Part 14 (1/2)
[Footnote 5: See also Mr. Muller's _Hibbert Lectures_, and his _Biographies of Words_.]
In this instance etymology admittedly points out one of the princ.i.p.al features of the common Aryan religions. But if we hope that etymology will reveal to us many further instances of the same kind, and introduce us to the whole Pantheon of the Aryans, we shall be disappointed. There are one or two more cases of etymological agreement between the G.o.ds of India and those of Europe,[6] but the agreement is in some of these cases no more than etymological. The Tiw or Tyr of the Teutonic mythology does not correspond in office or character with Zeus or Jupiter, though the names are etymologically akin. The agreement does not extend to all the religions in question, nor does it extend in any two religions to all their G.o.ds; most of the G.o.ds of Europe have no parallels in India. The evidence of etymology, therefore, tells us but little of that early religion of which we are in search. But if we consider the views and habits of the barbarous shepherd-huntsman, who is now seen to be the typical figure of common Aryanism, we need not seek long before we find something that was common to all the Aryan faiths. The patriarchal household has a religion which belongs to itself, and which is the working bond of union of its members. The hearth is its altar, because the forefathers of the house lie buried under it, or for another reason. These forefathers certainly are its G.o.ds. This hearth-cult has for its priest the father of the family; he in his turn will be gathered to his fathers if he has a legitimate son to do the last rites for him. No one but members of the family can partake in the domestic wors.h.i.+p, all unconnected with the family by blood must be kept at a distance from these rites. This is not a religion in which the individual counts anything for his own sake, any more than totemistic religion is; in both it is the community alone that serves the deity, in the one case, those acknowledging the same totem, in the second, those united by blood in the same family. In totemism the individual sacrifices himself to the tribe; here he is nothing apart from his family. Aryan piety is family religion pure and simple. It fosters sentiments which have been the strength of Aryan society in all lands. It makes family life a sacred thing, lends to all domestic ties the highest sanction, and causes the mere mention of ”hearth and home” to be the strongest incentive to valour and self-denial. Even in the wild-beast ferocity with which early men defend their homes against the intrusion of strangers, the germs of lofty domestic and patriotic virtues may be seen. Thus ancestor-wors.h.i.+p, which is a part of the very beginnings of human religion, is a more effective force among the Aryans than anywhere else. In Egypt and China that wors.h.i.+p is a highly artificial thing, and has lost much of its original force. In Egypt it is the fortunes of the dead that are most thought of; in China the cult has been smoothed down and deprived, according to the character of the people, of its intenser motives. Among the Aryans it combines actively with strong family feeling, causing them to cling with an extreme tenacity to their own G.o.ds and their own wors.h.i.+p.[7]
[Footnote 6: The princ.i.p.al are the following:--
1. Dyaus, G.o.d of the sky, see above.
2. Sans. Ushas, G.o.ddess of dawn; Gr. [Greek: heos]; Lat. aurora; Lith. auszra; A.-S. eostra.
3. Sans. Agni, fire, G.o.d of fire; Lat. ignis; Lith. ugnis; O.-S.
ogni.
4. Sans. Surya, sun; Lat. sol; Gr. [Greek: helios], also [Greek: Seirios]; Cymr. seul.
5. Sans. Mas, moon; Gr. [Greek: mene]; Lat. mena; Lith. menu.
Mars=Maruts, Manu=Minos=Mannus, Varuna=Ouranos, and other equations formerly brought forward, are not now relied on by etymologists.]
[Footnote 7: The comparative absence of ancestor-wors.h.i.+p among the Greeks leads Dr. Schrader to doubt whether their religion is Aryan.
The Semites and the Greeks occupy the same position in this respect (see chapter x., chapter xvi.).]
