** So £ar as I have been able to trace back the origin of the best-known minor provincial deities, they are usually men of past generations who have earned special promotion and brevet rank among disembodied ghosts by some pectdiar acts or accidents of their Uvea or deaths. ^ ^ ^ The Bnijaras, a tribe much addicted to highway robbery, worship a famous bandit. « « « M. Raymond, the French commander who died at Hyderabad, has been there canonized after a feishion. « ♦ i|e Of the numerous local gods known to have been Uying men, by far the greater portion derive from the ordinary canonization of holy person- ages, t « 4! The number of shrines thus raised in Berar alone to these anchorites and persons deceased in the odour of sanctity is large, and it is constantiy increasing. Some of them have akeady attained the rank of temples.^' And now having observed the natural genesis of ancestor- worship, its wide dimsion over the world, and its persist* ence among advanced races side by side with more developed forms of worship, let us turn from its external aspect to its internal aspect. Let us, so fer as we can, contemplate it from the stand-point of those who practise it. Fortunately, two examples, one of its less developed form and one of its more developed form, are exhibited to US in the words of ancestor-worshippers themselves.
ANCE8T0&-W0BSHIP IN GBNIAAL. 309 § 148. Our old acqaaintances the Amazuln^ whose ideas have been so carefully taken down from their own lips by Canon GaUaway^ supply the first. Here are the slightly- YBjrying, but similar, statements of different witnesses: — " The ancients said that it was Unkulunknlu who gaye origin to men, and eveiything besides, both cattle and wild animals/' " The sun and moon we referred to^Unkulonknln, together with the things of this world; and yonder heaven we referred to Unknlonktilu."
" When black men say Unkulanknla, or Uthlanga,* or the Creator, they mean one and the same thing."
" It is said, Unknlonknln came into being, and begat men; he gave them being; he begat them."
" He begat the ancients of long ago; they died and left their children; they begat others, their sons, they died; they begat others; thus we at length have heard about Unkolanknln."
** Unknlnnknlu is no longer known. It is he who was the first man; he broke off in the beginning."
** Unknlnnkulu told men^saying, ' I, too, sprang from a bed of reeds.' " ** Unkulunknln was a black man, for we see that all the people from whom we sprang are black, and their hair is black."
After noting that here, and in other passages not quoted, there are some inconsistencies (as that sometimes a reed and sometimes a bed of reeds is said to be the orig^ of XJnkulunkulu); and after noting that some variations of this primitive creed have arisen since European immigration, as is shown by one of the statements that " there were at first two women in a bed of reeds; one gave birth to a white man, and one to a black man; " let us go on to note the meaning of Unkulimkulu, This, Canon Callaway tells us, '' expresses antiquity, age, literally, the old-old one, as we use great, in great-great-grandfather/' So that briefly stated the belief is that from a reed or bed of reeds, came the remotest ancestor who originated all other things. By the Amazulu, however, this remotest ancestor is but * Canon Callaway tells na that "Utkkniffa is a reed, strictly speaking, one which is capably of 'stooling,' throwing ont oifsets;" and he thinks that it comes by Tirtoe of this metaphor " to mean a source of being." We shaU hereafter find good reason for thinking that the tradition originates in no such far-fetched metaphor; bat in a mnch simpler way.
810 THB DATA OF 800IOL0OT.
nominally recognized. Propitiation is limited to their nearer ancestors who are secondary Unkulunkulus, called in some cases Onkolnnkulus. The ideas concerning^ and the behavionr towards^ the remoter and nearer ancestors^ may be gathered from the following extracts: — " They say that Unkulunkalu, who sprang from the bed of reeds, is dead."
" By that it began to be evident that Unknlonkxila had no longer a son who could worship him; * * * the praise-giving names of Unknlnnlnila are lost."
**A11 nations [i.^., tribes] have their own Unknlunkulu. Each has its own."
"Utshange is the praise-giving name of our honse; he was tlie first man of oar family, — onr Unkulimkalu, who founded our house."
" We worshipped those whom we had seen with our eyes, their death and their life amongst us."
