And now we shall no longer find it difficult to under- stand how the title god, is, in early stages of progress, given to men in ways which seem to us so monstrous. Not meaning by the title anything like what we mean, savages naturally use it for powerful persons, living and dead, of various kinds. Let us glance at the several classes of them.
§ 196. We may fitly begin with individuals whose supe- riority is the least definite — individuals who are regarded by others, or by themselves, as better than the rest.
A typical case is fui*nished by the Todas above named. Mr. Marshall, describing the character of the p&l&l, a kind of holy milkman or priest among them, thus gives part of a conversation with one: — " * Is it tnie that Todas salute the sun? * I asked. * Lsch4kh! * he replied, * those poor fellows do so: but me/ tapping his chest, ' I, a god! why should I salute the Sun? ' At the time, I thought this a mere ebullition of vanity and pride, but I have since had opportunity of testing the truth of bis speech. The palal for the time being is not merely the casket containing divine attributes, but is kimtelfa god."
Mr. Marshall further tells us that ^^ the p&l&l, being himself a god, may with propriety mention the names of his fellow^ gods, a license which is permitted to no one else to do.'' This elevation to godhood of a living member of the tribe, who has some undefined superiority, is again exemplified among the Central Americans. Mr. Montgomery thus de- DEITISS. 417 scribes tlie Indians of Taltique as adoring sach a god^ witli all the ordinary ceremonials: — " This was no other than an old Indian, whom they had dressed up in a peculiar way and installed in a hut, where they went to worship him, offiaring him the fruits of their industry as a trihute, and perform- ing in his presence certain religious rites, according to their ancient practice."
Clearly people who for some nnspecified reason regard one of their number with awe, and propitiate him, pro- bably under the belief that he can bring good or evil on them, may thus originate a deity. For if the ghost in general is feared, still more feared will be the ghost of any one distinguished during life. Probably there is no ancestor -worship but what shows this tendency to the eyolution of a predominant ghost from a predominant human being. We hare seen how, by the Amazulu, the remembered founder of the family is the one chiefly propi- tiated; and the implication is that this founder was in some way superior. We have seen, too, how among the Central Americans Tamagastad and ^ipattoval were the remotest ancestors known; <md their doings were probably unusual enough to cause recollection of them. Here I may add, as obviously of kindred origin, the god of the Kamtscha- dales. Grieve tells us these people " say that Kut, whom they sometimes call god and sometimes their first father, lived two years upon each river, and left the children that river on which they were born, for their proper inherit- ance.*' Such facts show us in the most general way, how the conception of a deity begins to diverge from the con- ception of a remarkable person; feared during his life and still more feared after his death. We will now pass to the special ways in which genesis of this conception is shown.
« § 197. If, at first, the superior and the divine are equi- valent ideas, the chief or ruler will tend to become a deity B B 418 THS DATA Of SOCIOLOQT.
daring his life and a greater deity after his death. This inference is justified by &ct8.
Already I have referred (§ 112) to the Maori chief who scornfully repudiated an earthly origin, and looked forward to rejoining his ancestors, the gods. It is thus elsewhere in Polynesia. " I am a god," said Tuikilakila, the chief of Somosomo. And of these Fijians, Williams says: — " Indeed, there is veiy litUe difference between a chief of high Tvak and one of the second order of deities. The former regards himself very mnch as a god, and is often spoken of as snch by his people, and, on some occasions, claims for himself publicly the right of diyinity."
So, too, describing the sacredness of the king and queen of Tahiti, Ellis cites indirect praises of them quite as exalted as any used in worship of deities. The kingr's *' houses were called the aorai, the clouds of heaven; anuanua, the rainbow, was the name of the canoe in which he voyaged; his voice was called thunder; the glare of the torches in his dwelling was denominated lightning; and when the people saw them in the evening, as they passed near his abode, instead of saying the torches were burning in the palace, they would observe that the lightning was flaslung m the clouds of heaven.*** The like holds in Africa. Bastian tells us that the king of Benin is not only the representatiye of god upon earth, but god himself; and is worshipped by his subjects in both natures. We learn from Battel that " the king of Loango is respected like a deity, being caUed Samba and Pongo, that is, God.'' According to Krapf the people of Msambara say — ^''We are all slaves of the Zumbe [king] who is our Mulungu [god].'* About the ancient American races, we have like statements. We saw that in Peru, images of still- • This passage from EUis's Polynesian Sesearches, vol. iii., pp. 113, 114 (new edition), I commend to the attention of the mythologists. We are shown by it another way in which natore-worship may readily arise from ancestor-worship. As eulogies of a man after his death are apt to wax rather than wane, it is clear that this indirect glorification of a Tahitian king, surviving in legend, will yield evidence of his celestial nature; and when a king so lauded already has a complimentary name derived from anything in the heavens, these descrip- tions of his surroundings wiU join it in pioducing a nature-myth.
