These are indications how far missionary
effort had already been extended.
Minor disputes soon arose in the Church. Nestorius of
Antioch created intense excitement hy denying that Mary
was mother of God, maintaining that two natures and two
persons were connected in Christ. After years of painful
mutual anathemas between Antiochan and Alexandrian
theologians, the Council at Chalcedon (451) decided once
for all that Christ has one person and two natures, not two
persons and two natures, and not, as Eutyches had said,
one person and one nature, monphysite heresy. Mean-
1 Adherents of Eutyches formed the schismatic Coptic, Abyssin-
ian, and Armenian churches. That Christ had two wills (as hav-
ing two natures) was declared to be orthodox doctrine in 680 at
the third Council of Constantinople.
568
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
time Nestorius, condemned at Ephesus in 431, founded his.
Chaldee (Nestorian) Church of Eastern Protestants, which
sent missionaries to the far East, permitted clergy to marry,
and condemned the use of images and pictures, later ex-
pressly sanctioned by the orthodox Eastern Church at the
second Nicean, seventh general, Council, in 787.
The Eastern Church, however, had one more problem to
settle, ere it sank into that repose from which it has never
since emerged. The Nicean Council had strangely neglected
to formulate the status of the Holy Spirit, which an earlier
time had on occasion confused with the Logos and even
interpreted as the Mother Spirit. Thus Bardesanes (died
223) called the Spirit the “secret Mother." Some believed
the Spirit to be consubstantial with the Father; some (Semi-
Arians) denied the Spirit's divinity. Bishop Macedonius
(a sect was named for him) taught that the Spirit is a crea-
ture and servant of God, while the Son is divine and one
with the Father. But, under Gregory of Nazianzus, a
formal definition of the Spirit was made, as “life-giv-
ing Lord, proceeding from the Father, and to be wor-
shipped and glorified with the Father and the Son."
Epiphanius and Augustine, representative of the West, on
the other hand, derived the Spirit “from the Father and
from the Son," filioque. In 589, at Toledo, this Filioque
was added to the confession, and the refusal of the Eastern
Church to adopt it sundered the Churches. The separation
did not take place formally till after the time of John of
Damascus (750), but he was the last Easterner to be heard
with respect in the West.
After the Second Nicean Council (the seventh ecumeni-
cal council) in 787, the Greek Church (officially the Holy
Eastern Orthodox Catholic Apostolic Church) went its own
way. Intellectually it did not go far, though geographically
it extended itself over Bulgaria in the ninth and Russia in
the tenth centuries. But the new problems of the West did
not affect it; it had no reforms, only schisms on metaphysi-
cal grounds (above). It attached itself to symbols and
THE RELIGION OF CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY
569
mysteries, shows and ceremonies, and divided itself into
bodies under different jurisdictions ruled by Patriarchs and
local synods.1
The chief difference between the Eastern and Western
Churches, besides the theological dispute, is that the East
cared little for the question of redemption. It conceived it
as a means of freeing the soul from death, not from sin, and
never advanced beyond apostolic thought. As compared
with the subjective practical religion of Rome, it is meta-
physical and very ritualistic. Sculpture and organs it ta-
boos, but pictures it adores (literally). It has threefold
immersion, infant communion, anoints with oil (but not for
extreme unction), has communion sub utraque (in both
kinds) and leavened bread, exalts the cross and forbids the
crucifix. The non-clerical character of the monastic or-
ders is that of the early Western Church. Prayer is made
standing in an eastern direction, as in the apostolic Church.
Absolution is given with the words (used also by the Wal-
denses)"may God forgive thee." The Eastern Church has
its own Bible and the Catechism of Philaret (1839) is the
chief manual of belief. On the whole, this Church has re-
mained Hellenic in spirit, a divine mystery-religion, pre-
occupied with the occult, delighted with spectacles, super-
stitious, not inimical to the flesh, sensuously serene, not
spiritually stirred. An attempt was made in the fifteenth
century to effect a reunion with the Western Church. This
was accomplished in form only and the new union soon dis-
solved under political pressure.
1 Some of the national schismatic churches have as rivals United
Churches, Greek, Nestorian, Armenian, Syrian, Coptic,. Abyssinian,
which are partly Roman, accepting the Filioque and submitting to
the Roman pope, though they retain clerogamy (except for monks
and bishops) and communion in both kinds. They are modern
(fifteenth and sixteenth centuries). Of the National Syrian Jacob-
ites (of 451) and Marionites (of 680), the latter have become sub-
ject to the Roman pope (in the East papa or pope is a general
priestly title).
2 The cross appeared as a symbol in the Western Church (Cata-
combs) in the third century, the crucifix not till the seventh.
9 Yet it has developed pietistic sects like the Doukhabors. It also
570
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
1
The Roman Church had gradually built up its power at
Rome itself. As early as 190, Pope Victor, who, like Tertul-
lian, used Latin, high-handedly excommunicated the whole
Eastern Church because it would not celebrate Easter on
the Sunday after the Paschal full moon, though Eastern
delegates urged that they followed the Apostle John in
celebrating it on 14th Nisan (Passover). But Rome, fol-
lowing authority in faith, followed the Roman way in forms.
It made the ceremonial of old Rome its own, adapting its
religious processions, its feast-clays, etc., or did as it chose.
Because more convenient than the apostolic custom, it made
Easter come on Sunday; because inconvenient, in another
sense, it did away with the apostolic Love-feast. It ruled
as it would. The coercive policy became its settled method
from the third century when it became Latin. It conceived
of itself Jewishly as a comniunity ruled by God's delegates
through law, whereas the Eastern Church conceived of it-
self not as a body receiving doctrines and sacraments but
as the soul of the world, consisting of members that were
individual elect souls.
Its spirit was saved not from within but from without.
Africa gave it the fiery Tertullian (above) and the same
land gave it Augustine. But Africa gave it also Cyprian
of Carthage (d. 258), who laid the ecclesiastical framework
of the Church by developing the prestige of the bishop, as
representative of God, having the authority of Christ, who
as a priest offered himself in sacrifice. That sacrifice the
bishop repeats when he celebrates the sacrament of the
eucharist. Rome accepted this doctrine gladly, as she had
accepted the teaching of Tertullian (though otherwise she
rated him a heretic), that all culture before Christ was
sinful; 7 that the Church had received faith as its property
conceals survivals of old Cybele-worship among the more illiterate
masses.
1 In the East, Marcion (above) also held that even Judaism was
not the work of a good God. In general, however, the East took a
more liberal view and regarded all previous religions as preparatory
to Christianity and thus containing elements of truth.
THE RELIGION OF CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY
571
(as Irenaeus said, “ a deposit "); that heresy was only self-
will.
Augustine (354-430), the constructive mind of the West-
ern Church, established the Roman Church on a firm founda-
tion. In regard to the Arian question, he accepted, as did
the whole later Church, Roman and Protestant, the Nicean
theology and the Chalcedonian Christology. Yet, like the
Rome of old, he was not much interested in abstractions;
his work lay in practical theology, in the relation between
God and man rather than the relation between God and
Christ. But in one utterance he presents an interesting
parallel to the greatest of India's early theologians who
(c. 600 B. C.) said that Brahma could be defined only by
No, No (by negations). “If asked to define the trinity,"
says Augustine,“ we can say only that it is Not this and
Not that." John of Damascus echoes this: “ All that we
can know of the divine nature is that it is not to be known"
(this appears to revert to Plotinus).
Following Arnobius (c. 290), who degraded man to exalt
God, and taught that only some souls are saver (because
immortal), Augustine explained his doctrine of original sin,
grace, and predestination. He was at first, in Africa, a
disciple of the Manichaeans, whose principles were later
taken up by the Albigenses or Cathari in the twelfth cen-
tury. He was influenced first by Neo-Platonism and then
by Bishop Ambrose (who became bishop without having
been a priest) of Milan, where Augustine became Professor
of Rhetoric. His chief works were directed against the
Manichaeans; against Pelagius, who proclaimed salvation
by faith and declared that all men are born sinless; and
against Donatus, founder of a sectarian African church
(which lasted for two centuries), who demanded that the
Church separate itself from the world, and taught that a
Christian must have a personal experience of religion and
need not belong to the Roman Church. , Donatus was se-
vere on apostates weakened hy persecution; in his views he
was supported to some extent by Novatian at Rome.
572
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
and systemato legal study.gal attitude, isa
justine, a bio legals Ans
Although Augustine knew little Greek and no Hebrew,
yet his eloquence and constructive imagination established
the dogmatic leadership of the Roman Church. His famous
treatise, The City of God (De Civitate Dei), was written
in 426. His sister founded the order of Augustinian nuns,
but the monks of his name, to whose order Luther belonged,
were a later mediaeval body. His theory of predestination
is the product of a legal Roman mind, and it is significant
that it made no impression on the Church till it was revived
and systematized by Anselm and Calvin, both of whom
were bred to legal study. His attitude is genuinely old
Roman, a business or legal attitude, concerned with ad-
justing relations in a case where there is a guilty party and
a plaintiff. In the course of his De Civitate Dei, Augustine
shows that human empires wane (the Goths captured Rome
in 410), but God's empire grows as the other fails; this
divine empire is the (Roman) Church. This attitude be-
came that of the Church itself when, in 380, an edict of
Theodosius made Roman faith the test of orthodoxy, and
when, in 445, Emperor Valerian recognized the Roman Pope
as head of the Church.
There was no early consensus as to redemption and
grace. The Gnostics held that man is sinful by nature, as
is all creation, but the early Fathers said that man was a free
moral agent, till Pelagius “was permitted to speak falsely
that the Fathers might learn to speak rightly." Justin,
Clement, and Origen were content to say that God helps
him whose soul inclines to will aright (will is here a func-
tion of the soul). Original sin is not really sin, but an in-
herited disease, which inclines to the wrong: “Sinless at
1 He used the Latin texts of which there were several before
Jerome, whose (Vulgate) version (384-400) supplanted all others.
Cyprian (c. 250) already cites Latin texts of the Bible.
2 Chrysostom, who was banished from his office at Constantinople
by the Chalcedon Council in 403 and died in 407, recognized the
Bishop of Rome as Peter's successor “in primacy of honour but
not supremacy of jurisdiction.” This reflects the general Eastern
view of Rome. Chrysostom, like Nestorius, promoted missions but
opposed “Mariolatry," though he favoured the veneration of saints.
THE RELIGION OF CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY
573
birth, we sin from choice.” Thus too the Antioch school:
“ None sins through another's sin."i So Chrysostom:
“When man chooses well, God co-operates." The soul,
created in each instance, is not propagated; its action is
its own; its connexion with Adam is not immediate but
through the flesh, mediate; hence infants are born guilt-
less.
But here a word as to the soul's pre-existence is needed.
That the intellectual preceded the material, that souls came
before bodies, was the view of the Essenes, of Origen, and
of all those who regarded a body as a punishment for sin: all
souls were created once for all in the beginning. This was
derided by Jerome and Augustine, and was a view obsolete
by the end of the fourth century. The opposed theory, that
each soul is created at birth (see Zech. xii. I), prevailed
in the East and had adherents in the West. “God," says
Jerome, “ fabricates souls daily.” Every man's body is de-
rived from Adam; his soul comes straight from God. But
against this theory, Tertullian advanced still another, and it
is this which in the West soon became the working hypothe-
sis of its anthropology, viz., body and soul are both propa-
gated. God has done nothing since he rested on the sev-
enth day. The soul of Adam was created holy; but in Adam
it sinned and today man inherits that sinful soul, as he does
that mortal body, which Adam transmitted. In 461, Leo the
Great declared that “every man is formed soul and body in
the womb, and this is the Catholic belief." In a letter to
Jerome, Augustine says he does not know certainly about
this matter (his De Anima is against creationism); but his
theory of predestination seems to imply that he holds the
soul as descended from Adam and tainted by his sin. The
later Church reverted to creationism, as less materializing;
but Luther revived the Tertullian “traducianism," as best
1 Compare the Karma doctrine, which insists on the same point.
A further interesting parallel is that between the Buddhist "thirst"
or desire as originating evil and the Christian source in émiovula,
desire (“concupiscence"). There is of course no historical con-
nection.
574
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
explaining original sin. Calvin, however, remained a cre-
ationist.
That the soul is born sinful, is the view of Cyprian,
Ambrose, and Hilary (third and fourth centuries). Augus-
tine, whose own spiritual struggles had shown him that the
will itself is perverse and is determined by the state of the
soul (“ immanent determinism”), gradually gave up the
view that God co-operates (synergism) and decided that
the Holy Spirit must do all, even renovate the will (mon-
ergism); hence faith is a gift of God and, since faith is
necessary to salvation, only they whom God elects are
saved. Original sin must first of all be erased by baptism;
the unbaptized, even infants, are damned; all pagans are
damned; what is not of faith is sin; ergo, even old Roman
virtues are really all sins (De Civitate Dei).
Pelagius, an “indeterminist," taught, on the other hand,
that sin is due to temptation and example, not to inheritance.
Grace remits sin; regeneration comes from illumination ?
the intellect by truth. What is called Semi-Pelagianism
holds that evil but not guilt is inherited; it upholds a com-
bination of free-will and grace. This Semi-Pelagianism,
after being sanctioned by the Councils of Arles and Lyons
in 475, was adopted by the Council of Trent in 1545 (with
synergism); while Pelagianism was cast out as a heresy,
in 416 and 418, and even roused the East, which promptly
condemned it also, at Ephesus, in 431. Some Eastern
bishops, however, sided with Pelagius; some said his view
was “not essential.” Luther was a stronger determinist
than Calvin. The argument as to inherited guilt or in-
herited evil was revived by the controversy between Cal-
vinists and the Semi-Pelagian Arminians (the followers of
one Hermann). The Semi-Pelagian theory of inherited
evil has modified the Calvinism of the English Church.
Augustine's unrelenting logic took up also the relation
between God's justice and mercy, which later troubled the
a In America, traducianisin was taught by Jonathan Edwards and
Samuel Hopkins.
was Calvin. The aised by the continens (the followersited
THE RELIGION OF CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY
575
Mohammedans. To a Christian the problem expresses it-
self thus: How are infinite mercy and infinite justice cor-
related, and how is justice satisfied by Christ's suffering ?
As already remarked, expiation did not trouble the Jewish
Christians; to them, repentance and righteousness made
atonement. Other early believers (or unbelievers) as-
sumed, with Marcion, that divine suffering was apparent
only and hence was not expiatory; or, with Basilides, that
Christ's suffering was human only and hence finite, and
therefore not vicarious. Ignatius and Polycarp, reputed
pupils of John, merely repeat Scripture (Christ died for
our sins); Barnabas and Clement, reputed pupils of Paul,
say that “the (Christ's] soul is given for man's soul.”
That is, a ransom is paid; but from what? Irenaeus says
bluntly, “ from the devil.” Origen goes a step further and
says the ransom is paid to the devil. Gregory of Nazianzus
knows of this theory (390), but he questions its correct-
1935 Christ suffers, not to pay Satan but to satisfy God.
But Augustine has no hesitation in saying: “It would
have been unjust if Satan had not had the right to rule over
his captive (man).” On the other hand, both Gregory the
Great and John of Damascus say that atonement is paid to
God and not to the devil. Here the subject was dropped,
for the Church trusted rather to justification through works,
till the almost Protestant“ Bishop of Canterbury,” Anselm,
in his Cur Deus Homo (1035–1109) reasoned the matter
out on the basis of Roman law: God has been robbed and
must be reimbursed. Satan's claim is denied. God's jus-
tice must be satisfied. It is God's compassion for man that
leads to the sacrifice, through which alone justice can be
satisfied.
But the Church preferred the theory of Abelard and
Lombard (1164): Christ's suffering conjoined with baptism
1 This Gregory recognizes purification by fire, which under Greg-
ory the Great (c. 600) assumes the form of Purgatory, with deliv-
erance therefrom through intercessory prayers and masses. The
early church of Roine has no purgatory; the believer expects to
go immediately to God.
576
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
and penance gives remission of sin. Thomas Aquinas
(1270), agreeing with Bonaventura, though the latter was
not uninfluenced by Anselm, says that if God sees fit to
remit sin, it is not“ unjust” for him to do so; God is above
legal satisfaction. The Christian soul, member of the
Church, which is one with Christ, can partly redeem itself
(through works of supererogation), as Christ himself not
only satisfies justice but adds merit to the redeemned. This
view has remained that of the Roman Church; baptism,
character, good works, conformity to law are items tending
to remission of sins (so the Council of Trent, 1545-1563).”
This discussion has anticipated the progress of the Church
along other lines. In the first Christian era, Chiliasm, the
expectation of Christ's near advent to reign a thousand
years before the last day, had led many devout souls to
become ascetic. Ready for Christ, they renounced the
world and, sometimes, imitating earlier pagan associations,
collected in coenobite colonies. By the fourth century most
of the Fathers had renounced all hope of Christ's speedy
advent (Eusebius calls it a fable); 2 but the monastic prac-
tice had already been regulated by Basil the Great (d. 379),
who laid the foundation of Eastern monachism in Cappa-
docia. Athanasius, it is said, brought the idea to the West.
By the fifth century, there were monasteries in Italy, Africa,
and Gaul. The first well regulated order was that of the
Benedictines (529), whose regulations were adopted by
others. Personal salvation was the aim of these passive
saints, who were lay brothers, till Gregory the Great con-
verted them into active priestly missionaries. Cassiodorus
at Vivarium at the same time (i. e. 600) made their home
a seminary of learning. But, till 910, they were not under
1 Protestants think that this “confuses sanctification with justifi-
cation.” See Luther's view, below. Some early Christians (second
century) held that the eucharist was niystically “the medicine of
immortality."
2 It was revived in the year 1000 and later by the Anabaptists ;
also by the Millerites and other distraught sects crying: “the day is
at hand; prepare to meet thy God.”
THE RELIGION OF CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY
577
papal jurisdiction, and being uncontrolled they became more
or less corrupt. Yet they were by no means idle or vicious
position to simony, to clerical marriage, and to papal elec-
tion by party politics (the Cluny movement forced the elec-
tion by cardinals). A century before, monks had brought
Christianity to Germany. The reform movement also ex-
pressed itself in new orders. Bernhard's Cistertians were
such a reformed Benedictine order (eleventh century).