But those of whom we are speaking wors.h.i.+pped other G.o.ds besides those of the household. The second great characteristic of Aryan religion is its adoration of G.o.ds who are neither local nor tribal, but universal. Dyaus, the sky, the heaven-G.o.d, can be wors.h.i.+pped anywhere; so can the earth, so can the heavenly twins, who were objects of early Aryan religion, so can the sun and moon. Not that the Aryans always remembered that these beings were not local or tribal. The G.o.d of heaven could be the G.o.d of a particular place too, having a special name there; or he could be appropriated by a tribe who gave him a t.i.tle as their own particular patron. Each family could have its own heaven-G.o.d as well as its own hearth-G.o.d. Nor are we to think that when they wors.h.i.+pped beings who could be found in every place, the Aryans overlooked the sacred places, and the sacred objects wors.h.i.+pped formerly. They had themselves risen out of savagery, and still held many of the ideas of savages. Though they had a few great G.o.ds they could still believe in a large number of smaller ones. The tree, the stream, still had its spirit for them, the cave or the dark fissure its bad demon. And many a piece of magic did they practise, such as the rain-charm which would cause even the highest G.o.d to send what was needed. The world was well peopled with G.o.ds, and to keep on good terms with them all was, no doubt, a matter that required much attention and skill.
Other features which have been stated to be characteristic of Aryan religion are its non-priestly character, and the fact that its G.o.ds are generally arranged in a monarchical pantheon. But neither of these const.i.tutes a specific difference of the kind we are in search of. All primitive religions are non-priestly; a religion becomes priestly at a certain stage of its growth, when it is organised separately from the state. The monarchical pantheon, too, such as that of Homer and of the Eddas, is an indication, not of the genius of a religion, but of its having reached the systematising stage, and of the political ideas according to which the system is drawn up. The Aryan religions, it is true, arrange their G.o.ds when the time comes to do so, after the pattern of an Aryan patriarchal establishment, the father at the head, his sons and daughters near him, the servants in attendance, the unorganised host of spirits, nymphs and elves, outside. But to know the original character of the religion it is less important to ask how the pantheon is arranged, than what G.o.ds are wors.h.i.+pped, and how they are related to man. And the point which stands out clearly is that while Semitic religion is purely tribal and local, there is an element in Aryan religion which naturally transcends these limits. On Semitic ground the body with whom the G.o.d transacts is the tribe, the link is that of blood which connects all the members of the tribe with their divine head or ancestor. In Aryan religion also blood counts for much. The family altar is the seat of wors.h.i.+p, and he who has been cast out of his own family cannot wors.h.i.+p anywhere. The family G.o.ds are most thought of, no doubt, and exercise immense power in the ways we have mentioned. But the wors.h.i.+p of which blood is the tie is not to the Aryan, as to the Semite, the whole of religion. There are beings aloft as well as beings on the earth and under the earth, and the wors.h.i.+p of these beings is wider than the family. The family may address Heaven by a special private name, or at a particular spot, but Heaven itself was above all these t.i.tles and places. The spirits of the household made, as all the Semitic G.o.ds do, for separation, but the G.o.ds above made for union, and as any community grew, the upper G.o.ds, who were wors.h.i.+pped by all its members alike, became more lofty and more important. Thus we may agree with Mr. Gomme when he speaks (_Ethnology of Folklore_, p. 68) of the emanc.i.p.ation of the Aryans from the principle of local wors.h.i.+p, and says that the rise of the conception of G.o.ds who could and did accompany the tribes wheresoever they travelled, was ”the greatest triumph of the Aryan race.”
Farther than this it may be dangerous to go in a field so full of uncertainty. In all Aryan wors.h.i.+ps there are sacrifices of various kinds and degrees of importance. The horse sacrifice appears in several of the nations as one of distinction, but human sacrifice was most important of all, though in each of the Aryan lands commutations are made for it at a very early stage. The strife of Aryan with non-Aryan religions gave rise to many superst.i.tions; after the conquest the G.o.ds of the latter often became the bad G.o.ds or demons of the former, the ministers of the defeated cult were regarded as sorcerers or witches, the dethroned G.o.ds made many an attempt to come back to their seats, and to revive disused practices. But a religion based, as we have seen the Aryan to be, in the family affections is destined to rise as civilisation advances. It will be found that the Aryan draws a less absolute distinction than the Semite between the human and the divine. To the Semite G.o.d is, broadly speaking, a master, or Lord, whose word is a command, in regard to whom man is a subject, a slave. To the Aryan the relation is a freer one. His G.o.d is more human, and art and imagination can do more in his service.
