East Singhbhum, Jamshedpur

East Singhbhum, Jamshedpur

TRIBAL ISSUES

By: Mr. Kamal Kishore Soan IAS

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Introduction  Racial Affinity   Linguistic Affinity  Religion  Habitation & Settlement pattern   Socio-economic life   Financial Provisions in the Constitution What is to be done 

Introduction    TOP  Next

           The tribal population is found in almost all parts of the world. Prior to the introduction of the caste system, people were divided into various   tribes.    A tribe was a self-contained   unit without    any hierarchical discrimination.

           In      post-Independence   period,      all   the tribal   communities     were grouped together as "Scheduled Tribes "     under     the       constitution. The    main     criteria   adopted     for    specifying communities as the " Scheduled Tribes" include: -

1. Traditional occupation of a definite geographical area.
   
2. Distinctive culture which includes whole spectrum of tribal way of life i.e. language, customs traditions, religious beliefs, arts and crafts etc.
   
3. Primitive traits depicting occupational pattern, economy etc.
   
4. Lack of educational and techno - economic development.

 

            Tracing the historical background of the term " Scheduled Tribes" as used in the constitution, it may be stated that during the debate in the constituent Assembly,Sri Jaipal Singh had   favored the use of the term   "Adibasi"     instead of " scheduled   Tribes" . It was however, not accepted.   Dr.B.R. Ambedkar       explained   the reasons -" The word 'Adibasi' is   really a     general     term which has no  specific legal de jure connotation. Where      as the word      ‘Scheduled     Tribes’ has a fixed meaning, because      it     enumerates the tribes . In the   event of the matter being taken to a court of law, there should be a precise definition as to who  these Adibasis are." It was therefore, decided to enumerate the Adibasi under the term to be called "Scheduled Tribes". The term Adibasi literally means 'original settlers', 'earliest settlers' or 'autoch thones’. Archaeological evidences are numerous to indicate the existence of paleolithic   culture in   Singhbhum region and it is doubtful whether we can ascribe it to any of the communities living within the bound of the district at the present day. Attempts have been made to correlate the local Neolithic   finds to the ancestors of the Mundari group of tribes; but,  here too, the evidence is insufficient. It is known that from time to time various group of people have come and settled in Singhbhum, among  whom  it is  difficult to single out the first comers in the time scale. In Singhbhum     the   Hos, the Bhumij , etc.,have the  tradition of being the first settlers in the district . They claim that they first    cleared the jungle   and thus established KHUNTKATTI tenure rights. The general idea about the tribal is that they are    somewhat a strange set of people living in the midst of the jungles completely     isolated from the  general Indian population. This picture is not correct, the tribals having long-standing economic and cultural ties with their non-tribal Naghbours.

            The following castes or group of the Singhbhum district were notified as 'Scheduled Tribes ' under the Constitution of India,1950:-

        Asur,Baiga,Bathudi,Bedia,Binjhia,Birhore,Birjia,Chero,ChikBarik,Gond,Gorait,Ho,Karmali,

Kharia,Kharwar,Khond,Kisan,Kora,Korwa,Lohara,Mahli,Ma,Paharia,Munda,Oraon,Paharia,Santhal,

Sauria,Paharia,Savar,Bhumij

Racial Afinity TOP   Next   Previous 

                   Racially the tribes of Singhbhum are said to belong to a single stock, known variously as pre-Dravidian or proto -Australoid. Their general physical character is short to medium stature, dark complexion, wavy hair, dolichocephalic or long head and platyrrhine or broad nose.

Linguistic Affinity  TOP  Next Previous

               

   Linguistically,   the majority of the language belongs to Kolarian or Mundari branch of   the austric family of languages.   The language of the Hos, the Mundas and  Bhumij have a high   degree   of similarity;      the       Santhali   language ,though belonging to the same linguistic. Stock is  slightly different According to some anthropologists like colonel Dalton, as well as later writers like S.C.ROY, the Hos, the Mundas and Bhumij originally belonged to a single tribes living in Chotanagpur plateau. Subsequently, they became differentiated in course of migration to different areas. Besides speaking their tribal mother tongue, these people also use Hindi, Bengali or Oriya in some areas.

Religion  TOP Next  Previous

                    Earlier,   the tribals        were classified        as animist, but now the aboriginal    population of Singhbhum is being gradually adopting the hierarchical   system of Hindu castes.      The Hos,   living   comparatively isolated for a long time, have as yet resisted this process, but with the rapid growth of communication and the development of mining centre, they are also moving in the same direction.

                    The essential features of tribal religion of this area may be summed up as follows :-

• Belief in a Supreme Being, creator of the world and life, Sing Bonga or Dharam residing in the sun.
  
• Natural spirits.
  
• Belief in ancestral spirits- Oa Bonga or Burha Burhi.
  
• Belife in a presiding deity of the village -(Dessauli and his consort Jahira Buri) living in the sacred grove or sarna.
  
• Malevolent sprits cause disease.
  
• Absence of idolatry.

                    Belief   in witch is very extensive      among the Hos.    There are professional witch finders, khonses, sokhas, who divine the name of the witch responsible    for a particular    case of disease or ill-luck. In 1838, in his famous dispatch Wilkinson mentioned that there must be   spread of education to put down witchcraft and the institution of Sokhas who make divination and indicated some  as the witch that led to her murder. He waned it to be declared a crime for any person to practice as a Sokha or for any person to employ a Sokha. But sokhaism and witchcraft    have   not yet been stamped out. There are still dozens of murders every year due to the belief in witchcraft.

Habitation & Settlement pattern   TOP  Next  Previous

                  Except the kharias of Dhalbhum and the wandering Birhors, who live principally by hunting and collecting wild produce, the majority of the tribal communities, namely, the Hos, the santhals, the Bhumijs and the Mundas live a settled agriculture life hardly    distinguishable from that    of the Hindu agricultural castes living in the same region.

                  The village or hatu, is   a       single block of settlement or it may be divided into a number of hamlets (total or sahis ) situted within     the village boundary. The size of the village settlement varies from twenty  to even more than two hundred houses.

                  The pattern of the houses of these people has undergone considerable change. Formerly, the houses      were two sloped and     thatched with wild grass walls being made of upright sal logs placed side by side. Now, the wild     thatched grass     has given way to paddy straw or country tiles (Khapra) and the walls are principally built of mud. The houses are kept clean by regular   plastering with mud and cowdung solution; the walls are painted with  broad bands of yellow,    black or white, giving a very colorful appearance.     Very        often these broad bands are decorated with geometric drawings and occasionally animal figures.     The colours are made    from locally available materials;   the red and yellow are obtained from red and yellow ochre; the white made from soapstone and the black from burnt straw. The houses have a rectangular ground plan    with sizes varying from about    18 to 20 feet in length and 12 to 18 feet in width. The height at the top varies from 10 to 12 feet; in the dwelling houses, a partial portion wall divides the kitchen portion and the kitchen, which is also the sacred seat of ancestral spirits variously, termed as ading or bhitarghar.

             In economic life they have to be dependent on a number of artisan communities for essential manufactures.     Formerly,   trade was conducted through barter but today all transaction take place through money, though   with    regards    to    local products circulated locally the barter system still prevails to some extent.

            There      are a number        of weekly markets        throughout the districts, where various local communities make theire purchase and sales while   merchants from outside,   mostly marwaris and muslims, have also came in to ply their own trade.    These outsiders,     known as     'Dikkus' in local parlance, have exploited socio-economically to the tribals.

            With regard  to agriculture,        fragmentation of      holding and pressure on land are gradually growing more acute.The population has now became divided into roughly four classes: the wealthy Mankis and Mundas, substantial cultivators, poor cultivators and landless labourers.

Socio-economic life of some tribals   TOP  Next   Previous

The Birhors

                            The term Birhor literally means peoples of jungles (Bir-jungles, Hos- men) and this in very well with wandering hunters and collector's life, which these people lead.

                             Ethonologically, the Birhors belong to the same dark-skinned, short statured, long headed, wavy-haired and broad nosed race to which the Mundas, the Santhal, the Bhumis, the Hos and other allied tribes belong. Like other allied tribes the Birhors speak a language classed within the Mudari group in the Autro-Asiatic sub-family of language.

                            According to their economic habit the Birhors are classified into two groups -the wandering Birhors or Uthlus and the settled or Janghis. The Birhors of Singhbhum mostly belong to the former class. The settlement whether permanent or temporary are known as tandas which consists of usually half a dozen or more huts. The huts of the Uthlus are more improvised leaf sheds (Kumha) in form of low triangular tents with conical spaces. The individual house in a Janghi tanda is of a permanent nature. Tanda is comparatively more commodious with rectangular ground plan and two sloped roofing.

                        The uthlu Birhors do not practice any form of agriculture and are entirely dependent upon the collection of forest products for their living. Occasionally they also do a little bit of hunting with small basket traps. From the forests they collect edible roots, fruit, honey and barks of Baahinia Soondos for the manufacture of rope baskets. The Birhors are noted for their love of monkey’s flesh and skill in trapping these animals. They procure a staple food rice from the neighboring agriculturists in exchange of forest products. During the rainy season when they are unable to move about, they make wooden cups or bowls. Taking as a whole, dependence on forest products does not allow the Birhors to maintain local self-sufficiency.

                        In their social organization the following groups play most important roles: -

• The family
  
• The tanda or settlement group
  
• 
  

  Clan

                        The family is invariably of the simple type with father as its head. Tanda has a headman called naya who is also the priest of the groups. He has his assistants known as the Kotwar or Diguar. The members of the tanda group go out together for communal hunting, the most important of which is the monkey hunt or geri sendra.

