Page:History of Greece Vol I.djvu/375

 PERSONIFYING SYMPATHY AND BlAtrtiNAriOX. 343 circumscription of territory, besides horses, bulls, and dogs, of immortal breed and peculiar attributes, and monsters of strange ch. 17. p. 465). Heu-IIeu refused permission to any one to ascend the moun- tain, ou the ground that it was his tipuna or ancestor : " he constantly iden tified himself with the mountain and called it his sacred ancestor" (vol. ii. c. 4. p. 113). The mountains in New Zealand are accounted hy the natives masculine and feminine : Tonga Riro, and Taranaki, two male mountains, quarrelled about the affections of a small volcanic female mountain in the neighborhood (ibid. ii. c. 4. p. 97). The religious imagination of the Hindoos also (as described by Colonel Sleeman in his excellent work, Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official), affords a remarkable parallel to that of the early Greeks. Colonel Sleeman says, " I asked some of the Hindoos about us why they called the river Mother Nerbudda, if she was really never married. Her Majesty (said they with great respect) would really never consent to be married after the indignity she suffered from her affianced bridegroom the Sohun: and we call her mother because she blesses us all, and we are anxious to accost her by the name which we consider to be the most respectful and endearing. " Any Englishman can easily conceive a poet in his highest calenture of the brain, addressing the Ocean as a steed that knows his rider, and patting the crested billow as his flowing mane. But he must come to India to un- derstand how every individual of a whole community of many millions can address a fine river as a living being a sovereign princess who hears and un- derstands all t/iey say, and exercises a kind of local superintendence over their affairs, without a single temple in which her image is worshipped, or a single priest to profit by the delusion. As in the case of the Ganges, it is the river itself to whom they address themselves, and not to any deity residing in t, or presiding over it the stream itself is the deity which fills their imagina- tions, and receives their homage" (Rambles and Recollections of an In- dian Official, ch. iii. p. 20). Compare also the remarks in the same work on the sanctity of Mother Nerbudda (chapter xxvii. p. 261) ; also of the holy personality of the earth. " The land is considered as the MOTHER of the prince or chief who holds it, the great parent from whom he derives all that maintains him, his family, and his establishments. If well-treated, she yields this in abundance to her son ; but if he presumes to look upon her with the eye of desire, she ceases to be fruitful ; or the Deity sends down hail or blight to destroy all that she yields. The measuring the surface of ths fields, and the frequently inspecting the crops by the chief himself or hi* immediate agents, were considered by the people in this light either it should not be done at all, or the duty should be delegated to inferior agents, whose close inspection of the great parent could not be so displeasing to the Deity " ( Ch. xxvii. p. 248 ) . See also about the gods who are believed to reside in trees the Peepol-