ever, is the character elsewhere given to him. ''He is immortal, and confers immortality on gods and men"; '' the creator and father of the gods "; '' king of gods and men/' Yet along with this ascription of supreme divinity goes the belief that he is present in the Soma-juice. Here is a passage combining all the attributes: — R Y. ix. 96, 5 and 6. " Soma is purified; he who is the generator of hynms, of Dayus, of Pritliivl, of Agni, of Suiya, of Indra, and of Vishnu. Soma, who is a brahman -priest among the gods (or priests), a leader among the poets, a rishi among sages, a buffalo among wild beasts, a PLANT-WOBSHIP. 877 fidcoQ among YultnreB, an axe amid the forests, advances to the filter with a sound."
The origin of these conceptions dates back to a time when the Aryan races had not widely diverged; for like conceptions occur in the Zendavesta. Though, instead of Soma, the name there nsed is Haoma, there is so general an agreement as to show identity of the plant and of the worship. Windischmann says the Haoma is '' not a plant • only, bnt also a powerful deity''; and also that "in both works (Zendavesta and Rig Veda) the conceptions of the god and the sacred juice blend wonderfully with each other.''
That certain plants yielding intoxicating agents come therefore to be regarded as containing supernatural beings, is a conclusion supported by other instances — ^that of the vine being one. Dr. Muir, speaking of Soma as ^' the Indian Dionysus," quotes from the BaeduB of Euripides certain passages showing analogous conceptions. Of Dionysus it is said: — " He discovered and introduced among men the liquid draught of the grape, which puts an end to the sorrows of wretched mortals." * * * * He, bom a god, is poured out in libations to the gods." ♦ ♦ ♦ " And this deity is a prophet. For Bacchic excitement and raving have in them much prophetic power. For when this god enters in force into.the body, he causes those who rave to foretell the future."
That the facts are to be thus interpreted is shown by cer- tain allied but less developed beliefs found elsewhere. Garcilasso tells us that in Peru, tobacco " has been called the sacred herb" — a nervous stimulant was regarded with reverence. Similarly with another plant said to have an invigorating effect, the eoca. According to Markham, " the Peruvians still look upon it [coca] with feelings of supersti- tious veneration. In the time of the Yncas it was sacrificed to the Sun, the Huillac Umu, or high priest, chewing the leaf during the ceremony." Among the Chibchas, too, hnyo (coca) was used as an inspiring agent by the priests; and certain people chewed and smoked tobacco to produce the power of divination. In North Mexico, a kindred 378 THE DATA OF SOOIOLOGT.
notion is implied by a fact Bancroft gires — some of the natives " have a great veneration for the hidden virtues of poisonous plants, and believe that if they crush or destroy one, some harm will happen to them/' And at the present time in the Philippine Islands, as we are told by the recent traveller Jagor, the Ignatius bean, which contains strychnia and is used as a medicine, is worn as an amulet and held capable of miracles.* § 179. The attribution to a plant of a human personality, and the consequent tendency towards worship of the plants has other origins. Here is one of them.
