Kitabı oku: «The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (Third Edition, Vol. 09 of 12)», sayfa 13
Annual sham fights may represent contests with demons.
In like manner, wherever a sham or a real conflict takes place between two parties annually, above all at the New Year, we may suspect that the old intention was to ensure prosperity in some form for the people throughout the following year, whether by obtaining possession of a material object in which the luck of the year was supposed to be embodied, or by defeating and driving away a band of men who personated the powers of evil. For example, among the Tenggerese of eastern Java the New Year festival regularly includes a sham fight fought between two bands of men, who are armed with spears and swords and advance against each other again and again at a dancing step, thrusting at their adversaries with their spears, but always taking care to miss their aim.458 Again, in Ferghana, a province of Turkestan, it is or used to be customary on the first day of the year for the king and chiefs to divide into two parties, each of which chose a champion. Then the two champions, clad in armour, engaged in a combat with each other, while the crowd joined in with bricks and stones. When one of them was slain the scrimmage stopped, and omens were drawn as to whether the year on which they had entered would be prosperous or the reverse.459 In these combats it seems probable that one side represents the demons or other powers of evil whom the people hope to vanquish and expel at the beginning of the New Year.
Oftener, however, the expelled demons are not represented at all, but are understood to be present invisibly in the material and visible vehicle which conveys them away. Here, again, it will be convenient to distinguish between occasional and periodical expulsions. We begin with the former.
§ 2. The Occasional Expulsion of Evils in a Material Vehicle
Demons of sickness expelled in a small ship in Ceram.
The vehicle which conveys away the demons may be of various kinds. A common one is a little ship or boat. Thus, in the southern district of the island of Ceram, when a whole village suffers from sickness, a small ship is made and filled with rice, tobacco, eggs, and so forth, which have been contributed by all the people. A little sail is hoisted on the ship. When all is ready, a man calls out in a very loud voice, “O all ye sicknesses, ye smallpoxes, agues, measles, etc., who have visited us so long and wasted us so sorely, but who now cease to plague us, we have made ready this ship for you and we have furnished you with provender sufficient for the voyage. Ye shall have no lack of food nor of betel-leaves nor of areca nuts nor of tobacco. Depart, and sail away from us directly; never come near us again; but go to a land which is far from here. Let all the tides and winds waft you speedily thither, and so convey you thither that for the time to come we may live sound and well, and that we may never see the sun rise on you again.” Then ten or twelve men carry the vessel to the shore, and let it drift away with the land-breeze, feeling convinced that they are free from sickness for ever, or at least till the next time. If sickness attacks them again, they are sure it is not the same sickness, but a different one, which in due time they dismiss in the same manner. When the demon-laden bark is lost to sight, the bearers return to the village, whereupon a man cries out, “The sicknesses are now gone, vanished, expelled, and sailed away.” At this all the people come running out of their houses, passing the word from one to the other with great joy, beating on gongs and on tinkling instruments.460
Demons of sickness expelled in a small ship in Timor-laut, in a ship in Buru, removed from the persons of the sufferers.
Similar ceremonies are commonly resorted to in other East Indian islands. Thus in Timor-laut, to mislead the demons who are causing sickness, a small proa, containing the image of a man and provisioned for a long voyage, is allowed to drift away with wind and tide. As it is being launched, the people cry, “O sickness, go from here; turn back; what do you here in this poor land?” Three days after this ceremony a pig is killed, and part of the flesh is offered to Dudilaa, who lives in the sun. One of the oldest men says, “Old sir, I beseech you make well the grandchildren, children, women, and men, that we may be able to eat pork and rice and to drink palm-wine. I will keep my promise. Eat your share, and make all the people in the village well.” If the proa is stranded at any inhabited spot, the sickness will break out there. Hence a stranded proa excites much alarm amongst the coast population, and they immediately burn it, because demons fly from fire.461 In the island of Buru the proa which carries away the demons of disease is about twenty feet long, rigged out with sails, oars, anchor, and so on, and well stocked with provisions. For a day and a night the people beat gongs and drums, and rush about to frighten the demons. Next morning ten stalwart young men strike the people with branches, which have been previously dipped in an earthen pot of water. As soon as they have done so, they run down to the beach, put the branches on board the proa, launch another boat in great haste, and tow the disease-burdened bark far out to sea. There they cast it off, and one of them calls out, “Grandfather Smallpox, go away – go willingly away – go visit another land; we have made you food ready for the voyage, we have now nothing more to give.” When they have landed, all the people bathe together in the sea.462 In this ceremony the reason for striking the people with the branches is clearly to rid them of the disease-demons, which are then supposed to be transferred to the branches. Hence the haste with which the branches are deposited in the proa and towed away to sea. So in the inland districts of Ceram, when smallpox or other sickness is raging, the priest strikes all the houses with consecrated branches, which are then thrown into the river, to be carried down to the sea;463 exactly as amongst the Wotyaks of Russia the sticks which have been used for expelling the devils from the village are thrown into the river, that the current may sweep the baleful burden away.464 In Amboyna, for a similar purpose, the whole body of the patient is rubbed with a live white cock, which is then placed on a little proa and committed to the waves;465 and in the Babar archipelago the bark which is to carry away to sea the sickness of a whole village contains a bowl of ashes taken from every kitchen in the village, and another bowl into which all the sick people have spat.466 The plan of putting puppets in the boat to represent sick persons, in order to lure the demons after them, is not uncommon.467 For example, most of the pagan tribes on the coast of Borneo seek to drive away epidemic disease as follows. They carve one or more rough human images from the pith of the sago palm and place them on a small raft or boat or full-rigged Malay ship together with rice and other food. The boat is decked with blossoms of the areca palm and with ribbons made from its leaves, and thus adorned the little craft is allowed to float out to sea with the ebb-tide, bearing, as the people fondly think or hope, the sickness away with it.468
Demons of disease expelled in a ship in Selangor.