DEITIES. 419 living Ynoas were adored. F. de Xeres saya Huayana Gcapao " was so feared and obeyed^ that they almost looked upon him as their god^ and his image was set up in many towns /' while D^Acosta tells us that he ''was worshipped by his people as a god during Ufetime.'' And the state- ment of Garcilasso that out of rarious chiefs and petty kings^ the good were worshipped^ is confirmed by Balboa. Nor do only races of inferior type exemplify this deification of living men: it occurs in races of superior type. Palgrave illustrates it among the Semites as follows: — " ' Who is your Gh)d? ' said aa Arab traveller of my aoqaamtanee to a Mesaleckh nomade, not far from Basra. ' It was F&dee/ answered the man, naming a powerful proTincial governor of those lands, lately deceased; * but since his death I reallj do not know who is God at the present moment' '* And that Aryans have had like conceptions^ we are reminded by such facts as that Greek kings of the East^ besides altars erected to them^ had M^ stamped on their coins, and that Boman emperors were worshipped while alive: facts which, instead of being anomalous as is commonly supposed, show us survivals (or revivals) of practices wUch begin with the savage and develop with the barbarian.
Of course, as above said, identification of the superior with the divine, which leads to propitiation of living chiefs and kings as gods, leads to more marked propitiation of them after death. In Peru, according to D^Acosta, ^'a dead king was immediately regarded as a god, and had his sacri« fices, statues, etc/' Of the Yucatanese, Gogolludo, tell- ing us that Itzamat was a great king, says:— ''This king died, and they raised altars to him, and it was an oracle which gave them answers.'' Similarly of the Mexicans Mendieta writes: — ^''The people of Oholula considered Quet- zalcoatl ['feathered serpent '] to be the highest god," and further "the Indians said that Quetzalcoatl, though he was a native of Tula, came from that place to people the provinces of Tlaxcala." Again, Waitz asserts "that Huitzilopochtli, ['humming-bird, left'] afterwards a su- 420 THE DATA OP 80CI0L00T.
preme deity of the Aztecs * * * was originally a man, whose apotheosis may be clearly traced/' Polynesia supplies kindred illastrations. In his E^oAoaii, Ellis says: — ^^'The Sandwich Islanders regarded the spirit of one of their ancient kings as a tutelar deity/' Mariner tells ns the Tongans believe, '^that there are other Hotooas^ or gods, Tiz.^ the sonls of all deceased nobles and matabooles, who haye a like power of dispensing g^ood and evil, but in an inferior degree/' And according to 'Thomson, ''the New Zealanders believed that several high chiefs after death became deified, and that from them all punishments in this world for evil doings were sent/' In Africa it is the same. We have seen that among the Coast Negroes, king Ad61ee looks for success to the ghost of his dead father, and that in Dahomy the living king dutifully sacrifices victims that they may carry to the late king in the other world, reports of what has been done: that is, these dead kings have become.gods. Of like proofe I may add the statement of Harris, that ''the king of Shoa prays at his father's shrine "; and also Bastian's statement that '^ in Yoruba, Shango, the god of thunder, is regarded as a cruel and mighty king who was raised to heaven."
With such evidence before us, we cannot residt the impli- cation that the apotheosis of deceased rulers among the ancient historic races, was but the continuation of a primi- tive practice. When, from Prof. Eisenlohr, we learn that " Bamses Hek An (a name of Bamses III.) means ' engen- dered by Ba [Sun], prince of An (Heliopolis),' " and when, in the Harris papyrus, we find this Bamses HI. saying of his father, " the gods appointed their son arising from their limbs to (be) prince of the whole land in their seat"; we cannot but recognize a more developed form of those conceptions which savage and semi-civilized ex- hibit all over the world. When in the Babylonian legend of the flood, we, on the one hand, meet with the statements — "the gods feared the tempest and sought refuge," '^the DBITIBS. 421 gods like dogs fixed in droyes prostrate '' (implying that the gods differed little from men in their powers and feel- ings); and when^ on the other hand^ we find that the con- quering Izdubar^ the hero of the legend^ afterwards becomes a god, and that Bel, who made the deluge, was ^' the warrior BeP'^ we cannot doubt that the early Babylonians, too, worshipped chiefs who, gods while aliye, became greater gods after death.* § 198. Power displayed by the political head of a tribe, and in higher stages of progress by a king, is not the only kind of power. Hence, if at first the diyine means simply the superior, men otherwise distinguished than by chieftadn- ship, will be regarded as gods. Evidence justifies this con- clusion. Sorcerers, and also persons who show unparalleled skill, are deified.