In § 148, after giving some extracts from the cosmogony of the Amazulu, including the statement that XJnkulunkulu, their creator, descended from a reed, or a bed of reeds, I * As a eorollaiy from this group of belief^ let me here add a posuble explanation. Causing mental exaltation. Soma is described in the Vedie hymns as giving knowledge. We have the expressions — '* Soma of incom- parable wisdom"; "the ruddy Soma" has "the understanding of a sage;" " we have drunk the Soma, • • • we have entered into light." By im- plication, then, the Soma is called, if not a "tree of knowledge," still, a plant of knowledge. Further, the Soma is said to have given life to the gods; and the rejoicing statement of the rishis is — " We have drunk the Soma, we have become immortal." As the source of an enlivening beverage the Soma is thus a "tree of life"; and how naturally such a notion results from the effect of a nervous stimulant, is shown to us by the calling alcohol eau de vm. Kow with these facts join the further fact» that wheire the supply of a valued com- modity is small, a superior naturally forbids the use of it to inferiors — ^to the conquered, to slaves, to subjects. Thus in Peru, the nervous stimulant coca, or cuea, was limited to the royal class: " only the Ynca and his relations, and some Curaeas, to whom the Ynca extended this favour, were allowed to eat the herb called cuca." We thus discern a not improbable motive tor interdicting the use of a plant from the fruit or juice of which a stimulant producing mental exaltation is obtained — a motive much more comprehensible than U the desire that subject beings should continue to confound good and eviL A certain ancient legend is thus rendered comprehensible. (Since this was written I find that the sacred tree of the Assyrians, figured in their sculp- turesy is considered by archssologists — having no hypothesis to Justify — ^to represent the palm-tree; and with this identification we may join the ftiCt that even still, in some regions, an intoxicating drink is made from fermented palm- juice,) PLANT-WOBSHIP. 879 cited the suggested interpretation of Canon Callaway; remarking that we should hereafter find a more natural one. This more natural one is not derivable from data fur- nished by the Amazulu themselves; but comparison of their traditions with those of neighbouring races discloses it.
Abready it has been shown that in South Africa, as in other parts of the world, traditions obviously derived from ancestral troglodytes, refer to caves as places of creation. Instances before given may be supported by others. Re- specting the Bechuanas, MofEatt says — " Moiimo [the native name for a god] as well as man, with all the different species of animals* came ont of a hole or cave in the Bakone country, to the north, where, say they, their footmarks are still to be seen in the indurated rock, which was at that time sand." Again, the beliefs of the Basutos are thus given by Casalis: — " A legend says that both men and animals came out of the bowels of the earth by an immense hole, the opening of which was in a cavern, and that the animals appeared £rst. Another tradition, more generaUy received among the Basutos, is, that man sprang np in a marshy place, where reeds were growing."
And now observe the unexpected way in which these two traditions of the Basutos are reconciled with one another, as well as with the traditions oi the Bechuanas and the Amazulu. Here is a passage from Arbousset and Daumas: — " This spot is very celebrated amongst the Basutos and the Liglioyas, not only because the likatus of the tribes are there, but because of a certain mythos, in which they are told that their ancestors came origin- ally from that place. There is there a cavern surrounded with marsh reeds and mud, whence they believe that they have all proceeded." So that these several statements refer to the same place — the place where Unkulunkulu ''broke off in the beginning" — where he ''broke off the nations from Uthlanga " — -where the tribes separated (the word used means literally to separate). And while in some traditions the cave remained the dominant recollection, in others the surrounding bed of reeds acquired predominance; and in their imperfect speech this was confounded with a reed. Men came out of the reeds; men descended from reeds; became one form of the legend.
880 THE DATA OF SOCIOLOdT.
Among the Amaznlu there seems no resulting worship of the reed; and as, worshipping their near ancestors, they do not worship their remotest ancestor Unkalankala, it is con- sistent that they should not worship the plant whence he is said to have proceeded. Another South African race, how- ever, worship a plant similarly regarded as an original ancestor. Of the Damaras, Galton tells us ''a tree is sup- posed to be the universal progenitor, two of which divide the honour'' (Andersson says there are several). Elsewhere he adds — ''We passed a magnificent tree. It was the parent of all the Damaras. * * * The savages danced round and round it in great delight.^' In another place he thus gives the Damara creed: — " In the beginning of things there was a tree, and out of this tree came Damaras, Bushmen, oxen, and zebras. * * * The tree gave birth to everything else that lives.'' Unconnected with anything further, this ap- pears to be an unaccountable belief. But a clue to the origin of it is yielded by the following note in Andersson's Ngami. ''In my journey to the Lake Ngami, * * * I observed whole forests of a species of tree called Omumbo- rombonga, the supposed progenitor of the Damaras." If now we make the reasonable supposition that these tribes descended from a people who lived in forests of such trees (and low types, as Yeddahs, Ju4ngs, and wild tribes in the interior of Borneo, are forest-dwellers), we see that a conf asion like that between a reed and a bed of reeds, originates this notion of descent from a tree.
