Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/380

Rh KELIGIONS exception understand the relation between God and man as one between the supreme lord and king (El the mighty, Ba'al, Bel, Adon, Malik, Sar) and his subject or slave ('Abd, 'Obed, Bod), his client or protected one (Jar, Ger). They are eminently theocratic, and show a marked tendency to monotheism, which, both in Israel and in Arabia, is the last word of their religious development. It is not so easy to determine the grade of relationship between the different Semitic religions as it is to show that they all descend from a common parent. Moreover the question is complicated by another problem Whether the Babylonians and Assyrians borrowed the greater part of their religious conceptions and institutions from a foreign, non-Semitic people, the primitive inhabitants of their country, and if this be the case what they then have of their own and what is due to the influence of that ancient civilization. Whatever may be the final solution of this question, we shall not go far wrong if we distin- guish the Semitic religions into two principal groups the one comprising the southern or Arabic, with perhaps the most ancient Hebrew, the other all the Northern Semitic religions from the Tigris to the Mediterranean, leaving it undecided whether the undeniable relationship between the north-eastern and the north-western Semitic religions be that of parent and children or that of sisters in other words, whether it be due to the influence of the superior culture of the former or to the fact that they all have radiated from a common centre. This only is beyond doubt, that the Assyrian religion is a daughter of the Babylonian, and that the Canaanitic and Phcenician modes of worship are closely allied. W T hat we give on last page is no more than a rough genealogical table of the Semitic religions. A detailed and accurate genealogical classification of the religions which do not belong to either of those two principal families is out of the question. Their mutual relation can be fixed only in a general way. ifrican. African Religions. The first problem to be solved is the classification of the Egyptian religion. It is neither Semitic and theocratic nor Aryan and theanthropic. But it has many elements that belong to the former, and also a few elements that belong to the latter category, which might lead to the supposition that it represents a stage in the development of the great Mediterranean, commonly called the Caucasian, race, anterior to the separation of the Aryan family from the Semitic. But this is no more than a supposition, as the existence of such a Mediterranean race, embracing the so-called Hamites, Semites, and Japhetites or Aryans, is itself a pure hypothesis. All we know is that the Egyptians themselves mention a people called Punt (the Phut of the Bible), with whom they had commercial rela- tions and whose religion was akin to their own, so much so that they called the country of Punt, on the western Arabian and on the opposite African coast, the Holy Land (la neter). The same may be said of the Cushites, the southern neighbours of Egypt, the ancient pre-Semitic Ethiopians; and a pre-Semitic population also may have lived in Canaan, allied to the Egyptians and ethnologically or genealogically combined with them, with Gush, and with Phut in the tenth chapter of Genesis. But, as we know next to nothing about their religions, a Hamitic family of religions, including these four, is still purely hypothetical. That the primitive religion of southern Mesopotamia, commonly called Accadian or Sumerian, was related to the Egyptian, is also a mere conjecture, which does not seem to be favoured by the newly discovered facts. Finally, the scanty remains of the pre-Islamic religion of the Imoshagh or Berbers, the ancestors of the Libyans (in Egyptian Ribu), the Gaetulians, the Mauretanians, and the Numidians resemble in some degree Egyptian customs and notions; but, whether they point to genealogical relationship or are due to early Egyptian influence, it is hard to say. This, however, cannot be denied, that there are to be found in the Egyptian religion a great many magical rites and animistic customs, closely resembling those which prevail throughout the whole African continent. If then, as is generally supposed, 1 the dominant race sprang from Asiatic settlers and conquerors, who long before the dawn of history invaded the country, subjugated the dark- coloured inhabitants, and mixed with them, and if it is to these foreigners that the more elevated elements in the Egyptian religion are due, the basis of this religion is of a purely Nigritian character. All we can say about the other original religions of the dark continent is that they resemble one another in many respects. We may distinguish four principal groups : (1) the Cushite, inhabiting the north-eastern coast region south of Egypt ; (2) the Nigritian proper, including all the Negro tribes of inner Africa and the west coast ; (3) the Bantu or Kaffrarian (Kafir) ; and (4) the Khoi-Khoin or Hottentot, including the Bushmen, in South Africa. Before we can come to decision with regard to the first- named group, we must receive better and more certain information than we now possess. The prominent char- acteristic of the second group of religions, those of the Negroes proper, is their unlimited fetichism, combined as usual with tree worship, animal worship, especially that of serpents, with a strong belief in sorcery and with the most abject superstitions, which even Islam and Chris- tianity are not able to overcome. They have next to no mythology, at all events a very poor one, which may be one of the causes of what is called euphemistically their ten- dency to monotheism. A theistic tendency, as Dr Tylor calls it, cannot be denied to them. Almost all tribes believe in some supreme god, without always worshipping him, generally a heaven- and rain-god, sometimes, as among the Cameroons and in Dahomey, a sun-god. But the most widely spread worship among Negroes and Negroids, from west to north-east and south to Loango, is that of the moon, combined with a great veneration for the cow. Among the Abantu or Kaffrarians (Ama-Khosa, Ama- Zulu, Be-Chuana, Ova-Herero), which form the third group, fetichism is not so exuberant. Their religion is rather a religion of spirits. The spirits they worship, not sharply distinguished from the souls of the departed ancestors (Imi-shologu, Barimi), are conjured up by a caste of sorcerers and magicians, Isintonga (Isinyanga, Nyaka), and are all subordinate to a ruling spirit, re- garded as the ancestor of the race, the highest lawgiver who taught them their religious rites, but who seems to have been originally a moon-god as the lord of heaven. The four tribes give him different names the Ghost (Mu- kuro), the very High (Mo-limo), the Great-great (Unku- lunkulu) or grandfather ; but that the Bantu religions are four branches of one and the same faith cannot be doubted. They agree in many respects with those of the Negroes, but differ from them in others, especially in the cardinal characteristic of the latter, their fetichism. Possibly the difference is for the greater part due to the influence of the Hottentots, to whom the country now inhabited by the Abantu formerly belonged, and who seem to have been at the time of the invasion more civilized than the latter. The Khoi-Khoin or Hottentots, who are not black but brown, and who now live in and near the Cape Colony, 1 Even Rob. Hartmann, Die Nigritier, Berlin, 1876, pp. 192 sq., who denies the existence of a Hamitic race, and considers the Egyptians as Nubian Cushites, separated from the others in early times, ascribes their higher civilization to their intercourse with Semitic settlers.