The armies of the Church, the Knights Templar, etc., were
formed at this time. From the last quarter of the ninth to
the second half of the eleventh century, the Church was con-
trolled by the corrupt aristocracy of Rome; but when it
shook itself free, there sprang up the reformatory orders of
mendicant friars, the Franciscans (1209), and Dominicans
(1215). They followed the life of Jesus as imitated by that
mystical saint, Francis of Assisi (d. 1226), who bore on his
body the stigmata of Christ and in his heart the desire to be
like his Lord. This desire was expressed by vows of hu-
mility, poverty, love, devotion, and obedience. These friars
and their reformation lasted till what is known as the Refor-
mation was well-nigh at hand.
Buat was
But, between them and the Protestant era, came the four-
teenth century, when the Church was rent to its foundation,
for the papal throne was claimed by two Popes whose mutual
anathemas shocked the world. Then spirituality seemed to
have left the Church. Boccaccio and Dante show that the
ecclesiastic, bishop, priest, monk, or friar, was often synony-
mous with crime, meanness, and lust. Yet, before entering
upon this topic, to trace the Church orders a little further,
the Reformation itself produced one of the most important,
that of Ignatius Loyola (1534), whose Society of Jesus
dedicated itself to the service of the Church absolutely,
and whose missionaries with wonderful devotion laid the
principles of Christianity before the new and savage world
of America, as well as before the ancient civilization of the
578
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
East.1. Another result of the Reformation was the forma-
tion, within the Church, of the Augustinian party called
Jansenists. Jansen (1585–1638) contended against the
Jesuits at Louvain. His sect was expelled from France by
Louis XV; but it still forms a schismatic Netherland
Church. Jansen's Augustinus, which was published in 1640,
denies free will.
During the period just reviewed the Church was intel-
lectually alert. Its formal philosophy, though hampered
by orthodox requirements, was subtle. But the most im-
portant movement in it passed without appreciation of its
significance. This was when, after Anselm had enunciated
his credo ut intelligam (dogmatic truth must be made intel-
ligible), Thomas Aquinas, a Dominican, and Duns Scotus, a
Franciscan, founded two schools, in which understanding
and will were respectively made the highest principle.
Therewith the former union of faith and knowledge was
broken. At the same time the identity of thought and being
was investigated. The Nominalists, of the eleventh century,
denied reality to concepts; while Anselm and other Realists
held to the old Universalia ante rem.? The goal was then
sought through pantheism and mysticism. Scotus Erigena,
in the ninth, and Eckhardt and Bernhard, in the twelfth
1 That Jesuitical and Jesuit have become Protestant terms of
reproach is due to three reasons. Devotion to the Church involves
obeclience to it expressed by complete service, including sacrifice, of
one's own personality; higher truth must be served even by evasion
or untruth. To this ethics, corporate good is supreme. Second,
liberal politics in England opposed the Stuarts supported by the
Jesuits, who thus became odiolis to the Coinmonwealth party.
Third, Jesuits are often supposed to have invented the horrors of
the Inquisition, which was really invented in 1232 to enforce the
prohibition, of three years before, against the laity reading the
Bible. Again, an Alva was merely a political agent. To halance
Jesuit errors (many of them those of their day), the historian ini
his general estimate should weigh the life of the Jesuit Fathers
among our Redskins, for example; their heroic courage, their fre-
quent martyrdom; and, from a human point of view, the unrivalled
work they have clone for the history of religions.
2 Abelard, who was condemned by the Church as a rationalist in
1121 and 1140, held a middle view, Universalia in re. His answer
THE RELIGION OF CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY
579
TY
century, had been respectively precursors of these two
doctrines, which were revived by the pantheist Giordano
Bruno and the niystic Jacob Boehme (sixteenth century).
Herewith closes the period of Church-philosophy. In the
seventeenth century, Descartes assumed as the foundation
of his philosophy not orthodoxy but doubt, and Spinoza's
affirmation of the reality of a knowledge of things was
based on the veracity of God as known through man's in-
nate idea of the perfect. Thereafter, philosophy might, or
might not, support the Church. It was no longer the
nursling of religion.
Both Bernhard, who held that faith, though an intuition
of truth, is based on authority, as science is based on rea-
son, and Anselm, who invented the topic called Evidences,
were influential in furthering that veneration for the Mother
of God which is often called Mariolatry. Nestorius, in 431,
was condemned for his attitude toward this revered Mother,
the only mortal born sinless and going direct to God, as the
Fathers taught. Intense excitement was aroused in the
Eastern Church by Nestorius' repudiation of Mariolatry.
The priests who had defended the “Mother of God” in the
controversy were escorted home by a tumultuous mob of
enthusiasts. Devotion to her in the West was of later
growth, but in the thirteenth century they that neglected
her were fined and in 1854 Pius IX promulgated the doc-
trine that Mary was immaculately conceived. · But her wor-
to credo ut intelligain was Non credendum nisi prius intellectum.
Occam, who opposed papal control of the State in the fourteenth
century, revived Nominalism, but after him the identity of thought
and being was no longer urged in its scholastic form.
1 The Fathers' evidence (of God's existence) was either based on
teleology or on the subjective effect of his presence; divinity in
Augustine's phrase, “impinges on the soul”; God is known by being
experienced; we know he exists because we love him. Formal
ontology appears first in Anselm's argument (1033-1109): The
mind possesses the idea of God as a perfect being; hence such a
being exists. For a being who may not exist is not most perfect
and a necessarily existent being cannot be conceived as not existent;
hence the mind conceiving of a perfect being must conceive of a
real being.
580
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
ship is not permitted, only “hyperdoulia,” or great vener-
ation, higher than the doulia paid to a saint, to whom also
one does not pray, but cries ora pro nobis, pray for us.
Early veneration is shown by the remains in the catacombs.
There Mary with the child in her lap appears as early as the
first and second centuries. The accepted type of the Mother
of God may have been of Egyptian origin (Isis). .
The first case of "intercession of saints” is found c. 200
in the Gnostic Acts of Paul and Thecla, cited by Tertullian.1
Formal canonization was at first a sensible safeguard against
a multiplicity of doubtful saints. As it was, the Church
inadvertently canonized Buddha (St. Josaphat). A few
popes have been canonized, among them Pius V, who ex-
communicated Queen Elizabeth. But most of the Roman
saints are worthy Christians, apostles, the early Fathers
(except those incapacitated by heresy or other blemishes,
like Tertullian and Origen) and later worthies credited with
piety and miracles, either in person or through relics. They
have a vision of God and intercourse with God, according to
Origen and Justin; they wear aureoles, says Aquinas, in-
stead of common gold crowns. The nimbus occurs first in
the third century pictures of Christ; by the fifth century it
adorns any saint. It may have come, in the first instance,
from the head-shield of Greek statues.
The veneration of images, prohibited in the Eastern
Church, has been practised since the fifth century and prob-
ably before that. Many old divinities of Greece have be-
come, as images, converted into Christian objects of venera-
tion. Gregory the Great censured the Bishop of Marseilles
for having defaced the images in his diocese (c. 600), which
shows that official opinion was not uniform. In 1563, the
Church declared that images were only mnemonic, reminders
1 Prayers to martyrs occur as early as the fourth century.
Augustine recognizes prayers for the dead. It is of interest to see
that in his day it was a novelty to sing psalms in church.
2 Aquinas' Summa Theologica systematized theological science in
the thirteenth century (Lombard had attenipted this in the twelfth)..
Aquinas' work was endorsed by the Pope in 1879.
THE RELIGION OF CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY
581
purpose.
All Christian creeds agree in making the lives of the good
eternal in heaven; but Christians differ as to a probationary
of a “secret receptacle” of souls (purgatorial), postulates
an aionian fate for the damned, as did Calvin (Matt. XXV.
41). Origen speaks of eternal punishment, yet not as a
reality, for man can free himself, but as a beneficial decep-
tion of God (to induce good behaviour). Annihilation of
aced by compis magic lustra Baptism
ology, lies remote from heaven. Next to hell is purgatory;
next to that, the limbus infantum, who die unbaptized; next
to that, the limbus patrum, where Christ went to preach to
those in bondage, the abode of Old Testament saints (also
called the Bosom of Abraham).
The Roman Church extended the sacramental idea, from
baptism and the Last Supper, to include confirniation, pen-
ance, extreme unction, ordination, and marriage. Only for
the ordained priest does. God change the bread and wine
into the eucharist as a sacrifice. Jesus was himself bap-
tized but did not baptize. Both the original sacraments
have been traced by comparative study to magical ideas.
Baptism,-as we have seen, is magic lustration practised by
many races to expel demons or evil. Baptism "in the
Name" reverts to the hypostasis of the Name, of one whose
power is thereby conveyed to the one baptized. It purifies
from sickness as well as from sin, as does oil, used to keep
off sickness and other devils in life after death. Even in
the fifth century, baptism was a medicine for disease. Bap-
tism to wash away sin and as a symbol of the resurrection
is, says Tertullian, a Mithra-rite inspired by the devil to
1 Luther favoured more than did Calvin an intermediate state
after death and this view was received and extended by Sweden-
borg. There has been no consensus as to what sort of body would
rise again. According to Aquinas, it will be like the earthly body,
but it will “move faster." The whole subject was matter of opin-
ion not of dogma.
in hose
582
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
mock Christianity. The Name gives the power of the di-
vinity invoked. Lustrating water and Name together are
irresistible against devil and evil.
So of the Supper, Justin tells us that bread and a cup of
water (the early Christians used either water or wine;
Paul speaks of the cup only) made part of the Mithra
ritual, which bread signifies immortality. There is, indeed,
no doubt that the idea back of these rites was mystical.
The eating of a divine body is an early communion which
makes the worshipper one with the god. But the Church
spiritualizes. Augustine says that the eucharist contains a
spiritual presence. The early congregation described by
Justin seems to regard it as mnemonic, others as a means of
obtaining immortality. As early as the eighth century,
however, the Church of the East regarded the eucharist as
the real body and blood. This doctrine, called transub-
stantiation in 1215 by the Roman Church, was known earlier
than it was named. In 1050, Berengarius was excommuni-
cated for denying the real presence. In the sixteenth cen-
tury, the Jesuits proclaimed the opus operatum; the sacra-
ments effect in the penitent soul a disposition to grace.
The Reformers differed as to the eucharist. Luther
clung to the Church doctrine, as approved in 1215, but
modified it to consubstantiation, the real presence is not in
but with the eucharist. Calvin explained that the bread and
wine are not mere signs; Christ is “truly and efficaciously,
but not physically” present. Zwingli (d. 1531) and the
English reformers, on the other hand, maintained the
mnemonic or symbolic character of the eucharist.
That Paul was consciously bent on overcoming the pow-
ers of evil is probably true, but it may also be true that he
had at the same time already taken a higher view; to him
baptism is not a mere means of expelling a demon. As to
the Supper, Christ himself says, “Do this in memory
of me.” Whatever the original pagan idea (and that is
unquestioned), it remains doubtful whether even the most
primitive Christian idea had not already left it behind. All
THE RELIGION OF CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY
583
attainable the Churches of the
historians admit that a religious practice taken into a new
cult may be without its most primitive significance, as the
victor's laurel no longer was meant as a guard against
demons, though that was the laurel's first use. To say that
the principle of the eucharist, when first employed by Chris-
tians, was one with that which inspired the maenad to de-
vour the bull-god, is to ignore relative values, because, ac-
cording to Christian belief, there is no union without pre-
vious purification, not physical but spiritual.
The Church from the fourth century possessed as it were
a body and a soul. Its body was the huge establishment
with pope, cardinals, bishops, priests, friars, wealth ac-
quired by gift and trade (a crown exchanged for the “ states
of the church” in the eighth century) — a swollen body and
often in an unhealthy condition. Its soul was in that un-
dying aspiration for a diviner state and a purer life than
was easily attainable in a body devoted to the world. The
lowest moral ebb of the Church was when the popes lost
control of it and became creatures of the Roman nobility,
in the tenth and eleventh centuries. The Holy Roman
Empire was founded in 962. Even materially there was not
much gained by it, for the king who went barefoot to
Canossa in 1077 afterwards in royal power got to San
Angelo. In fact, every union of Church and State, papal
or protestant, has only helped to stifle the soul without
compensating advantage to the body, since the persistent
soul has always disturbed the body by doing its best to
escape.
Sometimes, however, it strove to cure the body without
escaping. This was the meaning of that earliest revolt ex-
pressed in Montanus' revival; in the retreat of Benedict's
monks; in the reform or spiritual outpouring in Francis'
order; in the Council called by Pope Urban II (French by
birth), to consider moral lapses on the part of the king
(Philip I of France); in the impulse given by the same
pope toward the first Crusade. For the Crusades, mixed
as they were with worldly aims (romance, conquest), were
Holy Ro
584
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
primarily spiritual enterprises. To approach Christ, to ob-
tain forgiveness of sins, were the underlying motives of this
mediaeval revival inspired by Urban and fired by Peter the
Hermit. Even Francis of Assisi took part in one of the
later crusades (in 1219).
The oldest formal Protestants were the Waldenses of
Lombardy, supposed to derive from Waldo (1173). With-
out wishing to leave the Church body, they longed to revive
its primitive piety and to read the Bible. They proclaimed
their own opinions, holding the intercession of saints as
naught and purgatory to be only an earthly state. A little
later, in England, Wicklif (1350–1384) denounced the
friars, called the Pope Antichrist, demanded independence,
opposed the doctrine of transubstantiation, and made his own
translation of the Bible. But, in the fourteenth century,
the Pope, who owned a papal residence at Avignon, was
now hand in glove with England's dearest foes, the French.
Parliament already, in 1366, had refused to pay the papal
taxes. Thus Wicklif revolted against the political as much
as against the worldly attitude of the Church. But, directly
influenced by him, Huss (1369–1415) began another crusade
against vice, venality, falsehood, and other diseases of the
Church body, exposed doctrinal errors, and left his follow-
ers in Hungary, the Unitas Fratrum or Moravians (as
Wicklif had left the Lollards) to uphold his reform, de-
claring Christ to be the model and accepting only the au-
thority of the Bible, till the new Reformation took up as
its own these old contentions. Another primitive com-
munity was that of the Mennonites (whence came those
who baptized only adults, mistakenly called re-baptizers,
Anabaptists), who opposed infant baptism, would not take
oaths or bear arms, and according to their lights endeavoured
to follow Christ in all things. Savonarola (b. 1452), who
opposed the pope, but still within the Church, and gave
his life for reform before the fifteenth century, in his plea
for the Bible and purity struck the very key-note of the
soon following Reformation.
THE RELIGION OF CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY
585
But the body was not responsive to the demands of the
soul. Hence, stirred by the abuse of indulgences, whereby
the Church had prostituted itself and sold its most valuable
possession for worldly gain, Martin Luther (1483-1546)
posted at last his ninety-five theses, at Wittenberg in 1517,
and came out openly against papal abuses, in restricting the
communion cup, in celebrating mass as a priestly sacrifice,
in confession and absolution, in monastic vows (as contrary
to nature), and in “meritorious acts," as impugning the
complete validity of redemption without such acts.
In theology, the Protestant Augsburg confession was Ni-
cean; in Christology, it was Chalcedonian; in anthropology,
it was Augustinean. Luther's strictures on the papal view
of sin and grace also were not his own but followed those
of Erasmus, who, as early as 1515, had called, too, for a
return to the authority of the Bible. As has been seen,
Luther himself, an Augustinian monk, still clung to the
view of the Church in regard to the eucharist, which he
hardly modified by the substitution of one proposition for
another. In sum, Luther's greatness did not consist in his
originality but in his boldness, his moral courage. Born of
peasants, himself rude, coarse, and fearless, he was needed
as ethical regenerator. Erasmus was too finnicky a scholar
for the purpose. Luther shook the religious world into a
realization of its needs. Alexander VI had shown what a
pope might be; Luther sought to show what a Christian
ought to be. In doing this, he worked hampered by many
limitations, personal and of the time. Nor was spirituality
his characteristic. He dismissed the gentle Melanchthon
(who was also so much of his time as to approve of burning
Servetus at the stake) in 1537 with the benediction, “May
God fill you with hatred of the pope.” This Teutonic touch
expresses, however, more than the animus of Luther,
Christian charity characterized none of the Reformers.
Against Zwingli, Luther was as incensed as against the
pope, because the two reformers differed as to the eucharist,
and because Luther believed in monergism and Melanchthon
586
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
in synergism, Luther felt that his friend was not really a
true Christian.
But the great drawback to Luther's work was, that in
shaking the religious world he shook it to pieces. What
had been for centuries in the West one Church, now became
a mass of fragments; or to speak in Biblical language, the
one flock became a number of Rocks, each penned in a
separate fold, and each unhappily regarding the occupants
of the other folds not as fellow-sheep of one shepherd, but
as wolves disguised and hierded by Satan.
A revivalist tendency had been active in Germany before
Luther's day. Attempts to limit papal power were made as
early as 1409. Religion based on personal relation with
God was not a new idea. Political and social reform began
in fact with the Renascence.1 What then did Luther ac-
complish? First, he reinstated, not in theory but in fact,
Biblical authority; then he freed the soul of Christianity
from hierarchical, mediatorial, monastic control, and re-es-
tablished as sacraments those of the primitive Church. For
Church belief and Church control he substituted the simple
message that the free grace of God in Christ is what inakes
guilty men blessed; a confident belief in God's grace suf-
fices. What he disastrously ignored was, that religious
fervour may legitimately express itself in emotion, in ritual,
in the soleinn ceremony; that the beauty of holiness is not
necessarily embodied in ugliness of worship. He abolished
fasting, though Christ fasted; he abolished deacons and
bishops, though they belong to pre-papal Christianity; he
rejected Roman control, only to substitute State-control; he
rejected “merit" and "good works," only to find that the
emphasis on “faith” resulted at once in defining faith in
1 It is a mistake to suppose that papal authority was almost un-
restricted before the Reformation. In England, before Protestant-
ism had been thought of, Henry VII and Wolsey under Henry VIII
had confiscated papal wealth and privileges. There was a universal
tendency to circumscribe Church power. Lorenzo de' Medici per-
mitted papal authority only “as it seemed good to him," nisi quod
ei videretur nihil permittens.
THE RELIGION OF CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY
587
terms of scholastic doctrine (whence interminable quarrels);
while to those indifferent to doctrine the crude statement
that good works were naught led (the Antinomians) to dis-
regard of any good work."
The theory of relative necessity of atonement became an
Arminian doctrine in the seventeenth century. Its germ
may be found in the division between Aquinas and Duns
Scotus and their followers, the Thomasts and Scotists, on
the infinite value of Christ's sufferings. Scotus, as a Nomi-
nalist, held to a nominal satisfaction of justice.