BOOKS RECOMMENDED
E. Siecke, _Die religion d. Indogermanen_, 1897.
C. F. Keary, _Outlines of Primitive Belief among the Indo-European Races_, 1882.
CHAPTER XV THE TEUTONS
The Aryans in Europe.--There is more than one European people which before it was touched by Roman civilisation had remained for an indefinite period--a period to be measured probably rather by millenniums than by centuries--in the state of society described in last chapter (see above) as occurring when the Aryans dwelt among those whom they had conquered. In various lands alike we meet with the combination of the patriarchal household with the village, the combination of agricultural with pastoral life, to which the Aryans early settled down among non-Aryan populations. This type of society, which is the basis of feudalism, is recognised alike in India and in Germany. It stretches far back into the past, and may even be recognised in some quarters at the present day.
As with civilisation so with religion. The early faith of the Slavs, the Celts, and the Teutons is now generally regarded as best representing that of the Aryans. It was a religion in which rite and belief were indefinite and variable compared with those of the later Aryan faiths of India and of Southern Europe, there being neither a regular priesthood nor the use of writing to impart fixity to religious forms. The river, the fountain, and the aged oak, each had its legend and its observance of unknown antiquity. The pre-Aryan and the Aryan elements of religion acted and reacted on each other, the Aryan, no doubt, being the element of progress, but blending with the other in indistinguishable mixture. The spirits of ancestors lived in the belief and the practice of posterity; a thousand unseen agents in the sky, and in the earth, and under the earth were believed in and treated according to tradition, fed or flouted, bribed or exorcised, as occasion suggested. New G.o.ds appeared, or old ones were combined into new, or a G.o.d migrated from one province to another. Here also myths and rituals were formed by various processes. But a more constant growth of belief took place in connection with some G.o.ds as larger social organisms came into existence, village communities combining into tribes, tribes into nations. The great G.o.ds of heaven, whatever the history of their early growth, proved specially fitted to unite together clans and peoples. These beings received different names in different countries. Their early history, no doubt, was not the same in all, yet in each mythology there were figures and stories which occurred also in others, whether in consequence of parallel growth out of similar circ.u.mstances in each land, or from a process of borrowing at a later time, or from both, we need not try to decide.
We give a short account of the religion of the Germans. That of the Celts, which may be studied in the Hibbert Lectures of Professor Rhys,[1] or that of the Slavs (of which there is an excellent short summary by Mr. W. R. Morfill in _Religious Systems of the World_), would have equally well served the purpose of exhibiting an Aryan religion at a low stage of development, and held by a people not thoroughly compacted into a nation. The religion of the Teutons has the advantage for our study over these others, that it remained longer unsuppressed by Christianity, and in its Scandinavian branch put forth a vigorous original growth in comparatively recent times.
The latest paganism which flourished in Europe, it is also the religion of our ancestors, on which the Christianity of the Northern lands was grafted, and many a survival of which may still be recognised in our own land. It therefore possesses for us even in itself considerable interest.
[Footnote 1: _Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion as ill.u.s.trated by Celtic Heathendom_, 1886.]
Of the ancient Germans, of the dwellers in the basins of the Rhine and the Danube, we have accounts by Caesar and by Tacitus.[2] After this there is a dearth of information; the Christian missionaries to the Germans thought it their duty to cover the former beliefs and rites of their converts in oblivion, and abstained from giving information about them. What we know is drawn from Church writers.
The Eddas belong to a much more developed stage of Teutonic life; they tell their own tale, which will be noticed in its turn.
[Footnote 2: Caesar, _B. Gall._ vi. 21. Tacitus, _Germania_.]