Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 5, 1894.djvu/342

 334 Athene in the Panathenaic festival; but it appears probable that similar rites extend through all stages of culture.

I should be glad of instances of garments or coverings, provided for images, or for any sacred object, and especially of the use of such garments at festivals or on special occasions.

As interesting examples of this clothing of images, or sacred objects, in most widely separated conditions of culture, I may mention the very primitive clothing of a sacred stone by branches, "to keep the god warm", in Samoa—"when praying on account of war, drought, famine, or epidemic, the branch clothes were carefully removed"; the clothing, like a woman, of a plantain tree in the ceremonies that take place at the consecration of an image of the great Hindoo goddess Durga (Parvati); the draping of images in the skin of sacrificial victims in ancient rites; the Mexican feast of Huitzilopochli, where an image, made of dough, was dressed in the raiment of the idol; and the great Mexican festival of Tezcatlipoca, on the eve of which the image was dressed in new clothes.

When the divinity is specifically represented by a living person (as in the Hindoo rite of worshipping daughters of a Brahman as forms of a goddess, and offering to them cloth, paint, and ornaments during the ceremony; and the Mexican rite in which human sacrifices were "adorned with the trappings of the Tlaloc gods, for it was said they were the images of these gods), garments provided for such persons would, of course, have an interest equal to clothing destined for an image.