" All we know is that the young and the old die, and the shade de- parts. The Unknlunkulu of us black men is that one to whom we pray for our cattle, and worship, saying, * Father! ' We say, * Udhlaminil Uhhadebe! Umutimkulu! Uthlomo I Let me obtain what I wish, Lord! Let me not die, but live, and walk long on the earth/ Old people see him at night in their dreams."
Here, then, we see ancestor-worship, in bnt a slightly- developed form — an nnhistoric ancestor-worship. There have arisen no personages dominant enough to retain their distinct individualities through many generations; and to subordinate the minor traditional individualities.
§ 149. Peoples who are more settled and further advanced show us a progress. Along with worship of recent and local ancestors, there goes worship of ancestors who died at earlier dates, and who, remembered by their power or position, have acquired in the general mind a supremacy. This truth ought to need but little illustration, for the habits of ancient races, as described and implied in early records, make it familiar. As Mr. Grote says — ** In the retrospective faith of a Greek, the ideas of worship and ancestry coalesced: every association of men, large or small, in whom ANCESTOB-WOBSHIP IN GBNJBBAL. 811 there existed a feeling of present union, traced back that union to some oommon initial progenitor, and that progenitor again was either the common god whom they worshipped, or some semi-divine being closely allied to him. " And this stage of deTelopment in which^ along with worship of ancestry distinctly traced back a certain number of gene- rations, there went a more widely-diffused worship of some to whom the relationships were lost in the far past, we find paralleled in other places 5 as, for example, in Peru. Sun- worship and Ynca-worship were ther6 joined with an active local worship of forefathers. Ayendano, repeating the affirmative answers to his questions, says:— - " Each of yonr ancestors if: * ♦ worshipped the marcayocc, who is the founder or senior of the 'village, from whom yon are sprang. He was not worshipped by the Indians of any other village, for they had another mareayoce" Chiefly, however, let us remark that these settled races of America, having traditions better preserved, exhibit in their professed creeds the transformation of their remotest progenitors into deities. By the Amazulu, the traditional old-old-one, though regarded as having given origin to them and all other things, is not worshipped: he is finally dead, and his sons, who once worshipped him, are finally dead; and the worship is monopolized by those later de- scendants who are remembered as founders of tribes. But among these more advanced peoples of America, the most ancient men, considered as still living elsewhere, had a worship which subordinated the worship of immediate an- cestors. This is well brought out by Priar Bobadilla's cross-examination of some Nicaraguans. Here are a few of the questions and answers: — " Friar, Do yon know who made a heaven and earth? " Indian, My parents told me when I was a child that it was Tamagastad and Gipattoval i|e ifs ♦ " Fr. Where are they? " Ind, I do not know; but they are our great gods whom we call 812 THE DATA OF SOCIOLOGY.
" Fr, By whom are the t«oU$ served?
" Jft^. I haye heard old men saj that there are people who serve them, and that the Indians who die in their honses go under the earth, and that those who die in battles go to serve the UotM, " Fr, Whioh is better— to go nnder the earth or to serve the teotss?
"Ind, It is better to go to serve the teoUt, for they go there to their fathers.
" Fr. Bat if their fathers have died in bed, how can they see them there?
'*Ind, Oar fathers are these teote$.'* Here are passages from the examination of another witness — ^the cazique Aragoaltegoan: — " Fr, Who created heaven and earth, and the stars, and the moon, and man, and all the rest?
" Ind. Tamagastad and ^pattoval; the former is a man, and the latter a woman.
" Fr, Who created that man and that woman?
*' Ind, No one; on the contrary, all men and women descend from " Fr, Are those gods whom you name made of flesh or wood, or of what other material?
" Ind, They are of flesh, and are man and woman, and youths, and are always the same; and they are of brownish colour like us Indians: and they walked over the earth dressed, and ate what the Indians ate. * * * •• Fr. What do they live on now?
** Ind, They eat what the Indians eat; for the plant (maize?) and all other eatables came from where the teotes dweU." Another witness^ Ta9oteyda^ a priest^ apparently sixty years of age^ who declined to become a Christian^ gave a like account of these ancestor-gods^ answering qaestions thus:— " Fr, Are they men?
" Ind. They are men.
" Fr. How do you know?
** Ind. My ancestors told me.
" Fr. Where are those gods of yours?
"Ind, My ancestors told me that they are where the sun rises. ♦ ♦ ♦ " Fr, Did they come to ♦ ♦ ♦ your shrines to speak to you?