In regard to justification by faith, as the judicious Hooker
says, “Holiness cannot be piacular," and the Reformers,
Luther and Calvin, added to the objective treatment of
Anselm (above) the element of faith and consciousness of
redemption, that is, a work of man. But, to guard against
error, the Reformation insisted that faith is not the procur-
ing but the instrumental cause of justification. Faith does
not justify but accepts what justifies. So Luther says:
“Faith and works are inseparably connected, but faith alone
without works appropriates atonement and thereby justifies,
and yet faith does not remain alone” (works spontaneously
follow). Calvin agrees with this. Both of course reject
Anselm's quaint mediaeval view that the number of the
saved exactly equals the number of fallen angels and that
redemption was really intended to keep up to its full quota
the number of pure spirits. Later Lutheran formulas
(1576) stressed the difference between the passive and active
obedience of Christ; the latter, obedience to the law, is
“ imputed to us for righteousness.” Except for the Ar-
minian view of Grotius, this is still the Protestant position
in regard to soteriology. Justification is from God in con-
sequence of faith; free grace, without merit, is granted to
every believer and is followed by freedom from the law.?
1 So the faith-doctrine in India has led to depreciation of all meri-
torious works and disregard of ethics.
2 Grotius (1645) held the view, called acceptilatio, of relative not
absolute necessity of atonement. Vicarious satisfaction is not in
this view a quid pro quo but an aliud pro quo; the claim is not
US
588
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
Intellectually the most influential Reformer was John
Calvin (1509–1564), whose religion extended over France,
Switzerland, Poland, Hungary, the Netherlands, England,
Scotland, and America, and cast a gloom over three cen-
turies. Lutherism as a Church was more local and suffered
the fate due to its party origin and scorn of emotion. It
became a State institution, markedly apathetic. A Lutheran
congregation in Germany appears to be spiritually dead.
In the last century, the Roman Church has in fact regained
much of the religious and political authority from which
Luther ousted it. Calvinism, a later growth, shook itself
more completely free from the old Church and landing in
England, at a time when reform meant freedom, found a
soil wherein to propagate itself successfully.
Brought up and educated under legal auspices, son of an
attorney and pupil of the famous lawyer Alciati, Calvin was
from boyhood severe and censorious. His mind was
shrewd, logical, devoid of higher spirituality, but religiously
inclined; his body weak, nervous, dyspeptic. Coming as a
youth to Geneva, he was induced by the Protestant Farel
to remain there as pastor. Expelled on account of harsh-
ness, he returned (1541) and thereafter ruled with an iron
hand. He was not an original thinker. Le Fèvre, born
about 1455, had denied “good works," held salvation as a
free gift, doubted transubstantiation, and taken the Bible
as sole authority five years before Luther nailed up his
theses. Farel was Le Fèvre's pupil. Calvin's mind, though
not creative, was formulative. His Institutes, owing to his
personal power, was formally voted by the Little Council
of Geneva to be “the holy doctrine of God," and at the
same time (1553) it was commanded that "no one should
dare to speak against the Institutes." In 1557 he banished
the Anabaptists under fear of death. At Strassburg he re-
quired every would-be communicant to be examined first
satisfied but waived. Atonement is only exemplary, not to atone
for past sin but to prevent future sin. Socinus rejected vicarious
atonement altogether.
THE RELIGION OF CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY
589
by himself in a sort of confessional; he instituted a "minute
inquisitorial interference with the lives of the people.” Be-
cause Castellio questioned the inspiration of Solomon's
Song, Calvin refused him the ministry. Worse than such
impiety was it to criticize adversely Calvin himself. He
forced Ameaux to go almost naked through Geneva and beg
pardon of God for saying that Calvin was a bad man. He
banished Bolsec because Bolsec said Calvin's theory of pre-
destination was nonsense, and (1553) caused Servetus to
be burned at the stake because of disbelief in Calvin's the-
ology. Yet, it is to be feared, not so much for religion's
sake as for the sake of his own authority. As one of his
admirers says: Calvin connived with the Roman Catholic
Church to slay Servetus not so much because of heresy as
because “the condemnation of Servetus 1 now became vital
to Calvin's whole Geneva status."
But the theocracy established by Calvin at Geneva was a
local Protestant autocracy, which his own neighbouring
Protestant states detested, as they ridiculed him. The
Council at Bern even declared Calvin to be “ a quarrelsome
meddler in divine counsels” (1557), and said that they
would burn his Institutes as an heretical and dangerous
work. Neither Basel, Zürich, nor Bern upheld Calvin
against Bolsec, who had declared that predestination was
"absurd." It is urged that Calvin showed "statesmanlike
breadth of mind” and that he helped the cause of civil lib-
erty. But it is difficult to find breadth of mind in any of his
expressed views, while his actions show only an inordinate
1 Servetus was “a man of genius who anticipated much not only
of what Socinianism afterwards asserted, but some Christological
views which now have wide currency” (Walker, John Calvin, p.
326). He discovered the circulation of the blood three quarters of
a century before Harvey. Calvin showed at the trial that Servetus
had said that Palestine was not a land flowing with milk and honey.
Hence (argued Calvin) Servetiis spoke against Moses; therefore
he spoke against the Holy Spirit who inspired Moses, etc. In his
De trinitatis erroribus (1531), Servetus had laid the foundation of
the charges against him. It must be admitted that he was as auda-
cious and impudent as he was clever.
590
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
1
self-conceit. His practical interpretation of civil liberty was
that the Church as the oracle of God should control the State
and that John Calvin should control the Church. His stren-
uous morality and individualistic conception of the nature of
salvation appealed to his English friends, while his opposition
to the papacy released the English world from one Church
without binding it to the pope of Geneva. Thus only can
it be said that “the spiritual indebtedness of Western Eu-
rope and of America to the educating influence of Calvin's
theology is wellnigh measureless” (op. cit. p. 428). In
France, two years before his death, there was a reaction
which weakened the Huguenots; but this was largely politi-
cal. We are indebted to Calvin, however, if not for his
gloomy theology, for his severe morality, which was needed
at the time. His intolerance of unethical behaviour put
into religion a forçe it had almost lost and its severity had a
tonic effect of lasting value.
Augustine's view that the lost who are not given the grace
of perseverance are passed by, became with Calvin the
statement that men are damned simply to please God. In
opposition to the Semi-Pelagianism of the Church, and to
the Arminian doctrine of inborn evil (not guilt), Calvin
insisted that man is naturally evil and guilty and redemption
is effected through God's favouritism (not through syn-
ergism). A few selected (elect) receive the undeserved
grace of redemption. Thus absolute predestination, par-
ticular redemption, man's total depravity, God's irresistible
grace, and the perseverance of the saints are the five theses
urged (at Dort in 1618–1619) against the Arminians. The
glory of God, not the blessedness or happiness of his crea-
ture, is the aim of God. This necessitates predestination,
which again is proved by the implication of provision in
prevision on the part of every intelligent being. The Ar-
minians, on the other hand, admit fore-knowledge but gen-
erally ceny fore-ordination.
The Geneva consensus on predestination occurred in 1551.
In 1551-1552 were composed in England the original Forty-
THE RELIGION OF CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY
591
Two Articles, which, when revised, became the Thirty-Nine
Articles, sanctioned in 1571. They are largely Calvinistic.
The (Presbyterian) Westminster Conference (1643–1648)
embodied the Calvinistic faith for those politically at odds
with the Crown. But the English Reformation (1532–
1536, 1547) belongs not to a history of religion but to a
history of establishments. It introduced no new ideas.
Calvinism mercifully tempered with Arminianism explains
it, except on its political side. The break with Rome was
due to desire for political, not religious, freedom. Mary
(1553-1558) established Protestantism firmly by her intem-
perate opposition and it was definitively restored by Eliza-
beth (1558), though soon divided by the re-reformers called
Puritans, and sub-divided again by Separatists, Quakers
(George Fox, b. 1624, was a pure mystic), etc., as Luther-
ism was divided in Germany and Calvinism in Poland.
Two of these reform movements deserve special notice,
that of the Pietists in Germany and that of the Methodists
in England and America. The first was the natural anti-
thetic result of Lutherism and Calvinisnı, both of which had
done what they could to stifle emotional religion. Spener
(b. 1635) and Francke (b. 1663) started the movement, but
their “piety” at first outdid Calvinism in some regards.
They forbade even children to play and adults were taught
to scorn all occupation except that of occupying their souls
with religious feeling; even religious form, such as church-
going, was looked upon as debasing. Sentimental piety was
true religion. The Moravian Zinzendorf became infected
with this doctrine and established in 1722 a monastic com-
munity of dispersed Moravians devoted to sensuous mysti-
cism, strict discipline, a new order of bishops, and an elab-
orate liturgy. This was, of course, a reversion to certain
"varieties of religious experience” familiar to the Church
in the Middle Ages. Lutherans, and even the original Pie-
tists, were revolted by the indecency inseparable from a too
sensuous “ love for Jesus” and Zinzendorf was banished.
Later conservatism improved this body, as was the case with
592
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
the Quakers, who also began as mystics and at first offended
decency, and the reformed Pietists adopted the Augsburg
Confession in 1749. Apart from objectionable features, this
Moravian body, active in America, has done much good in
Christianizing savages and in upholding a simple Christian
life.
In England, a High Church faction, devoted to ritualism
and hence called Methodist (1729), became the sect of that
name through the influence of Wesley and Whitefield
(1735). It fashioned its government after the Established
Church (having bishops), but, influenced in part by pietistic
feeling, it reverted to an apostolic model in restoring the
Love-feast and especially in re-inventing the order of itin-
erant evangelists, who, like mediaeval friars, roamed about,
preaching the gospel and recalling to life the simple spiritu-
ality of inner religion. Whitefield's particular followers are
Calvinistic, otherwise the sect is Arminian; as a whole, it
insists on sanctification and the witness of the Spirit.
Though its initial success was due chiefly to revivalist meth-
ods, it has held its own through its ability to be emotional
without being sickly, and dramatic without being insincere.
It is significant because it was the first sect both to minimize
theology as compared with religion and to see religion
broadly, without over-emphasis on non-essentials.
In England, Legate was burned at the stake (for holding
the Unitarian heresy) in 1611, the last victim of that formi
of intolerance. At present, after three hundred years, in-
tolerance in any form is beginning to disappear. In the late
past it has expressed itself rather through fission than
through persecution. In America, for example, the orig-
inal Calvinistic Baptists felt unequal to the strain of Chris-
tian unity and a sect was formed of Particular Baptists,
followed by other sects called Free-will Baptists, Primitive
L
1 The charge that the Puritans fled from intolerance only to be-
come as intolerant theniselves, has some basis of truth: but they
banished the Quakers not because of creed but because of their
behaviour (appearing naked in church, etc.).
THE RELIGION OF CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY
593
Baptists, and Seventh Day Baptists. A constant reforming
of the reformed has thus led to new parties innumerable 1
but not to new ideas. At most, one religious item of faith
or practice has been heavily stressed, thus producing a Bap-
tist, a Quaker, a Shaker, a Mormon Prophet, an Endeav-
ourer, a Christian Scientist, or a Salvationist, of whom some
are sects apart, while others are sectless, drawn from any
source, but now devotees of one idea. Even within more
conservative ranks, the practical effect of this predilection
for dissension has resulted in the anomaly of a village
scarcely capable of supporting one "meeting-house " yet
harbouring three or four sects, whose members do not know
why they differ but resolutely remain apart.
That they do not know why they differ is, however, a
distinct advance. Difference or dissent is only their reli-
gious inheritance; it does not express their real religious
attitude, which has passed beyond the subtleties of creeds.
It is, indeed, sometimes said that sects are a good thing;
they reflect mental activity; they keep religion alive. Yet
intellectual vigour expressed by quarrelling about minor
matters tends to keep alive not religion but dogma. Sects
have been a good thing. Each has preserved something
likely to be lost, independence, ethics, good taste, emotion,
etc. But there is only one question of vital importance be-
fore the Church today: Is Christianity one or divided, an
ethical system or a mystical belief, or both? For the sects
have joined hands and the Church long ago has ceased to
excite itself over the problems of the remoter past. It is
returning to that simple apostolic state of mind which had
nothing to say of predestination, ignored the controversial
possibilities of monophysitism, and did not even define the
trinity, but taught a living belief in the brotherhood of man
under the fatherhood of God.
Yet, even that age had this same vital problem. Is Chris-
1 In Pennsylvania alone there are said to be twenty-one sects and
fifty-two sub-divisions.
I
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
tianity the teachings of Jesus or a doctrine about Jesus? 1
If the former be called the religion of Jesus and the latter,
in distinction from it, be called Christianity, that is, the doc-
trine about Jesus that began with the resurrection and in-
by the “liberal Christianity” of the nineteenth century and
the monistic mysticism of the twentieth. Both have an his-
torical foundation, but a foundation much older than the
Christian era. It is one that must be studied in the light of
history.
As one looks back over the long extent of acrimonious
debate, passionate judgments, intolerance, cruelty, and vice,
tempted to say that of all religions this is the most inhumane,
the least divine. But, on the other hand, when one sees how
often, nay, how invariably, this turgid stream, full of abomi-
nations made by man, suddenly clears itself and becomes
sweet and pure again, how, through choking accumulations,
rises ever anew the water of life, fresh from its fountain,
one is led to ask whether any other religion in the world
has this faculty of renovating itself, and from what source
this particular religion has derived its marvellous power.
The tongue of Faith will say “ from God," and rest there-
with content. But the historian will ask by what means
God has accomplished this result. He turns to the records
and sees that all religions tend to express the peoples who
hold them. There are races that have no State-idea, no
State-ideal, which recognize no obligation to the State, which
do not make for themselves a god of the State, but rather
bow to the powers of nature and seek to understand the mys-
tery of nature. On the other hand, there are races which
ignore nature more and more as they progress, which build
up a State-ideal and make for themselves a State-god as head
of the State, whose thought is, “ The State must be saved."
In such races, Roman, Chinese, obedience to the State and
to its god is the basis of the higher religion, which is intelli-
1 See Bacon, Christianity Old and New, New Haven, 1914, P. 117.
THE RELIGION OF CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY
595
gent, ethical, demanding morality as the foundation of the
State, as the first law of its god. Such was above all the
Hebrew race; its religion was a race-religion; its God was
a deity of the race and State ; its religion was ethical rather
than mystical. In contrast to this, the religion of mysticism,
which prevailed among the Mediterranean races, ignores the
State in favour of the individual; it says, not to the State but
to the man, “ Thou shalt be saved, thou shalt live again, even
as nature dies and lives again."
Now these two religions, the social and the personal, each
of tremendous power, one appealing rather to the intellect,
the other to the feeling, rarely unite as equally authoritative.
Ethics, morality, is rather patched upon the nature-religion
of mysticisin than cognate with it. It is not first connected
with the god integrally and then assumed as a divine qual-
ity, for nature is not moral. Nor is mysticism a natural
outgrowth of a belief in a transcendent deity, whose law is
embodied in a system of ethics. So, on the one hand, ethics
is an unimportant addition to the mystical Hindu sects and,
on the other, mysticism is an unnatural addition to the reli-
gion of ancient Rome. But Christianity unites these as au-
thoritative, divinely inspired, elements. They are not for-
mally associated; they combine from the resurrection. God
is transcendent, ethical, as he is immanent, embracing the
world. Man must be moral, yet the individual soul may in
mystic vision receive the Spirit. God is the head of the
State; yet the individual shall be saved; he may enjoy rap-
tures felt only by the mystic and merge his soul in the larger
life in which the mystic seeks his God; yet he is still at one
with his sober co-religionist, who, if he feel no such rapture,
yet bows to the same God. The model of his life, moreover,
is given not in abstractions but in the person of an historical
character, who "suffered under Pontius Pilate.”
Hence the strength of Christianity. In it divinity blends
with humanity. Moreover, two best human types, the moral
and the spiritual, not artificially joined but fundamentally
blended, two ideals, that of service to the State, that of
596
THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
fullest expression of the individual, have in Christianity
been made one. To divorce this union, to declare that
Christianity must be a system of ethics alone or a monistic
mystery alone, is to disrupt Christianity itself.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
F. Legge, Forerunners and Rivals of Christianity, Cambridge,
1915.
Carl Clemen, Primitive Christianity and its non-Jewish
Sources, Edinburgh, 1912.
W. Bousset, Kyrios Christos, Göttingen, 1913.
B. W. Bacon, The Making of the New Testament, New York,
1912; Christianity Old and New, New Haven, 1914.
J. B. Lightfoot, The Apostolic Fathers, London, 1891.
Otto Pfleiderer, Early Christian Conceptions of Christ, New
York, 1905.
C. T. Cruttwell, A Literary History of Early Christianity, New
York, 1893.
Adolf Harnack, Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte, 2nd ed.
Freiburg, 1888–90; What is Christianity, New York, 1904.
K. R. Hagenbach, A Text-Book of the History of Christian
Doctrine, translated by Henry B. Smith, New York, 1861.
W. G. T. Shedd, A History of Christian Doctrine, New York,
1863.
George Park Fisher, History of Christian Doctrine, New York,
1896.
H. O. Taylor, The Medieval Mind, London, 1911.
Williston Walker, John Calvin, New York, 1906; A History of
the Christian Church, New York, 1918.
H. Boehmer, Luther in the Light of Recent Research, trans-
lated by C. F. Huth, Jr., New York, 1916.
Josiah Royce, The Problem of Christianity, New York, 1913.
C. M. Cobern, The New Archaeological Discoveries and their
Bearing upon the New Testament, 2nd ed., New York,
1917.
O
INDEX
Akbar, 475.
525.
Aaron, 436, 462.
Ahriman, hostile evil spirit,
Abbas, Abbasides, 475; Abbas 379 f, 383, 403; host of, 387 f.
Effendi, 482.
See Evil One.
Abelard, 575, 578.
Ahura, see Ormuzd.
Abhidhamma, 197, 199.
Ainus, 46 f., 275, 282.
Abraham, in Babylan, 367; Ajivikas, 181.
Patriarch, 418, 420, 581.
Absolution, 569.
Akkad, Akkadians, 55, 344;
Abstractions as spirits, 388, 487; theory, 15.
non-Semitic, 441; Roman, Akmo (Stone), sky as god, 142.
Albigenses, Cathari, Manichaean,
Abu Bakr, 453 f., 470, 473.
571.
Acceptilatio, 587.
Aleuts, 22, 76.
Achaeans, 483 f.
