Part 7 (1/2)

Hottentot: Tsoei'koap.

Namaqua: Tsoei'koap.

Koranna: Tshu'koab, and the author adds: 'This is the word from which the Kafirs have probably derived their u-Tixo, a term which they have universally applied, like the Hottentots, to designate the Divine Being, since the introduction of Christianity. Its derivation is curious. It consists of two words, which together mean the ”wounded knee.” It is said to have been originally applied to a doctor or sorcerer of considerable notoriety and skill amongst the Hottentots or Namaquas some generations back, in consequence of his having received some injury in his knee. Having been held in high repute for extraordinary powers during life, he appeared to be invoked even after death, as one who could still relieve and protect; and hence, in process of time, he became nearest in idea to their first conceptions of G.o.d.'

Other missionaries make old Wounded Knee a good sort of being on the whole, who fights Gaunab, a bad being. Dr. Moffat heard that 'Tsui Kuap' was 'a notable warrior,' who once received a wound in the knee. Sir James Alexander {204} found that the Namaquas believed their 'great father' lay below the cairns on which they flung boughs. This great father was Heitsi Eibib, and, like other medicine-men, 'he could take many forms.' Like Tsui Goab, he died several times and rose again. Hahn gives (p. 61) a long account of the Wounded Knee from an old chief, and a story of the battle between Tsui Goab, who 'lives in a beautiful heaven,' and Gaunab, who 'lives in a dark heaven.' As this chief had dwelt among missionaries very long, we may perhaps discount his remarks on 'heaven' as borrowed. Hahn thinks they refer to the red sky in which Tsui Goab lived, and to the black sky which was the home of Gaunab. The two characters in this crude religious dualism thus inhabit light and darkness respectively.

As far as we have gone, Tsui Goab, like Heitsi Eibib among the Namas, is a dead sorcerer, whose graves are wors.h.i.+pped, while, with a common inconsistency, he is also thought of as dwelling in the sky. Even Christians often speak of the dead with similar inconsistency. Tsui Goab's wors.h.i.+p is intelligible enough among a people so credulous that they took Hahn himself for a conjurer (p. 81), and so given to ancestor-wors.h.i.+p that Hahn has seen them wors.h.i.+p their own fathers' graves, and expect help from men recently dead (pp. 112, 113). But, while the Khoi Khoi think that Tsui Goab was once a real man, we need not share their Euhemerism. More probably, like Unkulunkulu among the Zulus, Tsui Goab is an ideal, imaginary ancestral sorcerer and G.o.d. No one man requires many graves, and Tsui Goab has more than Osiris possessed in Egypt. {205}

If the Egyptians in some immeasurably distant past were once on the level of Namas and Hottentots, they would wors.h.i.+p Osiris at as many barrows as Heitsi Eibib and Tsui Goab are adored. In later times the numerous graves of one being would require explanation, and explanations would be furnished by the myth that the body of Osiris was torn to pieces and each fragment buried in a separate tomb.

Again, lame G.o.ds occur in Greek, Australian, and Brazilian creeds, and the very coincidence of Tsui Goab's lameness makes us sceptical about his claims to be a real dead man. On the other hand, when Hahn tells us that epical myths are now sung in the dances in honour of warriors lately slain (p. 103), and that similar dances and songs were performed in the past to honour Tsui Goab, this looks more as if Tsui Goab had been an actual person. Against this we must set (p. 105) the belief that Tsui Goab made the first man and woman, and was the Prometheus of the Hottentots.

So far Dr. Hahn has given us facts which entirely fit in with our theory that an ancestor-wors.h.i.+pping people, believing in metamorphosis and sorcery, adores a G.o.d who is supposed to be a deceased ancestral sorcerer with the power of magic and metamorphosis. But now Dr. Hahn offers his own explanation. According to the philological method, he will 'study the names of the persons, until we arrive at the naked root and original meanings of the words.' Starting then with Tsui Goab, whom all evidence declares to be a dead lame conjurer and warrior, Dr. Hahn avers that 'Tsui Goab, originally Tsuni Goam, was the name by which the Red Men called the Infinite.' As the Frenchman said of the derivation of jour from dies, we may hint that the Infinite thus transformed into a lame Hottentot 'bush-doctor' is diablement change en route. To a dead lame sorcerer from the Infinite is a fall indeed. The process of the decline is thus described. Tsui Goab is composed of two roots, tsu and goa. Goa means 'to go on,' 'to come on.' In Khoi Khoi goa-b means 'the coming on one,' the dawn, and goa-b also means 'the knee.' Dr. Hahn next writes (making a logical leap of extraordinary width), 'it is now obvious that, //goab in Tsui Goab cannot be translated with knee,'-why not?-'but we have to adopt the other metaphorical meaning, the approaching day, i.e. the dawn.' Where is the necessity? In ordinary philology, we should here demand a number of attested examples of goab, in the sense of dawn, but in Khoi Khoi we cannot expect such evidence, as there are probably no texts. Next, after arbitrarily deciding that all Khoi Khois misunderstand their own tongue (for that is what the rendering here of goab by 'dawn' comes to), Dr. Hahn examines tsu, in Tsui. Tsu means 'sore,' 'wounded,' 'painful,' as in 'wounded knee'-Tsui Goab. This does not help Dr Hahn, for 'wounded dawn' means nothing. But he reflects that a wound is red, tsu means wounded: therefore tsu means red, therefore Tsui Goab is the Red Dawn. Q.E.D.

