The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion (Vol. 2 of 2)Frazer, James George
ReligionComparative
The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion (Vol. 2 of 2)
Frazer, James George
Magic; Mythology; Religion; Superstition
A like respect is testified for other dangerous animals by the hunters who
regularly trap and kill them. When Kafir hunters are in the act of
showering spears on an elephant, they call out, “Don’t kill us, great
captain; don’t strike or tread upon us, mighty chief.”(359) When he is
dead they make their excuses to him, pretending that his death was a pure
accident. As a mark of respect they bury his trunk with much solemn
ceremony; for they say that “The elephant is a great lord; his trunk is
his hand.”(360) Amongst some tribes of Eastern Africa, when a lion is
killed, the carcass is brought before the king, who does homage to it by
prostrating himself on the ground and rubbing his face on the muzzle of
the beast.(361) In some parts of Western Africa if a negro kills a leopard
he is bound fast and brought before the chiefs for having killed one of
their peers. The man defends himself on the plea that the leopard is chief
of the forest and therefore a stranger. He is then set at liberty and
rewarded. But the dead leopard, adorned with a chief’s bonnet, is set up
in the village, where nightly dances are held in its honour.(362) “Before
leaving a temporary camp in the forest, where they have killed a tapir and
dried the meat on a babracot, Indians [of Guiana] invariably destroy this
babracot, saying that should a tapir passing that way find traces of the
slaughter of one of his kind, he would come by night on the next occasion
when Indians slept at that place, and, taking a man, would babracot him in
revenge.”(363)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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