The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (Third Edition, Vol. 11 of 12)

2

W. Crooke, Popular Religion and Folk-lore of Northern India (Westminster, 1896), ii. 314 sqq.; Captain G. R. Hearn, “Passing through the Fire at Phalon,” Man, v. (1905) pp. 154 sq. On the custom of walking through fire, or rather over a furnace, see Andrew Lang, Modern Mythology (London, 1897), pp. 148-175; id., in Athenaeum, 26th August and 14th October, 1899; id., in Folk-lore, xii. (1901) pp. 452-455; id., in Folk-lore, xiv. (1903) pp. 87-89. Mr. Lang was the first to call attention to the wide prevalence of the rite in many parts of the world.

3

Pandit Janardan Joshi, in North Indian Notes and Queries, iii. pp. 92 sq., § 199 (September, 1893); W. Crooke, Popular Religion and Folk-lore of Northern India (Westminster, 1896), ii. 318 sq.

4

E. T. Atkinson, “Notes on the History of Religion in the Himalayas of the N.W. Provinces,” Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, liii. Part i. (Calcutta, 1884) p. 60. Compare W. Crooke, Popular Religion and Folk-lore of Northern India (Westminster, 1896), ii. 313 sq.

5

See above, vol. i. pp. 136 sq.

6

G. Schlegel, Uranographie Chinoise (The Hague and Leyden, 1875), pp. 143 sq.; id., “La fête de fouler le feu célébrée en Chine et par les Chinois à Java,” Internationales Archiv für Ethnographie, ix. (1896) pp. 193-195. Compare J. J. M. de Groot, The Religious System of China, vi. (Leyden, 1910) pp. 1292 sq. According to Professor Schlegel, the connexion between this festival and the old custom of solemnly extinguishing and relighting the fire in spring is unquestionable.

7

The Dying God, p. 262.

8

(Sir) H. H. Risley, Tribes and Castes of Bengal, Ethnographic Glossary (Calcutta, 1891-1892), i. 255 sq. Compare W. Crooke, Popular Religion and Folk-lore of Northern India (Westminster, 1896), i. 19; id., Tribes and Castes of the North-Western Provinces and Oudh (Calcutta, 1896), ii. 355. According to Sir Herbert Risley, the trench filled with smouldering ashes is so narrow (only a span and a quarter wide) “that very little dexterity would enable a man to walk with his feet on either edge, so as not to touch the smouldering ashes at the bottom.”

9

W. Crooke, Tribes and Castes of the North-Western Provinces and Oudh, ii. 82.

10

M. J. Walhouse, “Passing through the Fire,” Indian Antiquary, vii. (1878) pp. 126 sq. Compare J. A. Dubois, Mœurs, Institutions et Cérémonies des Peuples de l'Inde (Paris, 1825), ii. 373; E. Thurston, Ethnographic Notes in Southern India (Madras, 1906), pp. 471-486; G. F. D'Penha, in Indian Antiquary, xxxi. (1902) p. 392; “Fire-walking in Ganjam,” Madras Government Museum Bulletin, vol. iv. No. 3 (Madras, 1903), pp. 214-216. At Akka timanhully, one of the many villages which help to make up the town of Bangalore in Southern India, one woman at least from every house is expected to walk through the fire at the village festival. Captain J. S. F. Mackenzie witnessed the ceremony in 1873. A trench, four feet long by two feet wide, was filled with live embers. The priest walked through it thrice, and the women afterwards passed through it in batches. Capt. Mackenzie remarks: “From the description one reads of walking through fire, I expected something sensational. Nothing could be more tame than the ceremony we saw performed; in which there never was nor ever could be the slightest danger to life. Some young girl, whose soles were tender, might next morning find that she had a blister, but this would be the extent of harm she could receive.” See Captain J. S. F. Mackenzie, “The Village Feast,” Indian Antiquary, iii. (1874) pp. 6-9. But to fall on the hot embers might result in injuries which would prove fatal, and such an accident is known to have occurred at a village in Bengal. See H. J. Stokes, “Walking through Fire,” Indian Antiquary, ii. (1873) pp. 190 sq. At Afkanbour, five days' march from Delhi, the Arab traveller Ibn Batutah saw a troop of fakirs dancing and even rolling on the glowing embers of a wood fire. See Voyages d'Ibn Batoutah (Paris, 1853-1858), ii. 6 sq., iii. 439.

11

Sonnerat, Voyage aux Indes orientales et à la Chine (Paris, 1782), i. 247 sq.

12

Madras Government Museum, Bulletin, vol. iv. No. 1 (Madras, 1901), pp. 55-59; E. Thurston, Ethnographic Notes in Southern India (Madras, 1906), pp. 471-474. One of the places where the fire-festival in honour of Draupadi takes place annually is the Allandur Temple, at St. Thomas's Mount, near Madras. Compare “Fire-walking Ceremony at the Dharmaraja Festival,” The Quarterly Journal of the Mythic Society, vol. ii. No. 1 (October, 1910), pp. 29-32.

