Chapter XVIII: Rites and Ceremonies (3)

One of these means is the use of drugs. In the West India Islands at the time of the discovery, Columbus describes the religious ceremony of placing a platter containing ‘cohoba’ powder on the head of the idol, the worshippers then snuffing up this powder through a cane with two branches put to the nose. Pane further describes how the native priest, when brought to a sick man, would put himself in communication with the spirits by thus snuffing cohoba, ‘which makes him drunk, that he knows not what he does, and so says many extraordinary things, wherein they affirm that they are talking with the cemis, and that from them it is told them that the infirmity came.’ On the Amazons, the Omaguas have continued to modern times the use of narcotic plants, producing an intoxication lasting twenty-four hours, during which they are subject to extraordinary visions; from one of these plants they obtain the ‘curupa’ powder which they snuff into their nostrils with a Y-shaped reed.[1003] Here the similar names and uses of the drug plainly show historical connexion between the Omaguas and the Antilles islanders. The Californian Indians would give children narcotic potions, in order to gain from the ensuing visions information about their enemies; and thus the Mundrucus of North Brazil, desiring to discover murderers, would administer such drinks to seers, in whose dreams the criminals appeared.[1004] The Darien Indians used the seeds of the Datura sanguinea to bring on in children prophetic delirium, in which they revealed hidden treasure. In Peru the priests who talked with the ‘huaca’ or fetishes used to throw themselves into an ecstatic condition by a narcotic drink called ‘tonca,’ made from the same plant, whence its name of ‘huacacacha’ or fetish-herb.[1005] The Mexican priests also appear to have used an ointment or drink made with seeds of ‘ololiuhqui,’ which produced delirium and visions.[1006] In both Americas tobacco served for such purposes. It must be noticed that smoking is more or less practised among native races to produce full intoxication, the smoke being swallowed for the purpose. By smoking tobacco, the sorcerers of Brazilian tribes raised themselves to ecstasy in their convulsive orgies, and saw spirits; no wonder tobacco came to be called the ‘holy herb.’[1007] So North American Indians held intoxication by tobacco to be supernatural ecstasy, and the dreams of men in this state to be inspired.[1008] This idea may explain a remarkable proceeding of the Delaware Indians. At their festival in honour of the Fire-god with his twelve attendant manitus, inside the house of sacrifice a small oven-hut was set up, consisting of twelve poles tied together at the top and covered with blankets, high enough for a man to stand nearly upright within it. After the feast this oven was heated with twelve red-hot stones, and twelve men crept inside. An old man threw twelve pipefulls of tobacco on these stones, and when the patients had borne to the utmost the heat and suffocating smoke, they were taken out, generally falling in a swoon.[1009] This practice, which was carried on in the last century, is remarkable for its coincidence with the Scythian mode of purification after a funeral, as described by Herodotus. He relates that they make their hut with three stakes sloping together at the top and covered in with wooden felts; then they cast red-hot stones into a trough placed within and throw hemp-seed on them, which sends forth fumes such as no Greek vapour-bath could exceed, and the Scyths in their sweating-hut roar with delight.[1010]

Not to dwell on the ancient Aryan deification of an intoxicating drink, the original of the divine Soma of the Hindus and the divine Haoma of the Parsis, nor on the drunken orgies of the worship of Dionysos in ancient Greece, we find more exact Old World analogues of the ecstatic medicaments used in the lower culture. Such are the decoctions of thalassægle which Pliny speaks of as drunk to produce delirium and visions; the drugs mentioned by Hesychius, whereby Hekate was evoked; the mediæval witch-ointments which brought visionary beings into the presence of the patient, transported him to the witches’ sabbath, enabled him to turn into a beast.[1011] The survival of such practices is most thorough among the Persian dervishes of our own day. These mystics are not only opium-eaters, like so large a proportion of their countrymen; they are hashish-smokers, and the effect of this drug is to bring them into a state of exaltation passing into utter hallucination. To a patient in this condition, says Dr. Polak, a little stone in the road will seem a great block that he must stride over; a gutter becomes a wide stream to his eyes, and he calls for a boat to ferry him across; men’s voices sound like thunder in his ears; he fancies he has wings and can rise from the ground. These ecstatic effects, in which miracle is matter of hourly experience, are considered in Persia as high religious developments; the visionaries and their rites are looked on as holy, and they make converts.[1012]