                        The tribe is divided into a number of exogamous matrilineal clans, called gotras mostly named after some animal, plants, material objects, like :-

                      Indwar (fish),Khe (Grass),Gidh (Vulture),Golwa (Vegetable),Lakudchat (Spoon),Kerkett (bird),Toppe( basket),Singhpuria (Animal's horn),Hembrem (Paddy),Here Hembrem (rice),Ghuru Hembrem ( Cattle house ),Choli hembrem ( rice ),Lupur hembrem (rice bran),Savar (Iron rod),Hasda (sanwar tree),Savariya (wild grass ),Bhuiyan (bhuiyan cast),Andi (wildcat),Murum (stag)

                    A Birhor    must abstain     from killing, destroying, maiming, hunting, injuring, eating or otherwise using the animal, plant or other object that form his clan totem, or anything, made out of or obtained from it.

                    Marriage is considered indispensable for every Birhor. The different forms of valid marriage among Birhors are :-

                    Nam-Napam Bapala ( love Marriage ),Udra-Udri Bapala (elopement marriage),Balo-Bapala (intrusion marriage ),   Sipundur Bapala (forcible annoitment of sindur), Singha Bapala (widow re-marriage), Hirum Bapala ( second marriage of man while the first wife is still alive ), Kirig Javai Bapala ( brought son-in-low marriage ), Golhat Bapala (marriage by exchange of mates from two families ), Bing Kaihi Bapala (a marriage without payment of bride price ), Sadar Bapala ( a regular by negotiation between the guardians )

                   The corpses of children and women dying in a child birth are buried. The magico-religious beliefs and     practices are practically   identical with  those of the Hos. The Birhor’s whole life, economic,domestic and socio-political,    is pervaded by his belief in super-naturalism. Typical Mundari deities like Sing Bonga (Sun God), Haprom (Ancestral spirits). Buru Bonga (Ancestral family spirits) rank highest in Birhor religion.Contact with Hindu neighbours has left some impression on the essential structure of their belief in super-naturalism. Some Hindu deities like Debimai, Kalimai and Mahadeb have been included in their pantheon.

The Khariyas :-

 

                            In Singhbhum the Khariyas are  practically concentrated in Dhalbhum. In Dhalbhum the Khariyas settlements are situated mostly at the   foot of the hills or   sometimes even on hilltops. They are very shy of strangers and choose to live in  isolated jungles.  They seem to be slightly shorter in stature than the Mundas and are extremely platyrrhine, their average nasal index being 92. They are still   in   food gathering stage. They dig roots with the iron-tipped digger or Khonta. Compared to collection of vegetable products, hunting affords them with little regular supply of food. Fishing with simple basket is  quite common. With rapid deforestation the Khariyas find it hard to maintain their living on mere  collection of wild products. But as they have not yet been able to take settled agriculture or other  fruitful   occupation they lead a very precarious economic existence. Mortality rate of children is very high.      Monogamy is most widely prevalent though polygamy is not tabooed. Laviration is practiced. The binding portion   of Khariya’s marriage seems to be concentrated in the function of the bride and bridegroom mutually  anointing   the forehead with vermilion ( known as sindurdan ). Burial seems to be the approved method of disposing of the dead, though cremation is also resorted to at times.

The Mundas

 

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                        The Mundas are  one of the ancient tribes and are believed to belong to the Kolarian stock. The Mundas of Singhbhum  belong to the large Munda tribe of Ranchi plateau. In physical features, language, social organization, social customs and religious rites ,the Mundas resemble the Hos very closely.

                        The Mundas are   essentially agriculturist people. Initially the ownership of land was on community basis. They cleared the virgin forest for their cultivation and the land became their Khuntkatti. Such lands were   rent-free. In  due course, various other form of land tenure system known as "Utakar, Chattisa" etc. emerged in     which the rent was paid only for the year in which the land was cultivated.

                            With the passage of time, a number of free land holdings of the Mundas came under the zamindari   system. The exploitation by the zamindars gave rise to discontentment among the Mundas.Despite protective land laws, the exploitation by zamindars continued which eventually resulted in Sardari movement. The   Birsa movement of the late nineteenth century made the Government to review its land holding policy  and enacted the Chotanagpur Tenancy Act, 1908. It specifically protected the rights and interests of the tribals. Subsequently, for the restoration of the tribal land,  Land Regulation Act of 1969 was enacted. However, due to certain loopholes and operative defects in the Act, the alienation  of the tribal land to the non-tribals continues. They also agitated over the loss of their forest resources due to the nationalization of the forest produces.

                            The mundas believe in Sing Bonga as the supreme deity. Besides, there are ancestral spirits, which are worshipped by each family for the purposes of getting good crops or for avoidance of sickness, calamities, etc. There are several religious    functionaries. Deuari is the village priest. It is a hereditary position held generally by the eldest son.        Deona is the medicine man who knows the magical techniques of treating sick persons. It is also a hereditary position. Deosi is another religious functionary who is skilled in curing people affected by witchcraft .

                        All through the year the Mundas observe      several festivals and rituals associated with various agricultural activities. Some of the important       festivals include Garam Dharam, Maghe, and Sarhul. Halchar Parab festival is observed on the first day of the      month of Magh (Jan-Feb) with the ritual of ploughing for paddy. Munda              year also begins from      that month. During the month of Feb-March, Garam Dharam is     worshipped. The whole village     community participates in it. Maghe Parab is also observed          during the full moon   in Magh.     It is post-harvesting festival. The festival continues for seven days, but     the date     of     Morang-Maghe (four day) is most important. Bah also known as Sarhul, is celebrated in the month Phagun (Feb-March ).   It is connected with the flowering of Sal tree. The dancing is comparatively quieter than in case of Maghe-Parab and no open breach of decorum is perceptible on this occasion. Karma Puja is         performed during the month of May-June and is connected with weeding of paddy. They have also practically              the same annual    cycle of festivals as the Hos with the difference              that whereas among the latter the Maghe Parab is more important, in the   case of Mundas,     it is Ba Parab instead.      Tusu Parab is also observed with great fanfare in this area during Makar Sakranti.

                        The tradition panchayat, a form of   self-government          has been losing its importance. Ordinarily, each village has a Panchayat headed by a Pahan whose office is hereditary. Owing to the introduction of the statuary Panchayats the authority of the Pahan has been eroded to a great extent

The Santhals: -

 

                        The Santhals, like Bhils are believed to belong to the 'Pre-Aryan' period. They are the third largest tribe in India. Reformist Santhals are known as Safa-har, while the Santhals converted to Christianity called Um-hor. The Santhals speak Santhali language which has its own script known as 'Olchiki'. They are generally bilingual. Apart from speaking their Santhali mother tongue they also speak Oriya, Bengali and Hindi.

                        Santhals were formely engaged   in collection of    forest produce, hunting, fishing and shifting  cultivation on hill slopes for their   livelihood. But now they are mainly engaged in settled cultivation. A substantial number of them are landless labourers and seasonal migration plays a dominant role in their socio-economic life.

            The polity of the Santhals is patriarchal. In each village there are fiveofficials.Distinct functions are assigned to each of them. The 'headman' is known as 'jogmanjhi'.    His main duty is to look after the morals of boys and girls. ‘Pramanik’ and ‘assistant pramanik’ assist him. Nayak is a village priest and Gorait, a messenger. The majhithan is the usual place for communal talks and council meetings. There used to be a Pargana Council, which had jurisdiction over a number of villages. But now, there are hereditary Parganaits for each large district who preside over the Bir or Santhali High Court. Parganaits is the highest council recognized by the Santhals. It decides almost all sorts of disputes and its decisions are strictly followed.

                        With the introduction of Panchayati raj there has been some erosion in the authority of the traditional Santhali Panchayats.       But they exercise considerable influence in socio-economic matters. The present system does not allow active participation of tribals in the management of their own affairs. As a result the agents of vested interests are forsaking the rights and privileges of the Santhals.

                        The Santhals         observe several      festivals. Soharae, the harvest festival is their most important festival. It is celebrated with lots of merry-making in the month of     Paus (Dec-Jan) after the winter paddy is harvested. Baha is other important festival. Maghasin, Eroksin, Sakrat and Karam are other festivals. Bitlaha (excommunication) is an important form of punishment for promiscuitious relationship or incest.

The Oraons: -

 

                    The Oraons are believed to belong to the Dravedian stock. They generally speak Kurukh language. The     Oraons mainly     depend on agriculture and have believed to have first introduced plough cultivation in the Chotanagpur Plateau.

                    It has been observed that apart from minor diversification of occupations there  has been rapid dispossession of     land, forcing increasing number of them to become a labourer. In spite   of protective land laws, a      number of them  have been rendered landless due to regular and  irregular processes of land alienation. Money lending law has not been enforced and moneylenders continue to charge exorbitant rates of interest and fully exploit the tribal people.

The Hos: -

 

                    Hos, popularly known as Larka Kols, are a large group among the different tribal groups residing in the district.

                    For conducting communal worship on of the villagers, every Ho village has its priest or deuri. He offers prayer along with offerings of illi or rice beer and fowl. There is a concept of medicine men or deonas to counteract the evil influence of a malignant spirit.    It is significant that whereas the deuri is invariably Ho, the deona in many cases does not belong to that tribe.

The Bhuiyas: -

 

                    According to local tradition the Bhuiyas are among the oldest inhabitants of Singhbhum. The Bhuiyas, like Bhumijs, are gradually becoming hinduised. At present among the Hinduised section employment of Brahman priest in          marriage ceremony       and funeral rites is considered essential. The cult of vaishnavism has influenced them to a large extent as among the Bhumijs.