Alexander, myth of, 353, 376,
Actaeon, 346.
462; god, 509.
Adad, Hadad, 346, 421; Adados, Alexander Severus, 549.
421.
Alexandria, 440, 557; school of,
Adam, 573; Adam-Adapa, 352, 563, 567.
419; and Iblis, 463.
Al-Ghazali, 479.
Adityas, 383.
Ali, Aliites, 453 f., 473 f., 481.
Adlivan, 77.
Allah, 452, 471. See Divinity.
Adonis, Attis, 153, 326, 346; Allat, 365, 452.
etymology of, 364, 421, 557. Allegorical interpretation, 541.
Adultery, 562. See Cassia. All-father, 158; All-god, 208,
Aeschylus, 503.
211, 503; All-soul, 178; All-
Aesculapius, Asklepios, 415, 504, Souls in Japan, 278.
537, physician, saviour, 559. Alogoi, 561.
Aether, divinity, 541.
Amaterasu, Omikami, 281.
African gods, 24, 31; in Egypt Ambactonos, 124.
(q.v.), 329.
Ambrose, St., 543, 571, 574.
Agada, 447.
American religions, 75 f.
Agape, see Love-feast.
Ames, E. S., 41.
Ages, myth of, American, IOI; Amesha Spentas, Amshaspands,
Avestan, 395; Greek, 497.
376, 380 f., 384 f.
Agni, Fire as god, 172.
Amida, Amitabha, Amitâyus,
Agriculture, 26; deities of, 192, 198, 296 f.
American, 95, 109; Roman, Ammonites, Melek of, 415, 425.
526. See Demeter, Grain Amon, and Aton (q. v.), 314,
gods.
320; Amon-Re, 322.
hacia
597
598
INDEX
Amoraim, 448
Amorites, 346, 349, 369.
Amos, 425, 431 f., 433.
Amulets, 25, 77 ; paper, for dead,
105. See Charms, Fetish.
Amurru, 349.
Anabaptists, 576, 584, 588.
Anâhitâ, 346, 386, 411.
Anathemas, 67.
Anaxagoras, 501, 504.
Ancestors, savage cult of, 28, 55,
58, 65, 84; female, 170; in
China, 228 f.; in Japan, 277;
tablets of, 247, 284; in Bab-
ylon, 359, 365; Arabic clan-,
365; in Greece, 483. See
Ghosts, Shinto.
Andaman Islanders, 5.
Andra, Audra, 142, 172.
Androgynous gods, 32. See El,
Shiva.
Anesaki, M., 307.
Angakok, 76.
Angels, 385, 439; lists of, 405,
439, 466, 472; guardians of na-
tions, 438; of heaven and hell,
406 f.; bear God's throne, 466;
daughters of God, 454, 470;
and stars, 463, 508; deified, 428;
sexless, 472; recording, 473;
archangels, 383.
Angus, 133.
Animals, as ghosts and gods, 50,
109; calf-god, 316, 416; sacred,
78, 30; Celtic, 125 f.; Indic,
170, 175 f.; Chinese, 243, 246;
Jain and Chinese compassion
for, 180, 269; as men, 284;
-symbols, 422; in Egypt, 310,
313 f.; in Greece, 486. See
Boar, Bull, Elephant, Totem.
Animism, II, 19, 35, 48, 78, 228.
See Soul.
Annunaki, 349.
Anselm, Bishop, 572, 575, 578,
587.
Anthesteria, 495.
Antinomians, 308, 587.
Antioch, 462; school of, 567.
Antiochus Epiphanes, 444.
Anu or Danu, Celtic divinity,
124; Babylonian, 347 f., 351 f.
Anubis, 319.
Aphrodite, 485, 510, 538.
Apis, Serapis, 316.
Apollo, 105; herd-god, 484 f.,
487; sun, 489; oracle of, 494,
503; in Rome, 538.
Apop, 315, 321.
Apostle, see Mohammed; Apos-
tles, 552 f.; creed of, 560.
Apotropaic rites, fire and shoot-
ing, 108; race, 112, fire-rite,
130, 152; Indic, 175; Chinese,
244; Greek, 493 495. See
Lustration.
Arabic cult, 364, 452 f.; culture,
475.
Aralu, 358.
Aramaic language, 440, 447;
Aramaeans, 420.
Araucanians, 108 f.
Archaeology, 8.
Arda Virâf, 406.
Ares, 485.
Arhats (Rakan, Worthies),
190 f.; in Japan, 302.
Aristotle, 505 f.; and Moses, 449.
Arius, 565 f.
Ark, 356; of covenant, 417.
Arniaiti, 384 f.
Armenian Church, 569.
Arminians (disciples of Her-
mann), 574, 587, 590.
Arnobius, 571, 581.
Arnold, Matthew, 6.
Artemis, Artio, 127, 346, 485,
497, 526, 538, 557; tauropolis,
411.
Arthur, King, 127, 134 f.
Articles, Thirty-nine, 591.
Aru Islanders, 20, 44.
Aruru, 352 f., 365.
Arvales, Fratres, 519, 546.
Aryan religion, 16, 120, 171, 209,
365.
Asakawa, K., 302.
Asceticism, 178, 479, 562. See
Fetish.
Asanga, 200.
INDEX
599
480.
Asha, arta, rita, Right (Order),
383, 385 f.
Asharites (Al-Ashari), 477.
Asher, tribe, 421 ; asheras, 366,
421, 425. See Grove.
Ashoka (Asoka), 183.
Ashur, Assyrians, 345 f., 349 f.,
ethics of, 364; influence of,
424, 432.
Ashurbanipal, 347; library of,
368 f.
Ashvaghosha, 197, 200.
Asmodeus, 387 f., 405, 409, 439.
See Angels.
Assassins, religious sect, 478,
Astarte, Astoreth, 421 f., 423.
Astrology, Taoist, 270; Babylon-
ian, 360; Greek, 508.
Asura, 172, 372 f. See Ormuzd.
Atargatis, 539.
Athanasius, 566, 576.
Atharva Veda, 172 f.
Athene, 485, 487
Athtar, 366.
Atlas, Bogota form, 1o9.
Atman, breath, soul, 188. i
Aton, 334 f.; Atum, 320; Re-, 324.
Atonement, in China, 242; day
of, 363, 437; Jewish concep-
tion of, 450; Christian, 559,
575, 587. See Sacrifice, Re-
demption.
Atrakhasis, Xisuthros, 356.
Attis, 539, 556. See Adonis.
Atua, 60 f.
Atys, see Attis.
Augures, 530, 543; augury in
China, 270. See Divination.
Augustine, St., I, 551 f., 564;
doctrine of, 214, 567 f., 570 f.,
573, 579; nuns and monks of,
572,
Augustus, Emperor, 546 f.
Aureole and nimbus, 580.
Australian religion, 17, 20.
Avaiki, 62.
Avallon, 131.
Avalokiteshvara, 198, 201, 298;
as Kuannon, Kuanyin, 270.
Avatars, 209 f.
Avesta, 373 f.
Axe, symbol, 130.
Ayesha, 470.
Azhi Dahaka, see Dragon.
Aztecs, 90, 94 f., 102 f.
Baal, see Bel.
Babis, 479, 482.
Babylon, 175, 226, 272; religion
of, 344 f.; influence, 346, 438;
festivals, 353; Bapel, 388;
tower of, 419, 428.
Backbone, as serpent, 51, 494.
Bacon, B. W., 594.
Bahis, 479, 482.
Balder, 151, 154, 161.
Bantis, 25.
Baptism, 33, 65, 86, 118, 558, 560,
569, 574, 581; Baptist sects,
592,
Bar Cocheba, 441, 449.
Bardesanes, 272, 568.
Barnabas, 575.
Barton, G. A., 415, 419, 441.
Bârûti, Barîm, 361, 424.
Barzlukai, I43.
Basil, the Great, 576.
Basilides, 563, 575.
Bast, 317, 321.
Batchelor, John, 47 f.
Bath, purgation, 85; sweat-bath,
86, 91.
Beans, food for ghosts, 504, 524.
Bear-cult, 50 f.
Bedouins, 455, 466.
Beelzebub, 416.
Beer-ritual,' 172. See Intoxi-
cants, Soma.
Bees, god of, 97; Slavic, 142.
Bel, Baal, Belit, 348, 365, 421;
Bel-Marduk, 349, 351; Baal-
Berith, 423.
Belenos, 123.
Belgians, 124.
Bendis, Moon, 509.
Benedict, order of, 576, 583.
Ben Sira, 443, 449, 558.
Beowulf, 164.
Bernhard, 577 f.
600
INDEX
Berosus, 356.
Berserkers, 165.
Bhagavad-Gîtâ, 211 f., 216.
Bhakti, 197, 211 f., 213 f.
Bhandarkar, Sir R., 212.
Bible, 578, 584.
Bida, Usage, as religious prin-
ciple, 481.
Bilé, 132.
Bird, Isabella, 47 f.
Birds, Anierican belief, 78;
make wind, 82; bird-man, 93;
of hell, messengers, 97; hum-
ing-bird god, 103; in divina-
tion, 115, 153; praise God,
461 f.; raven, 78; goose, 126;
hawk, 121, 133; owl, 142. See
Augury, Horus, Kirke, Soul.
Birth, mysterious, 135; miracu-
lous, of Confucius, Zoroaster,
Mohammed, etc., see under
each; divinity of, 538. See
Regeneration, Taboo, Virgin-
birth.
Bishops, 559, 562, 570 f., 586.
Blood, 70, 74; spilling of, 97; for
vegetation 99, 170; reveals
murderer, 152; offering to
ghosts and demons, 175; -soul,
245; gods born of, 280; -broth-
erhood, 365; -offering, 421; in
Roman cult, 528; of martyrs,
565. See Atonement.
Boadicea, Boudicca, goddess,
133.
Boar, in Adonis-myth, 422. See
Suovitaurilia.
Boccaccio, 577.
Bodhidharma, in China, 271, 295.
Bodhisat, 191 f.
Boehme, 579.
Bogu, Bagaios, 144.
Bolsec, 589.
Bona Dea, 529, 537.
Book of the Dead, 311; of the
Gates and of the Other
World, 329 f; of Rewards, etc.,
268; of Secret Blessings, 268.
See Bible.
Borneo, 20, 100, 141.
Borvo, Bourbon deity, 126.
Brahma, as power, 67; world-
power, 174, 178, 185, 205.
Brahman, Creator, 173, 178,
205 f., 501.
Brahmans, Brahmanic gods in
Japan, 301 f.; Celtic parallel
to Brahmans, 128; Brahmans
in Buddhism, 186.
Bran, Celtic, 133.
Bread and Tea sect, 272.
Breasted, J. H., 327, 337.
Breath, as soul, 88. See Atman,
Spirit.
Bridge of souls, 88 f.; of hair,
115; of separation and judg-
ment, 382 f., 393 f.; El Aarãf,
467. See Rainbow, Soul.
Brigit, St., 131.
Brihaspati, 131.
Britain, Prydain, 134.
Britomartis, 485.
Brotherhood of man, 207, 506,
513, 545.
Bruno, 579.
Buddha, 178, 183 f.; 216; as
mother, 270; birthday (April
8), 293; and Heraclitus, 500;
as Christian saint, 580.
Buddhism, 2, 53, 57, 183 f.; and
Upanishads, 178; four truths
of, 184; eight precepts of, 187;
Hina and Mahâyâna, 190, 192, ·
194, 200; Tantra and Mantra-
yâna, 204 f.; and Gospels, 195,
552; church and ethics of, 196;
in China, etc., 197 ; sects, 203;
literature of, 197, 294; esoteric,
201; in Tibet, 203; in China,
244, 263 f., 266, 272; in Japan,
287 f., 306; Japanese sects,
292 f.; traits of, in Chinese re-
ligion, 227, 252 f., 265; in
Japan, 281 f., 284; militant
monks of, 291 f.
Buddhaghosha, 197.
Budge, E. A. W., 315.
Bulgarians, 138.
Bull, as god, 176, 316; -feast,
126; of Shiva, 207; -sacrifice,
INDEX
бо
208; Chinese, 241; bull-slay-
ing, tauroktonos, 411. See
Apis, Dionysos.
Bulla, as fetish, 42.
Burial, 8, 33, 63, 77; third day
after death, 72; articles
broken at, 88; Celtic, 132;
Slavic, 145; Scandinavian,
150; of the living, 239, 278;
Zoroastrian, 389, 402; Greek,
496; Roman, 524 f. See Sut-
tee, Taboo.
Bushido, 285.
Bushmen, 24 f.
Butler, Bishop, 4; Chinese par-
allel, 259.
Caesar, Julius, account of Bri-
tain, i 22 f.; of Germany, 151
f.; and priestly college, 530;
and cult of Bacchus, 547.
Cain, as Kenite, 418.
Caitanya, 210, 215.
Caird, Edward, 5.
Calendar, Aztec, 106; Chinese,
226; Roman, 526; nefas or
taboo (knot) days, 362.
Calf, Golden, see Animals.
Caliph, Caliphates, 473.
Callaway, Bishop, 27.
Canulus and Himmel, 123.
Calvin, John, 572, 574, 581 f.,
587 f.
Canaan, 366, 420 f.
Candles, for corpse, see Fire.
Cannibalism, 27, 33, 64, 80.
Carib, as cannibal, 80.
Carnoy, A. J., 406.
Caro, Joseph, 448. .
Carthage, 539.
Carvaka, 264.
Casmenta (carmen), 528.
Cassia, ordeal, 39.
Castes, South American, 107;
Indic, 174; in Buddhism, 186;
Shivaite disregard of, 207.
Castor, 526, 529.
Cato, 541.
Caves as graves, 115; pictures
of, 8, 42, 121; as temples, 112.
Celibacy, 479. See Monasteries.
Celtic religion, 61, 96, 120 f.
Ceres, 36, 545.
Chac, gods, 95.
Chalcedon, Council of, 567, 572;
Chalcedonian Christology, 571.
Chaldaeans, 360, 508, 547.
Chamberlain, B. H., 48.
Chanuka, feast of lights, 450.
Charila, American parallel of,
101.
Charins, 62, 548; Egyptian,
329. See Amulets, Fetish,
Karakia.
Chassidists, 449.
Chemi, 40.
Chemosh, 423.
Cheops, 313.
Cherubim, 439.
Chiliasm, 576.
China, Chinese, tablets, 80; re-
ligion, 224 f.; contact with the
West, 273; with Japan, 275,
285 f. See Babylon, Buddhism.
Chou-Tuni, 264.
Christ, Christian religion, 552 f.;
influence on Slavs, Hindus,
etc., 145, 213 f., 216 f.; it
Japan, 303 f.; parallels, 383
396 f.; in China, 267; and
Jews, 441, 451; and Moham-
med, 458; borrowed from
Rome, 545; aided by Pax Ro-
mana, 546; definition of Chris-
tianity, 593 f.; Christmas, 546,
548, 553.
Chrysippus, 506, 508, 541.
Chrysostom, 572.
Chthonic divinities, 493; at
Rome, 540. See Earth.
Chuang-tse, 252, 255 f., 200.
Chu-Hi, 264, 285, 300.
Cicero, 3, 543.
Circumcision 34, 60, 417, 438.
Cistercians, 577.
Clan-gods, 416.
Classification of religions, 10 f.
Clay, A. T., 367.
Clement, of Alexandria, 557, 564,
566, 572; of Rome, 559.
602
INDEX
Slavic, 145; German, 150;
Achaean, 496.
Crete, 332, 483 f., 502, 513.
Cromlech, 121.
Cross, Aztec as tree of life,
106 f.; cross and crucifix, 569;
cross-road spirits, 129.
Crusades, 583 f.
Culture-heroes, myth of, 70,
83 f.; Peruvian, 113; Tohil, 95;
Chibcha, 109; -goddess, 50;
heroine, 110, German, 164.
Cumont, F., 412 f.
Curse, 491.
Cuthah, 358.
Cybele, 502, 509 f., 529, 556. See
Attis, Magna Mater.
Cyprian, 572, 574.
Cyrus, 373, 434; as Messiah,
441.
Cluny, monastery, reforms insti-
tuted by, 577.
Cocoa, worship of, 112.
Cocks, oppose evil spirits, in
China, 243; in Avesta, 400.
Colours, 34, 60, 67, 102; of di-
rection-gods, 92, 107; of sun-
god, black and red, 104; of
rivers of hell, 105; of Amesha
Spentas, 384; Mohammedan,
green, 465.
Communion with gods, 163;
through eating, 49, 58, 100, 118;
prayer, 87; intoxication, 100;
in India, 173 f.; in Babylon,
349, 365; Hebraic, 415;
Greek, 499; Roman, 534, 540;
Christian, 558, 569. See Eu-
charist.
Conchobar, Cooley, god or hero,
135.
Confession, 99; in Peru, 118;
Buddhistic, 197; Zoroastrian,
391 ; Christian, 560; Calvin's,
589. See Fravashi.
Confucius, 224 f., 243, 249 f.,
251 f., 255; and Mencius, 258;
deified, 256, 271; and Moh,
260.
Conopas, 112.
Constantine, 550, 566.
Consubstantiation, 582.
Cook, A. B., 485.
Coptic United Church, 569.
Corn-genius, see Grain.
Councils of Arles, Chalcedon,
Trent, 574, 576.
Couvade, 49.
Covenant, Book of the, 425, 433;
code ratified by, 435.
Creation, myth of, 84, 97; from
nothing, 398; creator-gods,
105, 109, 113, 117, 173; in Bud-
dhism, 184, 198; in China, 245;
in Japan, 282; in Babylon, 350,
353, 369; creationism, 573. See
Ancestors, Evolution.
Creeds, of third century, 565;
Apostles', 560; Nicene, 566.
Cremation, 33; American, 88;
Daevas, 380 f., 388, 404
Dagda (Daksha), 131, 133.
Dagon, 424.
Daimios, 286.
Dakhinas, 389, 402.
Damnation, 581, 590.
Dance, 19 f., 22, 25 f., 30, 34, 82;
fertility-, 97, 100, 112, 153;
death-, 64, 240; of dead, 78;
American, 85, 87, 91; widder-
shins, 92; deasil, 129; on stilts,
97; religion of, 109; initiation-,
196; Indic, 170; Kogura, 281;
ritual, 284; Hebraic, 425,
433 f.; Roman, 530; Christian,
19. See Sun.
Danhu, Dasyu, see Demon na-
tion.
Daniel, 405, 409, 433 f., 443. ·
Dante, 406, 577.
Danu, 124, 133.
Darius, 373.