This kind of reasoning is obviously fallacious. Dr. Hahn's point could only be made by bringing forward examples in which tsu is employed to mean red in Khoi Khoi. Of this use of the word tsu he does not give one single instance, though on this point his argument depends. His etymology is not strengthened by the fact that Tsui Goab has once been said to live in the red sky. A red house is not necessarily tenanted by a red man. Still less is the theory supported by the hymn which says Tsui Goab paints himself with red ochre. Most idols, from those of the Samoyeds to the Greek images of Dionysus, are and have been daubed with red. By such reasoning is Tsui Goab proved to be the Red Dawn, while his gifts of prophecy (which he shares with all soothsayers) are accounted for as attributes of dawn, of the Vedic Saranyu.

Turning from Tsui Goab to his old enemy Gaunab, we learn that his name is derived from //gau, 'to destroy,' and, according to old Hottentot ideas, 'no one was the destroyer but the night' (p. 126). There is no apparent reason why the destroyer should be the night, and the night alone, any more than why 'a lame broken knee' should be 'red' (p. 126). Besides (p. 85), Gaunab is elsewhere explained, not as the night, but as the malevolent ghost which is thought to kill people who die what we call a 'natural' death. Unburied men change into this sort of vampire, just as Elpenor, in the Odyssey, threatens, if unburied, to become mischievous. There is another Gaunab, the mantis insect, which is wors.h.i.+pped by Hottentots and Bushmen (p. 92). It appears that the two Gaunabs are differently p.r.o.nounced. However that may be, a race which wors.h.i.+ps an insect might well wors.h.i.+p a dead medicine-man.

The conclusion, then, to be drawn from an examination of Hottentot mythology is merely this, that the ideas of a people will be reflected in their myths. A people which wors.h.i.+ps the dead, believes in sorcerers and in prophets, and in metamorphosis, will have for its G.o.d (if he can be called a G.o.d) a being who is looked on as a dead prophet and sorcerer. He will be wors.h.i.+pped with such rites as dead men receive; he will be mixed up in such battles as living men wage, and will be credited with the skill which living sorcerers claim. All these things meet in the legend of Tsui Goab, the so-called 'supreme being' of the Hottentots. His connection with the dawn is not supported by convincing argument or evidence. The relation of the dawn to the Infinite again rests on nothing but a theory of Mr. Max Muller's. {209} His adversary, though recognised as the night, is elsewhere admitted to have been, originally, a common vampire. Finally, the Hottentots, a people not much removed from savagery, have a mythology full of savage and even disgusting elements. And this is just what we expect from Hottentots. The puzzle is when we find myths as low as the story of the incest of Heitsi Eibib among the Greeks. The reason for this coincidence is that, in Dr. Hahn's words, 'the same objects and the same phenomena in nature will give rise to the same ideas, whether social or mythical, among different races of mankind,' especially when these races are in the same well-defined state of savage fancy and savage credulity.

Dr. Hahn's book has been regarded as a kind of triumph over inquirers who believe that ancestor-wors.h.i.+p enters into myth, and that the purer element in myth is the later. But where is the triumph? Even on Dr. Hahn's own showing, ancestor-wors.h.i.+p among the Hottentots has swamped the adoration of the Infinite. It may be said that Dr. Hahn has at least proved the adoration of the Infinite to be earlier than ancestor-wors.h.i.+p. But it has been shown that his attempt to establish a middle stage, to demonstrate that the wors.h.i.+pped ancestor was really the Red Dawn, is not logical nor convincing. Even if that middle stage were established, it is a far cry from the wors.h.i.+p of Dawn (supposed by the Australians to be a woman of bad character in a cloak of red' possum-skin) to the adoration of the Infinite. Our own argument has been successful if we have shown that there are not only two possible schools of mythological interpretation-the Euhemeristic, led by Mr. Spencer, and the Philological, led by Mr. Max Muller. We have seen that it is possible to explain the legend of Tsui Goab without either believing him to have been a real historical person (as Mr. Spencer may perhaps believe), or his myth to have been the result of a 'disease of language' as Mr. Muller supposes. We have explained the legend and wors.h.i.+p of a supposed dead conjurer as natural to a race which believes in conjurers and wors.h.i.+ps dead men. Whether he was merely an ideal ancestor and warrior, or whether an actual man has been invested with what divine qualities Tsui Goab enjoys, it is impossible to say; but, if he ever lived, he has long been adorned with ideal qualities and virtues which he never possessed. The conception of the powerful ancestral ghost has been heightened and adorned with some novel attributes of power: the conception of the Infinite has not been degraded, by forgetfulness of language, to the estate of an ancestral ghost with a game leg.

