The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (Third Edition, Vol. 09 of 12)

J. Thomas Phillips, Account of the Religion, Manners, and Learning of the People of Malabar (London, 1717), pp. 6, 12 sq.

534

Herodotus, ii. 39.

535

Herodotus, ii. 38-41; Sir J. Gardner Wilkinson, Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians, New Edition (London, 1878), iii. 403 sqq.

536

Herodotus, l. c. As to the worship of sacred bulls in ancient Egypt, see further Spirits of the Corn and of the Wild, ii. 34 sqq.

537

Spirits of the Corn and of the Wild, ii. 175 sqq., 314 sq.

538

Panjab Notes and Queries, ii. p. 54, § 335 (December, 1884).

539

Strabo, xi. 4. 7, p. 503. For the custom of standing upon a sacrificed victim, compare Demosthenes, Or. xxiii. 68, p. 642; Pausanias, iii. 20. 9.

540

The ceremony referred to is perhaps the one performed on the tenth day, as described in the text.

541

“Report of a Route Survey by Pundit – from Nepal to Lhasa,” etc., Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, xxxviii. (1868) pp. 167, 170 sq.; “Four Years Journeying through Great Tibet, by one of the Trans-Himalayan Explorers,” Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society, N.S. vii. (1885) pp. 67 sq.; W. Woodville Rockhill, “Tibet, a Geographical, Ethnographical, and Historical Sketch, derived from Chinese Sources,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society for 1891 (London, 1891), pp. 211 sq.; L. A. Waddell, The Buddhism of Tibet (London, 1895), pp. 504 sqq., 512 sq.; J. L. Dutreuil de Rhins, Mission Scientifique dans la Haute Asie 1890-1895: Récit du Voyage (Paris, 1897), pp. 257 sq. The accounts supplement each other, though they differ in some particulars. I have endeavoured to combine them. According to Mr. Rockhill's account, which is drawn from Chinese sources, at one point of the ceremonies the troops march thrice round the temple and fire volleys of musketry to drive away the devil. With the like intent they discharge a great old cannon, which bears the inscription, “My power breaks up and destroys rebellion.” The same account speaks of a fencing with battle-axes by a troop of boy-dancers, a great illumination of the cathedral with lanterns, and its decoration with figures made out of butter and flour to represent men, animals, dragons, etc.; also it makes mention of a horse-race and a foot-race, both run by boys. The clerical invasion of the capital at this season is graphically described by an eye-witness. See Huc, Souvenirs d'un Voyage dans la Tartarie et le Thibet, Sixième Édition (Paris, 1878), ii. 380 sq.

542

In the Dassera festival, as celebrated in Nepaul, we seem to have another instance of the annual expulsion of demons preceded by a time of license. The festival occurs at the beginning of October and lasts ten days. “During its continuance there is a general holiday among all classes of the people. The city of Kathmandu at this time is required to be purified, but the purification is effected rather by prayer than by water-cleansing. All the courts of law are closed, and all prisoners in jail are removed from the precincts of the city… The Kalendar is cleared, or there is a jail-delivery always at the Dassera of all prisoners.” This seems a trace of a period of license. At this time “it is a general custom for masters to make an annual present, either of money, clothes, buffaloes, goats, etc., to such servants as have given satisfaction during the past year. It is in this respect, as well as in the feasting and drinking which goes on, something like our ‘boxing-time’ at Christmas.” On the seventh day at sunset there is a parade of all the troops in the capital, including the artillery. At a given signal the regiments begin to fire, the artillery takes it up, and a general firing goes on for about twenty minutes, when it suddenly ceases. This probably represents the expulsion of the demons. “The grand cutting of the rice-crops is always postponed till the Dassera is over, and commences all over the valley the very day afterwards.” See the description of the festival in H. A. Oldfield's Sketches from Nipal (London, 1880), ii. 342-351. On the Dassera in India, see J. A. Dubois, Mœurs, Institutions et Cérémonies des Peuples de l'Inde (Paris, 1825), ii. 329 sqq. The Besisi of the Malay Peninsula hold a regular carnival at the end of the rice-harvest, when they are said to be allowed to exchange wives. See W. W. Skeat and C. O. Blagden, Pagan Races of the Malay Peninsula (London, 1906), ii. 70, 76, 145, compare 120 sq. Amongst the Swahili of East Africa New Year's Day was formerly a day of general license, “every man did as he pleased. Old quarrels were settled, men were found dead on the following day, and no inquiry was instituted about the matter.” See Ch. New, Life, Wanderings, and Labours in Eastern Africa (London, 1873), p. 65; and The Golden Bough,

iii. 250. An annual period of anarchy and license, lasting three days, is reported by Borelli to be observed by some of the Gallas. See Ph. Paulitschke, Ethnographie Nordost-Afrikas: die geistige Cultur der Danâkil, Galla und Somal (Berlin, 1896), p. 158. In Ashantee the annual festival of the new yams is a time of general license. See Spirits of the Corn and of the Wild, ii. 62.

