And here a significant correspondence may be noted. Birth-names derived irom. the Moon will habitually refer to it either as rising or setting, or else as in one of its phases — waxing, full, waning: a state of the Moon, rather than the Moon itself, wiU be indicated. Now the Egyptian goddess Bubastis, appears to have been the new Moon (some evi- dence implies the full) — at any rate a phase. The symbol- ization of Artemis expresses a like limitation; as does also that of Selene. And in his Aryan Mythology, Mr. Cox tells us that Id is '' pre-eminently the homed'* or young Moon; while Pandia is the full Moon. How do these facts harmonize with the current interpretation? Is the tyranny of metaphor so great that, of itself, it compels this change of personality f § 191. Naturally, we may expect to find that, in common with the Stars and the Moon, the Sun has been personalized by identification with a traditional human being.
Already implied by some of the quotations respecting the Moon, this is implied more distinctly by &cts now to be given. The original parent of the Oomanches, like them- selves but of gigantic stature, lives, they say, in the 404 THE DATA OF SOCIOLOGY.
Sun. So^ too, ''the Ohecliemecas called the Sun their father/' Writing of the Olchones, Bancroft says — "The snn here begins to be connected, or identified by name, with that great spirit, or rather, that Big Man, who made the earth and who rules in the sky;'' and he also says of the Tinneh that ''some of them believe in a good spirit called Tihn- gun, ' my old friend,' supposed to reside in the sun and in the moon." In the language of the Saliye, one of the Orinoco tribes, the name for the Sun is "the man of the Earth abore." Among the less civilized American peoples, then, the implication of original existence on Earth and subsequent migration to the sky, is general only. The conception is much upon a level with that of the Barotse, who, when asked by Livingstone whether a halo he saw round the Sun portended rain, gave the reply — " O no, it is the Barimo [gods or departed spirits] who have called a picho; don't you see they have the Lord in the centre f ": the belief doubtless being that as the rest of the celestial assemblage had once been on Earth, so, too, had their chief. But among peoples more advanced in civi- lization, and having traditions proportionately developed, the terrestrial personality of the Sun is definitely stated.
Writing of the Mexicans, Gamargo says: — "According to the Indians [of Tlascala] the Son was a god so leprous and sick that he could not move. The other gods pitied him, and constructed a very large'oven and lighted an enormoos fire in it, to put him out of pain hy killing him» or to purify him."
The Quich6 tradition, as given by Bancroft, is that after " there had been no sun in existence for many years," " the gods being assembled in a place called Teoiiliuacan, six leagues from Mexico, and gathered at the time round a great fire, told ^eir devotees that he of them who should first cast himself into that fire, should have the honour of being transformed into a sun."
Among the Zapotecs, there is a legend concerning the ances- tral cacique of Ulizteca, who, being a mighty archer, ** 8?iot there against the great light even till the going down of the NATURB-WOBSHTP. 405 same; then he took possession of all that land, seeing he had grievously wounded the sun, and forced him to hide hehind the mountains."
More specific still is a kindred story of the Mexicans, form- ing the sequel to one abore cited. When the god who became the Sun by throwing himself into the fire, first rose, he stood still; and when the other gods sent a mes- senger ordering him to go on, " the Sun replied that it would not go on untLL it had destroyed them. Both afraid and angry at this answer, one of them, called Gitli, took a how and three arrows, and shot at its fiery head; but the Son stooped, and thus avoided being hit. The second time he wounded its body, and also the third time. In rage, the Sun took one of the arrows and shot at Citli, piercing his forehead, and thus killing him on the spot" Nor does this exhaust the cases which Mexican traditions fur- nish. Waitz, after expounding the Sun-myths in which he figures, concludes that " Quetzalcoatl was originally a man, a priest in Tula, who rose as a religious reformer among the Toltecs, but was expelled by the adherents of Tezcatlipoca." By the mythologists these stories, in common with kin- dred stories of the Aryans, are without hesitation said to result from personalizations figuratively expressing the Sun's doings; and they appear to have no difficulty in believing that men not only gratuitously ascribed human nature to the Sun, but gratuitously identified him with a known man — ^with a priest or with a chief. Doubtless the Mexican tradition given by Mendieta, " that at one time there were five suns; and the fruits of the earth did not grow well, and the men died," will in some way be ex- plained as harmonizing with their hypothesis. Here, how- ever, the interpretation adopted, like preceding interpreta- tions, does not imply that these legends grew out of pure fictions; but that, however much transformed, they grew out of facts. Even were there no direct evidence that solar myths have arisen from misapprehensions of narratives respecting actual persons, or actual events in human history, the evidence furnished by analogy would warrant the belief. But the direct evidence is abundant.
