The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India Volume I (of IV)

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The divisions of time are considered in a concrete sense. The
fortnight or Nakshatra is presided over by its constellation, and
this is held to be a nymph or goddess, who controls events during its
course. Similarly, as shown in _The Golden Bough_, [113] many kinds
of new enterprises should be begun in the fortnight of the waxing
moon, not in that of the waning moon. Days are also thought to be
concrete and governed by their planets, and from this idea come all
the superstitions about lucky and unlucky days. If a day had been
from the beginning realised as a simple division of time no such
superstitions could exist. Events, so far as they are conceived of,
are also considered in a concrete sense. The reason why omens were
so often drawn from birds [114] is perhaps that birds fly from a
distance and hence are able to see coming events on their way; and the
hare and donkey were important animals of augury, perhaps because,
on account of their long ears, they were credited with abnormally
acute hearing, which would enable them to hear the sound of coming
events before ordinary people. The proverb 'Coming events cast their
shadows before,' appears to be a survival of this mode of belief,
as it is obvious that that which has no substance cannot cast a shadow.

The whole category of superstitions about the evil eye arises from the
belief that the glance of the eye is a concrete thing which strikes
the person or object towards which it is directed like a dart. The
theory that the injury is caused through the malice or envy of the
person casting the evil eye seems to be derivative and explanatory. If
a stranger's glance falls on the food of a Ramanuji Brahman while it
is being cooked, the food becomes polluted and must be buried in the
ground. Here it is clear that the glance of the eye is equivalent to
real contact of some part of the stranger's body, which would pollute
the food. In asking for leave in order to nurse his brother who was
seriously ill but could obtain no advantage from medical treatment,
a Hindu clerk explained that the sick man had been pierced by the
evil glance of some woman.

57. Words and names concrete.

Similarly words were considered to have a concrete force, so that
the mere repetition of words produced an effect analogous to their
sense. The purely mechanical repetition of prayers was held to be a
virtuous act, and this idea was carried to the most absurd length in
the Buddhist's praying-wheel, where merit was acquired by causing
the wheel with prayers inscribed on its surface to revolve in a
waterfall. The wearing of strips of paper, containing sacred texts,
as amulets on the body is based on this belief, and some Muhammadans
will wash off the ink from paper containing a verse of the Koran and
drink the mixture under the impression that it will do them good. Here
the belief in the concrete virtue and substance of the written word
is very clear. The Hindus think that the continued repetition of the
Gayatri or sacred prayer to the sun is a means of acquiring virtue,
and the prayer is personified as a goddess. The enunciation of the
sacred syllable Aum or Om is supposed to have the most powerful
results. Homer's phrase 'winged words' perhaps recalls the period
when the words were considered as physical entities which actually
travelled through the air from the speaker to the hearer and were
called winged because they went so fast. A Korku clan has the name
_lobo_ which means a piece of cloth. But the word _lobo_ also signifies
'to leak.' If a person says a sentence containing the word _lobo_ in
either signification before a member of the clan while he is eating,
he will throw away the food before him as if it were contaminated
and prepare a meal afresh. Here it is clear that the Korku pays no
regard to the sense but solely to the word or sound. This belief
in the concrete force of words has had the most important effects
both in law and religion. The earliest codes of law were held to be
commands of the god and claimed obedience on this ground. The binding
force of the law rested in the words and not in the sense because the
words were held to be those of the god and to partake of his divine
nature. In ancient Rome the citizen had to take care to know the
words of the law and to state them exactly. If he used one wrong word
the law gave him no assistance. "Gaius tells a story of a man whose
neighbour had cut his vines; the facts were clear; he stated the law
applying to his case, but he said vines, whereas the law said trees;
he lost his suit." [115] The divine virtue attached to the sacred
books of different religions rests on the same belief. Frequently the
books themselves are worshipped, and it was held that they could not
be translated because the sanctity resided in the actual words and
would be lost if other words were used. The efficacy of spells and
invocations seems to depend mainly on this belief in the concrete
power of words. If one knows an efficacious form of words connoting
a state of physical facts and repeats it with the proper accessory
conditions, then that state of facts is actually caused to exist;
and if one knows a man's name and calls on him with a form of words
efficacious to compel attendance, he has to come and his spirit can
similarly be summoned from the dead. When a Malay wishes to kill an
enemy he makes an image of the man, transfixes or otherwise injures
it, and buries it on the path over which the enemy will tread. As he
buries it with the impression that he will thereby cause the enemy
to die and likewise be buried, he says:

