saint, and ár implies the transference of a conditional curse. Thus, in the Great Atlas Mountains I found a large number of rags tied to a pole which was stuck in a cairn dedicated to the great saint Mulai 'Abd-ul-Ķâder, and when I asked for an explanation the answer was that petitioners generally fasten a strip of their clothes to the pole muttering some words like these :-"O saint, behold! I promised thee an offering, and I will not release (literally open') thee until thou attendest to my business." If the petitioner's wish is fulfilled he goes back to the place, offers the sacrifice which he promised, and unties the knot which he made. A Berber servant of mine from Aglu in Sûs told me that once when in prison he invoked Lälla Răḥ'ma Yusf, a great female saint whose tomb is in a neighbouring district, and tied his turban, saying, "I am tying thee, Lälla Răḥ'ma Yusf, and I am not going to open the knot till thou hast helped me." Or a person in distress will go to her grave and knot the leaves of some palmetto growing in its vicinity, with the words, "I tied thee here, O saint, and I shall not release thee unless thou releasest me from the toils in which I am at present. All this is what we should call magic, but the Romans would probably have called it religio. They were much more addicted to magic than to true religion; they wanted to compel the gods rather than to be compelled by them. Their religio was probably nearly akin to the Greek Kaтádeσμos, which meant not only an ordinary tie, but also a magic tie or knot or a bewitching thereby. Plato speaks of persons who with magical arts and incantations bound the gods, as they said, to execute their will. That religio, however, from having originally a magical significance, has come to be used in the sense which we attribute to the term "religion," is not difficult to explain. Men make use of magic not only in relation to their fellow men, but in relation to their gods. Magical and religious elements are often almost inseparably intermingled in one and the same act; and, as we shall soon see, the magical means of constraining a god are often externally very similar to the chief forms of religious worship, prayer and sacrifice. super That mystery is the essential characteristic of natural beings is proved by innumerable facts. It is testified by language. The most prominent belief in the religion of the North American Indians was their theory of manitou, that is, of "a spiritual and mysterious power thought to reside in some material form." The word is Algonkin, but all the tribes had some equivalent for it. Thus the Dacotahs express the essential attribute of their deities by the term wakan, which signifies anything which they cannot comprehend, "whatever is wonderful, mysterious, superhuman, or supernatural." The Navaho word digi'n likewise means sacred, divine, mysterious, or holy"; and so does the Hidatsa term mahopa. In Fiji "the native word expressive of divinity is kalou, which, while used to denote the people's highest notion of a god, is also constantly heard as a qualification of anything great or marvellous." The Maoris of New Zealand applied the word atua, which is generally translated as "god," not only to spirits of every description, but to various phenomena not understood, such as menstruation and foreign marvels, a compass, for instance, or a barometer. The natives of Madagascar, 4 3 Matthews, Navaho Legends, p. 37. Idem, Hidatsa Indians, p. 47 sq. 5 Williams and Calvert, Fiji, p. 183. 6 Best, Lore of the Whare-Kohanga,' in Jour. Polynesian Soc. xiv. 210. Dieffenbach, Travels in New Zealand, ii. 116, 118. The word tupua (or tipua) is used in a very similar way (Tregear, Maori-Polynesian Comparative Dictionary, p. 557). says Ellis, designate by the term ndriamanitra, or god, everything that exceeds the capacity of their understanding. "Whatever is new and useful and extraordinary, is called god.. Rice, money, thunder and lightning, and earthquakes, are all called god. . . . Taratasy, or book, they call god, from its wonderful capacity of speaking by merely looking at it." The Monbuttu use the word kilima for anything they do not understand— the thunder, a shadow, the reflection in water, as well as the supreme being in which they vaguely believe.2 The Masai conception of the deity (ngài), says Dr. Thomson, “seems to be marvellously vague. I was Ngãi. My language was Ngăi. Ngăi was in the steaming holes. . . . In fact, whatever struck them as strange or incomprehensible, that they at once assumed had some connection with Ngăi."s Mr. and Mrs. Hinde use "the Unknown" as their equivalent of the word ngăi.* The testimony of language is corroborated by kindred. facts referring to the nature of those objects which are most commonly worshipped." Among all the American tribes, says Mr. Dorman, "any remarkable features in natural scenery or dangerous places became objects of superstitious dread and veneration, because they were supposed to be abodes of gods." A great cataract, a difficult and dangerous ford in a river, a spring bubbling up from the ground, a volcano, a high mountain, an isolated rock, a curious or unusually large tree, the bones of the mastodon or of some other immense animal-all were looked upon by the Indians with superstitious respect 1 Ellis, History of Madagascar, i. 390 sqq. 2 Burrows, Land of the Pigmies, p. 100. 