Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/157

Rh MYTHOLOGY 145 whereof he himself is part. 1 Turning from Australia to the west coast of Africa, we find similar ideas prevailing there. Among the Ashantees, as among the Australians, there are local divisions of the people, through which are .scattered stocks claiming descent from animals, plants, and other natural objects. 2 As in Australia, the families may not eat the animals to which they are akin. The same notions prevail among the Basutos and other African tribes. 3 In America the amount of evidence for similar institutions grounded on similar creeds is too large to be dealt with here. The old missionaries, as Charlevoix and Bancroft, the old historian of the Peruvian tribes, Garcilasso de la Vega, the travels of Franklin, the collections of Bancroft and Schoolcraft, bear irrefutable testimony to the American belief in descent from animals and from inanimate objects, the kinship being recognized, as in Australia, by marriage laws of the strictest character. In India the idea of animal kinship is just as powerful as elsewhere. 4 The Hos and Mundas exhibit this creed in their marriage law. &quot; The Mundaris, like the Oraons, adopt as their tribal distinction the name of some animal, and the flesh of that animal is tabooed to them as food ; for example, the eel and the tortoise&quot; (Dalton, pp. 189, 254). Turner describes analo gous institutions in his Polynesia (p. 196). The Samoans, like the Egyptians, refuse to eat their own tribal gods, but consume those of their neighbours. Siberian examples are given in Sir John Lubbock s Origin of Civilization, under the head of the Jakuts. Among the Bonis (negroes relapsed into savagery out of slavery in Cayenne) one family reveres the red ape, another the cayman, a third the turtle. 5 The higher religion of the Bonis is a survival of Christianity. The language is a mixture of English, Dutch, and Creole patois. These instances from almost every quarter of the globe, from Siberia to Peru, from Bengal to Canada, from Ashantee to the Cape, will suffice to indicate the strength and wide diffusion of the savage belief in animal kinship with men. Considerable proof of the survival of this sen timent among the Semitic races is given by Professor Robertson Smith in &quot; Animal Worship and Animal Tribes among the Arabs and in the Old Testament,&quot; Journal of Philology, vol. ix. No. 17. 6 Savage man, then, regards all objects as animate and personal, and himself as physically akin to plants, animals, and other animate and inanimate things. He also believes that many of his own tribe-fellows have the power of as suming the shapes of animals, and that the souls of his dead kinsfolk revert to animal forms. Sir A. C. Lyal, writing from Hindustan, observes that &quot; to those who live in a country where wicked people and witches are constantly taking the form of wild beasts the explanation of lycan- thropy by a confusion between ACVKOS (white) and AI KOS (a wolf) seems wanton.&quot; Our sense of the wantonness and in adequacy of this etymological explanation is increased when we find phenomena like LYCANTHROPY (q. v.) believed in everywhere, whatever the language spoken by the believers. Mr Lane, in his introduction to the Arabian Nights (i. p. 58), says he found the belief in these transmigrations accepted solemnly in Cairo. Bancroft brings evidence to prove that the Mexicans supposed pregnant women would 1 Fison, Eamilaroi and Knrnai, p. 169. Sir George Grey s Travels and Mr G. S. Lang s lecture on Tlie Aborigines of Australia may also be consulted. 2 Bowditch, Mission to Ashantee, pp. 180, 181, 1873. 3 Casalis, p. 211 ; Livingstone, p. 13. 4 Evidence will be found in Dalton, Ethnology of Bengal, pp. 63, 166. 5 Crevaux, Voyage dans I Amerique du Sud, p. 59. 6 For similar survivals among Aryans see FAMILY (vol. ix. pp. 20, 21), and TJie Politics of Aristotle (Bolland and Lang), p. 96. The original observer of these institutions and ideas, Mr M Lennan, printed his remarkable papers on &quot; The Worship of Plants and Animals &quot; in the Fortnightly Preview, Nov. 1869, Feb. 1870. turn into beasts, and sleeping children into mice, if things went wrong in the ritual of a certain solemn sacrifice. There is a well-known Scotch legend to the effect that a certain old witch was once fired at in her shape as a hare, and that where the hare was hit there the old woman was found to be wounded. Lafitau tells the same story as current among his Red Indian flock, except that the old witch and her son took the form of birds, not of hares. A Scandinavian witch does the same in the Egil saga. In Lafitau s tale the birds were wounded by the magic arrows of a medicine man, and the arrow-heads were found in the bodies of the human culprits. In Japan 7 people chiefly transform themselves into badgers. The sorcerers of Hon duras (Bancroft, i. 7-40) &quot; possessed the power of trans forming men into wild beasts.&quot; Regnard, the French dramatist, found in Lapland (1681) that witches could turn men into cats, and could themselves assume the forms of swans, crows, falcons, and geese. Among the Bushmen s &quot; sorcerers assume the form of beasts and jackals.&quot; Dobrizhofer, a missionary in Paraguay (1717- 1791), learned that &quot;sorcerers arrogate to themselves the power of changing men into tigers&quot; (Eng. transl., i. p. 63). He was present at a conversion of this sort, though the miracle beheld by the people was invisible to the mis sionary. Near Loanda Livingstone noted that &quot;a chief may metamorphose himself into a lion, kill any one he chooses, and resume his proper form.&quot; The same accomp lishments distinguish the Barotse and Balonda, 9 Among the Mayas of Central America sorcerers could transform themselves &quot;into dogs, pigs, and other animals; their glance was death to a victim&quot; (Bancroft, ii. 797). The Thlinkeets hold that their shamans have the same powers. 10 A bamboo in Sarawak is known to have been a man. Metamorphoses into stones are as common among Red Indians and Australians as in Greek mythology. Com pare the cases of Niobe and the victims of the Gorgon s head. 11 Zulus, Red Indians, Aztecs, 12 Andaman Islanders, and other races believe that their dead assume the shapes of serpents and of other creatures, often reverting to the form of the animal from which they originally descended. In ancient Egypt &quot;the usual prayers demand for the deceased the power of going and coming from and to every where under any form they like.&quot; 13 A trace of this opinion may be noticed in the jEneid. The serpent that appeared at the sacrifice of ^Eneas was regarded as possibly a &quot; manifestation &quot; of the soul of Anchises (^Eneid, v. 84) Dixerat lirec, adytis quum lubricus anguis ab imis Septem iiigens gyros, septena volurnhm, traxit,&quot; and ^Eneas is &quot; Incertus, Geniumne loci, famuluimie parentis Esse putet.&quot; On the death of Plotinus, as he gave up the ghost, a snake glided from under his bed into a hole in the wall. 14 Com pare Pliny 15 on the cave &quot; in quo manes Scipionis Africani majoris custodire draco dicitur.&quot; Without further investigating the survivals of these ideas among civilized races (the most notorious examples are the Indian and Pythagorean theories of transmigration), enough has been said to prove the savage belief in man s kinship with the animals and its survival in civilization. The last peculiarity in savage philosophy to which we need call attention here is the belief in spirits and in human in tercourse with the shades of the dead. The topic has been 7 Mitford, Tales of Old Japan, 1871. 8 Bleek, Brief Account of Bushman Folk-Lore, pp. 15, 40. 9 Missionary Travels, pp. 615, 642. 10 Dall, Alaska, p. 423, 1870. 11 Dorman, Origin of Primitive Superstitions, pp. 130, 134. 12 Sahagun, French Transl., p. 226. 13 Records of the Past, x. 10. 14 Plotini Vita, p. 2, 95. 15 H. X., xv. 44, 85. XVII. 19