'* Ind. Our ancestors said that long ago they used to come and speak with them, but now they come no more.
'* Fr, Do those teoie$ eat?
**Ind, I have heard my ancestors say that they eat the blood and ANCESTOB-WOBSHIF IN GBNXSAL. 313 hearts of men; and some birds; and we give them candlewood, incense* and resin; that is what they eat."
From other like testimonies given by the thirteen caziqnes^ and chiefs, and priests, I will add only the following:— " Fr. Who sends yon rain and all things?
" /nd. The water is sent us by Quiateot, who is a man, and has &thor and mother, and the father is called Omeyateite, and the mother, Omeyate^igoat; and those dwell ♦ 4^ « where the son rises in heayen."
Pages might be filled by evidence of like meaning. What has been given shows, like the rest, that the remotest remembered ancestors have become divinities, remaining human, as all aboriginal divinities do, in physical and mental attributes, and differing only in power; that being recog- nized in tradition as the begetters, or causers, of existing men, they, as the only known causers of anything, come to be tacitly regarded as the causers of other things -^ and that they reside in the region whence the race came, and which, as we before saw, is the other world travelled to by the dead. The definite statements of these peoples directly imply that transformation of ancestors into deities, which we saw was indirectly implied by the growth of funeral rites into worship of the dead, and eventually into religious worship.
§ 150. It is said, however, that ancestor- worship is peculiar to the inferior races. I have seen implied, I have heard in conversation, and I have now before me in print, the statement that '^ no Indo-European or Semitic nation, * While correcting the proof of thiB chapter, I have met with dear evidence of the way in which the inadequately-differentiated ideas and words of primi- tive peoples, lead to confusions of this kind. In his Sanskrit TexU, Dr. Moir, showing the conceptions which the ancient Bishis had of the Yedic hymns as composed by themselves, groups together the various cases in which a word implying this composition is used. The several words thus used are " making," " fabricating/' " begetting, or generating." Now if in such a comparatively- developed language, these words are so imperfectly specialized as to be indis- criminately applied to the same act> we may well understand how incapable ruder languages must be of expressing a distinction between begetting; makings and creating.
314 THB DATA OF SOCIOLOOY.
SO far as wo know, seems to have made a religion of wor- ship of the dead." And the intended conclusion appears to be that these superior races, who in their earliest recorded times had higher forms of worship, were not even in their still earlier times, ancestor-worshippers.
That those who have another theory to uphold should thus interpret the evidence, is not unnatural: every hypo- thesis tends to assimilate facts yielding it support and to reject adverse facts. But that adherents of the Evolution- doctrine should admit, and even allege, such a profound distinction between the minds of different human races, is surprising. Those who believe in creation by manufacture, may consistently hold that Aryans and Semites were super- naturally endowed with higher conceptions than Turanians: if species of animals were separately made with fundamental differences, varieties of men may have been so too. But to assert that the human type has been evolved from lower types, and then to deny that the superior human races have been evolved, mentally as well as physically, from the inferior, and must once have had those general conceptions which the inferior still have, is a marvellous inconsistency. Even in the absence of evidence it would be startling; and in the presence of contrary evidence it is still more startling.
