Page:Primitive Culture Vol 2.djvu/191

Rh god is also by no means bound fast to his dwelling in the image, he goes out and in, or rather is present in it sometimes with more and sometimes with less intensity.' Castrén's wide and careful researches among the rude Turanian tribes of North Asia led him to form a similar conception of the origin and nature of their idolatry. The idols of these people are uncouth objects, often mere stones or logs with some sort of human countenance, or sometimes more finished images, even of metal; some are large, some mere dolls; they belong to individuals, or families, or tribes; they may be kept in the yurts for private use, or set up in sacred groves or on the steppes or near the hunting and fishing places they preside over, or they may even have special temple-houses; some open-air gods are left naked, not to spoil good clothes, but others under cover are decked out with all an Ostyak's or Samoyed's wealth of scarlet cloths and costly furs, necklaces and trinkets; and lastly, to the idols are made rich offerings of food, clothes, furs, kettles, pipes, and the rest of the inventory of Siberian nomade riches. Now these idols are not to be taken as mere symbols or portraits of deities, but the worshippers mostly imagine that the deity dwells in the image or, so to speak, is embodied in it, whereby the idol becomes a real god capable of giving health and prosperity to man. On the one hand, the deity becomes serviceable to the worshipper by being thus contained and kept for his use, and on the other hand, the god profits by receiving richer offerings, failing which it would depart from its receptacle. We even hear of numerous spirits being contained in one image, and flying off at the death of the shaman who owned it. In Buddhist Tibet, as in West Africa, the practice of conjuring into puppets the demons which molest men is a recognized rite; while in Siam the making of clay puppets to be exposed on trees or by the roadside, or set adrift with