It is not I who am burying him,
It is Gabriel who is burying him,

and thinks that the repetition of these words produces the state of
facts which they denote so that the guilt of the murder is removed from
his own shoulders to those of the archangel Gabriel. Similarly when he
has killed a deer and wishes to be free from the guilt of his action,
or as he calls it to cast out the mischief from the deer, he says:

It is not I who cast out these mischiefs,
It is Michael who casts them out.
It is not I who cast out these mischiefs,
It is Israfel who casts them out,

and so on, freeing himself in the same manner from responsibility
for the death of the deer. [116] Names also are regarded as
concrete. Primitive man could not regard a name as an abstract
appellation, but thought of it as part of the person or thing to
which it was applied and as containing part of his life, like his
hair, spittle and the rest of his body. He would have used names
for a long period before he had any word for a name, and his first
idea of the name as a part of the substantive body to which it is
applied has survived a more correct appreciation. Thus if one knew
a person's name one could injure him by working evil on it and the
part of his life contained in it, just as one could injure him through
the clippings of his hair, his spittle, clothes or the earth pressed
by his foot. This is the reason for the common custom of having two
names, one of which, the true name, is kept secret and only used on
ceremonial occasions when it is essential, as at a wedding, while the
other is employed for everyday life. The latter, not being the man's
true name, does not contain part of his life, and hence there is no
harm in letting an enemy know it. Similarly the Hindus think that a
child's name should not be repeated at night, lest an owl might hear
it, when this bird could injure the child through its name, just as
if it got hold of a piece of cloth worn or soiled by the child. The
practice of euphemism rests on this belief, as it was thought that
if a person's name was said and a part of him was thus caused to be
present the rest would probably follow. Hence the rule of avoiding the
use of the names of persons or things of which one does not desire the
presence. Thus Sir E.B. Tylor says: "The Dayak will not speak of the
smallpox by name, but will call it 'The Chief,' or 'Jungle leaves,'
or say, 'Has He left you?' The euphemism of calling the Furies the
Eumenides, or 'Gracious Ones,' is the stock illustration of this
feeling, and the euphemisms for fairies and for the devil are too
familiar to quote." [117] Similarly the name of a god was considered
as part of him and hence partaking of his divine nature. It was thus
so potent that it could not be mentioned on ordinary occasions or by
common persons. Allah is only an epithet for the name of God among
the Muhammadans and his True or Great Name is secret. Those who know
it have power over all created things. Clearly then the divine power
is held to reside in the name itself. The concealment of the name of
the tutelary deity of Rome, for divulging which Valerius Soranus is
said to have paid the penalty of death, is a case in point. [118]
Sir E.B. Tylor gives many other interesting examples of the above
ideas and points out the connection clearly existing in the savage mind
between the name and the object to which it is applied. The Muhammadans
think that Solomon's name is very efficacious for casting out devils
and evil spirits. The practice of naming children after gods or by
the epithets or titles applied to the divine being, or after the
names of saints, appears to be due to the belief that such names,
by reason of their association with the god or saint, acquire a part
of his divine life and virtue, which when given to children the names
will in turn convey to them. [119] On the other hand, when a Hindu
mother is afraid lest her child may die, she sometimes gives it an
opprobrious name as dirt, rubbish, sweepings, or sold for one or two
cowries, so that the evil spirits who take the lives of children may
be deceived by the name and think that such a valueless child is not
worth having. The voice was also held to be concrete. The position
of the Roman tribune was peculiar, as he was not a magistrate chosen
by divine authority and hence could not summon people to his court;
but the tribune had been dedicated to the city gods, and his person
was sacrosanct. He could therefore lay hands on a man, and once the
tribune touched him, the man was held to be in the magistrate's power,
and bound to obey him. This rule extended even to those who were within
hearing of his voice; any one, even a patrician or consul, who heard
the tribune's voice was compelled to obey him. In this case it is
clear that the voice and spoken words were held to be concrete, and
to share in the sanctity attaching to the body. [120] When primitive
man could not think of a name as an abstraction but had to think of
it as an actual part of the body and life of the person or visible
object to which it belonged, it will be realised how impossible it
was for him during a long period to conceive of any abstract idea,
which was only a word without visible or corporal reality.