13

E. Thurston, Castes and Tribes of Southern India (Madras, 1909), i. 98 sq.; id., Ethnographic Notes in Southern India (Madras, 1906), pp. 476 sq.

14

E. Thurston, Castes and Tribes of Southern India (Madras, 1909), i. 100 sq.

15

F. Metz, The Tribes inhabiting the Neilgherry Hills, Second Edition (Mangalore, 1864), p. 55.

16

“A Japanese Fire-walk,” American Anthropologist, New Series, v. (1903) pp. 377-380. The ceremony has been described to me by two eye-witnesses, Mr. Ernest Foxwell of St. John's College, Cambridge, and Miss E. P. Hughes, formerly Principal of the Teachers' Training College, Cambridge. Mr. Foxwell examined the feet of the performers both before and after their passage through the fire and found no hurt. The heat was so great that the sweat ran down him as he stood near the bed of glowing charcoal. He cannot explain the immunity of the performers. He informs me that the American writer Percival Lowell walked in the fire and was burned so severely that he was laid up in bed for three weeks; while on the other hand a Scotch engineer named Hillhouse passed over the hot charcoal unscathed. Several of Miss Hughes's Japanese pupils also went through the ordeal with impunity, but one of them burned a toe. Both before and after walking through the fire the people dipped their feet in a white stuff which Miss Hughes was told was salt. Compare W. G. Aston, Shinto (London, 1905), p. 348: “At the present day plunging the hand into boiling water, walking barefoot over a bed of live coals, and climbing a ladder formed of sword-blades set edge upwards are practised, not by way of ordeal, but to excite the awe and stimulate the piety of the ignorant spectators.”

17

Basil Thomson, South Sea Yarns (Edinburgh and London, 1894), pp. 195-207. Compare F. Arthur Jackson, “A Fijian Legend of the Origin of the Vilavilairevo or Fire Ceremony,” Journal of the Polynesian Society, vol. iii. No. 2 (June, 1894), pp. 72-75; R. Fulton, “An Account of the Fiji Fire-walking Ceremony, or Vilavilairevo, with a probable explanation of the mystery,” Transactions and Proceedings of the New Zealand Institute, xxxv. (1902) pp. 187-201; Lieutenant Vernon H. Haggard, in Folk-lore, xiv. (1903) pp. 88 sq.

18

S. P. Langley, “The Fire-walk Ceremony in Tahiti,” Report of the Smithsonian Institution for 1901 (Washington, 1902), pp. 539-544; id., in Folk-lore, xiv. (1901) pp. 446-452; “More about Fire-walking,” Journal of the Polynesian Society, vol. x. No. 1 (March, 1901), pp. 53 sq. In his Modern Mythology (pp. 162-165) Andrew Lang quotes from The Polynesian Society's Journal, vol. ii. No. 2, pp. 105-108, an account of the fire-walk by Miss Tenira Henry, which seems to refer to Raiatea, one of the Tahitian group of islands.

19

Annales de l'Association de la Propagation de la Foi, lxix. (1897) pp. 130-133. But in the ceremony here described the chief performer was a native of Huahine, one of the Tahitian group of islands. The wood burned in the furnace was hibiscus and native chestnut (Inocarpus edulis). Before stepping on the hot stones the principal performer beat the edge of the furnace twice or thrice with ti leaves (dracaena).

20

Les Missions Catholiques, x. (1878) pp. 141 sq.; A. Lang, Modern Mythology, p. 167, quoting Mr. Henry R. St. Clair.

21

Peter Kolben, The Present State of the Cape of Good Hope, Second Edition (London, 1738), i. 129-133.

22

A. C. Hollis, The Nandi (Oxford, 1909), pp. 45 sq.

23

Rev. Joseph Shooter, The Kafirs of Natal (London, 1857), p. 35.

24

Diego de Landa, Relation des choses de Yucatan (Paris, 1864), pp. 231, 233.

25

Strabo, xii. 2. 7, p. 537. Compare Adonis, Attis, Osiris, Second Edition, pp. 89, 134 sqq.

26

Pliny, Nat. Hist. vii. 19; Virgil, Aen. xi. 784 sqq. with the comment of Servius; Strabo, v. 2. 9, p. 226; Dionysius Halicarnasensis, Antiquit. Rom. iii. 32. From a reference to the custom in Silius Italicus (v. 175 sqq.) it seems that the men passed thrice through the furnace holding the entrails of the sacrificial victims in their hands. The learned but sceptical Varro attributed their immunity in the fire to a drug with which they took care to anoint the soles of their feet before they planted them in the furnace. See Varro, cited by Servius, on Virgil, Aen. xi. 787. The whole subject has been treated by W. Mannhardt (Antike Wald- und Feldkulte, Berlin, 1877, pp. 327 sqq.), who compares the rites of these “Soranian Wolves” with the ceremonies performed by the brotherhood of the Green Wolf at Jumièges in Normandy. See above, vol. i. pp. 185 sq.