543

See The Dying God, pp. 233 sqq., 264.

544

Above, pp. 186 (#x_17_i34), 189 (#x_17_i59), 201 (#x_18_i5).

545

H. Usener, “Italische Mythen,” Rheinisches Museum, N.F. (1875) xxx. 194; id., Kleine Schriften, iv. (Leipsic and Berlin, 1913) p. 105.

546

Joannes Lydus, De mensibus, iii. 29, iv. 36. Lydus places the expulsion on the Ides of March, that is 15th March. But this seems to be a mistake. See H. Usener, “Italische Mythen,” Rheinisches Museum, xxx. (1875) pp. 209 sqq.; id., Kleine Schriften, iv. (Leipsic and Berlin, 1913) pp. 122 sqq. Again, Lydus does not expressly say that Mamurius Veturius was driven out of the city, but he implies it by mentioning the legend that his mythical prototype was beaten with rods and expelled the city. Lastly, Lydus only mentions the name Mamurius. But the full name Mamurius Veturius is preserved by Varro, De lingua latina, vi. 45; Festus, ed. C. O. Müller, p. 131; Plutarch, Numa, 13. Mr. W. Warde Fowler is disposed to be sceptical as to the antiquity of the ceremony of expelling Mamurius. See his Roman Festivals of the period of the Republic (London, 1899), pp. 44-50.

547

H. Usener, “Italische Mythen,” pp. 212 sq.; id., Kleine Schriften, iv. 125 sq.; W. H. Roscher, Apollon und Mars (Leipsic, 1873), p. 27; L. Preller, Römische Mythologie

(Berlin, 1881-1883), i. 360; A. Vaniček, Griechisch-lateinisches etymologisches Wörterbuch (Leipsic, 1877), p. 715. The three latter scholars take Veturius as = annuus, because vetus is etymologically equivalent to ἔτος. But, as Usener argues, it seems quite unallowable to take the Greek meaning of the word instead of the Latin.

548

Cato, De agri cultura, 141.

549

Varro, De lingua latina, v. 85.

550

See the song of the Arval Brothers in Acta Fratrum Arvalium, ed. G. Henzen (Berlin, 1874), pp. 26 sq.; J. Wordsworth, Fragments and Specimens of Early Latin (Oxford, 1874), p. 158; H. Dessau, Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae, ii. Pars i. (Berlin, 1902) p. 276.

551

Spirits of the Corn and of the Wild, ii. 42 sqq.

552

Cato, De agri cultura, 83.

553

The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings, ii. 50 sq., 55, 124 sq.

554

L. Preller, Römische Mythologie,

i. 360; W. H. Roscher, Apollon und Mars, p. 49; id., Lexikon der griech. und röm. Mythologie, ii. 2408 sq.; H. Usener, op. cit. The ceremony also closely resembles the Highland New Year ceremony already described. See Spirits of the Corn and of the Wild, ii. 322 sqq.

555

But the Biyârs, a mixed tribe of North-Western India, observe an annual ceremony which they call “burning the old year.” The old year is represented by a stake of the wood of the cotton-tree, which is planted in the ground at an appointed place outside of the village, and then burned on the day of the full moon in the month of Pûs. Fire is first put to it by the village priest, and then all the people follow his example, parch stalks of barley in the fire, and afterwards eat them. Next day they throw the ashes of the burnt wood in the air; and on the morrow the festival ends with a regular saturnalia, at which decency and order are forgotten. See W. Crooke, Tribes and Castes of the North-Western Provinces and Oudh (Calcutta, 1896), ii. 137 sq. Compare id., Popular Religion and Folk-lore of Northern India (Westminster, 1896), ii. 319.

556

Propertius, v. 2. 61 sq.; H. Usener, “Italische Mythen,” p. 210; id., Kleine Schriften, iv. 123.