Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 1, 1890.djvu/166

160 smooth away all the impressions they have made, never leaving a stroke or a dot of the finger on the sand after they have finished writing. Pythagoras also enjoined his disciples when they lifted a pot from the ashes always to efface the mark left by the pot on the ashes. He probably feared that the persons who ate out of the pot might be magically injured by any enemy who should tamper with the impression left on the ashes by the pot. The obligation of this Pythagorean precept is acknowledged at the other end of the world by the natives of Cambodia. They say that when you lift a pot from the fire you should be careful not to set it down on the ashes, if you can help it; but if it is necessary to do so, you should at least be careful, in lifting it from the ashes, to obliterate the impression which it has made. The reason they give is, that to act otherwise would lead to poverty and want. But this is clearly an afterthought, devised to explain a rule of which the original meaning was forgotten.

Such, then, are specimens, and only specimens, of the savage superstitions which, under the name of the symbols of Pythagoras, passed muster in antiquity as the emanations of a profound philosophy and an elevated morality. The