The inference drawn from these two allied cases might be questionable were it unsupported; but it is supported by the inference from a much stronger case. We learn from Bastian that " the Congese proper, according to their traditions, have sprung from trees ''; and we also learn that " the forest from which a former reigning family of Congo was said to have come to subdue the country, was after- wards an object of veneration to the natives." Here, then, emergence from a forest is obviously confounded with PLANT-W0B8HIP. 881 descent from trees; and there is a consequent quasi^worship both of the forest and of a certain kind of tree which is planted in their market-places.
On recalling the fact pointed out on p. 313^ that eyen Sanscrit indiscriminately applies to the same process the words making and begetting; we shall not doubt that an inferior language will fail to maintain in tradition the dis- tinction between coTning out of a forest of trees and coming out of trees; and that emerging from trees of a certain kind will be confounded with emergence from a certain kind of tree. Doubt, if any remains, will disappear when we come to sundry analogous cases of confusion between a locality whence the race came, and a conspicuous object in that locality, which so becomes the supposed parent of the race.
§ 180. Before passing to the third origin of plant- worship, which, like the third origin of animal-worship, is linguistic, I must again comment on the defects of language conducing to it — defects some of them before pointed out, and some of them still to be pointed out.
How the poverty, the vagueness, and the incoherence of early speech, must inevitably cause misconstruction of tradi- tions, I may remind the reader by some additional cases. According to Palgrave, "the colours green, black, and brown are habitually confounded in common Arabic par- lance.'^ Hunter says " Santali, being barren of abstract terms, has no word for ' time.' '' We are told by Hill that the Kamtschkadales have " but one term for the sun and the moon,'' and have " scarcely any names for fish or birds, which are merely distinguished by the moon in which they are the most plentiful." Such instances strengthen the conclusion that undeveloped speech cannot express the distinction between an object and a person named after it.
But here let us observe that this inference need not be left in the form of an implication: it may be made direct.
882 THE ik4xi or bocxoloot.
In early stageB of lingmsidc progress there can exist no Bnch abstract word as name; still less a word for the process of naming: even the ancient Egyptian language not having risen to the power of expressing any difference between ^' My name '' and " I name or call/' To conceive a name as such, is to conceiye it as a symbol of symbols. There mnst first be observed the fact that special articulate sounds applied to particular things, severally stand related to them in like ways. Before a word can be thought of as a name, it must be thought of not simply as a group of sounds associated with a certain object; but it must be thought of as having a trait in common with many groups. The ability of names to remind other persons of the objects named, must be recognized ba a general property of names; and then this property must be abstracted in thought from its concrete manifestations before the conception of a name can arise. If now we remember that in the languiskges of inferior races the advances in generalization and abstraction are so slight that while there are words for particular kinds of trees there is no word for tree; and that, as among the Damaras, while each reach of a river has its special title, there is none for the river as a whole, much less a word for river; or if, still better, we consider the fact that the Cherokees have thirteen different verbs for washing different parts of the body, and different things, but no word for washing, dissociated from the part or thing washed; we shall see that social life must have passed through sundry stages, with their accom- panying steps in linguistic progress, before the conception of a name became possible.
Inductive justification is not wanting. Unfortunately, in most vocabularies of the uncivilized, travellers have given us only such equivalents of our words as are used by the peoples described: taking no note of the words we possess for which they have no equivalents. There is not this defect, however, in the Vocabulary of Dialects spoken in the Nicohar and Andaman Isles compiled by Mr. F. A. de PLANT-WOBSHIP. 38S RoepstorS.*. From this it appears that the tribes in Great Nicobar, in Little Nicobar^ in Teressa^ and in the Andaman Islands^ have no words corresponding to our word name.
