Page:Primitive Culture Vol 2.djvu/444

430 be justified by surveying lustration through a series of typical instances, which show its appearance and character in savage and barbaric culture, as being an act belonging to certain well-marked events of human life.

The purification of the new-born child appears among the lower races in various forms, but perhaps in some particular instances borrowed from the higher. It should be noticed that though the naming of the child is often associated with its ceremonial cleansing, there is no real connexion between the two rites, beyond their coming due at the same early time of life. To those who look for the matter-of-fact origin of such ceremonies, one of the most suggestive of the accounts available is a simple mention of the two necessary acts of washing and name-giving, as done together in mere practical purpose, but not as yet passed into formal ceremony — the Kichtak Islanders, it is remarked, at birth wash the child, and give it a name. Among the Yumanas of Brazil, as soon as the child can sit up, it is sprinkled with a decoction of certain herbs, and receives a name which has belonged to an ancestor. Among some Jakun tribes of the Malay Peninsula, as soon as the child is born it is carried to the nearest stream and washed; it is then brought back to the house, the fire is kindled, and fragrant wood thrown on, over which it is passed several times. The New Zealanders' infant baptism is no new practice, and is considered by them an old traditional rite, but nothing very similar is observed among other branches of the Polynesian race. Whether independently invented or not, it was thoroughly worked into the native religious scheme. The baptism was performed on the eighth day or earlier, at the side of a stream or elsewhere, by a native priest who sprinkled water on the child with a branch or twig; sometimes the child was immersed. With this lustration it received its name, the priest repeating a list of