Religions of Primitive PeoplesBrinton, Daniel G. (Daniel Garrison)
Religion
Religions of Primitive Peoples
Brinton, Daniel G. (Daniel Garrison)
Mythology; Religion; Religions -- History
The Tehuelches of Patagonia relate that the Creator first moulded men and
all animals on the “Hill of God” and then set them loose to people the
earth. The natives of Southern Borneo assign to their supreme divinity
Atala a home in the highest heaven, on the shore of the “celestial lake,
moved by the Moon and surrounding the Sun.” Homi, the high heaven, is the
deity of the Hottentots, who pours the rains, blows the wind, and sends
heat and cold on earth.[78]
Thus it is that everywhere the Sky God is also the High God. This
blending of the ideas of life and light with the sky led to another and
obvious association which has left its mark on every religion, primitive
or developed. The sky is, in direction, above us. The god of the sky is
therefore the god on high. He is the one who dwells above, our lord in
the heaven.
This he is in all mythologies. Among the Indians of the plains he is
(or, It is) “the great medicine _above_,” and in the sign language, to
indicate this, when the sign is made for “medicine” (mystery) the finger
is pointed to the zenith.[79] The Puluga of the Andamanese “lives in the
sky.” Tangaloa is addressed as “He above in the heavens”; the Finnish
Ukko is also called “The Navel of the Sky,” and so on.[80]
Examples are innumerable. But what need of collecting them? Do we not
ourselves constantly use the adjective the _Supreme_ Being, for God,
which means simply the highest being? And did not the founder of our
religion forbid his followers to swear by the sky, giving as the reason
that it was the throne of God, who sitteth upon it?[81]
This idea runs through the whole of his teachings. In the Gospel of
Matthew the same term, οὐρανιος, or, ἐν τοῖς οὐρανιος as a descriptive
term of divinity, is applied not less than eighty-eight times; and
in the first clause of the Lord’s Prayer, it is to “Our Father in the
Skies,” that the invocation is addressed.
Strange that this very word οἰρανὀς, in Sanscrit Uaruna, is that which,
in the primitive religion of the Aryan peoples, was applied to the most
exalted of their gods, to him “whose realm is above us,” “the very
strong,” “the shining one,” “the king of sky and earth,” “creator of all,
the earth-enveloping sky.”[82]
What more striking evidence do we wish of the indissoluble unity of
religious thought, no matter what its stage of development, in all
centuries and all races?
In the Polynesian mythology, Tangaloa, the bright daylight, has as his
brother, Rongo, the god of darkness and night. Tangaloa is fair-haired
and light in hue, Rongo is black in hair and skin. Tangaloa is
beneficent, the dispenser of good, and inventor of the arts of peace;
Rongo is the fomenter of strife, the god of war and author of bloodshed.
In accordance with these, all the gods were classed in two orders,
“dwellers in day,” and “dwellers in night.”[83]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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