In Selangor, one of the native states in the Malay Peninsula, the ship employed in the export of disease is, or used to be, a model of a special kind of Malay craft called a lanchang. This was a two-masted vessel with galleries fore and aft, armed with cannon, and used by Malay rajahs on the coast of Sumatra. So gallant a ship would be highly acceptable to the spirits, and to make it still more beautiful in their eyes it was not uncommonly stained yellow with turmeric or saffron, for among the Malays yellow is the royal colour. Some years ago a very fine model of a lanchang, with its cargo of sickness, was towed down the river to sea by the Government steam launch. A common spell uttered at the launching of one of these ships runs as follows: —
“Ho, elders of the upper reaches,
Elders of the lower reaches,
Elders of the dry land,
Elders of the river-flats,
Assemble ye, O people, lords of hill and hill-foot,
Lords of cavern and hill-locked basin,
Lords of the deep primeval forest,
Lords of the river-bends,
Come on board this lanchang, assembling in your multitudes.
So may ye depart with the ebbing stream,
Depart on the passing breeze,
Depart in the yawning earth,
Depart in the red-dyed earth.
Go ye to the ocean which has no wave,
And the plain where no green herb grows,
And never return hither.
But if ye return hither,
Ye shall be consumed by the curse.
At sea ye shall get no drink,
Ashore ye shall get no food,
But gape in vain about the world.”469
Demons of sickness expelled in small ships in New Guinea, the Philippines, Tikopia, and the Nicobar Islands.
The practice of sending away diseases in boats is known outside the limits of the Malay region. Thus when smallpox raged among the Yabim of German New Guinea, they used to make a little model of a canoe with mast, sail, and rudder. Then they said to the small vessel, on which the spirit of smallpox was supposed to have taken his passage, “Bear him away to another village. When the people come forth to draw you ashore, give them ‘the thing’ and do to them what you have done to us.” Lest the spirit should be hungry on the voyage, they put some taro on board, and to make sure of getting rid of the disease, they wiped their hands on the tiny canoe, after which they let it drift away. It often happened that the wind or tide drove the vessel back to the place from which it started. Then there would be a deafening rub-a-dub of drums and blowing of shell-trumpets; and the little ship, or rather its invisible passenger, would be again apostrophized, “Do go away, you have already raged among us so that the air is poisoned with the stench of corpses.” If this time it sailed away, they would stand on the shore and watch it with glad hearts disappearing; then they would climb the trees to get a last glimpse of it till it vanished in the distance. After that they came down joyfully and said to each other, “We have had enough of it. The sickness has happily gone away.”470 When the Tagbanuas and other tribes of the Philippines suffered from epidemics, they used to make little models of ships, supply them with rice and fresh drinking water, and launch them on the sea, in order that the evil spirits might sail away in them.471 When the people of Tikopia, a small island in the Pacific, to the north of the New Hebrides, were attacked by an epidemic cough, they made a little canoe and adorned it with flowers. Four sons of the principal chiefs carried it on their shoulders all round the island, accompanied by the whole population, some of whom beat the bushes, while others uttered loud cries. On returning to the spot from which they had set out, they launched the canoe on the sea.472 In the Nicobar Islands, in the Bay of Bengal, when there is much sickness in a village or no fish are caught, the blame is laid upon the spirits. They must be propitiated with offerings. All relations and friends are invited, a huge pig is roasted, and the best of it is eaten, but some parts are offered to the shades. The heap of offerings remains in front of the house till it is carried away by the rising tide. Then the priests, their faces reddened with paint and swine's blood, pretend to catch the demon of disease, and after a hand-to-hand tussle, force him into a model boat, made of leaves and decked with garlands, which is then towed so far to sea that neither wind nor tide is likely to drive it back to the shore.473 In Annam, when the population of a village has been decimated by cholera, they make a raft and lade it with offerings of money and food, such as a sucking pig, bananas, and oranges. Sticks of incense also smoke on the floating altar; and when all is ready and earnest prayers have been uttered, the raft is abandoned to the current of the river. The people hope that the demon of cholera, allured and gratified by these offerings, will float away on the raft and trouble them no more.474
Demons of sickness expelled in the form of animals in India.
