Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/560

 c; 2 2 Corresponde7ice.

as the conditions will permit."^ As a definition it will do. It fits the facts collected by Colonel Shakespear admirably.

I note with interest that in Burma, where the state of affairs is very similar to that in IManipur, the Cefisus Report quotes Mr. Lowis to the effect that " Animism supplies the solid constituents that hold the faith together, Buddhism the superficial polish. Far be it from me to underrate the value of that philosophic veneer. It has done all that a polish can do to smooth, to beautify, and to brighten, but to the end of things it will never be anything more than a polish. In the hour of great heart-searchings it is profitless as the Apostle's sounding brass. It is then that the Burman falls back upon his primaeval beliefs. Let but the veneer be scratched, the crude animism that lurks must out. Let but his inmost vital depths be touched, the Burman stands forth an animist confessed.""' I do not commend this picturesque per- suasive style, and I prefer my own way of putting it, — that what the Manipuri does shows him to be an animist. Colonel Shake- spear tells us that H.H. The Raja exhibited the same consternation when his stone at Santhong's /ai-p/iam shifted from the perpen- dicular as did the Nagas of Maram when the Public Works Department began to break up some of their memorial stones for roadmetal.*^ So, then, H.H. The Raja reverts " in the hour of great heart-searchings". to non-Hindu practices, employs a non- Hindu priest to set things straight to prevent disaster, and, in fact, displays the faith and the. imagination of a Naga. In Hinduism itself there is a large amount of animism. " It would be fruitless," says Sir Herbert Risley,' " to attempt to distinguish the two streams of magical usage, the Vedic and the Animistic." " The Vedas themselves are one source of the manifold Animistic practices which may now be traced all through popular Hinduism."

But, thanks to Colonel Shakespear and to the official main- tenance of the old religion, we can distinguish in Manipur with some degree of accuracy between the elements which the life of

^ Other definitions are to be found in E. B. Tylor, Primitive Culture, vol. i., p. 426, in Indian Census Reports, 1901, pp. 350 et seq., Bengal Census Report, 1 90 1, p. 151.

^ Burma Census Report, 191 1, p. 94. ** The Ndga 7 ribes of Manipur, p. 188.

''Indian Census Reports, 1901, p. 358.