Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 8, 1897.djvu/382

 346 The Binding of a God,

The same customs prevailed among the North American Indians. We are told that the principal object in the medi- cine bag is "a kind of household god which is a small carved image about eight inches long. Its first covering is of down, over which a piece of birch-bark is closely tied, and the whole is enveloped in several folds of red and blue cloth." ^ The Choktaws "kept a kind of box instead of the individual sack, containing some kind of substance which was considered sacred, and kept entirely secret from the common people ; and this box was borne by a number of men considered pure and holy." It was never rested on the ground, but on a pure rock or scaffold of wood.^ Similarly in Easter Island the people keep their images packed up in sacks during the whole year, " and each head of a household only exposes to view' during the public festivals as many of these toy divinities as he was able to manufacture with his own hands''^ — presumably those over which his influence was most completely assured.

Perhaps the most remarkable series of customs such as these comes from the Lower Himalaya in India. In Kumaun, we are told, the goddess Kali used in the old days to climb a deodar or cedar tree near the temple and call people by name — a most dangerous practice I need hardly say. Such unfortunate people used to die next day. But the great reliorious reformer, Shankar Acharya, put a stop to these im- proper proceedings of the goddess by inverting and fixing a huge cylindrical copper vessel, so as to cover the image en- tirely. Similarly, at Jageswar, the image known as Mrityun- jaya, or Siva, in his form as "conqueror of death," is covered with a cylinder. A massive lid is also thrown over the image of Vimaneswar, or the dwarf Vishnu. As the Hindu

' Emerson, Indian Myths, p. 248.

^ Ibid., p. 255.

' Featherman, Oceano-Melanesians, p. loS, note. The custom of covering sacred things appears in the Italian rite of Saint Ubaldo. Bower, Elevation and Procession of the Ceri, p. 61.