Many details of the production of ecstasy and swoon by bodily exercises, chanting and screaming, &c., have been incidentally given in describing the doctrine of demoniacal possession. I will only further cite a few typical cases to show that the practice of bringing on swoons or fits by religious exercises, in reality or pretence, is one belonging originally to savagery, whence it has been continued into higher grades of civilization. We may judge of the mental and bodily condition of the priest or sorcerer in Guyana, by his preparation for his sacred office. This consisted in the first place in fasting and flagellation of extreme severity; at the end of his fast he had to dance till he fell senseless, and was revived by a potion of tobacco-juice causing violent nausea and vomiting of blood; day after day this treatment was continued till the candidate, brought into or confirmed in the condition of a ‘convulsionary,’ was ready to pass from patient into doctor.[1013] Again, at the Winnebago medicine-feast, members of the fraternity assemble in a long arched booth, and with them the candidates for initiation, whose preparation is a three days’ fast, with severe sweating and steaming with herbs, under the direction of the old medicine-men. The initiation is performed in the assembly by a number of medicine-men. These advance in line, as many abreast as there are candidates; holding their medicine-bags before them with both hands, they dance forward slowly at first, uttering low guttural sounds as they approach the candidates, their step and voice increasing in energy, until with a violent ‘Ough!’ they thrust their medicine-bags at their breasts. Instantly, as if struck with an electric shock, the candidates fall prostrate on their faces, their limbs extended, their muscles rigid and quivering. Blankets are now thrown over them, and they are suffered to lie thus a few moments; as soon as they show signs of recovering from the shock, they are assisted to their feet and led forward. Medicine-bags are then put in their hands, and medicine-stones in their mouths; they are now medicine men or women, as the case may be, in full communion and fellowship; and they now go round the bower in company with the old members, knocking others down promiscuously by thrusting their medicine-bags at them. A feast and dance to the music of drum and rattle carry on the festival.[1014] Another instance may be taken from among the Alfurus of Celebes, inviting Empong Lembej to descend into their midst. The priests chant, the chief priest with twitching and trembling limbs turns his eyes towards heaven; Lembej descends into him, and with horrible gestures he springs upon a board, beats about with a bundle of leaves, leaps and dances, chanting legends of an ancient deity. After some hours another priest relieves him, and sings of another deity. So it goes on day and night till the fifth day, and then the chief priest’s tongue is cut, he falls into a swoon like death, and they cover him up. They fumigate with benzoin the piece taken from his tongue, and swing a censer over his body, calling back his soul; he revives and dances about, lively but speechless, till they give him back the rest of his tongue, and with it his power of speech.[1015] Thus, in the religion of uncultured races, the phenomenon of being ‘struck’ holds so recognised a position that impostors will even counterfeit it. In its morbid nature, its genuine cases at least plainly correspond with the fits which history records among the convulsionnaires of St. Medard and the enthusiasts of the Cevennes. Nor need we go even a generation back to see symptoms of the same type accepted as signs of grace among ourselves. Medical descriptions of the scenes brought on by fanatical preachers at ‘revivals’ in England, Ireland, and America, are full of interest to students of the history of religious rites. I will but quote a single case. ‘A young woman is described as lying extended at full length; her eyes closed, her hands clasped and elevated, and her body curved in a spasm so violent that it appeared to rest arch-like upon her heels and the back portion of her head. In that position she lay without speech or motion for several minutes. Suddenly she uttered a terrific scream, and tore handfuls of hair from her uncovered head. Extending her open hands in a repelling attitude of the most appalling terror, she exclaimed, “Oh, that fearful pit!” During this paroxysm three strong men were hardly able to restrain her. She extended her arms on either side, clutching spasmodically at the grass, shuddering with terror, and shrinking from some fearful inward vision; but she ultimately fell back exhausted, nerveless, and apparently insensible.’[1016] Such descriptions carry us far back in the history of the human mind, showing modern men still in ignorant sincerity producing the very fits and swoons to which for untold ages savage tribes have given religious import. These manifestations in modern Europe indeed form part of a revival of religion, the religion of mental disease.

From this series of rites, practical with often harmful practicality, we turn to a group of ceremonies whose characteristic is picturesque symbolism. In discussing sun-myth and sun-worship, it has come into view how deeply the association in men’s mind of the east with light and warmth, life and happiness and glory, of the west with darkness and chill, death and decay, has from remote ages rooted itself in religious belief. It will illustrate and confirm this view to observe how the same symbolism of east and west has taken shape in actual ceremony, giving rise to a series of practices concerning the posture of the dead in their graves and the living in their temples, practices which may be classed under the general heading of Orientation.

While the setting sun has shown to men, from savage ages onward, the western region of death, the rising sun has displayed a scene more hopeful, an eastern home of deity. It seems to be the working out of the solar analogy, on the one hand in death as sunset, on the other in new life as sunrise, that has produced two contrasted rules of burial, which agree in placing the dead in the sun’s path, the line of east and west. Thus the natives of Australia have in some districts well-marked thoughts of the western land of the dead, yet the custom of burying the dead sitting with face to the east is also known among them.[1017] The Samoans and Fijians, agreeing that the land of the departed lies in the far west, bury the corpse lying with head east and feet west;[1018] the body would but have to rise and walk straight onward to follow its soul home. This idea is stated explicitly among the Winnebagos of North America; they will sometimes bury a dead man sitting up to the breast in a hole in the ground, looking westward; or graves are dug east and west, and the bodies laid in them with the head eastward, with the motive ‘that they may look towards the happy land in the west.’[1019] With these customs may be compared those of certain South American tribes. The Yumanas bury their dead bent double with faces looking toward the heavenly region of the sunrise, the home of their great good deity, who they trust will take their souls with him to his dwelling;[1020] the Guarayos bury the corpses with heads turned to the east, for it is in the eastern sky that their god Tamoi, the Ancient of Heaven, has his happy hunting-grounds where the dead will meet again.[1021] On the other hand the Peruvian custom was to place the dead huddled up in a sitting posture and with faces turned to the west.[1022] Barbaric Asia may be represented by the modern Ainos of Yesso, burying the dead lying robed in white with the head to the east, ‘because that is where the sun rises;’ or by the Tunguz who bury with the head to the west; or by the mediæval Tatars, raising a great mound over the dead, and setting up thereon a statue with face turned toward the east, holding a drinking-cup in his hand before his navel; or by the modern Siamese, who do not sleep with their heads to the west, because it is in this significant position that the dead are burned.[1023] The burial of the dead among the ancient Greeks in the line of east and west, whether according to Athenian custom of the head toward the sunset, or the converse, is another link in the chain of custom.[1024] Thus it is not to late and isolated fancy, but to the carrying on of ancient and widespread solar ideas, that we trace the well-known legend that the body of Christ was laid with the head toward the west, thus looking eastward, and the Christian usage of digging graves east and west, which prevailed through mediæval times and is not yet forgotten. The rule of laying the head to the west, and its meaning that the dead shall rise looking toward the east, are perfectly stated in the following passage from an ecclesiastical treatise of the 16th century: ‘Debet autem quis sic sepeliri, ut capite ad occidentem posito, pedes dirigat ad orientem, in quo quasi ipsa positione orat: et innuit quod promptus est, ut de occasu festinet ad ortum: de mundo ad seculum.’[1025]