That medicine-men whose predominance has no other origin than their craft, are treated as gods during their liyes, we have but little direct evidence. Sometimes, where the medicine-man ^s also political head, he appears to be pro- pitiated in both capacities; as in Loango, where the king is god, and where '^ they belieye he can give rain when he has a mind. In December the people gather to beg it of him, every one bringing his present.'' But we have good evidence that the medicine-man becomes a deity after death. Indeed, some facts raise the suspicion tiiat his ghost is the one which first grows into predominance as a being to be feared. The Fuegians, to whom otherwise no definite religious ideas are ascribed, believe in ^' a great black man '' '' wandering about the woods and moun- tains," ''who influences the weather according to men's * The l*ter Babybnisn iMlief s of this class are implied by the following pas- sage from M^anf 8 traDslation of the great inscription of Nabuchadnezzar: — " Je snis Naba-kudnr-nsnr...le fils ain^ de Nabn-pal-usur roi de Bab- Iln, Moi!" *'Le dxeu Bel, Ini-mdme, m'a cr^ le dieu Mardok qui m'a engendr^ a d^pos^ Ini-mdme le germe de lAa vie dans le sein de ma mire."
422 THE DATA Of flOCIOLOOY.
oonduci": eyidently a deceased weaiher-doctor. So, too, of the neighboaring Patagonians, Falkner tells us that their wandering demons are '^ the sonhi of their wizards/' Much more specific is Schoolcraft's statement concerning the Ghippewas. Mana Bosho, one of their gods, is repre* sented as having recourse to his magic drum and rattles '^to raise np snpemataral powers to help him '^: he uses in the other world those appliances which, as a sorcerer, he used in this. Again, Bancroft tells us that the Gahrocs have " some conception of a great deitj called Chareya, the Old Man Above: ^ * ^ he is described as wearing a close tonic, with a medicine-bag/' In Africa the Damaras famish a defi- xiite instance. Oalton says: — " We passed the gprave of the god Omakum; the Damaras all threw stones on the cairn, exclaiming, 'Father Omakum.' He gives and withholds rain.'' The apotheosis of the medicine-man in Polynesia, is shown us by Ellis's statement that " the Sandwich Islanders have a tradition that a certain man, whom they deified after his death, obtained all their medicinal herbs from the gods. To this man the doctors address their prayers." That in ancient Mexico the power shown by the sorcerer led to deification of him, is inferable from the following state« ment of Mendieta — " Others said that only such men had been taken for gods who transformed themselves or ^ ^ * appeared in some other shape, and in it spoke or did some- thing beyond human power." But the best examples (unless we regard the stories gathered together in the SeimS'kringla as mere inventions) are famished by our own Scandinavian ancestors. As described in that work, chaps. 4^-10, Odin was manifestly a medicine-man. We read that " when Odin of Asaland came to the norths and the gods with him," he " was the cleverest of them all, and from him all the others learned their magic arts." We read further that when the Yanaland people beheaded Memir, a man of great understanding, " Odin took the head, smeared it with herbs so that it should not rot, and DEITIES. 423 sang incantations over it. Thereby he gave it the power that it spoke to him^ and discovered to him many secrets/' " Odin died in his bed in Sweden; and when he was near his death he made himself be marked with the point of a spear, and said he was going to Godheim, and would give a welcome there to all his friends, and the Swedes beUeved that he was gone to the ancient Asgard, and would live there eternally. Then began the belief in Odin and the calling npon him. * * * Odin was burnt, and at his pile there was great splendour.'* In chapter xi. of the same work, Niort is described as continning the sacrifices after Odin; and the Swedes be- lieved he " mled over the growth of seasons/' "In his time all the diars or gods died, and blood-sacrifices were made for them. Niort died on the bed of sickness, and before he died made himself be marked for Odin with the spear-point.