Dariesteter, J., 16, 376, 385, 408.
David, 418, 424.
Dawn, Africani divinity, 26;
Americani, 90; Slavic, 139, 142;
Indic, 172, 176.
Days, and planets, 508; Friday,
455; Judgment Day, 454, 457,
INDEX
603
468, 471; day of rest, 464;
Roman, 536. See Calendar,
Sabbath, Taboo.
Dayananda, 219 f., 222,
Deasil, see Dance, Sun.
De Civitate Dei, 572.
Dead, disposal of, 88, 389, 524;
offerings to, 131, 241; feast of,
152; god of, Woden, 159; Anu-
bis, -319, 330; Greek and
Roman treatinent of, 493, 524,
545. See Burial, Cremation,
Dog, Embalming.
Death, as illness and sleep, 66;
as spirit, 77, 96, 105; Māra, as
the Evil One, 195; servant of
Evil One, 398.
Deborah, song of, 419.
Decalogiie, 429 f.
Decemviri, 530, 540.
Decius, 565.
Definitions of religion, I f.
De Groot, J. J. M., 229.
Deification, of men, 33, 60; of
kings, 365.
Deives and daevas, 143 f.
De la Grasserie, 10.
Delphi, 489.
Deluge, common belief in, 62, 84,
97, 101, 109; Indic, 174;
Babylonian, 350, 355 ; Hebrew,
_3617, 369, 419, 427.
Demeter, 485 f., 487 f., 494 f.,
497 f.; as Christian saint, 510;
in Rome, 538. See Grain-
spirit.
Democritus, 500.
Denon nations, Chinese, Aves-
tan, 238, 372.
Demonology, 172, 243; Chinese,
270; Japanese, 301 ; Greek, 501.
See Animals, Ghosts, Spirits.
Dependence on gods, 422.
Depravity, total, of Calvin, 590.
Derketo, 422, 424.
Dervishes, 433, 479.
Descartes, 579.
Desire, 189. See Love, Thirst.
Determinism, 443, 574.
Delis, 7.
Deuteronomy, 433.
Devil, see Satan.
Devouress of hell, 340 f.
Dharma, law and God, dhar-
inakâya, 191 f.; Japanese form,
301.
Dharmaraksha, in China, 271.
Diana of Aricia, 525.
Diasia, 495.
Diatessaron, 564.
Didache, Teaching of the Apos-
tles, 560.
Digambara (Sky-garment), sect
of Jains, 181.
Diocletian, Emperor, 549, 566.
Dione, 487 f., 522.
Dionysos, 484 f., 494 f., 498, 502;
Indic form, 206; Bacchus in
Rome, 538, 547; Epiphany and
miracle of, 553, 55.6.
Direction-gods, see Quarters,
Winds.
Disease-demons, 32, 59 f., 96,
538; as Mothers, 105; plague
as goddess, 143.
Dis Pater, Celtic form, 122, 130,
132.
Divination, 110, 115; Celtic,
126 f.; Slavic, 144; German,
153; Chinese, 237, 245, 270;
Japanese, 284; Babylonian,
361, 366; Greek, 491, 494; ar-
row-, 361, 467; liver-, 361; tor-
toise-, 245. See Augury,
Birds, Horse.
Divinity, concept of, as power,
61; god as invoked, 164; sav-
age idea of, 34, 83, 90; Na-
huan, 106; Peruvian, 113; de-
fined by negation, 178; in Bud-
dhism, 193; of Râmânuja, 213;
Chinese, 231 f., 261; Japanese,
307; Egyptian, 334. Hebrew,
451 ; Mohammedan, 460, 463.
Docetism, Buddhistic, 303;
Greek, Manichaean, Gnostic,
559.
Dodona, Celtic, 127.
Dog, and the dead, 89; escorts
soul, 105, 115; catches soul,
604
INDEX
Echo, spirit, 62.
Eckhardt, 578.
Eclipse, 49, 108, 156.
Ecstasy, 57, 112, 433. See
Shamanism.
Eden, 468. See Paradise.
Edwards, J., 574.
Egg, cosmic, 112, 398, 504.
145; averts devils, 404; sacri-
fice of, 82, 90, 96 f.; as ances-
tor, 84; Kerberos and Celtic
dog of dead, 132; dog and fer-
tility, 151, 163; man as dog
or slave, of god, 422.
Dominicans, 577.
Domitian, Emperor, 548, 565.
Donatus, views of, 571.
Door, avoidance of, 472; -spirit,
518. See Janus.
Dorsitheans, 446.
Doshisha, school, 307.
Douglas, R. K., 271.
Doukhabors, 569.
Dragon, Chinese, 246, 269;
Egyptian, 315; Dragon-slayer,
377; Azhi-Dahaka, 388, 405,
407; Hebraic, 439. See Ser-
pent.
91; vegetation-, 99; in Peru,
116 f.; Indic, 178, 196, 207, 211;
Egyptian, 340; Greek, 498, 502;
Purim, 450; Roman, 529, 536.
Dravidians, 55, 170 f., 175, 208.
Dreams, 110, 126, 153, 361.
Drought, as demon, 243.
Druids, 127 f., 494, 547..
rivation of name, 310; history,
312; and Palestine, 420; and
Greece, 502.
Eisai, 295.
EI, Lord, 365; of Babylon, 423.
El Aarâf, see Bridge.
Elagabalus, 549.
Elect, election, 574, 590.
Elements, five Chinese, 244, 264;
and planets, 269; four Greek,
500; Stoic, 506; stoicheia, 508.
Elephant-god, 207.
Elizabeth, Queen, 580, 591.
Eleusis, 494 f., 498. See Myste-
ries.
El 'Hidhr, 462.
Elijah, Elisha, 359, 424, 430, 442.
Ellis, Col., 29 f., 38.
Elves, 149, 166 f.
Elysium, 348, 330, 332, 502.
Embalming, 115, 340. See Bu-
rial, Dead. .
Empedocles, 500, 503.
Emperor, of China, deified, 230 f.
See Augustus.
Dryads, 486.
Dualism, 83; Sânkhya, 207;
Slavic, 148; Teutonic, 167;
Yoga, 178; Semitic, 366; Zoro-
astrian, 379; Greek, 511
Duniuzi, see Tammuz.
Duns Scotus, 578, 587.
Durgâ, 207.
Dyaus, 172.
Ea, 347 f., and Adapa, 352, 355.
Earth-spirit, 34, 92; Celtic, 130;
Indic, 172; in Peru, 112;
Slavic, 141; in China, 228; in
Japan, 279; in Rome, 526. See
Demeter, Grain-spirit, Mother.
Easter, 570.
Ebionites, 561.
Enkidu, 353 f., 360.
Enlil, 347, 356.
Ennead, see Triad.
Ennius, 541.
Enoch, 359, 442.
Epictetus, 548, 552.
Epicurus, 508, 540; Chinese Epi-
cureanism, 263.
Epiphanius, 568.
Epiphany, 553. See Dionysos.
Epona, horse-goddess, 125 f.
Ereshkigal, 348, 357 f., 365.
Erinyes, 496.
Eroticism, see Mysticism.
Eschatology, savage belief, 20,
INDEX
605
27, 33, 58, 62 f., 77, 87 f., 105,
115; Celtic, 131 f.; Slavic, 145;
Indic, 175, 178; Chinese,
229 f.; Japanese, 277 f.; Egyp-
tian, 311, 328 f.; Babylonian,
364 f., 357 ; Zoroastrian, 392 f.,
396 f.; Hebraic, 442; Moham-
medan, 465 f.; Greek, 497 ;
Ronan, 524; Christian, 558.
See Sheol, Walhalla.
Eskimos, 37, 42, 71, 75 f..
Essenes, 72, 446, 534, 573.
Esther, 362, 450.
Esus, Aes, 125, 132.
Etana, Ethan, 357, 360.
Ethics, savage, 22, 39, 41, 73, 75,
90, 118; and religion, 595; in
Slavic religion, 147; Teutonic,
167; Vedic, 178; Buddhistic,
185, 196; relation between
ethics and religion in China,
238, 256, 268; good for evil,
251; Japanese, 285, 288; Egyp-
tian, 311, 340; Babylonian, 359,
363.368; Zoroastrian, 389 f.,
392; Hebraic, 415, 425, 431,
450; Mohammedan, 456, 469;
Greek, 485, 491, 501, 513;
Roman, 531, 549; Christian,
526, 529.
Ethnography, 9.
Etruria, Etruscan culture, 517 f.,
526, 539.
Eubuleus, 495.
Eucharist, 559, 576, 582, 585. See
Communion.
Euhemerus, 541; euhemerized
gods, 123 f., 497; in China, 244,
269; Mohammed's family as
nature-gods, 478; Roman,
546 f.
Eumenides, 497. See Manes.
Euripides, 501 f., 503.
Eusebius, 566, 576.
Eutyches, 567.
Eve, 360.
Evil, origin of, 502, 563; evil
eye, 240; Agashi, 388, 404;
Evil One as death, 195; Ahri-
man, 374, 378 f., 404 f.; created
by Zeus, 502; by God, 439, 464;
See Satan, Sin.
Evolution, 66; Zoroastrian, 398.
Exile, Jewish, 424, 434.
Ezekiel, 433 f., 435, 438 f., 441 f.
Ezra, 435, 443; son of God, 454.
Fahien, 198, 266.
Fairies, 124; king of, 123, 131;
Welsh, 134; Slavic, 143.
Faith, in Buddhism, 184, 187;
Sraosha, 384 f.; faith-sects,
211; in Japan, 296 f.; Christian
doctrine of, 574, 586 f.; con-
fession of, 191.
Falashas, 446.
Fanatici, 539.
Farnell, L. R., 346, 484 f.
Fasts, fasting, 40, 85, 91, 97,
110, 118, 4.17, Ramadhan, 468;
Christian, 586.
Fate, in China, 263, 264; Semitic
belief, 363; Mohammedan,
458, 465, 476; three Fates, 486,
490; wyrd, 166.
Father-god, 173, 207, 451, 460.
Fatima, Fatimites, 474, 480.
Fauna, Faunus, 537, 538.
Fear, as god, 208. See Sebas.
Female element, 61; Lettic, 140;
Hindu, 208; Chinese, 248;
Japanese, 301; Allat, 365.
Feng Shui, 270.
Fenrir, 156.
Feralia, 495, 524, 528.
Fertility-spirit, 34; thunder as,
95; -rite, 91 f., 97, 99, 170;
goddess with many breasts,
100; charms, 104, 112; sym-
bols, Celtic, 130, 133; German,
151, 154, 158, 160, 162 f.; Japa-
nese harvest-god, 283; Bab-
ylonian, 348; Canaanite, 366,
422; Greek, 495; Roman, 536 f.,
531. See Grain-spirit.
Festivals, Yam, 24; taboo at, 70;
as sacrifice, 97; American, 90,
97; Celtic, 129 f.; Slavic, 144;
German, 152; Puranic, 218;
Chinese, 242; Egyptian, 331 f.;

606
INDEX
Babylonian, 348, 362 f., 366; Fravashi, 376, 392 f.
Hebraic, 425, 438; Roman, 535. Frazer, Sir J., 3, 12, 71, 325, 342.
See Christmas, Grain-spirit, Free-will, 394, 443, 476, 564.
Saturnalia.
Freyja, Frigg, Freyr, 151, 156,
Fetish, 8, 19 f., 26, 29 f., 35 f., 41; 162 f. .
South American, 110, 112, 115; Friars, 577, 584.
Indic, 218; -stone, 456.
Frogs, in fertility-rite, 92.
Fiji, 22, 60, 63, 66.
Functional gods, 60, 96; of mer-
Fikh, 476.
chants, 194; Slavic, 139 f., 143;
Filioque, 568 f.
Greek and Roman, 487, 524.
Finn, Celtic, 123; Finns, 18, 65, See Numina.
149.
Future life, see Eschatology.
Firdaus, 466. See Paradise.
Fire, worship of, 32, 49, 79; Gabirol, 449.
-dragon, 90; renewal of, 96, Gad, Fortune as deity, 421.
112, 114; Aztec, old god, 102; Gamaliel, 447, 558.
Peruvian, 114; Celtic, 129 f.; Games, in honour of gods,
Slavic, 140, 142; German, need Aztec, 104; Peruvian, 117; ludi
fire, 151 f., 153; Indic, 172, Romani, etc., 529, 540.
175; Chinese corpse-candles, Gandharva, Ganderewa, 389.
241; -walking, 246; Japanese Ganesha, Elephant-god, 207.
cult, 279; Zoroastrian, 383 f., Garbe, R., 196, 217.
385; -altars, 386, 404; taboo of, Garden-god, 142.
362; Romani, against spirits, Gâthâs, hymns, Zoroastrian, 171,
526; Vestal, 531; Volcanus, 376; Buddhistic, 197.
538. See Virgin.
Geb, 320, 327.
Fish, god, 24, 61, 112, 175, 209, Gehenna, Ge Hinnom, 426, 468;
422; -taboo, 71.
Jehennum, 472.
Flaying, in sacrifice, 98 f., 110. Geku, 282.
Flora, 536.
Gellius, 533.
Flowers, offerings of, in Peru, Gemara, 447.
106; in India, 170; in Japan, Genesis, 351.
289.
Genius, spirit, 523 f.; of Augus-
Fomorach, 133.
tus, etc., 540 f.
Food, divinities of, 112; -sacri Genku, Honen, 297.
fice, 242; -goddess, 282 f. Genshin, 292.
Footsteps of gods, 117.
Geonim, 448.
Forke, A., 245, 264.
Germans, 8 f.; and Celts, 124 f.;
Fortuna, 525; Fortune, goddess, characteristics of, 150 f. See
139, 144, 508 f., 538. See Gad, Kultur.
Tyche.
Ghebers, Guebers, 410.
Fountain-gods, 142; Fountain Ghosts, 22, 25, 27, 29, 34, 47 f.,
of Youth, 86, 462; Fontinalia, 59 f., 62, 65 f., 76, 79, 146; Ger-
527.
man, as churchyard flames,
Fox, George, 591.
152, 164; Chinese, 228, 2:14. f.;
Foxes, Chinese, 243; Japanese, . as lot air, 264; Hebrew 417;
283.
Greek, 495, 502; Roman, 5.24.
Francis, St., Franciscans, 577, See Ancestors, Dead, Spirits.
583.
Giants, 62; of storic, 82, IOT : ;,.,-
Francke, A. H., 591.
gota, as Atlas, 10); Certii, chii,
INDEX
607
Gruppe, O., 15.
Gudea, 345.
Guru, as Presbyter, represents
God, 215; Mohammedan par-
allel, 478.
Gwenhwyfar, Arthur's wife, as
spectre, 132.
Gwydion, 125, 131.
Gyogi Bosatsu, 293.
Habakkuk, 43.
Hachiman, 276.
Haclad, see Adad.
Hades, 485, 502.
Hagiographa, 434.
Hair, as soul-power, 33 f., 49;
in America, 89; of victim, 102;
of sun, 103; offered to sun,
110; Chinese belief, 245; as
strength, offered to the dead,
ible, 590.
359.
133; Teutonic, stupid, 152,
161 f., 166.
Giles, H. A., 229; Lionel, 262
Gilgamesh, 353, 359; deified
king, 305.
Gnomes, 143.
Gnosticism, 478, 459 f., 563 f., 572.
Goblins, 279.
Gods, paired, 92; return of, 105,
283; men as, 117; groups of,
159; transparent, 172; nominal
gods, 280; naines of Arab gods,
462; of God, 402, 463, 472.
Gog and Magog, 162.
Gohei, 282.
Golden Age, Chinese, 251. See
Yima.
Gollziher, I., 481.
Gosala, 181.
Gospels, see Synoptic Gospels.
Goths, 572.
Grace, 497, 511, 571 f.; irresist-
Graebuer, F., 16.
Graecus ritus, in Rome, 540.
Grail, origin of, 132 f.
Grain-spirit, 98, 112, 130, 142,
146, 528, 539; as serpent, 103.
See Ceres, Cocoa, Demeter,
Fertility-spirit, Kurcha.
Gratitude, to spirits, 26, 64, 80,
87, 91, 140; Chinese, 230; Japa-
nese, 279; Roman, 533.
Greece, usages, parallels to, 9,
44, 60, 76, 90, 101; and Egypt,
329, 332; and Palestine, 440;
Greeks to Mohanimed, 472; re-
ligion of, 483 f.; gods of in
Rome, 535, 538 f.
Greek (Eastern Orthodox)
Church, 568 f.
Gregory, 566; of Nazianzus, 568,
Hajj, hagg, 473, 478.
Halaka, 447.
Hammer, for fertility, see Thor.
Hammurabi, 345 f., 350; code of,
367 f.
Han, dynasty and scholars, 227,
231, 238, 260.
Hanbal, Hanbalites, school, 477,
481.
Hanifites, school, 481.
Harpies, 496.
Harpocrates, Egyptian origin
of, 325.
Harrison, Frederic, 2; Miss Jane,
18, 496, 502, 504.
Harvest-god, 283. See Fertility-
spirit.
Hathor, cow-goddess, 321, 325.
Healing, gods of, 95, 105; in
Greece, 487; Apollo, 122; Wo-
den, 158; in Rome, 539. See
Aesculapius, Dionysos, Nas-
atya.
Hearn, Lafcadio, 279.
Heaven, 47 f., 57, 62, 77, 88, 90,
96, 100, 105; and Earth, 228;
as God, 233, 378; in Zoroas-
575; and the Great, 576, 580.
Grierson, Sir George, 217.
Griffin, Hittite, 439.
Grotius, H., 587.
Groves, religious use of, 61, 124,
138, 144, 151, 155, 170; Ashera,
366, 421; Greek, 490. See
Trees.
608
INDEX
trianism, 394 f.; seven heavens
and hells, 467. See Eschatol-
ogy, Paradise.
Hebe, 488.
Hebrews, 65, 343, 358, 361, 366,
595; language of, 440.
Hegira, hijra, 454 f.
Hel, 154, 161, 164.
Helen, 487.
Hell, 47 f., 57, 62, 77, 88, 90, 96 f.;
Lithuanian, 144; Chinese, 247;
Japanese, 277; Egyptian,
329 f.; Babylonian, under-
world, 348; Hebrew, 426;
Zoroastrian, 395 f.; Moham-
medan, 466 f.; Greek, 502, 507;
Christian, 581. See Hades,
Mandaeans, Sheol, Yama.
Henry, King, 587.
Henno, 159.
Hepatoscopy, 361.