3 Thomson, Through Masai Land, p. 260. 4 Hinde, Last of the Masai, p. 99. 5 See, besides the instances referred to below, Karsten, Origin of Worship, p. 14 sqq.; von Brenner, Besuch bei den Kannibalen Sumatras, p. 220 (Bataks); Mitteil. d. Geograph. Gesellsch. zu Jena, iii. 14 (Bannavs, between Siam and Annam). In Lord Kames's Essays on the Principles of Morality and Religion there is (p. 309 sqq.) an interesting discussion on the dread of unknown objects. 6 Dorman, op. cit. p. 300. See also Müller, Geschichte der Amerikanischen Urreligionen, i. 52; Harmon, Voyages and Travels in the Interior of North America, p. 363 sq.; Smith, Myths of the Iroquois,' in Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn. ii. 51. 1 or were propitiated by offerings. In Fiji "every object that is specially fearful, or vicious, or injurious, or novel, is eligible for admission to the native Pantheon. It is said that when the Aëtas of the Philippines saw the first locomotive passing through their country "they all fell upon their knees in abject terror, worshipping the strange monster as some new and powerful deity." Of the shamanistic peoples in Siberia Georgi writes, "All the celestial bodies, and all terrestrial objects of a considerable magnitude, all the phenomena of nature that can do good or harm, every appearance capable of conveying terror into a weak and superstitious mind, are so many gods to whom they direct a particular adoration." + Among the Samoyedes "a curiously twisted tree, a stone with an uncommon shape would receive, and in some quarters still receives, not only veneration but actual ceremonial worship." Castrén states that the Ostyaks worshipped no other objects of nature but such as were very unusual and peculiar either in shape or quality." The Lapps made offerings not only to large and strange-looking objects, but to places which were difficult to pass, or where some accident had occurred, or where they had been either exceptionally unlucky or exceptionally lucky in fishing or the chase. The Ainu of Japan deify all objects and phenomena which seem to them extraordinary or dreadful. In China "a steep mountain, or any mountain at all remarkable, is supposed to have a special local spirit, who acts as guardian." 9 The average middle-class Hindu, according to Sir Alfred Lyall, worships stocks or stones which are unusual or grotesque in size, shape, or position; or 1 Dorman, op. cit. pp. 279, 290, 291, 302, 303, 308, 313-315, 319. Chamberlain, in Jour. American Folk-Lore, i. 157 (Mississagua Indians). Georgi, Russia, iii. 237 sq. (Aleuts.) 2 Williams and Calvert, op. cit. p. 183. Lala, Philippine Islands, p. 96. 5 Jackson, in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xxiv. 398. Cf. Castrén, Nordiska resor och forskningar, iii. 230. 6 Castrén, op. cit. iii. 227. 7 Ibid. iii. 210. Högström, Beskrifning öfver de til Sveriges Krona lydande Lapmarker, p. 182. Leem, Beskrivelse over Finmarkens Lapper, p. 442 sq. Friis, Lappisk Mythologi, p. 133 sq. Sugamata, quoted in L'Anthropologie, x. 98. Edkins, Religion in China, p. 221. "3 inanimate things which are gifted with mysterious motion; or animals which he fears; or visible things, animate or inanimate, which are directly or indirectly useful and profitable or which possess any incomprehensible function or property. From all parts of Africa we hear of similar cults. The Negroes of Sierra Leone dedicate to their spirits places which "inspire the spectator with awe, or are remarkable for their appearance, as immensely large trees rendered venerable by age, rocks appearing in the midst of rivers, and having something peculiar in their form, in short, whatever appears to them strange or uncommon.' When Tshi-speaking natives of the Gold Coast take up their abode near any remarkable natural feature or object, they worship and seek to propitiate its indwelling spirit; whereas they do not worship any of the heavenly bodies, the regularity of whose appearance makes little impression upon their minds. Throughout East Africa the people seem to attach religious sanctity to anything of extraordinary size; in the island of Zanzibar, where the hills are low, they reverence the baobab tree, which is the largest growing there, and in all parts of the country where hills are not found they worship some great stone or tall tree. In Morocco places of striking appearance are generally supposed to be haunted by jnûn (jinn) or are associated with some dead saint. As I have elsewhere tried to show, the Arabic jinn were probably "beings invented to explain what seems to fall outside the ordinary pale of nature, the wonderful and unexpected, the superstitious imaginations of men who fear"; and the saint was in many cases only the successor of the jinn. Indeed, the superstitious dread of unusual objects is not altogether dead even among our 1 Lyall, Asiatic Studies, p. 7. 2 Wilson, Western Africa, p. 388 (Mpongwe). Mockler-Ferryman, British Nigeria, p. 255. Fritsch, Die Eingeborenen Suid-Afrika's, p. 340 (Hottentots). Winterbottom, Native Africans in the Neighbourhood of Sierra Leone, i. 223 4 Ellis, Yoruba-speaking Peoples of the Slave Coast, p. 282. Idem, Tshispeaking Peoples of the Gold Coast, p. 21. 5 Chanler, Through Jungle and Desert, p. 188. 6 Westermarck, Nature of the Arab Ginn,' in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xxix. 268. |