If in their more advanced times the leading divisions of the Aryans habitually, along with the worship of their greater deities, worshipped ancestors, who, according to their remoteness, were regarded as divine, semi-divine, and human; must we really infer that in the course of their progress they adopted these ideas and practices from in- ferior races? On finding that by the Greeks, heroes from whom the people of each locality traced their descent, were inade objects of religious rites, just as by aboriginal Peru- vians and others; shall we say that while becoming civilized they had grafted on their higher creed this lower creed? When we recall the familiar facts that besides sacrificing to the ghosts of their recent dead^ the Bomans sacrificed to the ghosts of their more ancient dead, who were the founders of their families^ just as the Amazulu do at the present time; are we to infer that while Asiatic nomads they had no such worship, but that, then worshipping only certain personal- ized powers of nature, they adopted the religion of less cultured })eoples as they themselves became more cultured? Such assumptions would be inadmissible even had we no indications of the original Aryan beliefs; and are still more inadmissible on seeing what the original Aryan beliefs were. As embodied in their sacred writings, they were essentially the same as those of existing barbarians, ''The heroic Indra, who delights in praise," and to whom the hymn is ''chaunted at the sacrifice," hoping to impel ''the well- accoutred, the loud-thundering, to succour us," is but the ancestor considerably expanded; and from the mouth of the Zulu chief about to sacrifice, would equally well come the words of the Aryan rishi — "friends drive hither the milch cow with a new hymn." If the human derivation of Indra needs further evidence, we have it in the statement concerning an intoxicating beverage made from the sacred plant — " the soma exhilarates not Indra unless it be poured out"; which is exactly the belief of an African respecting the libation of beer for an ancestral ghost. From the Kig- Yeda we learn that men who by their virtues gained admis- sion to heaven attained an existence like that of deities; and these "ancient pious sages," who "shared in the enjoy- ments of the gods," were implored to be "propitious" and to protect. Still more specific are passages from the laws of Menu. We have the statement that the manes eat of the funeral meal; we have the direction to the head of the family to make a daily offering to get the good will of the Tnanes, and also a monthly offering. And the ideas of savages, whose superior gods are the more powerful ghosts, are undeniably paralleled in a further injunction: to pre- serve the oblations to the manes, the master of the house 816 THB DATA OV SOOIOLOGT.
must cbmmeiice with an offering to the gods^ so that they may not appropriate what is intended for the mcmes!
Do^ then^ the Semitic races famish a solitary exception? Strong evidence mnst be assigned before it can be admitted that they do; and no such strong evidence is forthcoming. Contrariwise, what positive facts we gather have opposite implications. Bemembering that nomadic habits are un- favourable to evolution of the ghost-theory, it is manifest that if the ancient Hebrews had, like some existing peoples, not reached the conception of a permanently-existing ghost, they would, of course, have no established ancestor-worship: not because it was beneath them, but because the condi- tions for display of it were not fulfilled. Further, it is manifest that the silence of their legends is but a negative fact, which may be as misleading as negative facts usually are j and beyond the general reason we have special reasons for suspecting this illusiveness. For among other peoples we find traditions that give no accounts of practices which not only existed but were dominant: the reason being that extraordinary occurrences only are narrated in them, and not ordinary occurrences. Interesting personal adventures form their subject-matter and not social habits, which are at best traceable by implication, and in a condensed narra- tive may leave no traces at all. Thus, to take a case, the legends of the Polynesians say scarcely more than the Bible does about the worship of ancestors; and yet ancestor-wor- ship was in full activity among them. Again, it should be remembered that the sacred books of a religion nominally professed, may give very untrue ideas concern- ing the actual beliefs of its professors. Two facts already named incidentally show this. The Turkomans are rigid Mahometans; and yet, making pilgrimages to the tombs of canonized robbers, they pray to their ghosts. Similarly, the acceptance of Mahometanism does not prevent the Bedouins from sacrificing at the graves of their forefathers. In both cases there is habitually done that which we should ANCESTOR- WOBSHIP IN GENERAL. 817 infer could not be done^ if we drew our inferences from the Koran. When^ thus warned^ we turn to the denunciations of the Hebrew prophets directed against fprnus of. worship which the Hebrews had in common with other races^ we are reminded that the religion embodied in the Bible differed greatly from the popular religion. Besides the idolatry persisted in notwithstanding reprobation^ there was tree- worship; and the ceremonials^ equally low with those of semi-ciyilized peoples in geileral^ included prostitution in temples. Moreover^ the association of mourning dresses with fastings as well as the law against self -bleeding and cutting-oS the hair for the dead^ imply primitive funeral rites like those of ancestor-worshippers in general. Nor is this all. On making an offering of first-fruits to Jehovah, the sacrificer is required to say that he has not ''given thereof for the dead.''* Hence, the conclusion must be that ancestor-worship had developed as far as nomadic habits allowed, before it was repressed by a higher wor- ship. But whether there is or is not adequate reason for ascribing a partially-developed ancestor- worship to the Hebrews, there is evidence that it has existed, and continues to exist, among other Semitic peoples. Abundant proof is furnished by existing tribes in Arabia. In a paper entitled ''Le culte des ancdtres divinis6s dans FY^men/' contained in the Comptes rendus of the French Academy, M. Lenormant, after commenting on some inscriptions, says: — " Here, then, we have twiee repeated a whole series of human persons, decidedly deceased ancestors or relations of the author of the dedica- tion, llieir names are accompanied with the titles thej bore during lifetime. They are invoked by their descendants at the same time, in the same degree (rank), with the same intention, as the gods [mentioned in the same formula]; being, in short, completely placed on a par with the inhabitants of heaven. 4: 4^ * They incontestably are deified persons, objects of a fiumly worship, and gods or genii in the belief of the people of their race."