The inference, then, is inevitable. If there is no word for name, it is impossible for the narrators of legends to express the distinction between a person and the object he was named after. The results of the confusion we have now to observe in its relations to plant-worship.
§ 181. Writing of the Tasmaniaus, Dr. Milligan says — ''The names of men and women were taken from natural objects and occurrences around, as, for instance, a kangaroo, a gum-tree, snow, hail, thunder, the wind, flowers in blos- som, etc.^' Among the Hill-tribes of India the like occurs: *' Cotton '^ and ''White Cotton'' are names of persons among the Elarens. Similarly in America. The Araw&ks have in- dividuals known as *' Tobacco,'' " Tobacco-leaf," " Tobacco- flower;" and by the ancient Peruvians one of the Yncas was called " Sayri," a tobacco-plant.
On joining with these facts the fact that by the Pueblos, one of the several tribes into which they are divided is called the " Tobacco-plant race," we cannot fail to recog- nize an effect of this naming after plants. Associated as this clan of Pueblos is with other clans named after the bear, the prairie-wolf, the rattle-snake, the hare, which have severally descended from men called after, and eventually identified with, these animals, the "Tobacco-plant race" has doubtless descended from one who was called after, and eventually identified with, the tobacco-plant. In like manner the " Reed-grass race," of these same people, must be regarded as having had a kindred derivation; as also, among the Brazilian Indians, the "Mandiocca" race.
Now if an animal regarded as original progenitor, is therefore reverentially treated; so, too, may we expect the plant-ancestor will be: not, perhaps, so conspicuously, since • Calcnttm 1876.
384 THB DATA OF SOOIOLOOT.
the powers of plants to affect tlie fates of human beings are less conspicuous. But the idea of the sacredness of cer- tain plants is likely thus to originate^ and to generate fifti{Z«{-religious observances.
Here may fitly be noted a way in which misinterpretation of names leads to a belief^ not in the descent of men from animals and plants, but in the descent of animals and plants from men. Already we have seen (§ 175) that by the Salish, the Nisquallies, the Yakimas, not only birds and beasts, but also edible roots are supposed to haye had human ancestors; and it was suggested that misconstruction of names might lead to this supposition as well as to its converse. But there exists a habit more specially conducing to beliefs of this class. Various unallied peoples make it a custom for the parent to take a name from the child, and to be known after its birth as father or mother of So-and-so: an in- stance was given in § 171, and the Malays and Dyaks furnish others. Now if the child has either an animal- name or a plant-name, the literal rendering in tradition of the statement that a certain man was '^the father of the turtle," or a certain woman ''the mother of maize," would lead to the belief that this animal or this plant had a human progenitor. In some cases a figurative use of these names of parenthood, leads in a still stranger way to the same error, and to many kindred errors. An individual is regarded as the producer, or generator, of some attribute by which he or she is distinguished; and is hence called the parent of that attribute, which may be signified either directly or by metaphor. For example. Mason tells us of the E[arens —: "When the child grows up, and develops any particular trait of character, the friends give it another name, with ' father' or ' mother ' attached to it Thus, a boy is veiy quick to work, and he is named * Ftether of swiftness.' If he is a good shot with a bow and arrow, he is called ' Father of shooting.' When a girl is clevei: to contrive, she is named ' Mother of contrivance.' If she be ready to talk, she becomes 'Mother of talk.' Sometimes the name is given from the personal PLANT-WOBSHIP. 385 appearance. Thus a Tery white girl is called ' Mother of white cotton '; and another of an elegant form is named * Mother of the pheasant.' " Here we have forms of names which^ misunderstood in after-times, may initiate beliefs in the human ancestry not only of plants and animals, but of other things.