Where among the lower races sun-worship begins to consolidate itself in systematic ritual, the orientation of the worshipper and the temple becomes usual and distinct. The sun-worshipping Comanches, preparing for the war-path, will place their weapons betimes on the east side of the lodge to receive the sun’s first rays; it is a remnant of old solar rite, that the Christianized Pueblo Indians of New Mexico turn to the sun at his rising.[1026] It has been already noticed how in old times each morning at sunrise the Sun-chief of the Natchez of Louisiana stood facing the east at the door of his house, and smoked toward the sun first, before he turned to the other three quarters of the world.[1027] The cave-temple of the sun-worshipping Apalaches of Florida had its opening looking east, and within stood the priests on festival days at dawn, waiting till the first rays entered to begin the appointed rites of chant and incense and offering.[1028] In old Mexico, where sun-worship was the central doctrine of the complex religion, men knelt in prayer towards the east, and the doors of the sanctuaries looked mostly westward.[1029] It was characteristic of the solar worship of Peru that even the villages were habitually built on slopes toward the east, that the people might see and greet the national deity at his rising. In the temple of the sun at Cuzco, his splendid golden disc on the western wall looked out through the eastern door, so that as he rose his first beams fell upon it, reflected thence to light up the sanctuary.[1030]

In Asia, the ancient Aryan religion of the sun manifests itself not less plainly in rites of orientation. They have their place in the weary ceremonial routine which the Brahman must daily accomplish. When he has performed the dawn ablution, and meditated on the effulgent sun-light which is Brahma, the supreme soul, he proceeds to worship the sun, standing on one foot and resting the other against his ankle or heel, looking toward the east, and holding his hands open before him in a hollow form. At noon, when he has again adored the sun, it is sitting with his face to the east that he must read his daily portion of the Veda; it is looking toward the east that his offering of barley and water must be first presented to the gods, before he turns to north and south; it is with first and principal direction to the east that the consecration of the fire and the sacrificial implements, a ceremony which is the groundwork of all his religious acts, has to be performed.[1031] The significance of such reverence paid by adorers of the sun to the glorious eastern region of his rising, may be heightened to us by setting beside it a ceremony of a darker faith, displaying the awe-struck horror of the western home of death. The antithesis to the eastward consecration by the orthodox Brahmans is the westward consecration by the Thugs, worshippers of Kali the death-goddess. In honour of Kali their victims were murdered, and to her the sacred pickaxe was consecrated, wherewith the graves of the slain were dug. At the time of the suppression of Thuggee, Englishmen had the consecration of the pickaxe performed in make-believe in their presence by those who well knew the dark ritual. On the dreadful implement no shadow of any living thing must fall, its consecrator sits facing the west to perform the fourfold washing and the sevenfold passing through the fire, and then it being proved duly consecrated by the omen of the coco-nut divided at a single cut, it is placed on the ground, and the bystanders worship it, turning to the west.[1032]

These two contrasted rites of east and west established themselves and still remain established in modern European religion. In judging of the course of history that has brought about this state of things, it scarcely seems that Jewish influence was effective. The Jewish temple had the entrance in the east, and the sanctuary in the west. Sun-worship was an abomination to the Jews, and the orientation especially belonging to it appears as utterly opposed to Jewish usage, in Ezekiel’s horror-stricken vision: ‘and, behold, at the door of the temple of Jehovah, between the porch and the altar, about five-and-twenty men, with their backs toward the temple of Jehovah, and their faces toward the east, and they worshipped the sun toward the east.’[1033] Nor is there reason to suppose that in later ages such orientation gained ground in Jewish ceremony. The solar rites of other nations whose ideas were prominent in the early development of Christianity, are sufficient to account for the rise of Christian orientation. On the one hand there was the Asiatic sun-worship, perhaps specially related to the veneration of the rising sun in old Persian religion, and which has left relics in the east of the Turkish empire into modern years; Christian sects praying toward the sun, and Yezidis turning to the east as their kibleh and burying their dead looking thither.[1034] On the other hand, orientation was recognized in classic Greek religion, not indeed in slavish obedience to a uniform law, but as a principle to be worked out in converse ways. Thus it was an Athenian practice for the temple to have its entrance east, looking out through which the divine image stood to behold the rising sun. This rule it is that Lucian refers to, when he talks of the delight of gazing toward the loveliest and most longed-for of the day, of welcoming the sun as he peeps forth, of taking one’s fill of light through the wide-open doors, even as the ancients built their temples looking forth. Nor was the contrary rule as stated by Vitruvius less plain in meaning; the sacred houses of the immortal gods shall be so arranged, that if no reason prevents and choice is free, the temple and the statue erected in the cell shall look toward the west, so that they who approach the altar to sacrifice and vow and pray may look at once toward the statue and the eastern sky, the divine figures thus seeming to arise and look upon them. Altars of the gods were to stand toward the east.[1035]