Hephaistos, 486.
Hera, 487 f.
Heraclitus, 510.
Hercules, 353, 526, 539; Magus-
anus, 163, 550.
Heresy, 565. See Noetian, Sa-
bellian, Patripassian, Unitar-
ian, etc.
Hernies, 484, 486.f., 503.
Hero-cult, 110, 495. See Cul-
ture-hero.
Herod, 445.
Herodotus, 36, 316, 318, 331, 389,
501.
Hesiod, 492, 497 f.
Hestia, 486, 523. See Vesta.
Hewitt, J. F., 15.
Hezekiah, 423 f.
Hierodoulai, temple-slaves, wives
of gods, 32, 366, 425.
High Places, 424. See Moun-
tain.
Hilary, 574.
Hillel, school of, 446, 449.
Hinayâna, see Buddhism.
Hirth, F., 225 f., 229.
Hittites, 345 f., 348, 439.
Hiouen-tsang, 267.
Holiness, law of, 434.
Hom, haoma, 171, 383 f., 385, 411.
See Soma.
Homer, 9, 228, 486 f., 490, 494,
498, 507.
Honover, prayer, 401.
Homoousian, of same nature,
565 f.
Hopi, 92.
Hopkins, Samuel, 574.
Horace, 28, 44.
Horse, sacrifice of, 56, 127; In-
dic, 176; divination by, 153;
-shoe arch, 423; Roman Octo-
ber horse, 519, 527.
Horus, hawk and sun, 314 f., 320,
322; eye of, 326.
Hosca, 432 f., 441.
Hosein, 474 f.
Hospitality, 365.
Hosso sect, 293.
Hottentots, 24.
House, parts of, deified, 244.
Huacas, 112, 114.
Huang-Ti, 225.
Huguenots, 590.
Huns, Brynhild's husband a
Hun, 150; and Chinese, 226,
239.
Hurakan, wind-god, hurricane,
97.
Hurgronje, C. S., 481.
Husband, R. W., 533.
Huss, 584.
Hybris, 492.
Hygeia, 539.
Hyksos, 313.
Hymns, see Gâthâs, Song.
Hyperdoulia, doulia, 580.
Hypostasis of divinity, 428, 439.
Hystaspes, Vishtaspa, 373.

Iamblichus, 511.
Iblis, 463 f. See Satan.
Ibn Ezra, 448.
Ideas, powers, 440; of Plato,
503 f.
Idols, images, of savages, 20, 27,
34, 41 f., 60, 64, 76, 80, 97,
109, 580; Celtic, 124; Slavic,
INDEX
609
144 f.; Teutonic, 151; Puranic,
217; cf. 220; Chinese tablets,
247; Japanese idols, 284; He-
brew images in temple, 437;
Mohammedan, 463, 469;
Greek, 490, 510. See Saidas,
Shedu.
Idzumo, 283.
Ieyasu, 301, 304.
Igigi, 349.
Ignatius, 559, 575; Loyola, 577.
Ijma, 476 f., 480.
Ikhnaton, 334 f.
Illapa, light-god, 114.
Illusion, cosmic power, 178, 213.
Images, see Idols.
Imam, 480, 482.
Immaculate conception, of Zoro-
aster, 396; of Jesus, 579.. See
Virgin Birth.
Immanence of God, 460; Stoic,
542; Gnostic, 564. See Ve-
danta.
Immortality, not in gods, 105;"
religion of (Chinese), 272;
Ameretat, 384; hope of, 406;
Greek hope, 503.
Inari, 283.
Incas, 108 f., 110 f.
Incense, 105; in China, 241;
Greek use of, 346; Christian,
510, 546.
Incest, 71, III.
India, 9, 12, 18, 88, 131; religion
of, 170 f.; missionary to, 564.
Indigitanenta, 487, 530.
Indra, like Woden a Wanderer,
157, 160; cult of, 172 f.; heaven
of, 175; wife of, 523; in Japan,
388; Zoroastrian god, 388.
See Andros.
Infanticide, 456, 469.
Initiation-rite, 34, 85, 116.
Inquisition, Peruvian, 118; Ro-
man Catholic, 578.
Inspiration, 456.
Intolerance, in China, 227, 266,
514; in Japan, 300, 305; Mo-
hammedan, 458, 481; Greek,
504, 514; Roman, 547 f.; 565 f.;
Christian, 590, 592. See In-
quisition.
Intoxicants, religious use of, 97,
IIO, 115; saké, 49; octli, 99;
soma, 171; inilk for wine, 537.
See Rabbit-gods.
Irenaeus, 562 f., 564, 566, 570,
575.
Irmin, 155.
Isaiah, 428, 430, 432 f., 438, 441,
443.
Isé, 281 f.; Ise-o-harai, 282.
Ishtar, 325, 346, 348, 358, 422;
daughter of moon-god, 361.
Isis, 320 f., 326, 364; in Greece,
509; in Rome, 539, 541; Ger-
man form, 151.
Islam, resignation, 457. See
Mohammedanism.
Ismailites, 480.
Israel, children of, 413; four
tribes, 420; serpent-worship
of, 315; desolated, 421. See
Hebrews.
Itzamma, 95.
Iza-nagi, -nami, 280, 301.
Jabarites, 476.
Jabneh, 446.
Jackson, A. V. W., 413.
Jacob, of Babylon, 367.
Jacobi, H., 184.
Jains, 180 f.
Jansen, Jansenists, 578.
Janus, 518, 523, 526.
Japan, religion of, 275 f.; and
China, 285, 288; families of,
285, 291 f.; patriots of, 286 f.
Jastrow, Morris, Jr., 10, 44, 353,
361.
Jâtakas, 195, 198.
Jehovah, see Yahweh.
Jeremiah, 425 f., 429 f., 432 f.,
434 f.; 441.
Jerome, 572 f.
Jerusalem, Jebus, 424, 430 f., 432.
Jesuits, 578, 582; Japanese sect,
294; in Japan, 304.
Jesus, 454, 552.
Jevons, Dr. F. B., 18, 74.
бо
INDEX
Jews, in China, 272; and Bab-
ylonian festival, 362; and Mo-
hammed, 455, 462; and Rome,
547. See Hebrews, Israel.
Jimmu, Jingo, 276, 281.
Jinns, 365, 452 f., 456, 463, 472 f.
Jishidzume, 279.
Job, 443, 462.
Jodo sect, 292, 296 f.
John, as author of fourth gos-
pel, 533, 556; of Damascus,
568, 571, 575.
Josaphat, St., form of Buddha,
580.
Joseph, 316, 342, 428.
Josephus, 437, 446.
Josiah, 423, 426, 434.
Joten, see Giants.
Judah, 424 f.
Judaism and Zoroastrianism,
390, 406.
Judgment, Day of, 386, 393.
Julian, Apostate, 412, 550.
Juno, 487, 522, 526.
Jupiter, Feretrius, 461, 516; op-
timus, 520; Vediovis, 523;
Dolichenus, etc., 540; priestess
of, 518; Celtic forms of, 122 f.
See Dyaus.
Justification, 587.
Justin, Martyr, 560, 564 f., 572,
580, 582.
Ka, 311, 327, 393.
Kaabah, 452.
Kabbala, Cabalah, 428, 449.
Kadar, Kadarites, 476.
Kaira Kan, 54.
Kâli, 61, 207.
Kâma, Desire, love, god, cosmic
principle, 185, 207.
Kami, Kamui, powers, gods,
47 f.; -dama, 284; -110-michi,
276 f., 281.
Kamlamie, acting the Shaman,
56.
Karaites, 448.
Karakia, 63 f., 72.
Karma, 2, 177, 184 f., ingwa,
293.
Kashyapa, in China, 271.
Kegon sect, 293.
Keith, A. B., 176.
Kekrops, 21.
Kennedy, J., 196.
Keres, 496.
Khani, western Semitic god, 367
Kharejites, 474.
Khensu, 320.
Khshathra Vairya, 383, 385.
King, taboo of, 71 f. ; Celtic, as
priest, 135, 117f., Egyptian,
331 ; deified in Babylon, 345,
365; king-killing, 362. See
Balder, Osiris.
King, Chinese Canon, 224.
Kingu, 350 f.
Kingsley, Mary H., 30.
Kioto sects, 292.
Kirke as hawk, 133.
Kiyas, 476.
Knights Templar, 577.
Knots, 70, 464, 517.
Kobalts, 146.
Kobo, 294.
Kojiki, 275 f., 280.
Kolarians, 170 f., 175.
Koran, 452 f., 456, 476.
Kore, 488, 538; American form,
99.
Korea, 275 f., 288.
Koreish, 454 f., 474.
Kra, 30 f.
Kretschmer, P., 364.
Krishna, 174, 209 f.
Kuannon, Kuanyin, 270, 299.
Kublai Khan, 267.
Kukulkaii, 95.
Kultur of ancient Germans, 149.
Kuloskap, 83.
Kurcha, Gurcha, 142.
Lacouperie, Terriende, 226.
Ladder, in grave, 145; to climb
to gods, 329.
Lagash, 344 f.
Lake, worship of, 110 f., 113;
Paradise 11nder, 132; Prussian,
138; German, 167.
INDEX
611
Lamp at shrine, 284.
Lang, Andrew, 3.
Langdon, S., 357, 363.
Language of gods, 89.
Lao-tse, 249 f., 258, 260, 265, 301.
Lar, familiaris, 523; Lares,
larvae, 525; of vicus, 546.
Lay of the Harper, 311.
Lectisterniuin, 540.
Le Fèvre, 588.
Legate, last martyr, 592.
Legge, James, 227, 229, 259.
Lemuria, 527.
Leo, the Great, 573.
Ler, Lear, 133.
Levites, 436; Peruvian form of,
115.
Lex talionis, 367, 417.
Licius, Lich-tse, 249, 254, 256.
Lie-demon, 382 f., 387 f., 400.
Life-elixir, 250.
Light, as spirit or soul, 178;
light-gods, 61, 114, 124, 172;
God of light, 411; God as
light, 563; feast of, see Chan-
uka, Lykos.
Lightning, as serpent, 82; as red
man, 91; as female demon,
115; -taboo, as lucky, 115, 160,
517; Shiva as lightning-god,
208; as dragon's sword, 279.
Li-Ki, 224, 238.
Lillooet bear-sacrifice, 51.
Limbus, infantum, patrum, 581.
Lingam, phallus, 207.
Lion-sun, 317.
Livy, 21.
Llama-idols, 112.
Lloyd, Arthur, 271.
Logi, Loki, 154, 161.
Logos, germ of, 343; doctrine,
441, 510, 556; in Origen, 565.
Loisy, A., 418, 430.
Lollards, 584.
Lombard, 575, 580.
Longevity, 266.
Lord of Being, 175; lords as
Slavic gods, 42.
Lorenzo de' Medici, 587.
Lotus, see Buddhistic literature.
Love, as African god, 32; Na-
huan goddess, 99; in Bud-
dhism, 190; in Empedocles,
500; in China, 257, 259; love-
feasts, in India, 220; in Egypt,
342; Agape, 560, 570; Metho-
dist, 592. See Aphrodite,
Kâma.
Lucretius, 542.
Lud, London, 134. See Lug.
Ludi Romani, see Games.
Lug, Lyons, 125, 130, 134 f. See
Lud.
Luke, gospel of, 533.
Lung-Hen, 263.
Lupercalia, wolf-warding rite,
495, 528; Slavic form, 142.
Lustration, of cattle, etc., 129,
152, 282, 527, 545, 581.
Luther, Martin, 297, 308, 581 f.,
585.
Lyall, Sir Alfred, 3.
Lykos, Lykeios, 487 f.
Lyman, B. S., a Japanese god,
302.
Mâ, 485, 539.
Maat, 326.
Maccabees, 444 f.
Macedonius, Bishop, sect of, 568.
Madhva, Hindu reformer, 214.
Madonna, in India, 213; in
Egypt, 343. See Mary.
Magi, 375, 384, 402, 553.
Magic, 16, 38, 42, 68, 77, 81, III;
Celtic, 127 f., 129, 133; Ger-
man, 152; Indic, 174; Chinese,
239 f., 266; Egyptian, 329, 331,
340 f.; Babylonian, 349; Medi-
terranean, 483; Greek, 508 f.;
Roman, 517, 528; Christian,
563, 581.
Magna Mater, 412, 539.
Mahâvira, Vardhamâna, Jain
founder, 180 f.
Mahâyâna, see Buddhism.
Mahdi, 473.
Maia, Maiestas, goddess, 538.
Mairnonides, Moses, 448. See
Thomas Aquinas.
612
INDEX
Maitreya, 192.
Matriarchy, matrilinear succes-
Maize-goddess, see Grain-spirit. sion, 141, 365
Malik, school of, 481; angel, 466, Matthew, gospel of, 533.
472.
Mauss, M., 12.
Mama Ocllo, III, 113.
Mayas, 84 f.
Mana, power, 18, 35, 66 f.; May-day, 129; May-pole, 166.
Roman goddess, 538.
Mazda, Mazdakas, 373, 384, 391;
Manco Capac, III.
in China, 272.
Mandaeans, 410; their descent Mazdak, reformer, 410.
into hell, 559.
Mecca, 453 f., 468, 473.
Manes, 55, 172, 385; Di, 524. Medes, 375, 389, 402.
See Ancestors, Ghosts, Lares. Mediator, Marduk as, 348; Mo-
Manetho, 312.
hammed, 467; Christian, 580.
Mani, Manes, Manichaeism, Medicine-men, 82, 84. See
200, 267, 272, 410, 512, 571.
Priests, Wizards.
Manito, 82 f., 286.
Medina, Prince of, 458.
Mannhardt, W., 12, 153, 167. Mediterranean culture, 16, 120,
Mannus, German, primeval man, 495 f. See Minoan.
151; Manu, Hindu primeval Megalesia, 529, 541, 556.
man, 14, 174, 211.
Melanchthon, 585.
Marcion, 560, 570, 575.
Melech, Melek, Moloch, 365.
Marcus Aurelius, 548.
Memphis, as religious centre,
Marduk, Amorite god of Baby 332.
lon, 315, 346 f., 348 f.; as Jupi- Mencius, 224, 249, 257 f., 262.
ter, 360; festival of, 363. See Menes, 312.
Mordecai.
Mennonites, 584.
Mariolatry and Artemis-cult, Menzies, A., 18.
557; opposition to, 567, 572, Mercury, 489; Celtic and Ger-
579.
man forms, 122, 155.
Mark, gospel of, 533.
Merit, 586.
Marriage, 30, 63, -taboo, 71; Messiah, Messianic idea, Aztec,
child-, 220.
103; Egyptian, 337; Zoroas-
Mars, 516 f., 518 f.; and Moles, trian, 396, 407; Hebraic, 441 f.;
538; impious, 545; Celtic forms Christian, 554.
forms of, 122 f., 127; as Ziu, Metamorphosis, of animals, in
155.
China, 240, 243; of gods, 158,
Marti, K., 417.
284.
Martineau, J., 4.
Metawile sect, 481.
Martyrs, 565; prayers to, 580. Metempsychosis, 21, 131 f., 147,
Mary, mother of Jesus, in Mo 165, 170, 184, 261, 329, 448 f.,
hammedanism, 454 f.; see 467, 502, 505.
Mariolatry, Virgin; Queen, Methodists, 591 f.
591.
Meyer, E., 409.
Masai, 25.
Mexican religion, 64, 94 f.
Masks, funeral, 92, 109, 117, 524. Mia, 281.
Mass, 563, 575.
Michabo, 83 f., 87.
Massebas, 421, 425. See Phal Mictlan, 97.
licism, Stone.
Migration of culture, 15 f., 64,
Materialism, in China and India, 76, 94, 108, 115, 122, 272.
262, 264.
Mihrab, 423
INDEX
613
Mih Ti, Moh, 257, 260.
320, 345, 361; in Tyre and Si-
Mikado, 277 f., 281, 283 f., 286. don, 422; and Sabbath, 362,
Millerites, 576.
425; Zoroastrian cult of, 383;
Mills, L., 408 f.
Greek, 488. See Sin, Soma.
Milk, sea of, 56; Milky Way,
Zodiac.
125, 394.
Moravians, 584, 591.
Mimir, 157, 159.
Mordecai, 362, 450.
Minerva, 523, 526; Celtic form Morrison, W. D., 446.
of, 122 f., 131.
Moses, 359, 415, 418, 440, 557;
Minoan culture, 483, 517.
code of, 368, 426, 435 f.;
Minotaur, Indic, 174.
burned his tongue, 462; second
Miracles, 555, 580.
and third, see Maimonides.
Mirror, of fire-god, 102, 114; of Mother-goddess, 34, 124, 149;
Aztec sun-god, 103; of Japa- Dravidian, 170; of life, Semi-
nese sun-goddess, 281 f.
tic, 346, 421, 483 f., 494; Ma-
Mishnah, 447.
tralia, 529; Magna Mater, 366;
Missions, 510, 567.
Mothers' Night, 132, 153;
Mitanni, 388.
Mother of God, 579 f.
Mithra, Mitra, 172, 385, 404, Mothers as demons, Aztec,
410 f., glory of, 396, 540; and Hindu, 105, 207; Mothers of
Christianity, 548, 581.
Letts, 140 f.
Mixcoatl, 103.
Moulton, J. H., 402.
Mohammed, 42, 452 f.; Moham Mountain, god of, thunder of,
niedanism in India, 215 f.; in dance to, 100, 114; Shiva as,
China, 272; and Jewish relig 208; Enlil, 348; Zafa, Marwa,
ion, 449, 471; sects and 452; hills as holy, 421; as
schools, 481; parallels, 400 f. clouds, 461; hold down earth,
Monasteries, 290; of Eastern 465.
Church, 569; in the West, 576; Mourning, 21, 30, 33, 49, 89;
Egyptian origin of, 576.
cause of, 240; in Japan, 278,
Monergism, 574.
359, 365.
Mongols in China, 267; Mongo Müller, Max, 5.
lian influence, 229, 275.
Mummification, see embalming.
Monism, Chinese, 263. See Murray, G., 508.
Upanishads, Vedanta.
Muses, 486; lymph and nymph,
Monotheism, in India, 213, 216, 528.
475; Chinese, 229; Egyptian, Music, 30, 34, 78, 92; in Chinese
333 f., 342; tendency toward, cult, 231, 235; Hebraic, 437:
Babylon, 349, 364; Hebraic, See Hymns, Song.
428, 431; Greek, 497, 500; Mut, 320 f.