Financial Provisions in the Constitution  TOP   Next    Previous

                    Provisions related to economic development of Scheduled Tribes are mainly contained in Articles 275(1) and 339(2) of the Constitution. Article 275(1), first provison envisages provisions for grants-in-aid for meeting the cost of such schemes of development as may be undertaken by a state with the approval of Government of India for the purpose of promoting the welfare of its Schedule Tribes. In pursuance of this Article, provision of special assistance has been made to the states having Scheduled Tribe population. As per the provision, the grant is to be made against such specific schemes as are necessary for the welfare of Scheduled Tribe and are undertaken with the prior approval of the Union Government. But this is not done. But for this, implementing agencies/personnel only is not to be blamed.

                    For instance, in the East Singhbhum MESO Area, Rs. 87,14,000.00 was sanctioned as grant-in aid under Article 275(1) for the year 1997-98. But this was disbursed from the state capital on 25/12/97 and which was physically available only in the month of January. Similarly, under the ITDP (Integrated Tribal Development Project), the fund for the year 1997-98 was disbursed on 11/03/98 and reached to implementing agency in the next financial only. Last but not the least, the most important but not so glamorous office of the Tribal development Commissioner at Ranchi was kind enough to disburse money for the welfare of Scheduled Tribe allocated for the year 1997-98 in the first week of May 98.

                    Apart from these, the faulty selection of the activities adds another dimension in the poor performance. The selection of the activities and the fixation of the units as well as the cost per units are done by the state government. Some of these activities do not match with the local suitability, psychological receptivity of people and resource availability in the area. Bamboo plantation has never attracted the primitive tribes of this district, while bee keeping and leaf-plate making have made good impact. The primitive tribes do not have land enough to construct tanks for pisciculture, nor do they have the sedentary lifestyle for construction of check dams and utilize the water for agricultural purpose. In case of unit cost, it has been fixed without considering rate of inflation. For digging a well one needs approximately Rs.40,000.00, but the unit cost is Rs.26,700.00.

                In case of Schedule Tribes, most of them have crossed the sustenance stage and now looking for economic progress through entrepreneurship. Nowadays, they are evincing more interest in cycle repairing, food processing, kiosk for shops etc.

                Considering all such fact, if the district level programme Implementation Committee (PIC) desires to modify anything according to the local needs in the approved plan of the state government, at the most it can change the number of allocated units only in a particular activity within the monetary limit of the programme.

                Due to all these constraints, the allocated fund gets stuck and fund for the next year is neither allocated nor sanctioned because the implementing agency fails to submit the utilization certificate since it has not spent the money within the prescribed time- limit.

What is to be done   TOP  Previous

              The primitive tribal groups are still at the sustenance level. Food, shelter and clothing are still their priorities. It has been observed that some primitive tribes are still deprived of shelter despite the fact     that the housing scheme has been in the vogue for so many years. Some of the primitive tribal families have          not been allotted the houses under the IAY, just because they are residing over the forest land. In those cases, firstly, the Gair- masseur khan’s land has to be located and identified and subsequently the same has   to be settled with the landless tribals. Thereafter houses should be built over the settled       land. It requires a proper co-ordination among the Block Development officer, the Block Welfare          officer and the Revenue Circle officer, as the B.D.O. looks after the IAY, the B.W.O. looks after the Welfare of the primitive tribe,     while the C.O. looks into the matters related to location, identification and settlement/ allotment of     Government land. So the better co-ordination among the B.D.O. the B.W.O. and the C.O. will ensure that the primitive tribes get the houses.

            Earlier the guideline of IAY put more emphasis on the construction of ' pucca ' structure, which the     tribals never preferred. For, they use to have mud plastering and painting (soharai and Kowhar) with     earth colours on the walls at regular intervals according to the annual cultural cycle based on agricultural     activities. Now the guideline has been relaxed and the construction of mud houses has been allowed.

             Weekly bazars, popularly Known as haats, have been part and parcel of the tribal world- view. Hat is      the     place where not only the economic transaction takes place but socio-cultural activities also take      place.     Each Hat covers a number of adjacent villages. Every tribal of that particular area ensures      that  one     attends that hat. Considering the purchasing power capability of the tribes, the essential          good     Viz.      Food grain,      kerosene etc. should be made available in these hats. The administration      should also ensure the presence of doctors with sufficient amount of medicines in these hats, where          more population could be covered. Again considering the fact that most of the doctors do not stay at their      place    of posting, this would ensure that people get the medical facility regularly.

                Before planning of the programmes and selection of economic activities for the welfare and development of tribal population the government should give proper attention to the requirement of various tribal groups. For, the primitive tribal groups are still at the stage of sustenance and for them welfare         programmes should continue. Instead of making the provision for construction of check dams,     promotion of pisciculture and food processing etc. the activities like bee-keeping, leaf-plate making,   basket   and     rope     making   should be promoted. On the other hand; the major tribes are looking for the greener pastures after crossing the threshold of sustenance. Now they prefer to take up the other types of activities, like   cycle     repairing, land leveling for agriculture purpose, tailoring, radio repairing etc. Now   for      then,     develoment     activities should get the precedence rather than welfare activities. And     for     the      selection/ preference  of activities, the district level PIC has to be accorded the power to do so in public interest.

              The abysmal level of their economic progress does not motivate the poor tribals to send their children   to schools.  So the concept of residential schools is relevant and useful for this under privileged group. For, all the study expenditure incurred is borne by the government and the student gets an ample opportunity to get an exposure of the bigger world.

              Tribal development has been a non-glamorous and low profile activity. It needs the personnel with fair   amount  of commitment and dedication. While filling the posts like tribal Development commissioner   and MESO officers, the above mentioned criteria should be taken in to account and these posts should not remain vacant.

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http://jamshedpur.nic.in/tribal.htm

Myth, Ritual, and Religion Volume I

by Andrew Lang
(1844-1912)

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Table of Contents | Chapters: Preface | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 |

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Chapter 5

NATURE MYTHS.

Savage fancy, curiosity and credulity illustrated in nature myths-- In these all phenomena are explained by belief in the general animation of everything, combined with belief in metamorphosis--Sun myths, Asian, Australian, African, Melanesian, Indian, Californian, Brazilian, Maori, Samoan--Moon myths, Australian, Muysca, Mexican, Zulu, Macassar, Greenland, Piute, Malay--Thunder myths--Greek and Aryan sun and moon myths--Star myths--Myths, savage and civilised, of animals, accounting for their marks and habits--Examples of custom of claiming blood kinship with lower animals--Myths of various plants and trees--Myths of stones, and of metamorphosis into stones, Greek, Australian and American--The whole natural philosophy of savages expressed in myths, and survives in folk-lore and classical poetry; and legends of metamorphosis.

The intellectual condition of savages which has been presented and established by the evidence both of observers and of institutions, may now be studied in savage myths. These myths, indeed, would of themselves demonstrate that the ideas which the lower races entertain about the world correspond with our statement. If any one were to ask himself, from what mental conditions do the following savage stories arise? he would naturally answer that the minds which conceived the tales were curious, indolent, credulous of magic and witchcraft, capable of drawing no line between things and persons, capable of crediting all things with human passions and resolutions. But, as myths analogous to those of savages, when found among civilised peoples, have been ascribed to a psychological condition produced by a disease of language acting after civilisation had made considerable advances, we cannot take the savage myths as proof of what savages think, believe and practice in the course of daily life. To do so would be, perhaps, to argue in a circle. We must therefore study the myths of the undeveloped races in themselves.

These myths form a composite whole, so complex and so nebulous that it is hard indeed to array them in classes and categories. For example, if we look at myths concerning the origin of various phenomena, we find that some introduce the action of gods or extra- natural beings, while others rest on a rude theory of capricious evolution; others, again, invoke the aid of the magic of mortals, and most regard the great natural forces, the heavenly bodies, and the animals, as so many personal characters capable of voluntarily modifying themselves or of being modified by the most trivial accidents. Some sort of arrangement, however, must be attempted, only the student is to understand that the lines are never drawn with definite fixity, that any category may glide into any other category of myth.

We shall begin by considering some nature myths--myths, that is to say, which explain the facts of the visible universe. These range from tales about heaven, day, night, the sun and the stars, to tales accounting for the red breast of the ousel, the habits of the quail, the spots and stripes of wild beasts, the formation of rocks and stones, the foliage of trees, the shapes of plants. In a sense these myths are the science of savages; in a sense they are their sacred history; in a sense they are their fiction and romance. Beginning with the sun, we find, as Mr. Tylor says, that "in early philosophy throughout the world the sun and moon are alive, and, as it were, human in their nature".[1] The mass of these solar myths is so enormous that only a few examples can be given, chosen almost at random out of the heap. The sun is regarded as a personal being, capable not only of being affected by charms and incantations, but of being trapped and beaten, of appearing on earth, of taking a wife of the daughters of men. Garcilasso de la Vega has a story of an Inca prince, a speculative thinker, who was puzzled by the sun-worship of his ancestors. If the sun be thus all-powerful, the Inca inquired, why is he plainly subject to laws? why does he go his daily round, instead of wandering at large up and down the fields of heaven? The prince concluded that there was a will superior to the sun's will, and he raised a temple to the Unknown Power. Now the phenomena which put the Inca on the path of monotheistic religion, a path already traditional, according to Garcilasso, have also struck the fancy of savages. Why, they ask, does the sun run his course like a tamed beast? A reply suited to a mind which holds that all things are personal is given in myths. Some one caught and tamed the sun by physical force or by art magic.