406 THB DATA OF SOCIOLOGY.
One source of these solar mythsj is the literal accept- ance of figorative statements concerning the quarter whence the race came. Already we have seen that emergence of a people from a forest, confounded in tradition with emergence from the trees forming it^ has led to the wor- ship of trees as ancestors; and that the stoiy of migration from a distant mountain has become, through defect of lan- guage, changed into the story of descent from the moun- tain as a progenitor. The like has happened with peoples who have migrated from a locality marked by the Sun. On referring to § 112, where are given the ideas of various peoples respecting that other world whence their forefathers came, and to which they expect to return after deaths it will be seen that its supposed direction is usually either East or West: the obvious cause being that the places of sunrise and sunset, ranging through considerable angles of the horizon on either side, serve as general positions on the horizon to which more northerly and southerly ones are readily ap- proximated by the inaccurate savage, in the absence of definite marks. ''Where the Sun rises in heaven/' is said, by the Central American, to be the dwelling-place of his gods, who were his ancestors (§ 149); and the like holds in many cases. Describing the Dinneh (or Tinneh), Franklin says each tribe, or horde, adds some distinctive epithet taken from the name of the river, or lake, on which they hunt, or the district from which they last migrated. Those who come to Fort Chipewyan term themselves " Saw-eesaw-dinneh — Indians from the rising Sun.'' Now may we not suspect that such a name as ''Indians from the rising Sun," will, in the legends of people having an undeveloped speech, generate a belief in descent from the Sun? We ourselves use the expression "children of light"; we have the de- scriptive name " children of the mist " for a clan living in a foggy locality; nay, we apply the phrase "children of the Sun " to races living in the tropics. Much more, then, will the primitive man in his poverty-stricken language.
NATURE-WORSHIP. 407 speak of those coming from the place where the Sun rises as '' children of the Snn/' That peoples eren so advanced as the Perayians did so, we have clear proof. Bead this passage from Mr. Markham {Narratives, p. 12): — *' The oniyersal tradition pointed to a place called Paccari-tampu, as the cradle or point of origin of the Yncas. It was from Cuzco, the nearest point to the sun-xising; and as the sun was chosen as the pacarUoa [origin] of the Yncas, the place of their origin was at first assigned to Paocari-tampn. But when their conquests were extended to the GoUao, they could approach nearer to the sun, until they heheld it rising out of lake Titicaca; and hence the inland sea becan>e a second traditional place of royal origin."
When with this we join the facts that the Yncas, who otherwise carried ancestor-worship to so great an extent, were also predominantly worshippers of the Sun as ancestor; and that when the Ynca died he was '' called back to the mansion of his father, the Sun''; we have, I think, warrant for concluding that this belief in descent from the Sun re- sulted from misapprehension of the traditional fact that the Ynca-race emerged from the land where the Sun rises. Further evidence having this meaning is yielded by the names given by Mexicans and Ghibchas to the Spaniards. According to Herrera^ the Mexicans '' called Cortes the off- spring of the Sun/' And as the Spaniards came to them from the region of the rising Sun, we have a like cause preceding a like effect. Though apparently not for the same reason, the Ghibchas, too, made solar heroes of the Spaniards. Herrera says — ''wh^i the Spaniards first entered this king- dom, the natives were in a great consternation, looking upon them as the children of the Sun and Moon": a state- ment made in other words by P. Simon, and also by Lugo, who tells us that in their language, ^'8vu means the Sun, and Sue the Spaniard. The reason why this word svs is derived from 8ud is that the ancient Indians, when they saw the first Spaniards, said that they were children of the Sun."