" Frej took the kingdom after Niort; n^ * * there were good seasons in all the land, which the Swedes ascribed to Frey, bo that he was much more worshipped than the other gods. * w * Now when Frey died they bore him secretly into the mound, but told the Swedes he was alive; and^ey kept watch over him for three years. They brought all the taxes into the mound. * * * Peace and good seasons continued.** In these extracts there are various instructive implica- tions. The dominant race, coining from the East, returned there at death. While living they were worshipped; as we see superior men are, and have been, elsewhere. Such among them as were accounted powerful magicians, were more especially worshipped. After death these gained the character of great gods in virtue of their repute as great medicine-men; and were propitiated for a con- tinuance of their supernatural aid.' Of course, with the mythologists these circumstantial stories of the lives, deaths, and funeral rites of reputed magicians, go for nothing. They think them products of the mythopoeic tendency; and are not astonished at the correspondence between alleged fictions and the facts which existing savages show us. I suppose they are prepared similarly to dispose of such statements as that the descendants of iSsculapius wor- shipped him as a god, and counted the links of descent 424 THE DATA OP BOCIOLOOT, from him. Here, however, in presence of proofs that even now, in both hemispheres, weather-doctors and medicine- men become gods, we shall conclude that these legends had their roots in realities.
Between the mod'* cine-man and the teacher of new arts, there is but a nominal distinction; for, as we have seen, the primitive man thinks that any ability beyond the ordinary IS supernatural: even the blacksmith is a kind of magician to the African. Hence we may be prepared to find deifica- tions of men whose superiority was shown by their greater knowledge or skill; and we find them in many places. Waitz says the Brazilians '' ascribe the origin of agriculture to their teacher Tupan, who seems to be identical with the founder * * * of the race, and with the Supreme Being, so far as they have any idea of such." According to Bancroft, the Ghinooks say that ''a kind and powerful spirit called Ikdnam, * * * taught them how to make canoes as well as all other implements and utensils; and he threw great rocks into the rivers and made falls, to obstruct the salmon in their ascent, so that they might be easily caught.^' The Mexican god '^ Quetzalcoatl was a divinity who, during his residence on earth, instructed the natives in the use of metals, in agriculture, and in the arts of govern- ment." Further, the Mexicans apotheosized Chicomecoatl as the first woman who made bread; Tzaputlatena as the invent- ress of the uxitl-oil; Opuchtli as the inventor of some fishing implements; Yiacatecutli as the originator of trade; and Napatecutli as the inventor of rush mats. The Central Americans, too, had their gods and goddesses Chac, Ixazal- voh, Itzamnd, Ixchebelyax, who were the inventors of agri- culture, of cotton-weaving, of letters, of painting, as Gogol- ludo tells us. In the earliest records of historic peoples we meet with like facts. The Egyptian gods, Osiris, Ombte, Neph, and Thoth are said to have taught them arts; and the Babylonian god Oannes is similarly represented as having been an instructor. And it is needless to enumerate the DEITIES. 425 Greek and Boman deities described as teachers of one or other new process^ or inventors of this or that new appliance. Stilly then, we have the same truth under another aspect. Power exceeding previously-known powers, excites awe; and the possessor of it, feared during his life, is still more feared after his death.
§ 199. Unawares in treating of those who, within the tribe, as medicine-men or men of unusual ability, have ac- quired repute leading to deification, I have entered on the next class of facts — facts showing us that the foreign member of a superior race, becoming naturalized, becomes a god among an inferior race.
In our own times, members of our own race, such as ship- wrecked sailors, escaped convicts, etc., thrown among savage peoples, gain ascendency over them by virtue of the know- ledge and skill they display; and when we remember that after the deaths of such men, their powers, exalted in legend, are sure to make their ghosts feared more than ordinary ghosts, we shall recognize another source from which deities arise. That men of low type even now class strangers of high type as gods, we have abundant proof. In Africa, as we are told by Chapman, the Bushmen say — " Those white men are children of God; they know everything/' Livingstone describes the East Africans as exclaiming to Europeans — " Truly ye are gods '*; while Tuckey and Bastian state that the whites are thus spoken of in Congo. A chief on the Niger, seeing whites for the first time, thought them ^'chil- dren of heaven." When Thompson and Mofifatt wished to see a religious ceremony peculiar to the Bechuana women, the women said — *' These are gods, let them walk in.'' Even among so superior an African race as the Fulahs, some villagers, says Barth, "went so far as to do me the honour of identifying me with their god ' Pete,' who, they thought, might have come to spend a day with them" (staying to dinner, like Zeus with the Ethiopians). Other races furnish 426 THX DATA OF SOCIOLOGY.
kindred instances. The Khond women said of Campbell's tent, '' It is the house of a god.'' Barbe states that the *' Nicobarians have such a high idea of the power of Eoro- peans, that to them they attribute the creation of their islandsj and they think it depends on them to giye fine weather."'!' Remarking of the Fijians that ^* there appears to be no certain line of demarcation between gods and living men/' Erskine tells ns that one of the chiefs said to Mr. Hunt — *' If you die first, I shall make you my god." Mr. Alfred Wallace, who has had extensive opportunities of studying primitive men, says of the Am Isknders— ''I have no doubt that to the next generation, or even before, I myielf shall be transformed into a magician or a demi-god, a worker of miraoleSi and a being of Bupematural knowledge. They ahreadj believe that all the animals I preserve will come to life again; and to their children it will be related that they actually did so. An nnnsnal spell of fine weather setting in Just at my arrival, has made them believe I can control the seasons."