[1] Primitive Culture, i. 288.

In Australia the myth says that there was a time when the sun did not set. "It was at all times day, and the blacks grew weary. Norralie considered and decided that the sun should disappear at intervals. He addressed the sun in an incantation (couched like the Finnish Kalewala in the metre of Longfellow's Hiawatha); and the incantation is thus interpreted: "Sun, sun, burn your wood, burn your internal substance, and go down". The sun therefore now burns out his fuel in a day, and goes below for fresh firewood.[1]

[1] Brough Smyth, Aborigines of Victoria, i. 430.

In New Zealand the taming of the sun is attributed to the great hero Maui, the Prometheus of the Maoris. He set snares to catch the sun, but in vain, for the sun's rays bit them through. According to another account, while Norralie wished to hasten the sun's setting, Maui wanted to delay it, for the sun used to speed through the heavens at a racing pace. Maui therefore snared the sun, and beat him so unmercifully that he has been lame ever since, and travels slowly, giving longer days. "The sun, when beaten, cried out and revealed his second great name, Taura-mis-te-ra."[1] It will be remembered that Indra, in his abject terror when he fled after the slaying of Vrittra, also revealed his mystic name. In North America the same story of the trapping and laming of the sun is told, and attributed to a hero named Tcha-ka-betch. In Samoa the sun had a child by a Samoan woman. He trapped the sun with a rope made of a vine and extorted presents. Another Samoan lassoed the sun and made him promise to move more slowly.[2] These Samoan and Australian fancies are nearly as dignified as the tale in the Aitareya Brahmana. The gods, afraid "that the sun would fall out of heaven, pulled him up and tied him with five ropes". These ropes are recognised as verses in the ritual, but probably the ritual is later than the ropes. In Mexico we find that the sun himself (like the stars in most myths) was once a human or pre- human devotee, Nanahuatzin, who leapt into a fire to propitiate the gods.[3] Translated to heaven as the sun, Nanahuatzin burned so very fiercely that he threatened to reduce the world to a cinder. Arrows were therefore shot at him, and this punishment had as happy an effect as the beatings administered by Maui and Tcha-ka-betch. Among the Bushmen of South Africa the sun was once a man, from whose armpit a limited amount of light was radiated round his hut. Some children threw him up into the sky, and there he stuck, and there he shines.[4] In the Homeric hymn to Helios, as Mr. Max Muller observes, "the poet looks on Helios as a half god, almost a hero, who had once lived on earth," which is precisely the view of the Bushmen.[5] Among the Aztecs the sun is said to have been attacked by a hunter and grievously wounded by his arrows.[6] The Gallinomeros, in Central California, seem at least to know that the sun is material and impersonal. They say that when all was dark in the beginning, the animals were constantly jostling each other. After a painful encounter, the hawk and the coyote collected two balls of inflammable substance; the hawk (Indra was occasionally a hawk) flew up with them into heaven, and lighted them with sparks from a flint. There they gave light as sun and moon. This is an exception to the general rule that the heavenly bodies are regarded as persons. The Melanesian tale of the bringing of night is a curious contrast to the Mexican, Maori, Australian and American Indian stories which we have quoted. In Melanesia, as in Australia, the days were long, indeed endless, and people grew tired; but instead of sending the sun down below by an incantation when night would follow in course of nature, the Melanesian hero went to Night (conceived of as a person) and begged his assistance. Night (Qong) received Qat (the hero) kindly, darkened his eyes, gave him sleep, and, in twelve hours or so, crept up from the horizon and sent the sun crawling to the west.[7] In the same spirit Paracelsus is said to have attributed night, not to the absence of the sun, but to the apparition of certain stars which radiate darkness. It is extraordinary that a myth like the Melanesian should occur in Brazil. There was endless day till some one married a girl whose father "the great serpent," was the owner of night. The father sent night bottled up in a gourd. The gourd was not to be uncorked till the messengers reached the bride, but they, in their curiosity, opened the gourd, and let night out prematurely.[8]

[1] Taylor, New Zealand, p. 131.

[2] Turner, Samoa, p. 20.

[3] Sahagun, French trans., vii. ii.

[4] Bleck, Hottentot Fables, p. 67; Bushman Folk-Lore, pp. 9, 11.

[5] Compare a Californian solar myth: Bancroft, iii. pp. 85, 86.

[6] Bancroft, iii. 73, quoting Burgoa, i. 128, 196.

[7] Codrington, Journ. Anthrop. Inst., February, 1881.

[8] Contes Indiens du Bresil, pp. 1-9, by Couto de Magalhaes. Rio de Janeiro, 1883. M. Henri Gaidoz kindly presented the author with this work.

The myths which have been reported deal mainly with the sun as a person who shines, and at fixed intervals disappears. His relations with the moon are much more complicated, and are the subject of endless stories, all explaining in a romantic fashion why the moon waxes and wanes, whence come her spots, why she is eclipsed, all starting from the premise that sun and moon are persons with human parts and passions. Sometimes the moon is a man, sometimes a woman and the sex of the sun varies according to the fancy of the narrators. Different tribes of the same race, as among the Australians, have different views of the sex of moon and sun. Among the aborigines of Victoria, the moon, like the sun among the Bushmen, was a black fellow before he went up into the sky. After an unusually savage career, he was killed with a stone hatchet by the wives of the eagle, and now he shines in the heavens.[1] Another myth explanatory of the moon's phases was found by Mr. Meyer in 1846 among the natives of Encounter Bay. According to them the moon is a woman, and a bad woman to boot. She lives a life of dissipation among men, which makes her consumptive, and she wastes away till they drive her from their company. While she is in retreat, she lives on nourishing roots, becomes quite plump, resumes her gay career, and again wastes away. The same tribe, strangely enough, think that the sun also is a woman. Every night she descends among the dead, who stand in double lines to greet her and let her pass. She has a lover among the dead, who has presented her with a red kangaroo skin, and in this she appears at her rising. Such is the view of rosy-fingered Dawn entertained by the blacks of Encounter Bay. In South America, among the Muyscas of Bogota, the moon, Huythaca, is the malevolent wife of the child of the sun; she was a woman before her husband banished her to the fields of space.[2] The moon is a man among the Khasias of the Himalaya, and he was guilty of the unpardonable offence of admiring his mother-in-law. As a general rule, the mother-in-law is not even to be spoken to by the savage son-in-law. The lady threw ashes in his face to discourage his passion, hence the moon's spots. The waning of the moon suggested the most beautiful and best known of savage myths, that in which the moon sends a beast to tell mortals that, though they die like her, like her they shall be born again.[3] Because the spots in the moon were thought to resemble a hare they were accounted for in Mexico by the hypothesis that a god smote the moon in the face with a rabbit;[4] in Zululand and Thibet by a fancied translation of a good or bad hare to the moon.

[1] Brough Smyth, Aborigines of Victoria, i. 432.

[2] Tylor, Primitive Culture, i. 353.

[3] Bleek, Reynard in South Africa, pp. 69-74.

[4] Sahagun, viii. 2.

The Eskimos have a peculiar myth to account for the moon's spots. Sun and moon were human brother and sister. In the darkness the moon once attempted the virtue of the sun. She smeared his face over with ashes, that she might detect him when a light was brought. She did discover who her assailant had been, fled to the sky, and became the sun. The moon still pursues her, and his face is still blackened with the marks of ashes.[1] Gervaise[2] says that in Macassar the moon was held to be with child by the sun, and that when he pursued her and wished to beat her, she was delivered of the earth. They are now reconciled. About the alternate appearance of sun and moon a beautifully complete and adequate tale is told by the Piute Indians of California. No more adequate and scientific explanation could possibly be offered, granting the hypothesis that sun and moon are human persons and savage persons. The myth is printed as it was taken down by Mr. De Quille from the lips of Tooroop Eenah (Desert Father), a chief of the Piutes, and published in a San Francisco newspaper.

[1] Crantz's History of Greenland, i. 212.

[2] Royaume de Macacar, l688.

"The sun is the father and ruler of the heavens. He is the big chief. The moon is his wife and the stars are their children. The sun eats his children whenever he can catch them. They flee before him, and are all the time afraid when he is passing through the heavens. When he (their father) appears in the morning, you see all the stars, his children, fly out of sight--go away back into the blue of the above--and they do not wake to be seen again until he, their father, is about going to his bed.

"Down deep under the ground--deep, deep, under all the ground--is a great hole. At night, when he has passed over the world, looked down on everything and finished his work, he, the sun, goes into his hole, and he crawls and creeps along it till he comes to his bed in the middle part of the earth. So then he, the sun, sleeps there in his bed all night.

"This hole is so little, and he, the sun, is so big, that he cannot turn round in it; and so he must, when he has had all his sleep, pass on through, and in the morning we see him come out in the east. When he, the sun, has so come out, he begins to hunt up through the sky to catch and eat any that he can of the stars, his children, for if he does not so catch and eat he cannot live. He, the sun, is not all seen. The shape of him is like a snake or a lizard. It is not his head that we can see, but his belly, filled up with the stars that times and times he has swallowed.

"The moon is the mother of the heavens and is the wife of the sun. She, the moon, goes into the same hole as her husband to sleep her naps. But always she has great fear of the sun, her husband, and when he comes through the hole to the nobee (tent) deep in the ground to sleep, she gets out and comes away if he be cross.

"She, the moon, has great love for her children, the stars, and is happy to travel among them in the above; and they, her children, feel safe, and sing and dance as she passes along. But the mother, she cannot help that some of her children must be swallowed by the father every month. It is ordered that way by the Pah-ah (Great Spirit), who lives above the place of all.