§ 182. An indirect proof that the attribution of spirits to plants, and the resulting plant-worship, have arisen in one or other of the ways shown, must be added. The evidence clearly implies that there is always an identification, near or remote, between the worshipped plant and a human being.
Did plant-worship arise from an alleged primeval fetich- ism — ^were it one of the animistic interpretations said to result from the tendency of undeveloped minds to ascribe duality to all objects; there would be no explanation of the conceived shape of the plant-spirit. The savage thinks of the other-self of a man, woman, or child, as like the man, woman, or child, in figure — ^as being, indeed, a duplicate recognizable as the particular individual. If, then, the conception of plant-spirits were, as alleged, a sequence of the original animism, preceding and not succeeding the ghost-theory, plant-spirits ought to be conceived as plant-shaped; and they ought to be conceived as having other attributes in common with plants. Nothing of the kind is found. They are not supposed to have any plant- characters; and they are supposed to have many characters wholly unlike those of plants. This is both directly and indirectly shown.
In the East there are stories of speaking trees: to the indwelling doubles is attributed a &culty which the trees themselves have not. The Congo-people place calabashes of palm-wine at the feet of their sacred trees, lest they should be thirsty: they ascribe to them a liking not shown by trees, but treat them as they do their dead. In like manner the statement of Oldfield, who, at Adda- (X)odah, saw fowls and many other things suspended as cc 386 THB DATA OF BOCIOUOQY.
offerings to a gigantic tree; the statement of Mr. Tylor, who, to an ancient cypress in Mexico, found attached by the Indiana, teeth and locks of hair in great numbers; the state- ment of Hunter in his Annals of Rural Bengal, that once a year, at Beerbboom, the people '^make offerings to a ghost who dwells in a Bela-tree; '' unite to show that not the tree, but the resident being, is propitiated; and that this has characters utterly unlike those of a tree, and completely like those ascribed to the other-self of a human being. Further, in some Egyptian wall-paintings, we see female figures represented as emerging from trees and dispensing blessings.
Still more conclusive is the direct evidence. In LoVs Sarawak, we read that the people believe men are some- times metamorphosed into trees; and he further says — " The Land Dyaks venerate certain plants, bnflding small bamboo altars near them, to which is placed a ladder to facilitate the ascent of the^ spirits to the offerings, consisting of food, water, etc., placed on the altar on festive occasions."
Equally specific is the conception of the Iroquois, as given by Morgan. He says that the spirit of com, the spirit of beans, the spirit of squashes, " are supposed to have the forms of beautiful females.^' And this last instance re- minds us of the dryades of classic mythology, which, similarly conceived as human-shaped female spirits, were sacrificed to in the same ways that human spirits in general were sacrificed to.
Harmonizing entirely with the foregoing interpretations, these facts are incongruous with the animistic interpre- tation.
§ 183. Plant-worship, then, like the worship of idols and animals, is an aberrant type of ancestor-worship — a type somewhat more disguised externally, but having the same internal nature. Though it grows out in three different directions^ there is but one root.
PLANT-WORSHIP. 387 PLANT-WORSHIP. 387 The toxic effects produced by certain plants, or by ex- tracts from them, or by their fermented juices, are assimi- lated to other nervous excitements, as caused by spirits or demons. Where the stimulation is agreeable, the possessing spirit, taken in with the drug and supposed to be preyiously in the plant, is regarded as a beneficent being — a being sometimes identified with a human original and gradually developed into a divinity who is lauded and prayed to.
Tribes that have migrated or emerged from places charac- terized by particular trees or plants, unawares change the legend of emergence from them into the legend of descent from them: words fitted to convey the distinction not being contained in their vocabularies. Hence the belief that such trees are their ancestors, and the regard for them as sacred.
Further, the naming of individuals after plants becomes a cause of confusion. Identification of the two in tradition can be prevented only by the use of verbal qualifications that are impossible in rude languages; and from this identification there arise ideas and sentiments respecting the plant-ancestor, allied to those excited by the animal- ancestor or the ancestor figured as human.