If this view be correct, myth is the result of thought, far more than of a disease of language. The comparative importance of language and thought was settled long ago, in our sense, by no less a person than Pragapati, the Sanskrit Master of Life.

'Now a dispute once took place between Mind and Speech, as to which was the better of the two. Both Mind and Speech said, ”I am excellent!” Mind said, ”Surely I am better than thou, for thou dost not speak anything that is not understood by me; and since thou art only an imitator of what is done by me and a follower in my wake, I am surely better than thou!” Speech said, ”Surely I am better than thou, for what thou knowest I make known, I communicate.” They went to appeal to Pragapati for his decision. He (Pragapati) decided in favour of Mind, saying (to Speech), ”Mind is indeed better than thou, for thou art an imitator of its deeds, and a follower in its wake; and inferior, surely, is he who imitates his better's deeds, and follows in his wake.”'

So saith the 'Satapatha Brahmana.' {211}

FETICHISM AND THE INFINITE.

What is the true place of Fetichism, to use a common but unscientific term, in the history of religious evolution? Some theorists have made fetichism, that is to say, the adoration of odds and ends (with which they have confused the wors.h.i.+p of animals, of mountains, and even of the earth), the first moment in the development of wors.h.i.+p. Others, again, think that fetichism is 'a corruption of religion, in Africa, as elsewhere.' The latter is the opinion of Mr Max Muller, who has stated it in his 'Hibbert Lectures,' on 'The Origin and Growth of Religion, especially as ill.u.s.trated by the Religions of India.' It seems probable that there is a middle position between these two extremes. Students may hold that we hardly know enough to justify us in talking about the origin of religion, while at the same time they may believe that Fetichism is one of the earliest traceable steps by which men climbed to higher conceptions of the supernatural. Meanwhile Mr. Max Muller supports his own theory, that fetichism is a 'parasitical growth,' a 'corruption' of religion, by arguments mainly drawn from historical study of savage creeds, and from the ancient religious doc.u.ments of India.

These doc.u.ments are to English investigators ignorant of Sanskrit 'a book sealed with seven seals.' The Vedas are interpreted in very different ways by different Oriental scholars. It does not yet appear to be known whether a certain word in the Vedic funeral service means 'goat' or 'soul'! Mr. Max Muller's rendering is certain to have the first claim on English readers, and therefore it is desirable to investigate the conclusions which he draws from his Vedic studies. The ordinary anthropologist must first, however, lodge a protest against the tendency to look for primitive matter in the Vedas. They are the elaborate hymns of a specially trained set of poets and philosophers, living in an age almost of civilisation. They can therefore contain little testimony as to what man, while still 'primitive,' thought about G.o.d, the world, and the soul. One might as well look for the first germs of religion, for primitive religion strictly so called, in 'Hymns Ancient and Modern' as in the Vedas. It is chiefly, however, by way of deductions from the Vedas, that Mr. Max Muller arrives at ideas which may be briefly and broadly stated thus: he inclines to derive religion from man's sense of the Infinite, as awakened by natural objects calculated to stir that sense. Our position is, on the other hand, that the germs of the religious sense in early man are developed, not so much by the vision of the Infinite, as by the idea of Power. Early religions, in short, are selfish, not disinterested. The wors.h.i.+pper is not contemplative, so much as eager to gain something to his advantage. In fetiches, he ignorantly recognises something that possesses power of an abnormal sort, and the train of ideas which leads him to believe in and to treasure fetiches is one among the earliest springs of religious belief.

Mr. Muller's opinion is the very reverse: he believes that a contemplative and disinterested emotion in the presence of the Infinite, or of anything that suggests infinitude or is mistaken for the Infinite, begets human religion, while of this religion fetichism is a later corruption.