"Every month that father, the sun, does swallow some of the stars, his children, and then that mother, the moon, feels sorrow. She must mourn; so she must put the black on her face for to mourn the dead. You see the Piute women put black on their faces when a child is gone. But the dark will wear away from the face of that mother, the moon, a little and a little every day, and after a time again we see all bright the face of her. But soon more of her children are gone, and again she must put on her face the pitch and the black."

Here all the phenomena are accounted for, and the explanation is as advanced as the Egyptian doctrine of the hole under the earth where the sun goes when he passes from our view. And still the Great Spirit is over all: Religion comes athwart Myth.

Mr. Tylor quotes[1] a nature myth about sun, moon and stars which remarkably corresponds to the speculation of the Piutes. The Mintira of the Malayan Peninsula say that both sun and moon are women. The stars are the moon's children; once the sun had as many. They each agreed (like the women of Jerusalem in the famine), to eat their own children; but the sun swallowed her whole family, while the moon concealed hers. When the sun saw this she was exceedingly angry, and pursued the moon to kill her. Occasionally she gets a bite out of the moon, and that is an eclipse. The Hos of North-East India tell the same tale, but say that the sun cleft the moon in twain for her treachery, and that she continues to be cut in two and grow again every month. With these sun and moon legends sometimes coexists the RELIGIOUS belief in a Creator of these and of all things.

[1] Primitive Culture, i. 356.

In harmony with the general hypothesis that all objects in nature are personal, and human or bestial, in real shape, and in passion and habits, are the myths which account for eclipses. These have so frequently been published and commented on[1] that a long statement would be tedious and superfluous. To the savage mind, and even to the Chinese and the peasants of some European countries, the need of an explanation is satisfied by the myth that an evil beast is devouring the sun or the moon. The people even try by firing off guns, shrieking, and clashing cymbals, to frighten the beast (wolf, pig, dragon, or what not) from his prey. What the hungry monster in the sky is doing when he is not biting the sun or moon we are not informed. Probably he herds with the big bird whose wings, among the Dacotahs of America and the Zulus of Africa, make thunder; or he may associate with the dragons, serpents, cows and other aerial cattle which supply the rain, and show themselves in the waterspout. Chinese, Greenland, Hindoo, Finnish, Lithunian and Moorish examples of the myth about the moon- devouring beasts are vouched for by Grimm.[2] A Mongolian legend has it that the gods wished to punish the maleficent Arakho for his misdeeds, but Arakho hid so cleverly that their limited omnipotence could not find him. The sun, when asked to turn spy, gave an evasive answer. The moon told the truth. Arakho was punished, and ever since he chases sun and moon. When he nearly catches either of them, there is an eclipse, and the people try to drive him off by making a hideous uproar with musical and other instruments.[3] Captain Beeckman in 1704 was in Borneo, when the natives declared that the devil "was eating the moon".

[1] Tylor, Primitive Culture, vol. i.; Lefebure, Les Yeux d'Horus,

[2] Teutonic Mythology, English trans., ii. 706.

[3] Moon-Lore by Rev. T. Harley, p. 167.

Dr. Brinton in his Myths and Myth-Makers gives examples from Peruvians, Tupis, Creeks, Iroquois and Algonkins. It would be easy, and is perhaps superfluous, to go on multiplying proofs of the belief that sun and moon are, or have been, persons. In the Hervey Isles these two luminaries are thought to have been made out of the body of a child cut in twain by his parents. The blood escaped from the half which is the moon, hence her pallor.[1] This tale is an exception to the general rule, but reminds us of the many myths which represent the things in the world as having been made out of a mutilated man, like the Vedic Purusha. It is hardly necessary, except by way of record, to point out that the Greek myths of sun and moon, like the myths of savages, start from the conception of the solar and lunar bodies as persons with parts and passions, human loves and human sorrows. As in the Mongolian myth of Arakho, the sun "sees all and hears all," and, less honourable than the Mongolian sun, he plays the spy for Hephaestus on the loves of Ares and Aphrodite. He has mistresses and human children, such as Circe and Aeetes.[2]

[1] Gill, Myths and Songs, p. 45.

[2] See chapter on Greek Divine Myths.

The sun is all-seeing and all-penetrating. In a Greek song of to- day a mother sends a message to an absent daughter by the sun; it is but an unconscious repetition of the request of the dying Ajax that the heavenly body will tell his fate to his old father and his sorrowing spouse.[1]

[1] Sophocles, Ajax, 846.

Selene, the moon, like Helios, the sun, was a person, and amorous. Beloved by Zeus, she gave birth to Pandia, and Pan gained her affection by the simple rustic gift of a fleece.[1] The Australian Dawn, with her present of a red kangaroo skin, was not more lightly won than the chaste Selene. Her affection for Endymion is well known, and her cold white glance shines through the crevices of his mountain grave, hewn in a rocky wall, like the tombs of Phrygia.[2] She is the sister of the sun in Hesiod, the daughter (by his sister) of Hyperion in the Homeric hymns to Helios.

[1] Virgil, Georgics, iii. 391.

[2] Preller, Griech. Myth., i. 163.

In Greece the aspects of sun and moon take the most ideal human forms, and show themselves in the most gracious myths. But, after all, these retain in their anthropomorphism the marks of the earliest fancy, the fancy of Eskimos and Australians. It seems to be commonly thought that the existence of solar myths is denied by anthropologists. This is a vulgar error. There is an enormous mass of solar myths, but they are not caused by "a disease of language," and--all myths are not solar!

There is no occasion to dwell long on myths of the same character in which the stars are accounted for as transformed human adventurers. It has often been shown that this opinion is practically of world-wide distribution.[1] We find it in Australia, Persia, Greece, among the Bushmen, in North and South America, among the Eskimos, in ancient Egypt, in New Zealand, in ancient India--briefly, wherever we look. The Sanskrit forms of these myths have been said to arise from confusion as to the meaning of words. But is it credible that, in all languages, however different, the same kind of unconscious puns should have led to the same mistaken beliefs? As the savage, barbarous and Greek star-myths (such as that of Callisto, first changed into a bear and then into a constellation) are familiar to most readers, a few examples of Sanskrit star-stories are offered here from the Satapatha Brahmana.[2] Fires are not, according to the Brahmana ritual, to be lighted under the stars called Krittikas, the Pleiades. The reason is that the stars were the wives of the bears (Riksha), for the group known in Brahmanic times as the Rishis (sages) were originally called the Rikshas (bears). But the wives of the bears were excluded from the society of their husbands, for the bears rise in the north and their wives in the east. Therefore the worshipper should not set up his fires under the Pleiades, lest he should thereby be separated from the company of his wife. The Brahmanas[3] also tell us that Prajapati had an unholy passion for his daughter, who was in the form of a doe. The gods made Rudra fire an arrow at Prajapati to punish him; he was wounded, and leaped into the sky, where he became one constellation and his daughter another, and the arrow a third group of stars. In general, according to the Brahmanas, "the stars are the lights of virtuous men who go to the heavenly world".[4]

[1] Custom and Myth, "Star-Myths"; Primitive Culture, i. 288, 291; J. G. Muller, Amerikanischen Urreligionen, pp. 52, 53.

[2] Sacred Books of the East, i. 283-286.

[3] Aitareya Bramana, iii. 33.

[4] Satapatha Brahmana, vi. 5, 4, 8. For Greek examples, Hesiod, Ovid, and the Catasterismoi, attributed to Eratosthenes, are useful authorities. Probably many of the tales in Eratosthenes are late fictions consciously moulded on traditional data.

Passing from savage myths explanatory of the nature of celestial bodies to myths accounting for the formation and colour and habits of beasts, birds and fishes, we find ourselves, as an old Jesuit missionary says, in the midst of a barbarous version of Ovid's Metamorphoses. It has been shown that the possibility of interchange of form between man and beast is part of the working belief of everyday existence among the lower peoples. They regard all things as on one level, or, to use an old political phrase, they "level up" everything to equality with the human status. Thus Mr. Im Thurn, a very good observer, found that to the Indians of Guiana "all objects, animate or inaminate, seem exactly of the same nature, except that they differ by the accident of bodily form". Clearly to grasp this entirely natural conception of primitive man, the civilised student must make a great effort to forget for a time all that science has taught him of the differences between the objects which fill the world.[1] "To the ear of the savage, animals certainly seem to talk." "As far as the Indians of Guiana are concerned, I do not believe that they distinguish such beings as sun and moon, or such other natural phenomena as winds and storms, from men and other animals, from plants and other inanimate objects, or from any other objects whatsoever." Bancroft says about North American myths, "Beasts and birds and fishes fetch and carry, talk and act, in a way that leaves even Aesop's heroes quite in the shade".[2]

[1] Journ. Anthrop. Inst., xi. 366-369. A very large and rich collection of testimonies as to metamorphosis will be found in J. G. Muller's Amerikanischen Urreligionen, p. 62 et seq.; while, for European superstitions, Bodin on La Demonomanie des Sorciers, Lyon, 1598, may be consulted.

[2] Vol. iii. p. 127.