In this case, too, as in preceding cases, misinterpretation of individual names is a factor. In the essay which con- 408 THB DATA OF SOCIOLOGY.
tained a rude outline of the argnment elaborated in the foregoing chapters, I contended that by the savage and semi-civilized, ''Sun^' was likely to be given as a title of honour to a distinguished man. I referred to the fact that such complimentary metaphors are used by poets: instancing from Henry VIII. the expression — '' Those suns of glory, those two lights of men '^; to which I might have added the lines from Julius Ooesar — '* 0 setting srm, As in thy red rays thou dost sink to-night. So in his red blood Cassias* day is set; The son of Borne is set! " And I argued that among primitive peoples^ necessarily speaking more figuratively than we do, and greatly given as they are to flattery, "the Sun'' would probably be a fre- quent name of laudation. Facts in justification of this inference were not then at hand; but I can now give some. Here is a sentence from Prescott's Mexico, bk. iii.: — " The frank and joyous manners of Alvarado made him a great favourite with the Tlasoalana; and his bright, open countenance, fair complexion, and golden looks gave him the name of ToncUiuk, Son."
That the Peruvians, in a kindred spirit, gave a modification of the name to those who were mentally superior, is shown by the statement of Qarcilasso, that they " were so simple, that any one who invented a new thing was readily recog- nized by them as a child of the Sun." And then we have evidence that in these regions the title sometimes given in compliment, was sometimes arrogantly assumed. In the historic legend of the Central Americans) the Popol Vuh, is described the pride of Yucub-Cakiz, who boasted that he was Sun and Moon.
Once more we have, as a root for a Sun-myth, the birth- name. Among names Mason sets down as given by the Karens, is ^^ Yellow Rising Sun"; and though he speaks of ^* a handsome young person " as thus called, so implying that it is a complimentary name, yet considering that these NATUBE-WOBSHIP. 409 people use '' Evening/' '' Moon-rise/' '^ San-rise/' '' Full Moon/' as birth-names^ it seems probable that '^Rising Sun '' is also a birth-name. It would be anomalous were celestial incidents thus used^ with the exception of the most striking one.
And now mark a significant congruity and a significant incongruity^ parallel to those we marked in the case of the Moon's phases. Birth-names taken from the Sun must refer to the Sun at some part of his course — the rising Sun, the soaring Sun, the setting Sun, according to the hour of the birth; and complimentary names taken from the Sun, may express yarious of his attributes, as '^ the glory of the Sun," '^ the Sun's brightness," etc. Hence no difficulty is presented by the fact Wilkinson gives, that ^Hhe Egyptians made of the Sun several distinct deities: as the intellectual San, the physical orb, the cause of heat, the author of light, the power of the Sun, the vivifying cause, the Sun in the firmament, and the Sun in his resting-place." [Compare with king's names on p. 412.] On the other hand, how do the mythologists reconcile such facts with their hypothesis? Is the linguistic necessity for personalizing so great that eight distinct persons must be assumed, to embody the Sun's several attributes and states? Are we to understand that the Aryans, too, were led solely by the hypostasis of descrip- tions to suppose Hyperion, " the high-soaring Son," to be one individual, and Endymion, " the Sun setting/' to be another individual: both being independent of '^ the separate divinity of Phoibos Apoll6n"? Did the mere need for concreting abstracts, force the Greeks to think that when the Sun was thirty degrees above the horizon he was one person who had such and such adventures, and that by the time he had got within ten degrees of the horizon he had changed into a person having a different biography? That the mythologists cannot think this I will not say; for their stores of faith are large. But the faith of others will, I imagine, fall short here, if it has not done so before.
