Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 8, 1897.djvu/389

 The Binding of a God. 353

Hoho-zen or twin pots, two little double pipkins of red clay' big pipe-bowls, united like the Siamese twins and covered with whitewashed lids to guard the water-offering." ^ He also describes, in the Dahome worship of the sacred cotton tree, how before it " an inverted pipkin full of cullender holes is placed on the ground at the tree foot, and by its side is a narrow-necked pot, into which the water offering is poured." ^

We meet with a similar example in Egypt. " According to some accounts Canobus was worshipped in Egypt in the shape of a jar with small feet, a thin neck, a swollen body, and a round back. On the Egyptian monuments we find a number of jars with the head either of some animal or human being at the top. It may be that some deities were symbo- lically represented in this manner ; but a particular jar-god as worshipped at Canobus is not mentioned by any writer except Rufinus, and is therefore exceedingly doubtful." ^

To this may be added the sacred water jar, the hydria, used in Egypt;* the mystic double jar which represents the male and female principle worshipped by the Hindus at the Durga-puja festival ; and the Dravidian Ghanta-karan, who is worshipped in the form of a jar as the healer of cutaneous disease.

I venture then to think, in default of some better expla- nation of the myth which we have been considering, that Otus and Ephialtes may have captured the war-god, shut him up as the Indian exorcisor does the dangerous ghost, and used him for their own purposes until he was released. The " brazen crock," then, in which they " established " the god would be the analogue of the idol into which the Indian exorcisor infuses the spirit of his deity.

From this point of view I may suggest the analogy of the

' Mission to Gelek, vol. i. p. 301. ^ Ibid., vol. ii. p. 140.


 * Dr. L. Schmitz, in Smith's Dictionary of Mythology, s.v. Canobus.

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 * Rawlinson, Herodotus, vol. ii. p. 67.