Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 18.djvu/801

* SUNBURY. 69<J SUNDAY. Mary M. Packer Hospital, the court-house, jail, and parish house. Sunbury has silk and woolen mills, collin works, planing mills, a foundry and machine shops, and liour mills. The government, under the charter of 189G, is nested in a burgess, chosen every three years, and a council. Sun- bury was founded in 1772 on the site of an old Indian village and of Fort Augusta, built in 175{j, during the French and Indian War. It was first incorporated in 1797. Population, in 1890, 5930; in 1900, 9810. SUNDA (sun'da) ISLANDS. A name com- monly applied to all the islands of the Malay Archipelago lying west of the Molucca and Banda seas, and separating the China Sea from the Indian Ocean ( Map : East India Islands, B G). They include tlie four large Sun- das, Sumatra, Java, Borneo, and Celebes, with their dependent islands, and the Lesser Sundas, Bali, Lombok, Sumbawa, Flores, Sandal- wood Island, Timor, and others extending in a chain eastward from Java. The Sunda Islands are named from the Sundanese, ethnographically a Malayan people of the western part of Java. They are shorter in stature than the Javanese proper, and somewhat more brachycephalic. They have also been less influenced by Hindu culture. SUN DANCE. The great annual religious ceremony conmion to all the tribes of the Plains with the exception of the Comanche and perhaps one or two others. In purpose it is a thanksgiv- ing and invocation to the sun god and his rep- resentative the buffalo. Although anticipated as a yearly tribal event, it is usually 'made' or organized on each occasion in fulfillment of a vow by some particular individual in gratitude for recovery from sickness or for some other bless- ing. The management of details is in charge of certain priests, together with the warrior societies. The dance usually takes place about the beginning of summer and with all its at- tendant ceremonies lasts more than a week, the dance proper continuing four days and nights. The entire tribe assemble for the occasion and pitch their tipis in a great circle, in the centre of which is erected the medicine lodge of leafy Cottonwood saplings. The centre pole of the lodge is decorated with streamers and symbolic paints, besides which a sacred bundle, usually wrapped in a buffalo skin, is fastened near the top. The centre pole is cut down by the women with much ceremony. The dancers are stripped and painted, the paint design differing in symbolic char- acter at each stage of the dance, and are prohibited fiom eating or drinking during the four days of the dance. Among the Sioux, Cheyenne, and some other tribes they formerly also subjected themselves to voluntary torture by leaning their weight upon ropes fastened to wooden skewers driven through the flesh of their breasts and shoulders. Among the Mandan this torture was carried to an almost incredible degree; the vic- tim was lifted completely from the ground and permitted to swing from the roof pole in this condition, after which one or more fingers were chopped off as a further sacrifice. Among the Kiowa such torture was unknown. The dancers form a half circle about the centre pole, each one looking steadfastly upon the sacred bundle at the top and constantly facing the sun in its course, with their arms swinging at their sides, and holding between Vol. XVIII. —45. their teeth whistles of eagle bone with which they keep up a continual shrill whistling. At the west end of the medicine lodge is an altar of bushes and variously decorateil twigs within which are the sacred buffalo skull, the sacred pipe, and other ceremonial objects. On another side are the drummers, who sing the songs of the sun dance to the accompaniment of a power- ful drum. Throughout the ceremony there is a ra])id succession of ceremonial performances, in- cluding addresses, feasting, giving of presents, initiation of new members into the various so- cieties, and the piercing of the ears of the chil- dren born during the past year. At night there are games, story-telling, and more feasting, winding up with various social dances after the grand performance is at an end. The dance is still kept up among nearly all the Plains tribes, varying but little in details. _SUNDAKBANS, or SUNDERBUNDS, sijon'der-bunz. . number of low islands, forming the delta of the Ganges, British India, and ex- tending from the mouth of the Hugli to the island of Rabanabad (Map: India, E 4). Area, 7500 square miles. Only the northern part is inhabited, the southern being mainly jungle, in- fested by tigers, leopards, buffaloes, crocodiles, and snakes. The only town worthy of mention is Port Canning, connected with Calcutta by rail. SUNDAY (AS. sunnandwg, OHG. sunnuntag, Ger. Honntag, Sunda}', from AS. sunnan, OHG. sunnun, gen. sg. of AS. sunna, OHG. sunno, Ger. Sonne, sun + AS. dceg, Ger. Tug. day). The first day of the week, observed by Christians almost universally as a holy day in honor of the resur- rection of Christ. For some time after the foundation of the Christian Church, the converts from Judaism still observed the Jewish Sabbath to a greater or less extent, at first, it would seem, concurrently with the celebration of the first day; but before the end of the apostolic period, Sunday, known as 'the Lord's day,' had thoroughly established itself as the special day to be sanctified by rest from secular labor and by public worship. The hallowing of Sunday appears incontestably as a definite law of the Church by the beginning of the fourth century; and the Emperor Constantine confirmed the cus- tom by a law of the State. Throughout the mediaeval period the authority of the Church was so universally recognized that secular legis- lation in this regard was almost imneccssary. The Catholic Church then required, and still requires, abstinence from servile work on that day, and the assistance at mass of all who are not lawfully hindered. While the devout have at- tempted to make it in all respects a holy day, yet the mass of the people in Roman Catholic countries see no harm in spending a part of the day in social intercourse and amusements of various kinds. The tendency of Protestant- ism, however, has been to recur to the stricter Jewish observance, and to forbid any practice of the ordinary occupations of other days. In the mediaeval period the courts were pre- sided over or dominated by the clergy, and Sun- day early became in the legal sense a dies non (q.v.), on which legal proceedings could not be conducted. By the common law, however, all other business might law-fully be transacted on Sunday. The first substantial limitation of this right was imposed by the statute 5 and 6 Edw.