* Deuteronomy, zxvi. 14. See also Sccleeiattioue, yii. 88; and Tobit, iv. 17.
818 THl! DATA OF 80CI0L0G7.
Elindred evidence is furnished by the following passage from the Essai sur Vhistoire dee Arabes of M. Caussin de Perceval. Speaking of the time of Mahomet^ he says: — '* The greatest part of the nation [i.e., all who were not either Jews or Christians] were pagans. « * * They had a great number of deities; each tribe and nearly each fiGunily had one which they worshipped in particular. They admitted, however, the existence of a Supreme God (Allah), with whom the other deities were powerful intercessors. * * * Some beUeved that at death all was at an end; others believed in a resurrection and another Ufe."
Here are several significant implications. The fact last named reminds us of the ancient Hebrew belief, or no-belief. Further, this difference of opinion among Arabs, some of whom are stationary and some wandering, harmonizes with the suggestion above made, that nomadic habits are less favourable than the habits of a settled life to a persistent ghost-propitiation with all its sequences. Respecting the idea of a supreme deity, accompanying ancestor-worship among them, it is manifest that wandering hordes, coming in frequent contact with large, relatively-civilized peoples, would inevitably acquire it from them; as, from their European visitors, it is now acquired by savages. But that the belief so acquired is vague and superficial, is shown us by the existing Bedouins; whose Mahometanism, accord- ing to Mr. PaJgprave, is of the most shadowy kind, while the reality of their ancestor-worship is proved by the sacrifices they " devoutly " make at tombs. No more, then, of Semites than of Aryans can ancestor-worship be denied.
§ 151. It seems, however, that mythologists regard these observances as having a moral rather than a religious character — ^as not forming parts of what is properly called worship. Let us contemplate this proposed distinction under its concrete aspects.
When Nicaraguans are described as having adored the teotes, said by them to be the ancient men from whom they descended, we may accept the fact as it stands, for these ANCE8TOB-WOS8HIF IN aSNBBAL. 819 people were of inferior race; but when^ in tlie Institutes of Memty we read that 'Hhe sons of MaricHi and of all the other Bishis [ancient sages] ^ who were the offspring of Menu, son of Brahmd^ are called the companies of Pitris^ or forefathers,''* we must understand the fatherhood not literally but metaphorically: these people were Aryans. If one of the Amazulu, sacrificing a bullock, begins by in- viting " the first Itongo who is known '' (oldest ancestral ghost), or in other cases is careful to name first, a ghost who is supposed to be angry because he has not been pro* pitiated, the fact exhibits the crude ideas of a race incapable of high civilization. If, however, the Institutes of Menu say — '' Leii an offering to the gods be made at the beginning and end of the srdddha: it must not begin and end with an offering to ancestors; for he who begins and ends it with an oblation to the Pitris, quickly perishes with his pro- geny'';t we must, seeing the proved capacities of the Aryan mind, distinguish between the religious sentiment prompt- ing one part of the sacrifice, and the moral sentiment prompting the other. Negroes who, when suffering, go to the woods and cry for help to the spirits of dead relatives, show by the implied conceptions the grovelling nature of their race; and we must not confound with them those conceptions of the Iranians implied in the Khorda Avesta, where the souls of forefathers are called upon in prayers: J these express filial feeling only. Obviously, the frequent sacrifices by which the ancient Egyptians honoured their dead, namely, three " festivals of the seasons," twelve ^' festivals of the month,'' and twelve " festivals of the half- month," formed part of their religion; for were they not Turanians and ancestor-worshippers? Quite otherwise, however, must we interpret the offerings which the Romans made to their Lares, on the calends, nones, and ides of every month; for these were merely marks of proper respect to