Folklore; Manners and customs; Mythology; Religion
Where is the supernatural sanction that consecrated the chiefs of a race
which woke to the sense of the existence of infinite beings, in face of
trees, rivers, the dawn, the sun, and had none of the so-called late and
corrupt fetichism that does such useful social work?
To the student of other early societies, Mr. Muller's theory of the
growth of Aryan religion seems to leave society without cement, and
without the most necessary sanctions. One man is as good as another,
before a tree, a river, a hill. The savage organisers of other societies
found out fetiches and ghosts that were 'respecters of persons.' Zoolatry
is intertwisted with the earliest and most widespread law of prohibited
degrees. How did the Hindoos dispense with the aid of these
superstitions? Well, they did not quite dispense with them. Mr. Max
Muller remarks, almost on his last page (376), that 'in India also . . .
the thoughts and feelings about those whom death had separated from us
for a time, supplied some of the earliest and most important elements of
religion.' If this was the case, surely the presence of those elements
and their influence should have been indicated along with the remarks
about the awfulness of trees and the suggestiveness of rivers. Is
nothing said about the spirits of the dead and their cult in the Vedas?
Much is said, of course. But, were it otherwise, then other elements of
savage religion may also have been neglected there, and it will be
impossible to argue that fetichism did not exist because it is not
mentioned. It will also be impossible to admit that the 'Hibbert
Lectures' give more than a one-sided account of the Origin of Indian
Religion.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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