Often the vehicle which carries away the collected demons or ills of a whole community is an animal or scapegoat. In the Central Provinces of India, when cholera breaks out in a village, every one retires after sunset to his house. The priests then parade the streets, taking from the roof of each house a straw, which is burnt with an offering of rice, ghee, and turmeric, at some shrine to the east of the village. Chickens daubed with vermilion are driven away in the direction of the smoke, and are believed to carry the disease with them. If they fail, goats are tried, and last of all pigs.475 When cholera rages among the Bhars, Malians, and Kurmis of India, they take a goat or a buffalo – in either case the animal must be a female, and as black as possible – then having tied some grain, cloves, and red lead in a yellow cloth on its back they turn it out of the village. The animal is conducted beyond the boundary and not allowed to return.476 Sometimes the buffalo is marked with a red pigment and driven to the next village, where he carries the plague with him.477 The people of the city and cantonments of Sagar being afflicted with a violent influenza, General Sir William Sleeman received a request from the old Queen Dowager of Sagar “to allow of a noisy religious procession for the purpose of imploring deliverance from this great calamity. Men, women, and children in this procession were to do their utmost to add to the noise by ‘raising their voices in psalmody,’ beating upon their brass pots and pans with all their might, and discharging firearms where they could get them; and before the noisy crowd was to be driven a buffalo, which had been purchased by general subscription, in order that every family might participate in the merit. They were to follow it out for eight miles, where it was to be turned loose for any man who would take it. If the animal returned, the disease, it was said, must return with it, and the ceremony be performed over again… It was, however, subsequently determined that the animal should be a goat, and he was driven before the crowd accordingly. I have on several occasions been requested to allow of such noisy pūjās in cases of epidemics.”478 Once, when influenza was raging in Pithoria, a village to the north-west of Sagar, a man had a small carriage made, after a plan of his own, for a pair of scapegoats, which were harnessed to it and driven to a wood at some distance, where they were let loose. From that hour the disease entirely ceased in the town. The goats never returned; had they done so, it was affirmed that the disease must have come back with them.479
Goats and cocks employed as scapegoats in various parts of India.
The use of a scapegoat is not uncommon in the hills of the Eastern Ghats. In 1886, during a severe outbreak of smallpox, the people of Jepur did reverence to a goat, marched it to the Ghats, and let it loose on the plains.480 In Southern Konkan, on the appearance of cholera, the villagers went in procession from the temple to the extreme boundaries of the village, carrying a basket of cooked rice covered with red powder, a wooden doll representing the pestilence, and a cock. The head of the cock was cut off at the village boundary, and the body was thrown away. When cholera had thus been transferred from one village to another, the second village observed the same ceremony and passed on the scourge to its neighbours, and so on through a number of villages.481 Among the Korwas of Mirzapur, when cholera has broken out, the priest offers a black cock or, if the disease is very malignant, a black goat, at the shrine of the local deity, and then drives the animal away in the direction of some other village. But it has not gone far before he overtakes it, kills it, and eats it; which he may do with perfect safety in virtue of his sacred office. Again, when cholera is raging among the Pataris, an aboriginal Dravidian race of South Mirzapur, the wizard and the village elders feed a black cock with grain and drive it beyond the boundaries, ordering the fowl to take the disease away with it. A little oil, red lead, and a spangle worn by a woman on her forehead are usually fastened to the bird's head before it is let loose. The cost of purchasing the cock is defrayed by public subscription. When such a bird of ill-omen appears in a village, the priest takes it to the shrine of the local deity and sacrifices it there; but sometimes he merely bows before it at the shrine and passes it on to some other village. If a murrain attacks their cattle, the Kharwars of Northern India take a black cock and put red lead on its head, antimony on its eyes, a spangle on its forehead, and a pewter bangle on its leg; thus arrayed they let it loose, calling out to the disease, “Mount on the fowl and go elsewhere into the ravines and thickets; destroy the sin.” Perhaps, as has been suggested, this tricking out of the bird with women's ornaments may be a relic of some grosser form of expiation in which a human being was sacrificed or banished.482 Charms of this sort in India no doubt date from a remote antiquity. An ancient Indian book of magic, known as the Kausika Sutra, describes a ceremony of letting loose against a hostile army a white-footed ewe in which the power of disease was believed to be incarnate.483 In the same treatise we read of a mode of getting rid of ill-luck by fastening a hook to the left leg of a crow, attaching a sacrificial cake to the hook, and then letting the bird fly away in a south-westerly direction, while the priest or magician recites as usual the appropriate formula.484
Cows, toads, and llamas as scapegoats in Africa and America.