58. The soul or spirit.

Thus he could not at first have had any conception of a soul or
spirit, which is an unseen thing. Savages generally may have evolved
the conception of a soul or spirit as an explanation of dreams,
according to the view taken by Mr. E. Clodd in _Myths and Dreams_,
[121] Mr. Clodd shows that dreams were necessarily and invariably
considered as real events, and it could not have been otherwise, as
primitive man would have been unable to conceive the abstract idea of a
vision or fantasy. And since during dreams the body remained immobile
and quiescent, it was thought that the spirit inside the body left
it and travelled independently. Hence the reluctance often evinced
to waking a sleeper suddenly from fear lest the absent spirit might
not have time to return to the body before its awakening and hence
the man might die. Savages, not having the conception of likeness or
similarity, [122] would confuse death and sleep, because the appearance
of the body is similar in death and in sleep. Legends of the type
of Rip Van Winkle and the Sleeping Beauty, and of heroes like King
Arthur and Frederick Barbarossa lying asleep through the centuries
in some remote cave or other hiding-place, from which they will one
day issue forth to regenerate the world, perpetuate the primitive
identification of death and sleep. And the belief long prevailed that
after death the soul or spirit remained with the body in the place
where it lay, leaving the body and returning to it as the spirit was
held to do in sleep. The spirit was also thought to be able to quit
the body and enter any other body, both during life and after death;
most of the beliefs in spirit-possession and many of those about the
power of witches arise from this view. The soul or spirit was commonly
conceived of in concrete form; the Egyptians, Greeks and Hindus thought
of it as a little mannikin inside the body. After death the Hindus
often break the skull in order to allow the soul to escape. Often an
insect or a stone is thought to harbour the spirit. As shown by Sir
E. B. Tylor in _Primitive Culture_, [123] the breath, the shadow and
the pupil of the eye were sometimes held to be or to represent the
soul or spirit. Disembodied spirits are imprisoned in a tree or hole
by driving nails into the tree or ground to confine them and prevent
their exit. When a man died accidentally or a woman in childbirth and
fear was felt that their spirits might annoy or injure the living,
a stake might be driven through the body or a cairn of stones piled
over it in order to keep the ghost down and prevent it from rising
and walking. The genii of the Arabian Nights were imprisoned in
sealed bottles, and when the bottle was opened they appeared in a
cloud of vapour.

There seems every reason to suppose, as the same author suggests,
that man first thought he had a spirit himself and as a consequence
held that animals, plants and inanimate objects also contained
spirits. Because the belief that the human body had a spirit can
easily be accounted for, but there seems to be no valid reason why
man should have thought that all other visible objects also contained
spirits, except that at the period when he conceived of the existence
of a soul or spirit he still held them to be possessed of life and
self-conscious volition like himself. But certain beliefs, such as
the universal existence of life, and of its distribution all over
the body and transmission by contact and eating, the common life
of the species, and possibly totemism itself, appear to have been
pre-animistic or prior to any conception of or belief in a soul or
spirit either in man himself or in nature.