Thus the ghost-theory, supplying us with a key to other groups of superstitions, supplies us with a key to the superstitions constituting this group — superstitions other- wise implying gratuitous absurdities which we may not legitimately ascribe even to primitive men.
CO 2 CHAPTER XXIV.
NATUBE-W0R8HIP.
§ 184. Ukdeb this title whicli^ literally interpreted^ in- cludes the subject-matters of the last two chapters^ bat which is conventionally used in a more restricted sense, it remains to deal with those superstitions beliefs and senti- ments that refer to the more conspicuous inorganic objects and powers.
If not prepossessed by other theories, the reader will naturally anticipate parallelism between the genesis of these and the genesis of those described already. That their derivation is wholly unlike all derivations thus far traced, will appear to him improbable. He will, indeed, see that some of the reasons for identifying the adored object with a departed human being, no longer apply. Sun and Moon do not come into the old home or haunt the burial-cave, as certain animals do; and therefore cannot for this reason be regarded as spirits of the dead. Seas and mountains have not, in common with certain plants, the trait that parts of them when swallowed produce nervous exaltation; and as- cription of divine natures to them cannot thus be acconnted for. But there remain, as common causes, the misinter- pretation of statements and the misinterpretation of names. Before dealing with these linguistic sources of Nature- worship, let me point out a further imperfection in NATUBE-WOBSHIP. 889 undeveloped speech wUch co-operates witli the other im- perfections.
In the life of Mrs. Somerville, she says that her little brother, on seeing the great meteor of 1783, exclaimed, '^ O, Mamma, there^s the moon rinnin' awa/' This descrip- tion of an inorganic motion hj a word rightly applied only to an organic motion, illustrates a peculiarity of the speech used by children and by savages. A child's vocabulary consists mainly of words referring to those living beings which chiefly affect it; and its statements respecting non- living things and motions, show a lack of words free from implications of vitality. The statements of uncivilized men are similarly characterized. The inland negroes who accom- panied Livingstone to the west coast, and on their return narrated their adventures, described their arrival at the sea by the words — '^ The world said to us ' I am finished; there is no more of me.' " Like in form and like in implication were the answers given to a correspondent who was in Ashantee during the late war.
** I exclaimed, ' We onght to be at Beulah by now, surely. But what's that? ' The answer came from onr guide. ' That, sar, plenty of water live, bimeby we walkee cross him/ ' Where's Beulah, then? ' ' Oh, Beulah live other side him big hill.' " So, too, is it with the observation which a Bechuana chief made to Casalis — *' One event is always the son of another, and we must never forget the parentage.'' The general truth that the poorer a language the more metaphorical it is, and the derivative truth that being first developed to express human affairs, it carries with it certain human im- plications when extended to the world around, is well shown by the fact that even still our word " to be '' is traced back to a word meaning " to breathe.'' Manifestly this defect in early speech conspires with the defects we have already observed, in favouring personalization. If anything raises the suspicion tliat an inorganic mass was once a human being, or is inhabited by the ghost of one, the 390 THK DATA Of SOCIOLOGY.
necessity of using words implying life fosters the suspi- cion. Taken alone, this defect has probably litUe inflaence. Thoogh a f etichistic system logically elaborated, may lead to the conclosion that boiling water is atiye; yet I see no evidence that the child who remarks of the boiling water that ** it says bubble, babble/' is led by the use of the word ''says'' to believe the water a living being; nor is there any indication that the negro who represented the earth as saying '' I am finished/' therefore conceived the earth as a speaking creatnre. All we can safely say is that, given erroneous personalizations otherwise arising, and the nse of these life-implying words will confirm them. In the case of Natnre-worship, as in the cases of Animal-worship and Plant- worship, the misleading beliefs due to language take their rise from positive statements accepted on autho- riiy, and unavoidably misinterpreted.