Unknown in primitive Christianity, the ceremony of orientation was developed within its first four centuries. It became an accepted custom to turn in prayer toward the east, the mystic region of the Light of the World, the Sun of Righteousness. Augustine says, ‘When we stand at prayer, we turn to the east, where the heaven arises, not as though God were only there, and had forsaken all other parts of the world, but to admonish our mind to turn to a more excellent nature, that is, to the Lord.’ No wonder that the early Christians were thought to practise in substance the rite of sun-worship which they practised in form. Thus Tertullian writes: ‘Others indeed with greater truth and verisimilitude believe the sun to be our God ... the suspicion arising from its being known that we pray toward the region of the east.’ Though some of the most ancient and honoured churches of Christendom stand to show that orientation was no original law of ecclesiastical architecture, yet it became dominant in early centuries. That the author of the ‘Apostolical Constitutions’ should be able to give directions for building churches toward the east (ὁ οἶκος ἔστω ἐπιμηκής, κατ’ ἀνατολὰς τετραμμένος), just as Vitruvius had laid down the rule as to the temples of the gods, is only a part of that assimilation of the church to the temple which took effect so largely in the scheme of worship. Of all Christian ceremony, however, it was in the rite of baptism that orientation took its fullest and most picturesque form. The catechumen was placed with face toward the west, and then commanded to renounce Satan with gestures of abhorrence, stretching out his hands against him, or smiting them together, and blowing or spitting against him thrice. Cyril of Jerusalem, in his ‘Mystagogic Catechism,’ thus depicts the scene: ‘Ye first came into the ante-room of the baptistery, and standing toward the west (πρὸς τὰς δυσμάς) ye were commanded to put away Satan, stretching out your hands as though he were present.... And why did ye stand toward the west? It was needful, for sunset is the type of darkness, and he is darkness and has his strength in darkness; therefore symbolically looking toward the west ye renounce that dark and gloomy ruler.’ Then turning round to the east, the catechumen took up his allegiance to his new master, Christ. The ceremony and its significance are clearly set forth by Jerome, thus: ‘In the mysteries [meaning baptism] we first renounce him who is in the west, and dies to us with our sins; and so, turning to the east, we make a covenant with the Sun of righteousness, promising to be his servants.’[1036] This perfect double rite of east and west, retained in the baptismal ceremony of the Greek Church, may be seen in Russia to this day. The orientation of churches and the practice of turning to the east as an act of worship, are common to both Greek and Latin ritual. In our own country they declined from the Reformation, till at the beginning of the 19th century they seemed falling out of use; since then, however, they have been restored to a certain prominence by the revived mediævalism of our own day. To the student of history, it is a striking example of the connexion of thought and ceremony through the religions of the lower and higher culture, to see surviving in our midst, with meaning dwindled into symbolism, this ancient solar rite. The influence of the divine Sun upon his rude and ancient worshippers still subsists before our eyes as a mechanical force, acting diamagnetically to adjust the axis of the church and turn the body of the worshipper.

The last group of rites whose course through religious history is to be outlined here, takes in the varied dramatic acts of ceremonial purification of Lustration. With all the obscurity and intricacy due to age-long modification, the primitive thought which underlies these ceremonies is still open to view. It is the transition from practical to symbolic cleansing, from removal of bodily impurity to deliverance from invisible, spiritual, and at last moral evil. Our language follows this ideal movement to its utmost stretch, where such words as cleansing and purification have passed from their first material meaning, to signify removal of ceremonial contamination, legal guilt, and moral sin. What we thus express in metaphor, the men of the lower culture began early to act in ceremony, purifying persons and objects by various prescribed rites, especially by dipping them in and sprinkling them with water, or fumigating them with and passing them through fire. It is the plainest proof of the original practicality of proceedings now passed into formalism, to point out how far the ceremonial lustrations still keep their connexion with times of life when real purification is necessary, how far they still consist in formal cleansing of the new-born child and the mother, of the man-slayer who has shed blood, or the mourner who has touched a corpse. In studying the distribution of the forms of lustration among the races of the world, while allowing for the large effect of their transmission from religion to religion, and from nation to nation, we may judge that their diversity of detail and purpose scarcely favours a theory of their being all historically derived from one or even several special religions of the ancient world. They seem more largely to exemplify independent working out, in different directions, of an idea common to mankind at large. This view may be justified by surveying lustration through a series of typical instances, which show its appearance and character in savage and barbaric culture, as being an act belonging to certain well-marked events of human life.

The purification of the new-born child appears among the lower races in various forms, but perhaps in some particular instances borrowed from the higher. It should be noticed that though the naming of the child is often associated with its ceremonial cleansing, there is no real connexion between the two rites, beyond their coming due at the same early time of life. To those who look for the matter-of-fact origin of such ceremonies, one of the most suggestive of the accounts available is a simple mention of the two necessary acts of washing and name-giving, as done together in mere practical purpose, but not as yet passed into formal ceremony—the Kichtak Islanders, it is remarked, at birth wash the child, and give it a name.[1037] Among the Yumanas of Brazil, as soon as the child can sit up, it is sprinkled with a decoction of certain herbs, and receives a name which has belonged to an ancestor.[1038] Among some Jakun tribes of the Malay Peninsula, as soon as the child is born it is carried to the nearest stream and washed; it is then brought back to the house, the fire is kindled, and fragrant wood thrown on, over which it is passed several times.[1039] The New Zealanders’ infant baptism is no new practice, and is considered by them an old traditional rite, but nothing very similar is observed among other branches of the Polynesian race. Whether independently invented or not, it was thoroughly worked into the native religious scheme. The baptism was performed on the eighth day or earlier, at the side of a stream or elsewhere, by a native priest who sprinkled water on the child with a branch or twig; sometimes the child was immersed. With this lustration it received its name, the priest repeating a list of ancestral names till the child chose one for itself by sneezing at it. The ceremony was of the nature of a dedication, and was accompanied by rhythmical formulas of exhortation. The future warrior was bidden to flame with anger, to leap nimbly and ward off the spears, to be angry and bold and industrious, to work before the dew is off the ground; the future housewife was bidden to get food and go for firewood and weave garments with panting of breath. In after years, a second sacred sprinkling was performed to admit a lad into the rank of warriors. It has to be noticed with reference to the reason of this ceremonial washing, that a new-born child is in the highest degree tapu, and may only be touched by a few special persons till the restriction is removed.[1040] In Madagascar, a fire is kept up in the room for several days, then the child in its best clothes is in due form carried out of the house and back to its mother, both times being carefully lifted over the fire, which is made near the door.[1041] In Africa, some of the most noticeable ceremonies of the class are these. The people of Sarac wash the child three days after birth with holy water.[1042] When a Mandingo child was about a week old its hair was cut, and the priest, invoking blessings, took it in his arms, whispered in its ear, spat thrice in its face, and pronounced its name aloud before the assembled company.[1043] In Guinea, when a child is born, the event is publicly proclaimed, the new-born babe is brought into the streets, and the headman of the town or family sprinkles it with water from a basin, giving it a name and invoking blessings of health and wealth upon it; other friends follow the example, till the child is thoroughly drenched.[1044] In these various examples of lustration of infants, the purifications by fire have especial importance ethnologically, not because this proceeding is more natural to the savage mind than that of bathing or sprinkling with water, but because this latter ceremony may sometimes have been imitated from Christian baptism. The fact of savage and barbaric lustration of infants being in several cases associated with the belief in re-birth of ancestral souls seems to mark the rite as belonging to remote pre-Christian ages.[1045]