Mithraic, 548.
Mutazilites, 475, 477.
Montanus, 533, 561, 583.
Mysteries, 20 f., 26, 60, 64, 87,
Months, sacred to spirits and 92, 172; Greek, 346, 498, 502 f.
gods, 384.
Mysticism, Vedic, 178; erotic,
Moon, 29, 109 f., 112, 114; as 212 f., 366; Japanese, 300; un-
birth-god, 99; cult of, Slavic, Semitic, 448; late Mohamme-
139; German, 151 f., 154;. dan, 475, 478 f.; Greek, 483 ;
menu, 142 ; -plant, 385; in Roman, 540, 544; Mediter-
China, Japan, 244, 280; ranean, 595; sensuous Chris-
Babylon, lord of knowledge, tian, 569, 591.
614
INDEX
360.
1
Nabi, 429.
Nichiren, 292, 294, 299.
Nabonidus, 344 f.; daughter of, Nicolaitans, 364.
366
Nihongi, 275..
Nabu, Nebo, 347 f.; as Mercury, Nimrod, epic of, 353, 369.
Nineveh, 347; Ishtar of, 348.
Nagarjuna, 199.
Nin-deities, 345, 347; Ninib as
Naiku shrine, 282.
Saturn, 360.
Name, in baptism, 48, 65; hypo- Nirgrantha sect, 180.
stasis of, 70; taboo of, 71, 240; Nirvana, 185, 192, 194.
of God, concealed, 71; Holy Nisaba, Western Semitic pa-
Name of Sikhs, 219; mean tron of Code, 367.
names, 240; power of, 351, Nixies, 166.
581.
Nobunaga, 291, 303 f.
Nannar, 348.
Noetian heresy, 565.
Nara sects, 281, 292 f.
Nominalists, 578.
Närada, 388.
Norito, 283.
Naram-Sin, 344 f.; horns of, 361. Norns, 163, 165.
Nârâyana, 211.
Nous, Reason (q. v.) as divinity,
Nâsatya, Healer, Naonhaithya, 501, 505, 506, 508, 548.
385, 388.
Nuada, Nudd, 133 f., 156.
Nassau, R. H., 14, 36.
Numa, 517, 530, 535.
Naturism, 31 f., 59 f., 76 f., 79, Numbers, Pythagorean, 500;
90, 107, 139, 170 f., 236 f., 278, lucky, 517; three, 33, 140, 173,
376, 423, 462, 478, 486, 523.
Naville, E., 428.
383; rivers, 105, 356; Chinese
fives, 264; seven, Brahmanic,
Necromancy, 359. See Oracles. Semitic, 33, 54, 362; 411, 462,
Nebuchadrezzar, 347, 434.
Neeshima, school of, 307.
280; and Mohammedan, 466;
Nehemiah, 434 f., 443.
thirty-three gods, 385; seventy-
Nemetona, 133.
one or more sects, 481. See
Neo-Confucianism, 265, 304.
Triad.
Neolithic man, 8.
Numina, 489, 518, 523; Slavic,
Neo-Platonism, 441 f., 449, 479, 139 f.; Teutonic, 164. See
511, 571.
Functional gods.
Nephthys, 327, 339.
Nusairiah sect, 478.
Neptunus, 524, 529.
Nergal, 348 f.; as Mars, 360; fes Oath, by thigh, 68; by tree, 166;
tival of, 363.
by genius, 523.
Nero, 547, 565.
Obeah magic cult, 30, 40.
Nerthus, 151.
Occam, 579.
Nestorius, 567; Nestorians in Odhin, 156, 160. See Woden.
China, 267, 272, 298; Nestorian Offerings, of jewellery and in-
monument, 273; and Moham cense, 110; to gods and Manes,
medans, 475.
175; called Great, in Japan,
279; Hebrew, 436. See Sacri-
New Year, 130, 450; Roman, fice.
529.
Ogma, 131, 133.
Nicean theology, 571. See
Creed.
Oldenberg, H., 183 f.
INDEX
615
Omar, 453, 463.
Oinayyads, 474 f.
One-eyed god, Cyclops, 100, 158.
Ontology, 579.
Ops, Consus, 523, 527.
Opus operatum, 582.
Oracles, Mayan, 98; from caves,
114; tree-, 127; grave-, 132;
from dead, 359; Egyptian, 329;
ark as, 417; law-giving, 429;
Greek, 494, 501, 513; Roman,
533; of Sibyl, 531. See Divini-
ation, Osiris.
Ordeals, 26, 34, 39, 49, 152.
Orcus, 524.
Order, Holy, 376 f. See Rita,
Tao.
Origen, 564 f., 572, 575, 580 f.
Ormuzd, Ahura Mazda, 373, 377,
402.
Orphism, 494 f., 497, 499, 502,
Osiris, 161, 311, 318, 320 f., 322 f.,
325, 339 f., 364, 556 f.
Ossian, 123, 136.
Othman, 474.
Ouranos, 27.
Ovid, 547.
Oyomei school, 304.
504 f.
Parjanya, 138; American par-
allel, 100.
Parsis, 391, 410.
Passover, 417, 420, 425, 436.
Patagonians, 20, 75, 108, 110.
Patriarchs, of Bible, 418, 426 f.;
of Eastern Church, 569.
Patrick, St., 567.
Patripassian heresy, 565.
Paul, St., 510, 548, 552 f., 555 f.,
575, 582; as Gnostic, 563 ; Acts
of, 580; of Samosata, 565.
Pax, Dei, 110; 530; Romana, 546.
Pelagius, 214, 567, 571 f., 574.
Pelasgians, 483 f.
Penates, 50, 523, 547; Slavic, 146.
Pentateuch, 368, 419 f., 426 f.
Pentecost, 425, 434, 436.
Perkunas, 138 f., 140.
Persecution, see Intolerance.
Persephone, 485, 488, 494.
Peru, religion of, 108 f.
Pessimism, 481, 507.
Peter, St., 553, 559, 562, 572;
Hermit, 584.
Petrie, W. Flinders, 342.
Pfleiderer, O., 4, 18.
Phallicism, 24, 26, 42, 60, 79;
Slavic, 144; Teutonic, 162;
Indic, 207, 209; Chinese, 246;
Japanese, 283; Roman, 538.
Pharisees, 442, 444 f., 451.
Pharaoh, 313, 321, 332.
Phenomenal gods, See Natur-
ism.
Philaret, 569.
Philistines, 332, 420, 424.
Philo Judaeus, 376, 441, 511, 556.
Philosophy in religion, 172, 334;
Jewish, 449; Greek, 499 f.;
Roman, 541. See Vedanta,
Yang.
Phoenicians, 420 f., 422, 426.
Phoenix, Chinese, 269; Egyptiani,
318.
Pied Piper, Celtic myth, 133.
Pietists of Germany, 591.
Pig, taboo of, 70; divinity of,
126, 151; sacrifice of, 170; boar
of Shiva, 207; in China, 242;
Pachacamac, II3.
Pagoda, in China, 267.
Pairika, Peri, 388.
Pakht, 317.
Pales, Parilia, 545.
Palestine, and Egypt, 313, 332;
and Babylon, 347 f., 366 f.
Pâlî, 199.
Pan, 486 f., 503; in India, 212.
Panaetius, 542 f.
Pantaenus, 564.
Pantheism, 213; Egyptian, 333 f.;
Orphic, 497, 504.
Paradise, American, 88; of
Tlaloc, 105; Babylonian, 356;
of India and Iran, 396; He-
braic, 419; Mohammedan, 459,
465 f.
Parents, religiously strangled,
63; Parentalia, 524, 528.
616
INDEX
in Egypt, 318; in Greece, Prophets, 419, 425 f., 429 f., 435.
494 f., 496; in Rome, 537. See See Mohammed..
Boar, Suovitaurilia.
Propitiation-service, 283.
Pilgrimage, 110, 116, 315; Hajj, Protestant theology, 585, 587.
473.
Prussian savages, 138.
Pindar, religion of, 503.
Psalms, Babylonian, 363, 368;
Pitakas, 197 f.
Jewish, 443. See Gâthâs.
Planets, 114, 244. See Astrology, Psychology in Buddhism, 188.
Plato, 3, 376, 503, 509. .
Ptah, 310, 316, 320, 324.
Plautus, 541.
Pujâ, 43.
Pleiades, 114.
Purânas, 217 f., 276.
Plotinus, 511, 564.
Purdah, 469.
Plutarch, 327, 376, 384 f., 407, Purgation, see Purification.
548.
Purgatory, American, 88; Zoro-
Pluto, 539.
astrian, 395; Jewish, 443;
Polycarp, 573.
Christian, 581.
Polygamy, 440, 456.
Purification, 40, purgation, 86,
Polynesian gods, 60 f.
97, 363; by washing, 404; by
Polytheism, in Israel, 424. See fire, 527; Greek, 491; Sabbath,
Gods, Monotheism.
362. See Taboo, Washing.
Pompey, 445.
Purim, 362, 450.
Pontifex, 523, 530 f., 534, 543. Puritans, 591 f.
Poorah, 36.
Pygmies, 20, 24.
Pope, 305, 569, 577; as head of Pyramids, 313, 322.
Church, 572; two, 577; papal Pythagoras, 494, 499 f., 503, 542.
power, 586; Victor, 570; Pius
V, 580; Pius IX, 579, Alexan Quakers, 591 f.; of Japan, 295.
der VI, 585.
Quarters, sacrifice to four, 241,
Porphyry, 511.
244; gods of in Egypt, 320.
Poseidon, 484 f., 487.
See Directions, Winds.
Prayer, 79 f., 85, 87, 91; Aztec Queensland, 20.
and Peruvian, 107; German, Quetzalcoati, 95 f., 102 f.
to dead, 164; in Japan, 278, Quipu, 108.
283 f.; -wheel, 295; Babylon Quirinus, 516, 520.
ian, 349; Mohaminedan, 468;
Greek, 490; Christian, 569, 575, Rabbit-gods, 90, 99.
580. See Honover.
Râdhâ, mistress of Krishna,
Predestination, 571, 590.
215.
Pre-logical magic, 13, 21.
Rainbow, 32; bridge, 394; god-
Priests, 38, 63 f.; of America, 84, : dess of birth, 95 ; of women,
110; Aztec, 103, 106; Peruvian, 109; as god, 100; servant of
115; as ruler, 97; chief as sun and moon, 112; causes
priest or god, 117; Celtic, 127, dumbness, 114.
136; Slavic, 140, 144; German, Rain-making gods, 140.
150; Indic, Avestan, 171 f., 222, Ram, of Tiu, 156; Chinese sac-
404; Chinese, 246, 267; Shinto, rifice of, 242; Egyptian ba,
283; Egyptian, 330 f.; Bab 317.
ylonian, 366; Hebrew, 424, 436; Râma, 174, 209 f.; Râmânand,
Greek, 490; Roman, 529; 214, Râmânuja, 213; Râma
Priestly Code, 428 f., 434 f. sects, 215.
INDEX
617
Rome, Roman, religion, 516 f,
Holy Roman Empire, 583; and
Palestine, 445; Church of,
562 f., 565 f., 570, 572.
Rosary, prototype of, 64; Indic
origin of, 207; Japanese and
Mohammedan adoption of, 298,
481.
Rudra, 205, 208, 385.
Runes, 158.
Râma-Krishna, 222.
Raniadlan, fast, 468, 473.
Rammon, Rimmon, 346, 422.
Ransom, see Redemption.
Realists, 578.
Re(Ra), Sun-god, 314.f., 320 f.,
323 f.; full-form, 316.
Reason as Divinity, Chinese,
263, 265; Greek, See Nous.
Rechabites, 417, 430.
Redemption, 562; ransom paid to
Satan, 565, 575; other views
of, 509, 572 f.; particular, 590.
Reformers, 582, 584 f.; English
Reformation, 591.
Regeneration, savage, 84; by
baptism, 86; see Christian re-
ligion.
Reinach, S., 42.
Reincarnation, 89. See Metem-
psychosis.
Religion, as fear, 3; as a sacred
tree, 60; tribal, 364. See
Definitions, Sebas.
Repentance, useless, 242; 390 f.
Resurrection, 62, 115; Celtic,
· 132; Indic, 175; Egyptian, 340;
Zoroastrian and Christian, 406,
408; Hebrew, 442; Moham-
medan, 454, 457, 462 f., 468;
Greek, 506; of Attis, 556.
Réville, A., 4 f., IO, 18.
Rhadamanthus, 332, 386, 502.
Ridgeway, W., 176, 484, 502.
Rigantona, 129, 131.
Rig Veda, 172 f.
Right Order, 248. See Rita,
Saadia, 449, 467.
Sabaoth, lord of, battle hosts,
425.
Sabazios, Zeus, 509.
Sabbath, 362, 415, 420, 438, 461.
Sabellian heresy, 565.
Sabitu, 354.
Sacer, holy, accursed, 531.
Sacraments, 581.
Sacrifice, savage, II, 30, 32, 56,
60, 64, 87; smoke-, 85; -straw,
91; Mayan, 96 f., 100; Aryan,
barhis, 171; human, Aztec, 102,
104; S. American, IIo f., Greek,
421, 491; foundation, 116, 426;
Celtic, 127 f.; German, 151 f.,
157 ; beer-, 172; for divination,
144; Chinese, 231, 239, 141;
cost, 242; Japanese, 278 f., 280,
289; Egyptian, 331 f.; Semitic,
349, 365, 413, 421, 420, 436, 459,
469, 478; Zoroastrian, 404;
Roman, 534; vicarious, 492.
See Communion, Offerings,
Scape-goat.
Sadducees, 436, 443 f., 451, 554.
Sahajiya sect, 202.
Saicho, Dengyo, 293.
Saidas, 43.
Saints, Mohammedan, 479; gods
as, 510, 545; veneration of,
572; intercession of, 580; per-
severance of, 590.
Saké, 275. See Intoxicants.
Salii, 34, 518.
Saliva, power of, 34, 92.
Salvation, 563, 565; Salvationists,
593.
Tao.
Rimac, Lima, murmur, of oracle,
114.
Risley, Sir Herbert, 19.
Rita, Right (Order), 248, 326.
Ritsu sect, 293.
Ritual, Chinese, 238; Roman,
Rivers, 60; of hell, 33, 96, 105;
four of Aztec Paradise, 105;
cult of, Celtic, 125; Chinese,
231 f., 234; Greek, 486; Roman,
538; of Eden, 356.
545.
618
INDEX
Samâjas, 219 f.
Samaria, 420, 422, 430; Samari-
tans, 443 f.
Sanihain, 130.
Samoyeds, 18.
Samsoni, 353.
Samuel, parallel to, 355, 429, 442.
Samurai, 286; visit the Pope, 305.
Sanhedrin, 446 f.
Sankarshana, 210 f.
Sânkhya, dualistic system, 179,
184, 207.
Sanron sect, 293.
Saoshyant, saviour, 375, 395; as
Zoroaster, 396, 407.
Sargon, 344 f., 424, 433, 557.
Sassanides, Sassanians, 386, 398,
406; and Mohammedans, 475.
Satan, 33, 50; Erlik, 54; not
nanied, 71; evil cleity in Peru,
117; in Egypt, 321; in Avesta,
409; Hebrew, 438 f.; Christian,
564 f., 575. See (Mâra) Death,
Iblis.
Saturnus, 523, 527 f., 537, 545;
Saturnalia, 450.
Saussaye, C. de la, 43.
Saviour, in Japan, 298; in
Avesta, see Saoshyant; Aescu-
lapius, 559; Christ, ibid.
Savonarola, 584.
Sayce, A. H., 315, 325, 352.
Saxnéat, 155.
Scape-goat sacrifice, 65; Chinese,
244; Japanese, 280, 283; He-
braic, 417; Greek, 491; Roman,
5.37.
Schleiermacher, F., 4.
Scotus Erigena, 578.
Scribes, 435 f., 446 f.
Sea as god, 24, 110, 112, 133;
579; sea-spirits, 166.
Seasons, deified, 244.
Sebas, religion as fear, 3, 7.
Sebek, 318.
Sects, Indic, 179, 203; reforming,
205 f., 219 f.; Mohanimedan,
481; Christian, 593. See Don-
atus, Macedonius, etc. .
Secret Societies, see Mysteries.
Sedna, 77.
Self as soul and All-soul, At-
man, 178.
Semi-Arians,-Pelagians, 568, 574.
Semites, religion of, 420 f; cul-
ture, 16; connexion with
Egypt, 332, 343; contrast with
Aryans, 365. See Babylon,
Hebrew, etc.
Sen, Keshub Chunder, 219.
Seneca, 3, 548, 552.
Sennacherib, 347, 424, 433.
Sensuality, see Mysticism, Phal-
licism.
Septuagint, 440.
Seraphi, 422, 439.
Serapis, 316 f.
Serpent, 32, 82, 90, 112; plumed,
92; bird-, 93, 95 f.; lightning
as, 109; belief of Celts, 127;
Slavs, 139, 142 f.; India, 170,
209; the Midhgardh-snake,
154; Chinese, 246; Egyptian,
314; Hebrew, 415 f.; Greek,
486, 494; and eagle, 360 ; and
Aesculapius, 537. See Back-
bone, Dragon.
Servetus, 585, 589.
Set, 318, 321, 326, 339 f.
Sex as religious element, 34, 61,
68, 422; goddess of, 99; sex-
dualism, 366. See Ashera,
Mysticisin, Phallicism, Sen-
suality, Shakti.
Shabatum, 362.
Shadow, soul, 32, 88, 105, 245;
shadow-land, 115.
Shafiites, 481.
Shakti, 208, 217.
Shaman, Shamanism, 22, 53 f.;
Polynesian, 65; Eskimo, 78;
Zoroastriani, 402; Hebraic, 433.
Shamash, 345, 348, 360 f., 363,
367; Joshua the Bel-Shamite,
424; horses of, 424.
Shammai, school of, 446.
Shang Ti, Supreme Lord, God,
231 f., 235 f., 262.
Shankara, monist, 208.
Sharraph, god, 422.
INDEX
619
Shechem, Lord of, 417, 423;
· Gerizim, 443.
Shedu, 44.
Shema, 447,
Sheol, 359, 442. See Hell.
Shiahs, Shiites, 474, 478, 480 f.
Shin, Shinron, sect, 292, 297.
Shingakuha, Japanese heart-
culture sect, 301.
Shi King, 224.
Shingon sect, 294.
Shinto, not originally ancestor-
cult, 276 f.; pure and mixed,
Ryobu, 286 f.; as monotheism,
306. See Tao.
Shirk, heresy of, 454.