The savage tendency is to see in inanimate things animals, and in animals disguised men. M. Reville quotes in his Religions des Peuples Non-Civilise's, i. 64, the story of some Negroes, who, the first time they were shown a cornemuse, took the instrument for a beast, the two holes for its eyes. The Highlander who looted a watch at Prestonpans, and observing, "She's teed," sold it cheap when it ran down, was in the same psychological condition. A queer bit of savage science is displayed on a black stone tobacco-pipe from the Pacific Coast.[1] The savage artist has carved the pipe in the likeness of a steamer, as a steamer is conceived by him. "Unable to account for the motive power, he imagines the paddle to be linked round the tongue of a coiled serpent, fastened to the tail of the vessel," and so he represents it on the black stone pipe. Nay, a savage's belief that beasts are on his own level is so literal, that he actually makes blood-covenants with the lower animals, as he does with men, mingling his gore with theirs, or smearing both together on a stone;[2] while to bury dead animals with sacred rites is as usual among the Bedouins and Malagasies to- day as in ancient Egypt or Attica. In the same way the Ainos of Japan, who regard the bear as a kinsman, sacrifice a bear once a year. But, to propitiate the animal and his connections, they appoint him a "mother," an Aino girl, who looks after his comforts, and behaves in a way as maternal as possible. The bear is now a kinsman, [Greek text omitted], and cannot avenge himself within the kin. This, at least, seems to be the humour of it. In Lagarde's Reliquiae Juris Ecclesiastici Antiquissimae a similar Syrian covenant of kinship with insects is described. About 700 A. D., when a Syrian garden was infested by caterpillars, the maidens were assembled, and one caterpillar was caught. Then one of the virgins was "made its mother," and the creature was buried with due lamentations. The "mother" was then brought to the spot where the pests were, her companions bewailed her, and the caterpillars perished like their chosen kinsman, but without extorting revenge.[3] Revenge was out of their reach. They had been brought within the kin of their foes, and there were no Erinnyes, "avengers of kindred blood," to help them. People in this condition of belief naturally tell hundreds of tales, in which men, stones, trees, beasts, shift shapes, and in which the modifications of animal forms are caused by accident, or by human agency, or by magic, or by metamorphosis. Such tales survive in our modern folk- lore. To make our meaning clear, we may give the European nursery- myth of the origin of the donkey's long ears, and, among other illustrations, the Australian myth of the origin of the black and white plumage of the pelican. Mr. Ralston has published the Russian version of the myth of the donkey's ears. The Spanish form, which is identical with the Russian, is given by Fernan Caballero in La Gaviota.

[1] Magazine of Art, January, 1883.

[2] "Malagasy Folk-Tales," Folk-Lore Journal, October, 1883.

[3] We are indebted to Professor Robertson Smith for this example, and to Miss Bird's Journal, pp. 90, 97, for the Aino parallel.

"Listen! do you know why your ears are so big?" (the story is told to a stupid little boy with big ears). "When Father Adam found himself in Paradise with the animals, he gave each its name; those of THY species, my child, he named 'donkeys'. One day, not long after, he called the beasts together, and asked each to tell him its name. They all answered right except the animals of THY sort, and they had forgotten their name! Then Father Adam was very angry, and, taking that forgetful donkey by the ears, he pulled them out, screaming 'You are called DONKEY!' And the donkey's ears have been long ever since." This, to a child, is a credible explanation. So, perhaps, is another survival of this form of science--the Scotch explanation of the black marks on the haddock; they were impressed by St. Peter's finger and thumb when he took the piece of money for Caesar's tax out of the fish's mouth.

Turning from folk-lore to savage beliefs, we learn that from one end of Africa to another the honey-bird, schneter, is said to be an old woman whose son was lost, and who pursued him till she was turned into a bird, which still shrieks his name, "Schneter, Schneter".[1] In the same way the manners of most of the birds known to the Greeks were accounted for by the myth that they had been men and women. Zeus, for example, turned Ceyx and Halcyon into sea-fowls because they were too proud in their married happiness.[2] To these myths of the origin of various animals we shall return, but we must not forget the black and white Australian pelican. Why is the pelican parti-coloured?[3] For this reason: After the Flood (the origin of which is variously explained by the Murri), the pelican (who had been a black fellow) made a canoe, and went about like a kind of Noah, trying to save the drowning. In the course of his benevolent mission he fell in love with a woman, but she and her friends played him a trick and escaped from him. The pelican at once prepared to go on the war-path. The first thing to do was to daub himself white, as is the custom of the blacks before a battle. They think the white pipe-clay strikes terror and inspires respect among the enemy. But when the pelican was only half pipe-clayed, another pelican came past, and, "not knowing what such a queer black and white thing was, struck the first pelican with his beak and killed him. Before that pelicans were all black; now they are black and white. That is the reason."[4]

[1] Barth, iii. 358.

[2] Apollodorus, i. 7 (13, 12).

[3] Sahagun, viii. 2, accounts for colours of eagle and tiger. A number of races explain the habits and marks of animals as the result of a curse or blessing of a god or hero. The Hottentots, the Huarochiri of Peru, the New Zealanders (Shortland, Traditions, p. 57), are among the peoples which use this myth.

[4] Brough Symth, Aborigines of Australia, i. 477, 478.

"That is the reason." Therewith native philosopy is satisfied, and does not examine in Mr. Darwin's laborious manner the slow evolution of the colour of the pelican's plumage. The mythological stories about animals are rather difficult to treat, because they are so much mixed up with the topic of totemism. Here we only examine myths which account by means of a legend for certain peculiarities in the habits, cries, or colours and shapes of animals. The Ojibbeways told Kohl they had a story for every creature, accounting for its ways and appearance. Among the Greeks, as among Australians and Bushmen, we find that nearly every notable bird or beast had its tradition. The nightingale and the swallow have a story of the most savage description, a story reported by Apollodorus, though Homer[1] refers to another, and, as usual, to a gentler and more refined form of the myth. Here is the version of Apollodorus. "Pandion" (an early king of Athens) "married Zeuxippe, his mother's sister, by whom he had two daughters, Procne and Philomela, and two sons, Erechtheus and Butes. A war broke out with Labdas about some debatable land, and Erechtheus invited the alliance of Tereus of Thrace, the son of Ares. Having brought the war, with the aid of Tereus, to a happy end, he gave him his daughter Procne to wife. By Procne, Tereus had a son, Itys, and thereafter fell in love with Philomela, whom he seduced, pretending that Procne was dead, whereas he had really concealed her somewhere in his lands. Thereon he married Philomela, and cut out her tongue. But she wove into a robe characters that told the whole story, and by means of these acquainted Procne with her sufferings. Thereon Procne found her sister, and slew Itys, her own son, whose body she cooked, and served up to Tereus in a banquet. Thereafter Procne and her sister fled together, and Tereus seized an axe and followed after them. They were overtaken at Daulia in Phocis, and prayed to the gods that they might be turned into birds. So Procne became the nightingale, and Philomela the swallow, while Tereus was changed into a hoopoe."[2] Pausanias has a different legend; Procne and Philomela died of excessive grief.

[1] Odyssey, xix. 523.

[2] A Red Indian nightingale-myth is alluded to by J. G. Muller, Amerik. Urrel., p. 175. Some one was turned into a nightingale by the sun, and still wails for a lost lover.

These ancient men and women metamorphosed into birds were HONOURED AS ANCESTORS by the Athenians.[1] Thus the unceasing musical wail of the nightingale and the shrill cry of the swallow were explained by a Greek story. The birds were lamenting their old human sorrow, as the honey-bird in Africa still repeats the name of her lost son.

[1] Pausanias, i. v. Pausanias thinks such things no longer occur.

Why does the red-robin live near the dwellings of men, a bold and friendly bird? The Chippeway Indians say he was once a young brave whose father set him a task too cruel for his strength, and made him starve too long when he reached man's estate. He turned into a robin, and said to his father, "I shall always be the friend of man, and keep near their dwellings. I could not gratify your pride as a warrior, but I will cheer you by my songs."[1] The converse of this legend is the Greek myth of the hawk. Why is the hawk so hated by birds? Hierax was a benevolent person who succoured a race hated by Poseidon. The god therefore changed him into a hawk, and made him as much detested by birds, and as fatal to them, as he had been beloved by and gentle to men.[2] The Hervey Islanders explain the peculiarities of several fishes by the share they took in the adventures of Ina, who stamped, for example, on the sole, and so flattened him for ever.[3] In Greece the dolphins were, according to the Homeric hymn to Dionysus, metamorphosed pirates who had insulted the god. But because the dolphin found the hidden sea-goddess whom Poseidon loved, the dolphin, too, was raised by the grateful sea-god to the stars.[4] The vulture and the heron, according to Boeo (said to have been a priestess in Delphi and the author of a Greek treatise on the traditions about birds), were once a man named Aigupios (vulture) and his mother, Boulis. They sinned inadvertently, like Oedipus and Jocasta; wherefore Boulis, becoming aware of the guilt, was about to put out the eyes of her son and slay herself. Then they were changed, Boulis into the heron, "which tears out and feeds on the eyes of snakes, birds and fishes, and Aigupios into the vulture which bears his name". This story, of which the more repulsive details are suppressed, is much less pleasing and more savage than the Hervey Islanders' myth of the origin of pigs. Maaru was an old blind man who lived with his son Kationgia. There came a year of famine, and Kationgia had great difficulty in finding food for himself and his father. He gave the blind old man puddings of banana roots and fishes, while he lived himself on sea-slugs and shellfish, like the people of Terra del Fuego. But blind old Maaru suspected his son of giving him the worst share and keeping what was best for himself. At last he discovered that Kationgia was really being starved; he felt his body, and found that he was a mere living skeleton. The two wept together, and the father made a feast of some cocoa-nuts and bread-fruit, which he had reserved against the last extremity. When all was finished, he said he had eaten his last meal and was about to die. He ordered his son to cover him with leaves and grass, and return to the spot in four days. If worms were crawling about, he was to throw leaves and grass over them and come back four days later. Kationgia did as he was instructed, and, on his second visit to the grave, found the whole mass of leaves in commotion. A brood of pigs, black, white and speckled, had sprung up from the soil; famine was a thing of the past, and Kationgia became a great chief in the island.[5]

[1] Schoolcraft, ii. 229, 230.