Amongst the Dinkas, a pastoral people of the White Nile, each family possesses a sacred cow. When the country is threatened with war, famine, or any other public calamity, the chiefs of the village require a particular family to surrender their sacred cow to serve as a scapegoat. The animal is driven by the women to the brink of the river and across it to the other bank, there to wander in the wilderness and fall a prey to ravening beasts. Then the women return in silence and without looking behind them; were they to cast a backward glance, they imagine that the ceremony would have no effect.485 When influenza broke out in a virulent form among the negroes of Togoland during the winter of 1892, the natives set the trouble down to the machinations of evil spirits, who must be expelled the country. The principal instrument of expulsion was a fat toad, which was dragged through the streets of every town or village, followed by an elder who sprinkled holy water to right and left. All the evil was thus concentrated in the toad, which was finally thrown away into the forest. Thus the natives expected to rid the village of the influenza.486 In 1857, when the Aymara Indians of Bolivia and Peru were suffering from a plague, they loaded a black llama with the clothes of the plague-stricken people, sprinkled brandy on the clothes, and then turned the animal loose on the mountains, hoping that it would carry the pest away with it.487
Goddess of disease expelled in a toy chariot.
In some parts of India a principal means of expelling an epidemic is a little toy chariot called a ratha or rath, in which the goddess of the disease is supposed to be carted away. It is carried or drawn in procession to the next village, the inhabitants of which pass it on in like manner, with great alacrity, to their neighbours. Thus the goddess and the plague are transferred from village to village, until at last they come to one which is so far away from its next neighbour that the people do not care to undertake the long weary journey. In that case they content themselves with conveying the chariot to a place so shut in by hills that the disease cannot possibly escape, and there they leave it to die. Or if the village is near the sea, they drown the sickness by throwing the chariot into the water. However, in Central India the real home of the goddess of cholera is at Unkareshwar; and accordingly the chariot in which she is politely escorted out of a village is finally deposited at or near that place. It is usual and proper for the people of a village to give a friendly notice to their neighbours that they are going to cart the cholera, smallpox, or whatever it may be, to their village, so that the inhabitants may be ready to receive the goddess with due honour and to escort her on her progress. But some unneighbourly folk, without giving notice, go by night and stealthily deposit the chariot on the outskirts of the next village. If the inhabitants are not on the watch, and suffer the fatal little vehicle to remain there, the disease will naturally cleave to them. Sometimes, perhaps generally, the procession with the chariot is accompanied by a goat, a cock, and a pot of native beer or wine, which serve as additional attractions to the goddess to set out on her travels.488
Human scapegoats in Uganda.
Occasionally the scapegoat is a man. For example, from time to time the gods used to warn the King of Uganda that his foes the Banyoro were working magic against him and his people to make them die of disease. To avert such a catastrophe the king would send a scapegoat to the frontier of Bunyoro, the land of the enemy. The scapegoat consisted of either a man and a boy or a woman and her child, chosen because of some mark or bodily defect, which the gods had noted and by which the victims were to be recognized. With the human victims were sent a cow, a goat, a fowl, and a dog; and a strong guard escorted them to the land which the god had indicated. There the limbs of the victims were broken and they were left to die a lingering death in the enemy's country, being too crippled to crawl back to Uganda. The disease or plague was thought to have been thus transferred to the victims and to have been conveyed back in their persons to the land from which it came. So, too, after a war the gods sometimes advised the king to send back a scapegoat in order to free the warriors from some evil that had attached itself to the army. One of the women slaves, a cow, a goat, a fowl, and a dog would be chosen from among the captives and sent back to the borders of the country whence they had come; there they were maimed and left to die. After that the army would be pronounced clean and allowed to return to the capital. In each case a bundle of herbs would be rubbed over the people and the cattle, and would then be tied to the victims, who would thus carry back the evil with them.489 A similar use of scapegoats, human and animal, was regularly made after a King of Uganda had been crowned. Two men were brought to the king; one of them he wounded slightly with an arrow shot from a bow. The man was then sent away, under a strong guard, as a scapegoat to Bunyoro, the enemy's country, and with him were sent a cow, a goat, and a dog. On his sad journey he took with him the dust and ashes of the sacred fire, which had burned day and night at the entrance to the late king's enclosure and had been extinguished, as usual, at his death. Arrived at their destination, the man and the animals were maimed and left to die. They were believed to bear away with them any uncleanness that might cleave to the new King or Queen.490
Human scapegoats in China and India. Indian ceremony of sliding down a rope.