59. The tranmission of qualities.

Primitive man thought that the life and all qualities, mental
and physical, were equally distributed over the body as part of
the substance of the flesh. He thus came to think that they could
be transferred from one body or substance to another in two ways:
either by contact of the two bodies or substances, or by the eating
or assimilation of one by the other. The transmission of qualities
by contact could be indicated through simply saying the two names of
the objects in contact together, and transmission by eating through
saying the two names with a gesture of eating. Thus if one ate a piece
of tiger's flesh, one assimilated an equivalent amount of strength,
ferocity, cruelty, yellowness, and any other qualities which might be
attributed to the tiger. Warriors and youths are sometimes forbidden
to eat deer's flesh because it will make them timid, but they are
encouraged to eat the flesh of tigers, bears, and other ferocious
animals, because it will make them brave. The Gonds, if they wish
a child to be a good dancer, cause it to eat the flesh of a kind of
hawk, which hangs gracefully poised over the water, with its wings
continually flapping, on the look-out for its prey. They think that
by eating the flesh the limbs of the child will become supple like
the wings of the bird. If a child is slow in learning to speak,
they give it to eat the leaves of the pipal tree, which rustle
continually in the wind and are hence supposed to have the quality
of making a noise. All qualities, objective and instrumental, were
conceived of in the same manner, because in the absence of verbs or
abstract terms their proper relation to the subject and object could
not be stated or understood. Thus if a woman's labour in child-birth
is prolonged she is given to drink water in which the charred wood of
a tree struck by lightning has been dipped. Here it is clear that the
quality of swiftness is held to have been conveyed by the lightning
to the wood, by the wood to the water, and by the water to the woman,
so as to give her a swift delivery. By a similar train of reasoning
she is given to drink the water of a swiftly-flowing stream which thus
has the quality of swiftness, or water poured through a gun-barrel in
which the fouling of a bullet is left. Here the quality of swiftness
appertaining to the bullet is conveyed by the soiling to the barrel and
thence to the water and to the woman who drinks the water. In the above
cases all the transfers except that to the woman are by contact. The
belief in the transfer of qualities by contact may have arisen from
the sensations of the body and skin, to which heat, cold and moisture
are communicated by contact. It was applied to every kind of quality. A
familiar instance is the worship of the marks on rocks or stone which
are held to be the footprints left by a god. Here a part of the god's
divine virtue and power has been communicated through the sole of his
foot to the rock dented by the latter. Touching for the king's evil
was another familiar case, when it was thought that a fraction of
the king's divine life and virtue was communicated by contact to the
person touched and cured him of his ailment. The wearing of amulets
where these consist of parts of the bodies of animals is based on the
same belief. When a man wears on his person the claws of a tiger in an
amulet, he thinks that the claws being the tiger's principal weapon
of offence contain a concentrated part of his strength, and that the
wearer of the claws will acquire some of this by contact. The Gonds
carry the shoulder-bone of a tiger, or eat the powdered bone-dust,
in order to acquire strength. The same train of reasoning applies
to the wearing of the hair of a bear, a common amulet in India, the
hair being often considered as the special seat of strength. [124]
The whole practice of wearing ornaments of the precious metals and
precious stones appears to have been originally due to the same motive,
as shown in the article on Sunar.

If the Gonds want a child to become fat, they put it in a pigsty or
a place where asses have rolled, so that it may acquire by contact
the quality of fatness belonging to the pigs or asses. If they wish to
breed quarrels in an enemy's house, they put the seeds of the _amaltas_
or the quills of the porcupine in the thatch of the roof. The seeds
in the dried pods of this tree rattle in the wind, while the fretful
porcupine raises its quills when angry. Hence the seeds will impart
the quality of noise to the house, so that its inmates will be noisy,
while the quills of the porcupine will similarly breed strife between
them. The effects produced by weapons and instruments are thought of
in the same manner. We say that an arrow is shot from a bow with such
force as to penetrate the body and cause a wound. The savage could not
think or speak in this way, because he had no verbs and could not think
of nouns in the objective case. He thought of the arrow as an animate
thing having a cutting or piercing quality. When placed in a suitable
position to exercise its powers, it flew, of its own volition, through
the air to the target, and communicated to it by contact some of the
above quality. The idea is more easily realised in the case of balls,
pieces of bone or other missiles thrown by magicians. Here the person
whom it is intended to injure may be miles away, so that the object
could not possibly strike him merely through the force imparted to it
by the thrower. But when the magician has said charms over the missile,
communicating to it the power and desire to do his will, he throws it
in the proper direction and savages believe that it will go of its
own accord to the person against whom it is aimed and penetrate his
body. To pretend to suck pieces of bone out of the body, which are
supposed to have been propelled into the victim by an enemy, is one
of the commonest magical methods of curing an illness. The following
instances of this idea are taken from the admirable collection in
_The Golden Bough_ [125]: "(In Suffolk) if a man cuts himself with a
bill-hook or a scythe he always takes care to keep the weapon bright,
and oils it to prevent the wound from festering. If he runs a thorn or,
as he calls it, a bush into his hand, he oils or greases the extracted
thorn. A man came to a doctor with an inflamed hand, having run a
thorn into it while he was hedging. On being told that the hand was
festering, he remarked: 'That didn't ought to, for I greased the bush
well after I pulled it out' If a horse wounds its foot by treading on
a nail, a Suffolk groom will invariably preserve the nail, clean it
and grease it every day to prevent the wound from festering." Here the
heat and festering of the wounds are held to be qualities of the axe,
thorn or nail, which have been communicated to the person or animal
wounded by contact. If these qualities of the instrument are reduced
by cleaning and oiling it, then that portion of them communicated
to the wound, which was originally held to be a severed part of
the life and qualities of the instrument, will similarly be made
cool and easy. It is not probable that the people of Suffolk really
believe this at present, but they retain the method of treatment
arising from the belief without being able to explain it. Similarly
the Hindus must have thought that the results produced by the tools
of artisans working on materials, and by the plough on the earth,
were communicated by these instruments volitionally through contact;
and this is why they worship once or twice a year the implements of
their profession as the givers of the means of subsistence. All the
stories of magic swords, axes, impenetrable shields, sandals, lamps,
carpets and so on originally arose from the same belief.