The purification of women at childbirth, &c., is ceremonially practised by the lower races under circumstances which do not suggest adoption from more civilized nations. The seclusion and lustration among North American Indian tribes have been compared with those of the Levitical law, but the resemblance is not remarkably close, and belongs rather to a stage of civilization than to the ordinance of a particular nation. It is a good case of independent development in such customs, that the rite of putting out the fires and kindling ‘new fire’ on the woman’s return is common to the Iroquois and Sioux in North America,[1046] and the Basutos in South Africa. These latter have a well-marked rite of lustration by sprinkling, performed on girls at womanhood.[1047] The Hottentots considered mother and child unclean till they had been washed and smeared after the uncleanly native fashion.[1048] Lustrations with water were usual in West Africa.[1049] Tatar tribes in Mongolia used bathing, while in Siberia the custom of leaping over a fire answered the purpose of purification.[1050] The Mantras of the Malay Peninsula have made the bathing of the mother after childbirth into a ceremonial ordinance.[1051] It is so among the indigenes of India, where both in northern and southern districts the naming of the child comes into connexion with the purification of the mother, both ceremonies being performed on the same day.[1052] Without extending further this list of instances, it is sufficiently plain that we have before us the record of a practical custom becoming consecrated by traditional habit, and making its way into the range of religious ceremony.

Much the same may be said of the purification of savage and barbaric races on occasion of contamination by bloodshed or funeral. In North America, the Dacotas use the vapour-bath not only as a remedy, but also for the removal of ceremonial uncleanness, such as is caused by killing a person, or touching a dead body.[1053] So among the Navajos, the man who has been deputed to carry a dead body to burial, holds himself unclean until he has thoroughly washed himself in water prepared for the purpose by certain ceremonies.[1054] In Madagascar, no one who has attended a funeral may enter the palace courtyard till he has bathed, and in all cases there must be an ablution of the mourner’s garments on returning from the grave.[1055] Among the Basutos of South Africa, warriors returning from battle must rid themselves of the blood they have shed, or the shades of their victims would pursue them and disturb their sleep. Therefore they go in procession in full armour to the nearest stream to wash, and their weapons are washed also. It is usual in this ceremony for a sorcerer higher up the stream to put in some magical ingredient, such as he also uses in the preparation of the holy water which is sprinkled over the people with a beast’s tail at the frequent public purifications. These Basutos, moreover, use fumigation with burning wood to purify growing corn, and cattle taken from the enemy. Fire serves for purification in cases too trifling to require sacrifice; thus when a mother sees her child walk over a grave, she hastens to call it, makes it stand before her, and lights a small fire at its feet.[1056] The Zulus, whose horror of a dead body will induce them to cast out and leave in the woods their sick people, at least strangers, purify themselves by an ablution after a funeral. It is to be noticed that these ceremonial practices have come to mean something distinct from mere cleanliness. Kaffirs who will purify themselves from ceremonial uncleanness by washing, are not in the habit of washing themselves or their vessels for ordinary purposes, and the dogs and the cockroaches divide between them the duty of cleaning out the milk-baskets.[1057] Mediæval Tatar tribes, some of whom had conscientious scruples against bathing, have found passing through fire or between two fires a sufficient purification, and the household stuff of the dead was lustrated in this latter way.[1058]

In the organised nations of the semi-civilized and civilized world, where religion shapes itself into elaborate and systematic schemes, the practices of lustration familiar to the lower culture now become part of stringent ceremonial systems. It seems to be at this stage of their existence that they often take up in addition to their earlier ceremonial significance an ethical meaning, absent or all but absent from them at their first appearance above the religious horizon. This will be made evident by glancing over the ordinances of lustration in the great national religions of history. It will be well to notice first the usages of two semi-civilized nations of America, which though they have scarcely produced practical effect on civilization at large, give valuable illustration of a transition period in culture, leaving apart the obscure question of their special civilization having been influenced in early or late times from the Old World.