410 THE DATA OF BOGIOLOGY.
§ 192. When the genesis of solar myths after the manner I haye described^ was briefly indicated as a part of the general doctrine set forth in the essay above referred to, snndry resulting correspondences with the traits of such myths were pointed out. The fact that conspicuous celestial objects, in common with the powers of nature at large, were conceived as male and female, was shown to be a sequence. The &ct that in mythologies the Sun has such alternative names as " the Swift One," '* the Lion/' " the Wolf," which are not suggested by the Sun's sensible attributes, was shown to be explicable on the hypothesis that these were additional complimentary names given to the same indi* vidual, after the fashion of barbarous peoples, who habitu- ally multiply flattering metaphors. Further, the strange jumbling of celestial phenomena with the adventures of earth-bom persons, was explained as an inevitable con- sequence of endeavours to reconcile the statements of tradition with the evidence of the senses. And once more it was suggested that by the fusion of local legends con- cerning persons thus named, into a mythology co-extensive with many tribes who were united into a nation, there would result conflicting genealogies and biographies of the personalized Sun. While able then to illustrate but briefly these positions, I alluded to evidence which was forth- coming. Of such evidence I have now given an amount which fulfils the tacit promise made; and goes far to justify the inference drawn. I did not then, however, hope to do more than make the inference highly probable. But while collecting materials for the foregoing chapters, I have come upon a passage in the records of the ancient Egyptians which, I think, gives conclusiveness to the argument. It is in the third Sallier Papyrus, translated by Prof. Lushing^n, and published in the Transadions of the Society of Biblical Archceology, vol. iii. Prom this document, re- cording the triumphs of Bamses II., I have already quoted parts illustrating the ancient beliof in the supernatural Btrength giyen bj an ancestral ghost who has become a god; and more recently I have quoted from it a phrase illustrating the complimentary application of an animal- name to a conquering monarch. Here^ from the laudatory address of the def eated^ praying for mercy, I quote in full the significant sentence: — ^ " Horns, conquering bull, dear to Ma, Prince guarding thy army, ▼aliaut with the sword, bulwark of his troops in day of battle, king mighty of strength, great Sovran, Sun powerful in truth, approved of Ra, mighty in victories, Ramses Miamon.'* The whole process described aboye as likely to occur, is thus showu us actually occurring. Observe all the cor- respondences. The deity to whom Bamses says he has sacrificed 30,000 bulls, and to whom he prays for super- natural aid, is his ancestor: '^ I call on my father Am- mon/' he says; and the defeated say to him — ^* truly thou art bom of Ammon, issue of his body.'' Further, Bamses, himself described as performing the feats of a god, is spoken of as though a god: the defeated call him ^' giver of life for ever like his father Ba.'' Thus regarded as divine, he receives, as we find warriors among the semi- civilized and savage still doing, a multiplicity of compli- mentary titles and nietaphorical names; which, being joined to the same individual, become joined to one another: Bamses is at once the King, the Bull, the Sun. And while this record gives the human genealogy of Bamses and his achievements on Earth, its expressions point to his subse- quent apotheosis, and imply that his deeds will be narrated as the deeds of the ^'conquering bull'' and of ''the Sun." Bemembering that at the deaths even of ordinary Egyptians, there were ceremonial eulogies by priests and others, who afterwards, at fixed intervals, repeated their praises; we cannot doubt that in laudations of a king who became a god after death, carried on in still more exag- gerated language than during his life, there persisted these metaphorical titles. And if, as pointed out above, the 412 THE DATA OF SOCIOLOOT.
Egyptian language^ even in historic times, could not dis- criminate between a name and tlie act of naming; it is manifest that the distinction between the person and the thing he was named after, must have been difficult to ex- press, and that when the language was still less developed the two were inevitaMjr confounded.* To me it seems obvious that in this legend of the victo- rious Bamses, king, conqueror, bull, sun, and eventually god, we have the elements which, in an early stage of civilization, generate a solar myth like that of Indra; who similarly united the characters of the conquering hero, the bull, the sun. To say that when orally transmitted for generations among a less advanced people, a story such as this would not result in a human biography of the Sun, is to deny a process congruous with the processes we find going on, and to assume an historical accuracy which was * While making for me a fuller examination of tbeae docnments than I was myielf able to make, an assistant has found some yerifying facts.
In the (great) Harris Papyms (translated by Prof. Eisenlohr), leaf 76, lines 1 and 2, Ramies III. is represented as saying — ** [My fkiher] set in his horizon like the nine gods. There were made to him the ceremonies of Osiris navigating in his royal bark on the surface of the riyer. He descended to his eternal house in the west of Thebes."
Here again are several royal names taken from Mr. Edw. Hawkins' preface to the second volume of the Select Papyri: — The King, the son of the Sun, Hanaa.
The King, the Sun of creation, the son of the Sun, Hannutf.
Jhe King, the first to attend to the Earth, the son of the Sun, Sebakemshaf.
The King, the Sun becoming victorious, the son of the Suns, Ta-aa. - The King, the Sun orderer of creation, the son of the Sun, Karnes.
Now, though " Sun," used in these cases as an ordinary royal title, is re- strained, by union with several meaningless proper names, from generating a tradition of identity; yet before such proper names came into use, identifica- tion would be unchecked.
That the ** father Ammon," referred to in the text as the supreme god, was the remote ancestor, is farther implied by the statement of Brugsch that " the cult of the Ammon of the Ramesseum was of a funereal character."
I may add the significant fact that in the hieroglyphics, one and the same « determinative" means, according to the context, god, ancestor, august person.
