Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 28, 1917.djvu/317

Rh water and thrown in—a common rain-charm to the present hour in Bengal, N.E. India and Burma. In sum, Adonis (undying through death) is the primitive god of vegetation who perishes and again revives; son and also husband of the Great Mother who stands behind, herself immortal and in a sense unchanging. Now, according to Philo, Eliun the Highest died in an encounter with wild beasts and was deified, his descendants 'continuing to offer him sacrifice and libation.' This makes clear his identity with the Adonis of Gebal and of Hellenic mythology. The name Elyun, it may be mentioned, is also found in another well-known figure of Greek myth—Pygmalion, which is Pume-Elyun.

7. Some seventeen years ago Dussaud published his Histoire et Religion des Nosairis (Paris 1900), and hazarded the conjecture that the Ali el Ala of this obscure pagan sect in the Lebanon is Adonis Elyun of the most primitive time. The uninitiated of this community recognise Khidr as the god par excellence; but the adept who has passed the Greater Mysteries call him Ali. In 'Khodr's' honour the proficient takes a solemn pilgrimage.

8. It seems fairly certain then that Shi'ism is nothing more than an adaptation of the early Anatolic nature- worship to the 'heroic humanism' of later times. Instead of a half-personified principle, combining in itself decay and resurrection, life in and through death, man associates his hopes and fears (which have now become largely selfish and personal) with a human figure. Adonis in the Greek myth has assumed the clear-cut outlines of a real personage: the invisible Great Mother has become the very feminine type, Aphrodite. The 'Highest' met his death by violence and was therefore worshipped; hero-cult all over the world aiming chiefly at the appeasement of souls cut off by