60. The faculty of counting. Confusion of the individual and the
species.

But primitive man not only considered the body as a homogeneous mass
with the life and qualities distributed equally over it. He further,
it may be suggested, did not distinguish between the individual
and the species. The reason for this was that he could not count,
and had no idea of numbers. The faculty of counting appears to have
been acquired very late. Messrs. Spencer and Gillan remark of the
aborigines of Central Australia: [126] "While in matters such as
tracking, which are concerned with their everyday life, and upon
efficiency in which they actually depend for their livelihood,
the natives show conspicuous ability, there are other directions in
which they are as conspicuously deficient. This is perhaps shown most
clearly in the matter of counting. At Alice Springs they occasionally
count, sometimes using their fingers in doing so, up to five, but
frequently anything beyond four is indicated by the word _oknira_,
meaning 'much' or 'great.' One is _nintha_, two _thrama_ or _thera_,
three _mapitcha_, four _therankathera_, five _therankathera-nintha_."
The form of these words is interesting, because it is clear that
the word for four is two and two, or twice two, and the word for
five is two and two and one. These words indicate the prolonged and
painful efforts which must have been necessary to count as far as
five, and this though in other respects the Australian natives show
substantial mental development, having a most complicated system of
exogamy, and sometimes two personal names for each individual. Again,
the Andamanese islanders, despite the extraordinary complexity of
their agglutinative language, have no names for the numerals beyond
two. [127] It is said that the Majhwar tribe can only count up to
three, while among the Bhatras the qualification for being a village
astrologer, who foretells the character of the rainfall and gives
auspicious days for sowing and harvest, is the ability to count
a certain number of posts. The astrologer's title is Meda Gantia,
or Counter of Posts. The above facts demonstrate that counting is a
faculty acquired with difficulty after considerable mental progress,
and primitive man apparently did not feel the necessity for it. [128]
But if he could not count, it seems a proper deduction that his
eye would not distinguish a number of animals of the same species
together, because the ability to do this, and to appraise distinct
individuals of like appearance appears to depend ultimately on the
faculty of counting. Major Hendley, a doctor and therefore a skilled
observer, states that the Bhils were unable to distinguish colours
or to count numbers, apparently on account of their want of words
to express themselves. [129] Now it seems clearly more easy for the
eye to discriminate between opposing colours than to distinguish
a number of individuals of the same species together. There are a
few things which we still cannot count, such as the blades of grass,
the ears of corn, drops of rain, snowflakes, and hailstones. All of
these things are still spoken of in the singular, though this is well
known to be scientifically incorrect. We say an expanse of grass,
a field of corn, and so on, as if the grass and corn were all one
plant instead of an innumerable quantity of plants. Apparently when
primitive man saw a number of animals or trees of the same species
together, the effect on him must have been exactly the same as that
of a field of grass or corn on us. He could be conscious only of an
indefinite sense of magnitude. But he did not know, as we do in the
cases cited, that the objects he saw were really a collection of
distinct individuals. He would naturally consider them as all one,
just as children would think a field of grass or corn to be one great
plant until they were told otherwise. But there was no one to tell
him, nor any means by which he could find out his mistake. He had no
plural number, and no definite or indefinite articles. Whether he
saw one or a hundred tigers together, he could only describe them
by the one word tiger. It was a long time before he could even say
'much tiger,' as the Australian natives still have to do if they see
more animals than five together, and the Andamanese if they see more
than two. The hypothesis therefore seems reasonable that at first man
considered each species of animals or plants which he distinguished
to have a separate single life, of which all the individuals were
pieces or members. The separation of different parts of one living
body presented no difficulties to his mind, since, as already seen, he
believed the life to continue in severed fractions of the human body.