In the religion of Peru, lustration is well-marked and characteristic. On the day of birth, the water in which the child has been washed was poured into a hole in the ground, charms being repeated by a wizard or priest; an excellent instance of the ceremonial washing away of evil influences. The naming of the child was also more or less generally accompanied with ceremonial washing, as in districts where at two years old it was weaned, baptized, had its hair ceremonially cut with a stone knife, and received its child-name; Peruvian Indians still cut off a lock of the child’s hair at its baptism. Moreover, the significance of lustration as removing guilt is plainly recorded in ancient Peru; after confession of guilt, an Inca bathed in a neighbouring river and repeated this formula, ‘O thou River, receive the sins I have this day confessed unto the Sun, carry them down to the sea, and let them never more appear.’[1059] In old Mexico, the first act of ceremonial lustration took place at birth. The nurse washed the infant in the name of the water-goddess, to remove the impurity of its birth, to cleanse its heart and give it a good and perfect life; then blowing on water in her right hand she washed it again, warning it of forthcoming trials and miseries and labours, and praying the invisible Deity to descend upon the water, to cleanse the child from sin and foulness, and to deliver it from misfortune. The second act took place some four days later, unless the astrologers postponed it. At a festive gathering, amid fires kept alight from the first ceremony, the nurse undressed the child sent by the gods into this sad and doleful world, bade it receive the life-giving water, and washed it, driving out evil from each limb and offering to the deities appointed prayers for virtue and blessing. It was then that the toy instruments of war or craft or household labour were placed in the boy’s or girl’s hand (a custom singularly corresponding with one usual in China), and the other children, instructed by their parents, gave the newcomer its child-name, here again to be replaced by another at manhood or womanhood. There is nothing unlikely in the statement that the child was also passed four times through the fire, but the authority this is given on is not sufficient. The religious character of ablution is well shown in Mexico by its forming part of the daily service of the priests. Aztec life ended as it had begun, with ceremonial lustration; it was one of the funeral ceremonies to sprinkle the head of the corpse with the lustral water of this life.[1060]

Among the nations of East Asia, and across the more civilized Turanian districts of Central Asia, ceremonial lustration comes frequently into notice; but it would often bring in difficult points of ethnography to attempt a general judgment how far these may be native local rites, and how far ceremonies adopted from foreign religious systems. As examples may be mentioned in Japan the sprinkling and naming of the child at a month old, and other lustrations connected with worship;[1061] in China the religious ceremony at the first washing of the three days’ old infant, the lifting of the bride over burning coals, the sprinkling of holy-water over sacrifices and rooms and on the mourners after a funeral;[1062] in Burma the purification of the mother by fire, and the annual sprinkling-festival.[1063] Within the range of Buddhism in its Lamaist form, we find such instances as the Tibetan and Mongol lustration of the child a few days after birth, the lama blessing the water and immersing the child thrice, and giving its name; the Buraet consecration by threefold washing; the Tibetan ceremony where the mourners returning from the funeral stand before the fire, wash their hands with warm water over the hot coals, and fumigate themselves thrice with proper formulas.[1064] With this infant baptism of Tibetans and Mongols may be compared the rite of their ethnological kinsfolk in Europe. The Lapps in their semi-Christianized state had a form of baptism, in which a new name, that of the deceased ancestor who would live again in the child, as the mother was spiritually informed in a dream, was given with a threefold sprinkling and washing with warm water where mystic alder-twigs were put. This ceremony, though called by the Scandinavian name of ‘laugo’ or bath, was distinct from the Christian baptism to which the Lapps also conformed.[1065] The natural ethnographic explanation of these two baptismal ceremonies existing together in Northern Europe, is that Christianity had brought in a new rite, without displacing a previous native one.

Other Asiatic districts show lustration in more compact and characteristic religious developments. The Brahman leads a life marked by recurring ceremonial purification, from the time when his first appearance in the world brings uncleanness on the household, requiring ablution and clean garments to remove it, and thenceforth through his years from youth to old age, where bathing is a main part of the long minute ceremonial of daily worship, and further washings and aspersions enter into more solemn religious acts, till at last the day comes when his kinsfolk, on their way home from his funeral, cleanse themselves by a final bath from their contamination by his remains. For the means of some of his multifarious lustrations the Hindu has recourse to the sacred cow, but his more frequent medium of removing uncleanness of body and soul is water, the divine waters to which he prays, ‘Take away, O Waters, whatsoever is wicked in me, what I have done by violence or curse, and untruth!’[1066] The Parsi religion prescribes a system of lustrations which well shows its common origin with that of Hinduism by its similar use of cow’s urine and of water. Bathing or sprinkling with water, or applications of ‘nirang’ washed off with water, form part of the daily religious rites, as well as of such special ceremonies as the naming of the new-born child, the putting on of the sacred cord, the purification of the mother after childbirth, the purification of him who has touched a corpse, when the unclean demon, driven by sprinkling of the good water from the top of the head and from limb to limb, comes forth at the left toe and departs like a fly to the evil region of the north. It is, perhaps, the influence of this ancestral religion, even more than the actual laws of Islam, that makes the modern Persian so striking an example of the way in which ceremony may override reality. It is rather in form than in fact that his cleanliness is next to godliness. He carries the principle of removing legal uncleanness by ablution so far, that a holy man will wash his eyes when they have been polluted by the sight of an infidel. He will carry about a water-pot with a long spout for his ablutions, yet he depopulates the land by his neglect of the simplest sanitary rules, and he may be seen by the side of the little tank where scores of people have been in before him, obliged to clear with his hand a space in the foul scum on the water, before he plunges in to obtain ceremonial purity.[1067]

Over against the Aryan rites of lustration in the religions of Asia, may be set the well-known types in the religions of classic Europe. At the Greek amphidromia, when the child was about a week old, the women who had assisted at the birth washed their hands, and afterwards the child was carried round the fire by the nurse, and received its name; the Roman child received its prænomen with a lustration at about the same age, and the custom is recorded of the nurse touching its lips and forehead with spittle. To wash before an act of worship was a ceremony handed down by Greek and Roman ritual through the classic ages: καθαραῖς δὲ δρόσοις, ἀφυδρανάμενοι στχείετε ναούς—eo lavatum, ut sacrificem. The holy-water mingled with salt, the holy-water vessel at the temple entrance, the brush to sprinkle the worshippers, all belong to classic antiquity. Romans, their flocks and herds and their fields, were purified from disease and other ill by lustrations which show perfectly the equivalent nature of water and fire as means of purification; the passing of flocks and shepherds through fires, the sprinkling water with laurel branches, the fumigating with fragrant boughs and herbs and sulphur, formed part of the rustic rites of the Palilia. Bloodshed demanded the lustral ceremony. Hektor fears to pour with unwashen hands the libation of dark wine, nor may he pray bespattered with gore to cloud-wrapped Zeus; Æneas may not touch the household gods till cleansed from slaughter by the living stream. It was with far changed thought that Ovid wrote his famous reproof of his too-easy countrymen, who fancied that water could indeed wash off the crime of blood:—

‘Ah nimium faciles, qui tristia crimina cædis
Fluminea tolli posse putetis aqua.’