Shishak, king, 313, 424.
Shiva, fertility-god, originally
storm and lightning, 174 f.; as
man, 161, 176; mothers of,
105; children of, 379; sects of,
205, 209.
Shotoku, Prince, 285, 288, 292.
Shu, Chinese classics, 224; Shu
· King, 276.
Shushi school, 265, 304.
Shvetâmbara (white-garment),
sect of Jains, 181.
Sibyl, 531, 536, 538 f., 543. See
Oracles.
Sikhs, hybrid religion of, 215,
219.
Silvanus, 523, 545.
Simon Magus, 563.
Sin (moon-god), 248 f., 415;
Sin, Shamash, and Ishtar,
361.
Sin, evil and wickedness, 507,
558, 564, 571, 573; origin of
evil, 563.
Sing Li, 264.
Sinism, traits of, 245.
Sirens, 496.
Skanda, war-god, 207.
Sky-god, Slavic, 141; German,
155 f.; Indic, 172; Chinese,
228 f., 236; Greek, 483.
Slavs, Slavic religion, 138 f.
Smith, E. G., 15, 310; Robert-
son, 12.
Smith-gods, 133; Wayland,
152. See Hephaistos.
Smoke-sacrifice, 85, 92.
Sneeze, may expel soul, 32.
Socinus, Socinianism, 567, 588.
Socrates, 503.
Soederblom, N., 407 f.
Sokaris, 330.
Sol Invictiis, 539, 548.
Solomon, 424, 440; ring of, 402.
Solon, 501.
Solstice-rite, 92, 175.
Somna, plant and moon, 171. See
Hom, Intoxicants.
Song, hymns to gods, in Peru,
118; India, see Veda; Babylon,
349, 363; of Solomon, 434.
See Gâthâs, Music, Psalms.
Sophia, see Wisdom. Soplists,
500 f.
Sophocles, religion of, 503.
Sorcerer, 453.
Soter, epithet of saviour deities,
559.
Soul, savage belief, 8, 18, 21, 25,
32, 34, 48, 51, 78, 87, 93, 121;
as breath of heaven, 65; plur-
ality of, 88; departing soul ar-
rested, 240; Slavic belief, 145;
etyniology of word soul, 165;
as follower, as self, 165, 177;
as light, 178; Buddhistic, 188,
193; Japanese conception,
277 f.; kvei and shen, 245;
Egyptian ka, ba, etc., 311, 317,
322, 327; Zoroastriani, ahıl,
daena, etc., 392; journey of,
411; Hebrew breath and psyche
443; in Plato, 503; and sin
(4. V.), 573.
Spells, carmina, 517.
Spencer, H., 18, 29, 176; and
Gillen, 17.
Spener, P. J., 591.
Spheres, seven, 411.
Sphinx, 317.
Spinoza, 579.
Spirit, 30, 34 f., 48 f., 55, 58, 76 f.,
80; guardian, 56, 81; language
of, 89; group-spirits of Celts,
620
INDEX
see Fairies, Mothers; Slavic,
142; Chinese, 228, 243; Japa-
nese, 277 f., 279; Babylonian,
349; Arabian, 365; Zoroas-
trian, 378; Greek, 495, 503;
evil, 378; and baptism, 558;
Great Wise Spirit, 377; Holy
Spirit, 566; as son of God, 561;
as female, 568; origin of
Heavenly Spirit, 461.
Spring-festival, 366, 527.
Srahman, Suhman, African
gods, 30 f.
Sraosha, Faith, 384.
Stars, savage cult of, 96, 103,
108, 112, 172, 564; Chinese cult
of, 269; Japanese, 284; Egyp-
tian, 322; Zoroastrian, 386,
388; sacrifice to, 404; Greek,
508; angels pelt with, 463.
See Soul.
State and religion, 533, 594.
Stoics, 505 f., 511, 542 f.
Stones, holy, circles, 9, 22, 43 f.,
60, 82, 90, 109; stone as sky,
62, 411; litholatry before
heliolatry, 113; in Peru, stone
as home of Fire-god, 114;
akmo, 142; boundary and
guardian, 170; Egyptian, 314;
Arabic, 365; black, 452, 540;
Jupiter Silex, 521. See Akmo,
Ark, Hermes, Phallicism, Mas-
seba.
Sufis, sůf, 460, 479 f.
Suicide, forbidden in Buddhism,
180.
Sukhâvatî, Happy Land, 198,
297
Sulis, 123.
Sulla, 543.
Sultan as Caliph, 475.
Sumerian culture, 344, 364.
Sun, worship of, 79, 90, 109 f.;
-dance, gi f.; Celtic, deasil,
129, 133; Chinese deasil, 241;
swinging with, 91, 141 ; horns
of, 130; Holy Grail form of
sun, 132; Cuchullin, 135;
brother suns, 92; Aztec, 102;
Peruvian, 113; son of sun,
III; servant of God, 113;
Slavic cult, 139 f.; Lithuanian,
141, 146; Teutonic, 151 f., 154;
Indic, 172, 213; Japanese,
276 f., 289, 306; Egyptian,
314 f., 327; hymn to, 329,
333 f.; Babylonian, 360;
Roman, 540, 548; sun and
queen of Sheba, 462. See
Mithra, Sol, Vairocana,
Vishnu.
Sunna, (Right) Way, Orthodox,
Sunnis, 474 f., 476 f., 478 f.,
481.
Suovitaurilia, 527, 534.
Supererogation, work of, 561.
Superstition, outlasts religion,
548.
Supper, Last, 581. See Eu-
charist, Love-feast.
Supplicationes, Roman, prayer,
entreaty, thanksgiving, 540.
Suras, 456, 464.
Suttee, suicide of widow, 30;
116, 132.
Svantovit, as St. Vitus, 144.
Svarog, Sky-god, 141.
Svastika (svasti, “is well"),
107, 244.
Sword-dance as worship, 43.
Synagogue, 447.
Synergism, 574.
Synoptic Gospels, 552 f., 556.
Syria, dea, 539; Church of, 569.
Tabernacle, 425; feast of, 432,
536.
Tablets, see Ancestors.
Taboo, II, 25; of ground, 56;
63, 67 f.; Celtic gessa, 135;
-day, 361; Semitic, 417; of
leaven, 420; Roman, 517.
Tacitus, 9, 121, 138, 150 f.
Tagore, Sir Rabindranath, 219.
Tahion, 224.
Talisman, see Fetish, Charm.
Talmud, 435, 447 f.
Tamashi, soul as wind-ball, 278.
Tamate, 60.
INDEX
621
Tanımuz, 354, 360, 363; Dumuzi,
364; 422.
Tanith, 539.
Tantra, Tantric cult, 201, 564.
Tao, 238, 248, 250 f., 252, 326;
Shen-tao, Shinto, 250, 276;
later Taoism, 265 f.; Tao Teh
King, 249.
Taranis and Teutates, 123, 125.
Tartars, 239 f., 262, 272, 278.
Tatian, 564.
Tattoo, 49, 63; in Peru, 115; in
China, 238; Semitic, 417.
Tauroktonos, Mithra, see Bull.
Taylor, H. O., 342.
Temple, 26, 64; Mayan, 95, 97;
Aztec, 103; Peruvian, 115;
Celtic, 124; Slavic, 148; Indic,
170; Chinese, 226; Japanese,
281, 288 f.; Egyptian, 330 f.;
Babylonian, 345, 366; Jewish,
424 f., 434 f.; Greek, 492;
Roman, 526, 533, 539, 546.
See Pagoda, Tcocalli, Tomb.
Temptation, of Buddha, 195; of
Zoroaster, 374, 403; of Jesus,
556.
Tenaim, 448.
Tendai sect, 293.
Tengu, Japanese spirit, 279.
Tenri-kyo, 287.
Teocalli, 105.
Tera, 284, 288.
Teraphim, 40, 361, 416.
Tertullian, 412, 557, 561 f., 566,
570; traducianism of, 573,
580 f.
Teutonic religion, 149 f.
Tezcatlipoca, 99.
Thanksgiving, see Gratitude.
Theocritus, Adonis of, 364.
Theodosius, Emperor, 550, 572.
Theopompus, 407.
Thesiophoria, 495.
Theosophical Society, 220.
Thomas Aquinas, 576, 578; and
Maimonides, 449, 580.
Thor, 8; Celtic form, 123; ham-
mer of fertility (thunder),
130, 156; German, 155 f., 161 f.
Thoth, 310, 319, 324, 340.
Thucydides, 501.
Thugs, stranglers, religious sect,
42, 207.
Thunder, 8, 91; god of, 95, 109.
See Thor.
Thutmose, king, 314, 324 f., 332 f.
Tiamat, 315, 350 f.
Tiber, Father, 538.
Tiele, C. P., 2, 4, 229.
T'ien, Sky-Heaven, Fate, 236,
262.
Tierra del Fuego, 20.
Tiglath Pileser, 347.
Tirthankara, Jain hero, 180.
Titans, 497, 502.
Titicaca, lake, as divinity, in f.
Tiu, 43, 155 f., 172.
Tlaloc, 96 f., 99, 115; frog-fes-
tival of, 101; Paradise of, 105.
Todas, 43.
Toltec civilization, 94 f.
Tomb, as temple, 331.
Tophet, 426.
Torah, 440.
Torana, Torii, 282.
Tornassuk, 77.
Tortoise, for longevity, 243. See
Avatar, Divination.
Torture, 91.
Totem, 20 f., 29, 50, 60, 65 f.,
80 f., 112, 126, 156, 284; in In-
dia, 170, 175; Egypt, 316; not
Semitic, 417; not Roman, 528.
Trade, gods of, American, 104,
110; Mercury, etc., 526.
Traducianism, 573.
Tragedy, 502. See Drama.
Translation of heroes, 359.
Transubstantiation, 560, 582.
Trees, sacred, cult of, 28, 60, 80,
109; of heaven, 96; oak and
mistletoe, 127; oak spirits, 129;
oak and linden, male and fe-
male, 140; Slavic cult, 143 f.;
German, 158; oak and oath by,
160, 166; stone and trce, 170;
holy, in China, 246; in Egypt,
314; acacia, 452; of life, of
knowledge, 352 f.; in Arabia,
622
INDEX
178.
365, 366; of hell, 466; Greek,
495; religion as tree, see Re-
ligion. See Druid, Dryad,
Grove.
Triads, Buddhistic, 192, 205 f. ;
Vishnuite, 217; Chinese, 270;
Japanese, 307; Egyptian triads
and enneads, 319f., 340;
Babylonian, 347 f., 349, 361;
Greek groups of three, 486;
Roman, 526; Christian, 562,
566. Triratna, three Jewels,
288. Doctrine of Trinity, 560,
571.
Troy-circles, 133.
Tuisto, 151.
Tupan, 108.
Tukaram, religious poet, 215.
Tulsi Das, 214.
Turanians, 381.
Twelfth Night, 152. See Epiph-
any.
Twins, sacrificed, 115.
Tyche, Fortune, 508.
Tylor, Sir E., 6, 18, 37.
Ucchishta, remnant of sacrifice,
Vedda form, 58.
Uitzilopochtli, 103.
Unction, extreme, 509, 581.
Underworld, 524. See Escha-
tology.
Unitarians, 567, 592.
Unitas Fratrum, 584.
Universalist doctrine, 564; Uni-
versism, in China, 228.
Unkulunkulu, ancestral god, not
God, 28.
Upanishads, 176 f., 216, 512.
Urabe, diviners, 284.
Usener, H. K., 139 f., 172, 428.
Ushebti, Egyptian conception,
328.
Utnapishtim (Parnapishtim),
254 f., 358.
Vallabha (calf, darling), sect of,
215.
Vallée-Poussin, L. de la, 196.
Vampires, 146.
Vanir, gods, 162. .
Vardhamâna, see Mahâvira.
Varro, 541.
Varuna, god, 27, 70, 172 f.; Aztec
parallel, 194.
Vâsudeva, title of Krishna, 210 f.
Vâyu, wind-god, 172.
Veda, 18, 50; religion of, 172 f.;
Rig Veda, songs to gods, 9,
28, 62, 66; date of, 171, 373;
authority of disputed, 180.
See Atharva Veda.
Vedântamonistic pantheism,
Veddas, religion of, 57.
Vediovis, volcano-god, 523, 540.
Vegetarian monks, Aztec, 106;
Indic, 220; vegetarianism in
China, 272.
Vegetation-spirits, see Grain-
spirit.
Veles and Vile, Slavic spirits,
142, 146.
Vendidad, Zoroastrian code, 371,
374 f., 390, 400 f.
Venus, 537; Celtic, 134; planet,
as war-goddess, 361; American
conception, as page of sun,
104, 112; Babylonian, 348; in
Lucretius, 542.
Verethraghna, 411.
Vergil, 121, 536, 541, 545 f., 548.
Vesta, Hestia, 523, 545; Augusta,
546; Vestal Virgins, of Peru,
114, 116; of Ireland, 131; of
Rome, 523, 520, 531, 537.
Veyopatis,-mate, Slavic wind-
deity, 140.
Vinaya sect, 293. See Buddhis-
tic literature.
Vintius, ventus, 123.
Viracocha, Peruvian god, 113f.
Virgin,-birth, 26, 103, 375, 552,
579; Mary as, 113; as cattle-
goddess, 144; in the Trinity,
217; mentioned in Chinese
Vairocana, Brilliant, form of di-
vinity, 289, 293, 298.
Valentinus, Gnostic, 563.
Valerian, Emperor, 565, 572.
INDEX
623
monument, 273. See Mariol- Williams, Sir Monier, 2; S.
atry.
Wells, 227.
Vishnu, 174, 178, 205, 209 f. Wind or Direction gods, 86, 90 f.,
Vision, of Prophets, 433.
107; colours of, 92; Aztec,
Vitus, St., see Svantovit.
103; Indic, 172; seven winds,
Vivekananda, 221 f.
351; good and bad winds,
Vohu-mano, Good Mind, 385 f. 496. See Vintius, Woden.
Volcano-spirit, Araucanian, 109; Wisdom, divine, Sophia, 440,
Peruvian, 114; Roman, 523. . 508.
Volcanus, fire-god, 538.
Witch, sacrifice of, 239; witch-
Volsci, 121.
craft, savage, 19, 39, 76, 83,
Volturnus, 538.
140, 172; Slavic, 148; Mohan-
Voodoo, 30.
medan, 464.
Votan, 95.
Woden, 155 f.; as wind, 157.
Vows, 40; herem vow, 417; Wolf-cult, 142; demon, 156;
Ronan vota, 532.
were-wolf, 165.
World-soul, see All-soul.
Wahabites, Mohammedan sect, Worthy, title of Buddhist saint.
481.
See Arhat.
Waldo, Waldenses, 584.
Women, 84; cause of woe, 88,
Walhalla, 154, 157, 164.
105, 170; Paradise of, 100;
Walker, Williston, 589.
priestesses, 110; German view
Walkyries, 165.
of, wise women, 150, 165; in
Walpurgis, 152.
Buddhism, 189; in China, In-
Wanderers, sects of, 479.
dia, Greece, 242; dead women
Wanga inagic, 30.
as demons, 245'; in Greek re-
Wang Ch'ung, Epicurean, 263. ligion, 483; Roman, 528; in
Wang Yang Min, 265, 304.
Mithra-cult, 412.
War-chief, as god, 97, 110, 241, Works, good, in salvation, 586.
348.
See Karma, Opus operatum,
Washing, 33, 72, 86; apotropaic, Supererogation.
112. See Lustration.
Wright, W. K., 5.
Water, 32; cult of, 86, 90, 98, Wundt, W. M., 69.
113; home of fire, 102; Celtic Wu-tsung, persecution of, 273.
water-spirits, 129; Slavic, 142; Wu-wei, sect, 250, 272.
ordeal by, 152, 279; bitter, Wyrd, 166. See Fate.
417; of sky, 351; in Avesta,
385; of life, 462; Greek, 495; Xavier, F., 303, 305.
Roman, holy, 546. See Bap- Xenophanes, 500.
tism, Fish, Fountain, Muses, Xerxes, 36.
River, Sea, Taboo, Washing.
Weapons, as divine, 152.
Yahweh (Jehovah), 7, 415.f.,
Welsh, 121.
422; Baal-, 425, of Sabaoth,
Wesley, John (and Charles). 432; -nissi, 425; Elohim, EI
592.
Shaddai, 435.
Westermarck, E. A., 130.
Yaku, spirit as ghost, 58.
Westminster Confession, 591. Yama, 172; Aztec parallel, 105;
Whitefield, George, 592.
heaven of, 175; in China, 270;
Wicklif, 584 f.
Yima, 389, 396.
Widows, 90. See Suttee. Yamato-Damashii, 287.
624
INDEX
Yânas, schools of Buddhism, q. v.
Yang and Yin, 228; philosophy
of, 247 f., 263.
Yashts and Yasnas, 375 f., 384.
Yazatas, Izads, 384 f.
Year-demon, 12, 507. See Hera.
Yezedis, devil-worshippers, 33.
Yggdrasil, 166.
Yih King, 224, 226, 237, 247.
Yima, see under Yama.
Yoga, Yogin, discipline of,
178; power of, 2017 in Bud-
dhism, 188; Yogâcâra, 200;
Hosso, 293; bhakti as Yoga,
214; Yogin, Indic, 66, 208;
Chinese, 266.
Yule log, 153.
Yupanqui, 113.
Zechariah, 434; 439, 441.
Zeidites, sect, 480.
Zemipati, -luks, 141.
Zen sect, 292, 295.
Zendo, 297 f.
Zeno, 500, 506.
Zeus, origin of, 521; German
form of, 156, 172; Greek god,
484 f., 487 f., 489, 497, 501 f.
Ziggurat, Aztec form, 103. .
Zinzendorf, Graf von, 591.
Zionism, 450.
Zodiac, lunar, 244; divine, 508
Zoroaster, Zarathustra, religion
of, 371 f., 552; and Slavic cult,
145; and Vedic religion, 171,
248, 372; and other cults, 383,
398, 405, 442; literature of, 375.
Zulus, 25.
Zwingli, H., 582, 585.

Zadok, Zadokites, 425, 436.
FEB 23 1919
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end of the book.
“ Christianity," says the author in his preface, “is
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must be recognized as one of the master forces of
mediaeval and modern history and of the present day.
Intelligent men ought, it would seem, to be acquainted at
least in outline with the course of its history through the
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
Publishers 64–66 Fifth Avenue New York

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