Some of the aboriginal tribes of China, as a protection against pestilence, select a man of great muscular strength to act the part of scapegoat. Having besmeared his face with paint, he performs many antics with the view of enticing all pestilential and noxious influences to attach themselves to him only. He is assisted by a priest. Finally the scapegoat, hotly pursued by men and women beating gongs and tom-toms, is driven with great haste out of the town or village.491 In the Punjaub a cure for the murrain is to hire a man of the Chamar caste, turn his face away from the village, brand him with a red-hot sickle, and let him go out into the jungle taking the murrain with him. He must not look back.492 When disease breaks out among a herd, the Oraons take the herdsman himself, tie a wooden bell from one of the cows round his neck, beat him with sticks, and drive him out of the village to a cross-road, where the bell and sticks are deposited.493 In the territory of Kumaon, lying on the southern slopes of the Western Himalayas, the custom of employing a human scapegoat appears to have taken a somewhat peculiar form in the ceremony known as Barat. First of all a thick rope of grass is stretched from the top of a cliff to the valley beneath, where it is made fast to posts driven into the ground. Next a wooden saddle, with a very sharp ridge and unpadded, is attached by thongs to the cable, along which it runs in a deep groove. A man now seats himself on the saddle and is strapped to it, while sand-bags or heavy stones are suspended from his feet to secure his balance. Then, after various ceremonies have been performed and a kid sacrificed, he throws himself as far back in the saddle as he can go, and is started off to slide down the rope into the valley. Away he shoots at an ever-increasing speed; the saddle under him, however well greased, emits volumes of smoke during the greater part of his progress; and he is nearly senseless when he reaches the bottom. Here men are waiting to catch him and run forward with him some distance in order to break gradually the force of his descent. This ceremony, regarded as a propitiation of Mahadeva, is performed as a means of delivering a community from present or impending calamity. Thus, for example, it was performed when cholera was raging at Almora, and the people traced the immunity they enjoyed to the due observance of the rite. Each district has its hereditary Badi, as the performer is called; he is supported by annual contributions in grain from the inhabitants, as well as by special payments for each performance. When the ceremony is over, the grass rope is cut up and distributed among the villagers, who hang the pieces as charms at the eaves of their houses; and they preserve the hair of the Badi for a similar purpose. Yet while his severed locks bring fertility to other people's lands, he entails sterility on his own; and it is firmly believed that no seed sown by his hand could ever sprout. Formerly the rule prevailed that, if a Badi had the misfortune to fall from the rope in the course of his flying descent, he was immediately despatched with a sword by the spectators. The rule has naturally been abolished by the English Government; but its former observance seems to indicate that the custom of letting a man slide down a rope as a charm to avert calamity is only a mitigation of an older custom of putting him to death.494
Tibetan New Year ceremony of sliding down a rope.
A somewhat similar ceremony is annually performed at Lhasa a few days after the beginning of the Tibetan New Year, which falls in spring. The scene of the performance is Potala Hill, on the summit and slope of which is built the superb castle of the Grand Lama of Tibet, a massive and imposing pile of buildings which attracts the eye and dominates the landscape from afar. On the day in question a rope of hide is stretched from the top to the bottom of the steep hill, and men from a distant province of Tibet climb up it with the agility of monkeys. They are called Flying Spirits. Arrived at the top, each of them places a piece of wood on his breast, stretches out his hands and feet, and letting himself go shoots down the rope (in the words of a Chinese writer) “like the bolt flying from the bow, or the swallow skimming the water. 'Tis a wondrous sight!” Considering that these performers are called Spirits, and that the performance takes place a few days after the New Year, a season so commonly selected for the expulsion of demons, we may conjecture that the Flying Spirits represent the powers of evil who are thus shot out of the Tibetan pope's palace at the beginning of the year.495