[1] Boeo, quoted by Antoninus Liberalis.

[3] Gill, South Sea Myths, pp. 88-95.

[4] Artemidorus in his Love Elegies, quoted by the Pseud- Eratosthenes.

[5] Gill, Myths and Songs from South Pacific, pp. 135-138.

"The owl was a baker's daughter" is the fragment of Christian mythology preserved by Ophelia. The baker's daughter behaved rudely to our Lord, and was changed into the bird that looks not on the sun. The Greeks had a similar legend of feminine impiety by which they mythically explained the origin of the owl, the bat and the eagle-owl. Minyas of Orchomenos had three daughters, Leucippe, Arsippe and Alcathoe, most industrious women, who declined to join the wild mysteries of Dionysus. The god took the shape of a maiden, and tried to win them to his worship. They refused, and he assumed the form of a bull, a lion, and a leopard as easily as the chiefs of the Abipones become tigers, or as the chiefs among the African Barotse and Balonda metamorphose themselves into lions and alligators.[1] The daughters of Minyas, in alarm, drew lots to determine which of them should sacrifice a victim to the god. Leucippe drew the lot and offered up her own son. They then rushed to join the sacred rites of Dionysus, when Hermes transformed them into the bat, the owl and the eagle-owl, and these three hide from the light of the sun.[2]

[1] Livingstone, Missionary Travels, pp. 615, 642.

[2] Nicander, quoted by Antoninus Liberalis.

A few examples of Bushman and Australian myths explanatory of the colours and habits of animals will probably suffice to establish the resemblance between savage and Hellenic legends of this character. The Bushman myth about the origin of the eland (a large antelope) is not printed in full by Dr. Bleek, but he observes that it "gives an account of the reasons for the colours of the gemsbok, hartebeest, eland, quagga and springbok".[1] Speculative Bushmen seem to have been puzzled to account for the wildness of the eland. It would be much more convenient if the eland were tame and could be easily captured. They explain its wildness by saying that the eland was "spoiled" before Cagn, the creator, or rather maker of most things, had quite finished it. Cagn's relations came and hunted the first eland too soon, after which all other elands grew wild. Cagn then said, "Go and hunt them and try to kill one; that is now your work, for it was you who spoilt them".[2] The Bushmen have another myth explanatory of the white patches on the breasts of crows in their country. Some men tarried long at their hunting, and their wives sent out crows in search of their husbands. Round each crow's neck was hung a piece of fat to serve as food on the journey. Hence the crows have white patches on breast and neck.

[1] Brief Account of Bushmen Folk-Lore, p. 7.

[2] Cape Monthly Magazine, July, 1874.

In Australia the origins of nearly all animals appear to be explained in myths, of which a fair collection is printed in Mr. Brough Symth's Aborigines of Victoria.[1] Still better examples occur in Mrs. Langloh Parker's Australian Legends. Why is the crane so thin? Once he was a man named Kar-ween, the second man fashioned out of clay by Pund-jel, a singular creative being, whose chequered career is traced elsewhere in our chapter on "Savage Myths of the Origin of the World and of Man". Kar-ween and Pund- jel had a quarrel about the wives of the former, whom Pund-jel was inclined to admire. The crafty Kar-ween gave a dance (jugargiull, corobboree), at which the creator Pund-jel was disporting himself gaily (like the Great Panjandrum), when Kar-ween pinned him with a spear. Pund-jel threw another which took Kar-ween in the knee- joint, so that he could not walk, but soon pined away and became a mere skeleton. "Thereupon Pund-jel made Kar-ween a crane," and that is why the crane has such attenuated legs. The Kortume, Munkari and Waingilhe, now birds, were once men. The two latter behaved unkindly to their friend Kortume, who shot them out of his hut in a storm of rain, singing at the same time an incantation. The three then turned into birds, and when the Kortume sings it is a token that rain may be expected.

[1] Vol. i. p. 426 et seq.

Let us now compare with these Australian myths of the origin of certain species of birds the Greek story of the origin of frogs, as told by Menecrates and Nicander.[1] The frogs were herdsmen metamorphosed by Leto, the mother of Apollo. But, by way of showing how closely akin are the fancies of Greeks and Australian black fellows, we shall tell the legend without the proper names, which gave it a fictitious dignity.

[1] Antoninus Liberalis, xxxv.

THE ORIGIN OF FROGS.

"A woman bore two children, and sought for a water-spring wherein to bathe them. She found a well, but herdsmen drove her away from it that their cattle might drink. Then some wolves met her and led her to a river, of which she drank, and in its waters she bathed her children. Then she went back to the well where the herdsmen were now bathing, and she turned them all into frogs. She struck their backs and shoulders with a rough stone and drove them into the waters, and ever since that day frogs live in marshes and beside rivers."

A volume might be filled with such examples of the kindred fancies of Greeks and savages. Enough has probably been said to illustrate our point, which is that Greek myths of this character were inherited from the period of savagery, when ideas of metamorphosis and of the kinship of men and beasts were real practical beliefs. Events conceived to be common in real life were introduced into myths, and these myths were savage science, and were intended to account for the Origin of Species. But when once this train of imagination has been fired, it burns on both in literature and in the legends of the peasantry. Every one who writes a Christmas tale for children now employs the machinery of metamorphosis, and in European folk-lore, as Fontenelle remarked, stories persist which are precisely similar in kind to the minor myths of savages.

Reasoning in this wise, the Mundas of Bengal thus account for peculiarities of certain animals. Sing Bonga, the chief god, cast certain people out of heaven; they fell to earth, found iron ore, and began smelting it. The black smoke displeased Sing Bonga, who sent two king crows and an owl to bid people cease to pollute the atmosphere. But the iron smelters spoiled these birds' tails, and blackened the previously white crow, scorched its beak red, and flattened its head. Sing Bonga burned man, and turned woman into hills and waterspouts.[1]

[1] Dalton, pp. 186, 187.

Examples of this class of myth in Indo-Aryan literature are not hard to find. Why is dawn red? Why are donkeys slow? Why have mules no young ones? Mules have no foals because they were severely burned when Agni (fire) drove them in a chariot race. Dawn is red, not because (as in Australia) she wears a red kangaroo cloak, but because she competed in this race with red cows for her coursers. Donkeys are slow because they never recovered from their exertions in the same race, when the Asvins called on their asses and landed themselves the winners.[1] And cows are accommodated with horns for a reason no less probable and satisfactory.[2]

[1] Aitareya Brahmana, ii. 272, iv. 9.

[2] iv. 17.

Though in the legends of the less developed peoples men and women are more frequently metamorphosed into birds and beasts than into stones and plants, yet such changes of form are by no means unknown. To the north-east of Western Point there lies a range of hills, inhabited, according to the natives of Victoria, by a creature whose body is made of stone, and weapons make no wound in so sturdy a constitution. The blacks refuse to visit the range haunted by the mythic stone beast. "Some black fellows were once camped at the lakes near Shaving Point. They were cooking their fish when a native dog came up. They did not give him anything to eat. He became cross and said, 'You black fellows have lots of fish, but you give me none'. So he changed them all into a big rock. This is quite true, for the big rock is there to this day, and I have seen it with my own eyes."[1] Another native, Toolabar, says that the women of the fishing party cried out yacka torn, "very good". A dog replied yacka torn, and they were all changed into rocks. This very man, Toolabar, once heard a dog begin to talk, whereupon he and his father fled. Had they waited they would have become stones. "We should have been like it, wallung," that is, stones.

[1] Native narrator, ap. Brough Smyth, i. 479.

Among the North American Indians any stone which has a resemblance to the human or animal figure is explained as an example of metamorphosis. Three stones among the Aricaras were a girl, her lover and her dog, who fled from home because the course of true love did not run smooth, and who were petrified. Certain stones near Chinook Point were sea-giants who swallowed a man. His brother, by aid of fire, dried up the bay and released the man, still alive, from the body of the giant. Then the giants were turned into rocks.[1] The rising sun in Popol Vuh (if the evidence of Popol Vuh, the Quichua sacred book, is to be accepted) changed into stone the lion, serpent and tiger gods. The Standing Rock on the Upper Missouri is adored by the Indians, and decorated with coloured ribbons and skins of animals. This stone was a woman, who, like Niobe, became literally petrified with grief when her husband took a second wife. Another stone-woman in a cave on the banks of the Kickapoo was wont to kill people who came near her, and is even now approached with great respect. The Oneidas and Dacotahs claim descent from stones to which they ascribe animation.[2] Montesinos speaks of a sacred stone which was removed from a mountain by one of the Incas. A parrot flew out of it and lodged in another stone, which the natives still worship.[3] The Breton myth about one of the great stone circles (the stones were peasants who danced on a Sunday) is a well-known example of this kind of myth surviving in folk-lore. There is a kind of stone Actaeon[4] near Little Muniton Creek, "resembling the bust of a man whose head is decorated with the horns of a stag".[5] A crowd of myths of metamorphosis into stone will be found among the Iroquois legends in Report of Bureau of Ethnology, 1880-81. If men may become stones, on the other hand, in Samoa (as in the Greek myth of Deucalion), stones may become men.[6] Gods, too, especially when these gods happen to be cuttlefish, might be petrified. They were chased in Samoa by an Upolu hero, who caught them in a great net and killed them. "They were changed into stones, and now stand up in a rocky part of the lagoon on the north side of Upolu."[7] Mauke, the first man, came out of a stone. In short,[8] men and stones and beasts and gods and thunder have interchangeable forms. In Mangaia[9] the god Ra was tossed up into the sky by Maui and became pumice-stone. Many samples of this petrified deity are found in Mangaia. In Melanesia matters are so mixed that it is not easy to decide whether a worshipful stone is the dwelling of a dead man's soul or is of spiritual merit in itself, or whether "the stone is the spirit's outward part or organ". The Vui, or spirit, has much the same relations with snakes, owls and sharks.[10] Qasavara, the mythical opponent of Qat, the Melanesian Prometheus, "fell dead from heaven" (like Ra in Mangia), and was turned into a stone, on which sacrifices are made by those who desire strength in fighting.

