Folklore; Manners and customs; Mythology; Religion
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 worshipped by Hottentots and Bushmen (p. 92). It appears that
the two Gaunabs are differently pronounced. However that may be, a
race which worships an insect might well worship 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 worships the dead, believes in
sorcerers and in prophets, and in metamorphosis, will have for its god
(if he can be called a god) a being who is looked on as a dead prophet
and sorcerer. He will be worshipped 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
Müller's.[195] 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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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