In treating of fetichism Mr. Muller is obliged to criticise the system of De Brosses, who introduced this rather unfortunate term to science, in an admirable work, 'Le Culte des Dieux Fetiches' (1760). We call the work 'admirable,' because, considering the contemporary state of knowledge and speculation, De Brosses's book is brilliant, original, and only now and then rash or confused. Mr. Muller says that De Brosses 'holds that all nations had to begin with fetichism, to be followed afterwards by polytheism and monotheism.' This sentence would lead some readers to suppose that De Brosses, in his speculations, was looking for the origin of religion; but, in reality, his work is a mere attempt to explain a certain element in ancient religion and mythology. De Brosses was well aware that heathen religions were a complex ma.s.s, a concretion of many materials. He admits the existence of regard for the spirits of the dead as one factor, he gives Sabaeism a place as another. But what chiefly puzzles him, and what he chiefly tries to explain, is the wors.h.i.+p of odds and ends of rubbish, and the adoration of animals, mountains, trees, the sun, and so forth. When he ma.s.ses all these wors.h.i.+ps together, and proposes to call them all Fetichism (a term derived from the Portuguese word for a talisman), De Brosses is distinctly unscientific. But De Brosses is distinctly scientific when he attempts to explain the animal-wors.h.i.+p of Egypt, and the respect paid by Greeks and Romans to shapeless stones, as survivals of older savage practices.

The position of De Brosses is this: Old mythology and religion are a tissue of many threads. Sabaeism, adoration of the dead, mythopic fancy, have their part in the fabric. Among many African tribes, a form of theism, Islamite or Christian, or self-developed, is superimposed on a ma.s.s of earlier superst.i.tions. Among these superst.i.tions, is the wors.h.i.+p of animals and plants, and the cult of rough stones and of odds and ends of matter. What is the origin of this element, so prominent in the religion of Egypt, and present, if less conspicuous, in the most ancient temples of Greece? It is the survival, answers De Brosses, of ancient practices like those of untutored peoples, as Brazilians, Samoyeds, Negroes, whom the Egyptians and Pelasgians once resembled in lack of culture.

This, briefly stated, is the hypothesis of De Brosses. If he had possessed our wider information, he would have known that, among savage races, the wors.h.i.+ps of the stars, of the dead, and of plants and animals, are interlaced by the strange metaphysical processes of wild men. He would, perhaps, have kept the supernatural element in magical stones, feathers, sh.e.l.ls, and so on, apart from the triple thread of Sabaeism, ghost-wors.h.i.+p, and totemism, with its later development into the regular wors.h.i.+p of plants and animals. It must be recognised, however, that De Brosses was perfectly well aware of the confused and manifold character of early religion. He had a clear view of the truth that what the religious instinct has once grasped, it does not, as a rule, abandon, but subordinates or disguises, when it reaches higher ideas. And he avers, again and again, that men laid hold of the coa.r.s.er and more material objects of wors.h.i.+p, while they themselves were coa.r.s.e and dull, and that, as civilisation advanced, they, as a rule, subordinated and disguised the ruder factors in their system. Here it is that Mr. Max Muller differs from De Brosses. He holds that the adoration of stones, feathers, sh.e.l.ls, and (as I understand him) the wors.h.i.+p of animals are, even among the races of Africa, a corruption of an earlier and purer religion, a 'parasitical development' of religion.

However, Mr. Max Muller himself held 'for a long time' what he calls 'De Brosses's theory of fetichism.' What made him throw the theory overboard? It was 'the fact that, while in the earliest accessible doc.u.ments of religious thought we look in vain for any very clear traces of fetichism, they become more and more frequent everywhere in the later stages of religious development, and are certainly more visible in the later corruptions of the Indian religion, beginning with the atharvana, than in the earliest hymns of the Rig Veda.' Now, by the earliest accessible doc.u.ments of religious thought, Professor Max Muller means the hymns of the Rig Veda. These hymns are composed in the most elaborate metre, by sages of old repute, who, I presume, occupied a position not unlike that of the singers and seers of Israel. They lived in an age of tolerably advanced cultivation. They had wide geographical knowledge. They had settled government. They dwelt in States. They had wealth of gold, of grain, and of domesticated animals. Among the metals, they were acquainted with that which, in most countries, has been the latest worked-they used iron poles in their chariots. How then can the hymns of the most enlightened singers of a race thus far developed be called 'the earliest religious doc.u.ments'? Oldest they may be, the oldest that are accessible, but that is a very different thing. How can we possibly argue that what is absent in these hymns, is absent because it had not yet come into existence? Is it not the very office of pii vates et Phbo digna locuti to purify religion, to cover up decently its rude shapes, as the unhewn stone was concealed in the fane of Apollo of Delos? If the race whose n.o.blest and oldest extant hymns were pure, exhibits traces of fetichism in its later doc.u.ments, may not that as easily result from a recrudescence as from a corruption? Professor Max Muller has still, moreover, to explain how the process of corruption which introduced the same fetichistic practices among Samoyeds, Brazilians, Kaffirs, and the people of the atharvana Veda came to be everywhere identical in its results.