[1] See authorities ap. Dorman, Primitive Superstitions, pp. 130- 138.

[2] Dorman, p. 133.

[3] Many examples are collected by J. G. Muller, Amerikanischen Urreligionen, pp. 97, 110, 125, especially when the stones have a likeness to human form, p. 17a. Im der That werden auch einige in Steine, oder in Thiere and Pflanzen verwandelt." Cf. p. 220. Instances (from Balboa) of men turned into stone by wizards, p. 309.

[4] Preller thinks that Actaeon, devoured by his hounds after being changed into a stag, is a symbol of the vernal year. Palaephatus (De Fab. Narrat.) holds that the story is a moral fable.

[5] Dorman, p. 137.

[6] Turner's Samoa, p. 299.

[7] Samoa, p. 31.

[8] Op. cit., p. 34.

[9] Gill, Myths and Songs, p. 60.

[10] Codrington, Journ. Anthrop. Inst., February, 1881.

Without delaying longer among savage myths of metamorphosis into stones, it may be briefly shown that the Greeks retained this with all the other vagaries of early fancy. Every one remembers the use which Perseus made of the Gorgon's head, and the stones on the coast of Seriphus, which, like the stones near Western Point in Victoria, had once been men, the enemies of the hero. "Also he slew the Gorgon," sings Pindar, "and bare home her head, with serpent tresses decked, to the island folk a stony death." Observe Pindar's explanatory remark: "I ween there is no marvel impossible if gods have wrought thereto". In the same pious spirit a Turk in an isle of the Levant once told Mr. Newton a story of how a man hunted a stag, and the stag spoke to him. "The stag spoke?" said Mr. Newton. "Yes, by Allah's will," replied the Turk. Like Pindar, he was repeating an incident quite natural to the minds of Australians, or Bushmen, or Samoans, or Red Men, but, like the religious Pindar, he felt that the affair was rather marvellous, and accounted for it by the exercise of omnipotent power.[1] The Greek example of Niobe and her children may best be quoted in Mr. Bridges' translation from the Iliad:--

And somewhere now, among lone mountain rocks On Sipylus, where couch the nymphs at night Who dance all day by Achelous' stream, The once proud mother lies, herself a rook, And in cold breast broods o'er the goddess' wrong. --Prometheus the fire-bringer.[2]

In the Iliad it is added that Cronion made the people into stones. The attitude of the later Greek mind towards these myths may be observed in a fragment of Philemon, the comic poet. "Never, by the gods, have I believed, nor will believe, that Niobe the stone was once a woman. Nay, by reason of her calamities she became speechless, and so, from her silence, was called a stone."[3]

[1] Pindar, Pyth. x., Myers's translation.

[2] xxiv. 611.

[3] The Scholiast on Iliad, xxiv. 6, 7.

There is another famous petrification in the Iliad. When the prodigy of the snake and the sparrows had appeared to the assembled Achaeans at Aulis, Zeus displayed a great marvel, and changed into a stone the serpent which swallowed the young of the sparrow. Changes into stone, though less common than changes into fishes, birds and beasts, were thus obviously not too strange for the credulity of Greek mythology, which could also believe that a stone became the mother of Agdestis by Zeus.

As to interchange of shape between men and women and PLANTS, our information, so far as the lower races are concerned, is less copious. It has already been shown that the totems of many stocks in all parts of the world are plants, and this belief in connection with a plant by itself demonstrates that the confused belief in all things being on one level has thus introduced vegetables into the dominion of myth. As far as possessing souls is concerned, Mr. Tylor has proved that plants are as well equipped as men or beasts or minerals.[1] In India the doctrine of transmigration widely and clearly recognises the idea of trees or smaller plants being animated by human souls". In the well-known ancient Egyptian story of "The Two Brothers,"[2] the life of the younger is practically merged in that of the acacia tree where he has hidden his heart; and when he becomes a bull and is sacrificed, his spiritual part passes into a pair of Persea trees. The Yarucaris of Bolivia say that a girl once bewailed in the forest her loverless estate. She happened to notice a beautiful tree, which she adorned with ornaments as well as she might. The tree assumed the shape of a handsome young man--

She did not find him so remiss, But, lightly issuing through, He did repay her kiss for kiss, With usury thereto.[3]

J. G. Muller, who quotes this tale from Andree, says it has "many analogies with the tales of metamorphosis of human beings into trees among the ancients, as reported by Ovid". The worship of plants and trees is a well-known feature in religion, and probably implies (at least in many cases) a recognition of personality. In Samoa, metamorphosis into vegetables is not uncommon. For example, the king of Fiji was a cannibal, and (very naturally) "the people were melting away under him". The brothers Toa and Pale, wishing to escape the royal oven, adopted various changes of shape. They knew that straight timber was being sought for to make a canoe for the king, so Pale, when he assumed a vegetable form, became a crooked stick overgrown with creepers, but Toa "preferred standing erect as a handsome straight tree". Poor Toa was therefore cut down by the king's shipwrights, though, thanks to his brother's magic wiles, they did not make a canoe out of him after all.[4] In Samoa the trees are so far human that they not only go to war with each other, but actually embark in canoes to seek out distant enemies.[5] The Ottawa Indians account for the origin of maize by a myth in which a wizard fought with and conquered a little man who had a little crown of feathers. From his ashes arose the maize with its crown of leaves and heavy ears of corn.[6]

[1] Primitive Culture, i. 145; examples of Society Islanders, Dyaks, Karens, Buddhists.

[2] Maspero, Contes Egyptiens, p. 25.

[3] J. G. Muller, Amerik. Urrel., p. 264.

[4] Turner's Samoa, p. 219.

[5] Ibid.. p. 213.

[6] Amerik. Urrel., p. 60.

In Mangaia the myth of the origin of the cocoa-nut tree is a series of transformation scenes, in which the persons shift shapes with the alacrity of medicine-men. Ina used to bathe in a pool where an eel became quite familiar with her. At last the fish took courage and made his declaration. He was Tuna, the chief of all eels. "Be mine," he cried, and Ina was his. For some mystical reason he was obliged to leave her, but (like the White Cat in the fairy tale) he requested her to cut off his eel's head and bury it. Regretfully but firmly did Ina comply with his request, and from the buried eel's head sprang two cocoa trees, one from each half of the brain of Tuna. As a proof of this be it remarked, that when the nut is husked we always find on it "the two eyes and mouth of the lover of Ina".[1] All over the world, from ancient Egypt to the wigwams of the Algonkins, plants and other matters are said to have sprung from a dismembered god or hero, while men are said to have sprung from plants.[2] We may therefore perhaps look on it as a proved point that the general savage habit of "levelling up" prevails even in their view of the vegetable world, and has left traces (as we have seen) in their myths.

[1] Gill, Myths and Songs, p. 79.

[2] Myths of the Beginning of Things.

Turning now to the mythology of Greece, we see that the same rule holds good. Metamorphosis into plants and flowers is extremely common; the instances of Daphne, Myrrha, Hyacinth, Narcissus and the sisters of Phaethon at once occur to the memory.

Most of those myths in which everything in Nature becomes personal and human, while all persons may become anything in Nature, we explain, then, as survivals or imitations of tales conceived when men were in the savage intellectual condition. In that stage, as we demonstrated, no line is drawn between things animate and inanimate, dumb or "articulate speaking," organic or inorganic, personal or impersonal. Such a mental stage, again, is reflected in the nature-myths, many of which are merely "aetiological,"-- assign a cause, that is, for phenomena, and satisfy an indolent and credulous curiosity.

We may be asked again, "But how did this intellectual condition come to exist?" To answer that is no part of our business; for us it is enough to trace myth, or a certain element in myth, to a demonstrable and actual stage of thought. But this stage, which is constantly found to survive in the minds of children, is thus explained or described by Hume in his Essay on Natural Religion: "There is an universal tendency in mankind to conceive all beings like themselves, and to transfer to every object those qualities . . . of which they are intimately conscious".[1] Now they believe themselves to be conscious of magical and supernatural powers, which they do not, of course, possess. These powers of effecting metamorphosis, of "shape-shifting," of flying, of becoming invisible at will, of conversing with the dead, of miraculously healing the sick, savages pass on to their gods (as will be shown in a later chapter), and the gods of myth survive and retain the miraculous gifts after their worshippers (become more reasonable) have quite forgotten that they themselves once claimed similar endowments. So far, then, it has been shown that savage fancy, wherever studied, is wild; that savage curiosity is keen; that savage credulity is practically boundless. These considerations explain the existence of savage myths of sun, stars, beasts, plants and stones; similar myths fill Greek legend and the Sanskrit Brahmanes. We conclude that, in Greek and Sanskrit, the myths are relics (whether borrowed or inherited) of the savage mental STATUS.

[1] See Appendix B.

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