And then, lastly, we have the fact that an apotheosis Hke that which Mr. Wallace anticipates, has already occurred in a neighbouring island. Low, in his Sara/wak, says the Dyaks attribute supernatural power to Bajah Brooke. He is invoked along with the other gods.
With such abundant proofs that the genesis of gods out of superior strangers is now going on, we cannot, without perversity, regard as fictions those stories found in many countries, which represent certain gods as having brought knowledge and arts from elsewhere. Mendieta says the Mexican chief god, Quetzalcoatl, who came from the west, was '^a tall white man, with broad forehead, large eyes, long black hair, and g^eat round beard/' who, having instructed them and reformed their manners, departed by the way he came. So, too, of the great god of the Chibchas, Bochica^ we read that he was a white man with a beard, who gave them laws * I have lately had brought to me from the locality, a photograph of Nioobar-idoU, among which there are grotesque and yet characteristic figuTM of EngUihmen.
9am and institations, and who disappeared after having long liyed at Sogamoso. In Sonth America it is the same. Humboldt tells ns that '^ Amaliyaoa, the father of the TamanacS| that is^ the creator of the human race (for every nation regards itself as the root of all other nations) arriyed in a bark/' He afterwards re-embarked. '^Amalivaca was a stranger^ like Manco-Oapac^ Bochica^ and Quetssalcohaatl/' In some oases the remarkable strangers who thus become a people's gods^ are regarded as the returned ghosts of their own remarkable men. Ghosts and gfods being origin- ally undifEerentiated in thought; and neither of them being always distinguishable from living persons; it hap- pens^ as was shown in § 92^ that the whites are^ by Aus- tralians^ Polynesians^ and Africans^ held to be the doubles of their own dead. When we read that among the Wanikas '' ' Mulunga/ the word applied like the Kaffir ' IThlunga' to the Supreme, also denotes any good or evil revenant;'* we see how it happens that Europeans are called indiscrimi- nately ghosts and gods. Hence the naturalness of the fact which Ellis tells us of the Sandwich Islanders, that when '' Captain Cook arrived, it was supposed, and reported, that the god Bono was returned''; and therefore ''the people prostrated themselves before him." Hence, too, the belief implied by Camargo's account of the Mexicans, that ''as soon as the Spaniards had disembarked, news came to the very smallest villages that the gods had arrived:" the ex- pectation being '*that their god Quetssalcoatl had come" back with his companions. And hence, again, the explana- tion of Piedrahita's statement respecting the Chibchas, that at Turmequ6 they " showed to the Spaniards the venera- tion and worship they showed to the gods, making incense to them."
Thus we find re-illustrated under other conditions, the same general truth, that the primitive god is the superior man, either indigenous or foreign; propitiated during his life and still more after his death.
§ 200. From this deification of single men of higher races^ there is a natural transition to the deification of con- quering races, not indiyiduallj but bodily. The expression ''gods and men/' occurring in the traditions of various peoples, is made readily interpretable.
We assume that, as a matter of course, every tribe of savages has a word for man, applicable equally to members of their own tribe and to members of other tribes; but, as usual, we are misled by assimilating their thoughts and language to ours. Often their name for men is their tribal name. Already we have seen that among the Ouaranies of South America, the same word means man and Gnarani. In North America, too, the people who call themselves Thlinkeets have no word but this to signify human beings; and an adjacent race, the Tinneh, fu]:nish a parallel case. Similarly in Africa, the native name for the Ka£Bbr tribes is Abantu, BaMu (plrural of ntu, a man;) and for the Hottentot tribes the designation is Koukoin {i,e,, ''men of men,'' from koi^ a man). In Asia, again. Mason says of the Karens that "a few of the tribes only have distinctive names for themselves, and all, when speaking of each other, use the word for man to designate themselves; " and according to Kotzebue, the Eamtschadales "have no designation either for themselves or their country. They called them- selves simply men, as considering themselves either the only inhabitants of the earth, or so far surpassing all others as to be alone worthy of this title." Indeed, in his Stone Age^ Nilsson, generalizing such facts, says that "all rude nations apply the designation ' men ' to themselves only, all others being differently designated."