Thus, too, the mourner must be cleansed by lustration from the contaminating presence of death. At the door of the Greek house of mourning was set the water-vessel, that those who had been within might sprinkle themselves and be clean; while the mourners returning from a Roman funeral, aspersed with water and stepping over fire, were by this double process made pure.[1068]

The ordinances of purification in the Levitical law relate especially to the removal of legal uncleanness connected with childbirth, death, and other pollutions. Washing was prescribed for such purposes, and also sprinkling with water of separation, water mingled with the ashes of the red heifer. Ablution formed part of the consecration of priests, and without it they might not serve at the altar nor enter the tabernacle. In the later times of Jewish national history, perhaps through intercourse with nations whose lustrations entered more into the daily routine of life, ceremonial washings were multiplied. It seems also that in this period must be dated the ceremony which in after ages has held so great a place in the religion of the world, their rite of baptism of proselytes.[1069] The Moslem lustrations are ablutions with water, or in default with dust or sand, performed partially before prayer, and totally on special days or to remove special uncleanness. They are strictly religious acts, belonging in principle to prevalent usage of Oriental religion; and their details, whether invented or adopted as they stand in Islam, are not carried down from Judaism or Christianity.[1070] The rites of lustration which have held and hold their places within the pale of Christianity are in well-marked historical connexion with Jewish and Gentile ritual. Purification by fire has only appeared as an actual ceremony among some little-known Christian sects, and in the European folklore custom of passing children through or over fire, if indeed we can be sure that this rite is lustral and not sacrificial.[1071] The usual medium of purification is water. Holy-water is in full use through the Greek and Roman churches. It blesses the worshipper as he enters the temple, it cures disease, it averts sorcery from man and beast, it drives demons from the possessed, it stops the spirit-writer’s pen, it drives the spirit-moved table it is sprinkled upon to dash itself frantically against the wall; at least these are among the powers attributed to it, and some of the most striking of them have been lately vouched for by papal sanction. This lustration with holy-water so exactly continues the ancient classic rite, that its apologists are apt to explain the correspondence by arguing that Satan stole it for his own wicked ends.[1072] Catholic ritual follows ancient sacrificial usage in the priest’s ceremonial washing of hands before mass. The priest’s touching with his spittle the ears and nostrils of the infant or catechumen, saying, ‘Ephphatha,’ is obviously connected with passages in the Gospels; its adoption as a baptismal ceremony has been compared, perhaps justly, with the classical lustration by spittle.[1073] Finally, it has but to be said that ceremonial purification as a Christian act centres in baptism by water, that symbol of initiation of the convert which history traces from the Jewish rite to that of John the Baptist, and thence to the Christian ordinance. Through later ages adult baptism carries on the Jewish ceremony of the admission of the proselyte, while infant baptism combines this with the lustration of the new-born infant. Passing through a range of meaning such as separates the sacrament of the Roman centurion from the sacrament of the Roman cardinal, becoming to some a solemn symbol of new life and faith, to some an act in itself of supernatural efficacy, the rite of baptism has remained almost throughout the Christian world the outward sign of the Christian profession.

In considering the present group of religious ceremonies, their manifestations in the religions of the higher nations have been but scantily outlined in comparison with their rudimentary forms in the lower culture. Yet this reversal of the proportions due to practical importance in no way invalidates, but rather aids, the ethnographic lessons to be drawn by tracing their course in history. Through their varied phases of survival, modification, and succession, they have each in its own way brought to view the threads of continuity which connect the faiths of the lower with the faiths of the higher world; they have shown how hardly the civilized man can understand the religious rites even of his own land without knowledge of the meaning, often the widely unlike meaning, which they bore to men of distant ages and countries, representatives of grades of culture far different from his.

Footnote 844:

Turner, ‘Polynesia,’ p. 88; see p. 427.

Footnote 845:

Ibid. p. 200; see p. 174. See also Ellis, ‘Polyn. Res.’ vol. i. p.
343. Mariner, ‘Tonga Is.’ vol. ii. p. 235.

Footnote 846:

Schoolcraft, ‘Ind. Tribes,’ part iii. p. 237.

Footnote 847:

M’Coy, ‘Baptist Indian Missions,’ p. 359.

Footnote 848:

Tanner, ‘Narrative,’ p. 46.

Footnote 849:

Brinton, ‘Myths of New World,’ p. 297.

Footnote 850:

Heckewelder, ‘Ind. Völkerschaften,’ p. 354.

Footnote 851:

‘Narratives of Rites and Laws of Yncas,’ tr. and ed. by C. R. Markham,
pp. 31, 33. See also Brinton, p. 298.

Footnote 852:

Callaway, ‘Religion of Amazulu,’ pp. 141, 174, 182. ‘Remarks on Zulu
Lang.’ Pietermaritzburg, 1870, p. 22.

Footnote 853:

Waitz, vol. ii. p. 169. Steinhauser, l.c. p. 129.

Footnote 854:

Rowley, ‘Universities’ Mission to Central Africa,’ p. 226.

Footnote 855:

Mason, ‘Karens,’ l.c. p. 215.

Footnote 856:

Macpherson, ‘India,’ pp. 110, 128. See also Hunter, ‘Rural Bengal,’ p.
182 (Santals).