NATU&S-WOBSHIP. 413 not possible. While to allege^ instead^ that the Son may not only be affiliated on human parents^ bat may be credited with feats of arms as a king^ while he is also a brute^ and this solely because of certain linguistic suggestions^ is to allege that men disregard the evidence of their senses at the prompting of reasons relatively trivial.
§ 193. Little^ then^ as first appearances suggest it^ the conclusion warranted by the facts^ is that Nature-worship^ like each of _ the worships previously analyzed^ is a form of ancestor-worship; which has lost^ in a still greater degree, the external characters of its original.
Partly by confounding the parentage of the race with a conspicuous object marking the natal region of the race, partly by literal interpretation of birth-names, and partly by literal interpretation of names given in eulogy, there have been produced beliefs in descent from Mountains, from the Sea, from the Dawn, from animals which have become constellations, and from persons once on Earth who now appear as Moon and Sun. Implicitly believing the state- ments of fore&thers, the savage and semi-civilized have been compelled grotesquely to combine natural powers with human attributes and histories; and have been thus led into the strange customs of propitiating these great terres- trial and celestial objects by such offerings of food and blood, as they habitually made to other ancestors.
Between this group of phenomena and the preceding groups, there is, then, entire congruity; and the applica- bility of one interpretation to them all, notwithstanding its apparent inapplicability, is a further reason for regarding that interpretation as true.
CHAPTER XXY.
DEITIES.
§ 194. In the foregoing five chapters the genesis of deities has been so fully set forth by implication^ that there seems no need for a chapter dealing directly with the sub- ject. But though we haye dealt with those classes of deities in which the human personality is greatlydisguised; there remains to be dealt with the class of deities which has arisen by simple idealization and expansion of the human personality. For while some men have, by the mis- interpretation of traditions, had their individualities merged in those of natural objects; the individualities of others have survived with anthropomorphic attributes.
This last class, always co-existing with the other classes, eventually becomes predominant: probably, as before hinted, through the agency of proper names that are less and less connotative and more and more denotative. So long as men were named after natural objects, they failed to survive in tradition under their human forms; and the wor- ship of them as ancestors became the worship of the things they were nominally identified with. But when there arose such proper names as were not also borne by objects, men began to be preserved in story as men. It became possible for ghosts to retain their anthropomorphic individualities wmm DIEITIES. 415 wmm DIEITIES. 415 long after the deaths of contemporaries; and so an anthropo- morphic pantheon resulted.
Ahready in the chapter on ''Ancestor-worship in General/' the initiation of this class of deities has been indicated; and now, haying traced the evolution of the other classes^ we must trace the eyolution of this most important class.
§ 195. Like an animal^ a savage fears whatever is strange in appearance or behaviour. Along with this unparalleled quality there is no knowing what other unparalleled qualities may go. He feels endangered by these capacities which trans- cend those he is familiar with; and behaves to the possessor of them in a way betraying his consciousness of danger. As we saw, he regards as supernatural whatever he cannot com- prehend. His mental attitude is well illustrated by the two Krumen named by Thompson, who, when taken over a ship, said it '' was for certain an uncreated thing— a thing come of itself, and never made by human hands.'' And this sup- posed supematuralness of the unaccountable, holds alike of a remarkable object and of a remarkable man. If the Ghippewas " do not understand anything, they immediately say it is a spirit "; and our informant, Buchanan, adds that a man of extraordinary talent '' is said to be a spirit."
In various cases we find the native equivalent for god is thus indiscriminately applied to an incomprehensible object and to a person whose powers are incomprehensible. The Fijian name for a divine being, halou, means also ''any- thing gpreat or marvellous." And while in pursuance of this conception the Fijians declared a printing-press to be a god, they also applied the word to their European visitors: "You are a halau/' "Tour countrymen are gods." So, too, it is with the Malagasy, who speak of their king as a god, and by whom, according to Ellis, whatever is new or useful or extraordinary is called a god. Silk, "rice, money, thunder and lightning, and earthquakes, are all called gods. Their ancestors and a deceased sovereign 416 THE DATA OF SOGIOLOQT.
they designate in the same manner/' A book, too^ is a god; and ^^ velvet is called by the singular epithet — Son of God/^ It is the same with the man-worshipping Todas. As Marshall tells us respecting the meanings of Der, Swdmi (gods, lords,) as used by them, ^' there is a tendency for everything mysterious or unseen to ripen into Der; cattle, relics, priests, are confused in the same category, until it would seem that Der, like Swdmi, is truly an adjective-noun of eminence/'