Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 28, 1917.djvu/321

 Persistence of Primitive Beliefs in Theology. 289

may be seen in visnu-\\.Q Avatarism, wherein Visnu takes on different shapes (beginning with those of pure totemism), to preach truth when the world is steeped in sin and misery. This doctrine has indeed taken the place of Buddhism in India, for the simple reason that it answers the same demand of the soul and provides a more certain and orthodox object of worship.

11. I must assume for the present purpose a theorem still in dispute— that both Therapeuts in Egypt and Essene Jews in their socialistic communities round the Dead Sea, fell under Buddhist influence. Ebionism is only the attempt to adapt the new Christian teaching to the old beliefs ; our Lord was the last avatar of the Recurrent Prophet. The language of Hippolytus (ix. 14, x. 29, ed. Duncker, Gottingen, 1859), cannot be misinterpreted ; it is not Pythagorism, it is the salient doctrine of the great Aryan ' Protestant ' who was almost Pythagoras' contemporary.^

12. So many threads have been worked up into this religious tapestry that we must sum up before we can safely proceed. The Incarnationism of Anatolia reposes on the old belief in an impersonal ' mana ' which is chained or imprisoned in the fetish-king, who is only tolerated so long as he is its effective vehicle : the regicide of the Golden Bough is the 'legitimate end of every reign.' From Persia came the doctrine of the halo of the divine king (hvarena) and, as we might expect from Zoroaster, a higher notion of the holder or wearer of the regal title.^ From India came the thought of an Eternal Law, from time to time ' republished,' as our English Deists of century XVIII.

^ I draw special attention to the words iv (ruofj.aa-1. TroXXotx . . . /caret Kaipovs . . . p.€Tayyi^«T6ai., the individual and historic prophet is a vessel which the Divine Spirit uses and discards : in every Gnostic sect the heavenly Christ descends upon, speaks through, and then hefore the Passion deserts, the human person, Jesus.

-The persona/ism at the root of Iranian thought is clearly seen in the later reaction to an infallible imam, whose judgments are to supersede the rigid letter of the Koran — ^just as the Pope is to interpret the Bible and tradition. T