Footnote 857:

Plath, ‘Religion der Chinesen,’ part ii. p. 2; Doolittle, vol. ii. p.
116.

Footnote 858:

‘Sama-Veda,’ i. 4, 2. Wuttke, ‘Gesch. des Heidenthums,’ part ii. p.
342.

Footnote 859:

Lane, ‘Modern Egyptians,’ vol. i. p. 128.

Footnote 860:

‘Rig-Veda,’ i. 51, 8, x. 105, 8. Muir, ‘Sanskrit Texts,’ part ii. ch.
iii.

Footnote 861:

Lane, ‘Modern Egyptians,’ vol. ii. p. 383.

Footnote 862:

See Köppen, ‘Religion des Buddha,’ vol. i. pp. 345, 556; vol. ii. pp.
303, 319. Compare Fergusson, ‘Tree and Serpent Worship,’ pl. xlii.

Footnote 863:

Xenoph. Memorabilia Socrat. i. 3, 2.

Footnote 864:

Sahagun, ‘Retorica, &c., de la Gente Mexicana,’ lib. vi. c. 4, in
Kingsborough, ‘Antiquities of Mexico,’ vol. v.

Footnote 865:

‘Rig-Veda,’ vii. 89, 3. Max Müller, ‘Chips,’ vol. i. p. 39.

Footnote 866:

‘Avesta,’ tr. by Spiegel; ‘Khorda-Avesta,’ Patet Qod.

Footnote 867:

Garcilaso de la Vega, ‘Commentarios Reales,’ v. 19. Ellis,
‘Madagascar,’ vol. i., p. 421.

Footnote 868:

Charlevoix, ‘Nouv. Fr.’ vol. i. p. 394. See also Smith, ‘Virginia,’ in
‘Pinkerton,’ vol. xiii. p. 41.

Footnote 869:

Phillips in Astley’s ‘Voyages,’ vol. ii. p. 411; Lubbock, ‘Origin of
Civilization,’ p. 216. Bosman, ‘Guinea,’ in Pinkerton, vol. xvi. p.
500. Bastian in ‘Ztschr. für Ethnologie,’ 1869, p. 315.

Footnote 870:

Schoolcraft, ‘Algic Res.’ vol. ii. p. 75. See also Tanner, ‘Narr.’ p.
193, and above, p. 270.

Footnote 871:

Macpherson, ‘India,’ p. 129.

Footnote 872:

Billings, ‘Exp. to Northern Russia,’ p. 125. Chinese sacrifices buried
for earth spirits, see ante, vol. i. p. 107; Plath, part ii. p. 50.

Footnote 873:

Taylor, ‘New Zealand,’ p. 182.

Footnote 874:

Römer, ‘Guinea,’ p. 67.

Footnote 875:

Herod. vii. 35, 54. Liv. vii. 6. Grote, ‘Hist. of Greece,’ vol. x. p.
589, see p. 715.

Footnote 876:

Rochefort, ‘Iles Antilles,’ p. 367.

Footnote 877:

Ellis, ‘Polyn. Res.’ vol. i. pp. 336, 358. Williams, ‘Fiji,’ vol. i.
p. 220.

Footnote 878:

Bosman, ‘Guinea,’ in Pinkerton, vol. xvi. p. 494; J. L. Wilson, ‘W.
Afr.’ p. 218; Burton, ‘W. & W. fr. W. Afr.’ p. 331.

Footnote 879:

Ward, ‘Hindoos,’ vol. ii. p. 195, &c.

Footnote 880:

Clavigero, ‘Messico,’ vol. ii. p. 69. J. G. Müller, p. 631.

Footnote 881:

Ward, vol. ii. p. 194; ‘Mem. Anthrop. Soc.’ vol. i. p. 332.

Footnote 882:

Williams, ‘Fiji,’ vol. i. p. 226.

Footnote 883:

J. L. Wilson, ‘W. Afr.’ p. 218.

Footnote 884:

Manu, iii. 212. See also ‘Avesta,’ tr. by Spiegel, vol. ii. p. lxxvii.
(sacrificial cakes eaten by priest).

Footnote 885:

Ysbrants Ides, ‘Reize naar China,’ p. 38. Meiners, vol. i. p. 162.

Footnote 886:

Clavigero, vol. ii. p. 46. J. G. Müller, p. 631.

Footnote 887:

Bel and the Dragon.

Footnote 888:

Römer, ‘Guinea,’ p. 47.

Footnote 889:

Bastian, ‘Mensch,’ part ii. p. 210.

Footnote 890:

Homer, Odyss. xi. xii.

Footnote 891:

‘Journ. Ind. Archip.’ vol. i. p. 270.

Footnote 892:

Smith, ‘Virginia,’ in Pinkerton, vol. xiii. p. 41; see J. G. Müller,
p. 143; Waitz, vol. iii. p. 207. Comp. Meiners, vol. ii. p. 89. See
also Bollaert in ‘Mem. Anthrop. Soc.’ vol. ii. p. 96.

Footnote 893:

‘Journ. Ind. Archip.’ vol. iii. p. 145. See also St. John, ‘Far East,’
vol. i. p. 160.

Footnote 894:

Hodgson, ‘Abor. of India,’ p. 147; Hunter, ‘Rural Bengal,’ p. 181;
Forbes Leslie, ‘Early Races of Scotland,’ vol. ii. p. 458.

Footnote 895:

Bosman, ‘Guinea,’ letter xxi. in Pinkerton, vol. xvi. p. 531. See also
Waitz, vol. ii. p. 192.

Footnote 896:

Bastian, ‘Psychologie,’ p. 96.

Footnote 897:

Levit. i. &c.; Deuteron. xii. 23; Psalm xvi. 4.

Footnote 898: