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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[NOVEMBER, 1894.
belief is strong among the South African Zulus.100 Among all the nations of the Zulu country it is a custom that on starting for a war, or a hunt, the chief sacrifices to the spirit of his immediate ancestor. It is to the humour of this capricious spirit that every degree of success or failure is dae. The Papuans of New Guinea have an idol called Kaiwai. This seems to be the guardian spirit of each person. When a man dies, the guardian is abused, and is set over the grave, and left there to rot.3 In America the Hyperboreans hold that men who die a natural death become guardians. The Dacota Indians take a round stone, paint it red, call it grandfather, and pray to it as a guardian. The Roman Catholics beliove in an angel guardian, who keeps off danger, and warns and stirs to good.
One of the early phases of the guardian theory was that there were guardian animals. Guardian animals were of two kinds : animals whose habits suggested that they hold the spirits of the dead -the cock, the crow, the snake, the monkey, the l'at. Another class of animals seem to owe their position as guardians to the fact that they were man-eaters, whose spirits staying in their living tomb made the eaters kindly disposed to men, or at least spirit
scarers. Thus, in North Kinara the important cultivating class of Halvikki Vakkals, an early and · wide-spread tribe, is divided into eight clans, each of which has a separate clan god, or guardian spirit, and a name-giving article which they do not eat. Thus the Kadan ballis do not eat the same var, or stag, called kadave in Kararese. The Bargalballis do not eat the deer (bárgá), and the Kuntiballis do not eat the woodcock. The reason why they do not eat these animals is probably that they are considered as guardians. The Vây dâs of Kachch worship the monkey god, who is considered as their ancestor, and to please him, in their marriage ceremony, the bridegroom goes to the bride's house dressed as a monkey, and there leaps about in monkey fashion. The guardian spirit of the Kars, or Muậsis, of West Bengal is Gansâm, a Gond chief, who was eaten by a tiger. Among the Central Province Gonds, Baghdev, the tiger-god, is a man, who has been eaten by a tiger.10 The Malays hold that the spirits of dead men go into tigers. 11 In the Hervey Islands one clan held birds sacred, and another the land crab.12 The Africans believed that men went into snakes and monkeys 13 and the American Indians thought men went into the bear, wolf, tortoise and deer.14
Under the head of animal-worship it will be shewn that these animals were all held to be guardians and spirit-scarers. Similarly several of the spirit-scaring or guardian plants and trees, as the betel and cocoanut, are used to represent ancestors. Among the depressed Gujarât Shindas, Bhildi Mata, the family guardian, lives in a cocoanut.15 Guardian spirits need not always be friendly or well-disposed, they may have been neglected, and so be angry, and have to be appeased by offerings. Again, guardians are not always, and they were notat first, satisfied with milk, flowers and fruits - lifeless offerings. They were acenstomed to other food in their life: they were used to worry18 enemies, and, therefore, their strength must be kept up. This seems the reason why Lakshmi was till lately in Bombay, and is still in outlying places, pleased with blood offerings - cocks, goats, and even buffaloes.
(To be continued.)
100 Tylor's Primitive Culture, Vol. II. pp. 113-115.
1 Gardiner's Zulu Country, p. 311. ? Earl's Papuans, p. 83. Bancroft, Vol. III. pp. 516,576 Tylor's Primitire Culture, Vol. II. p. 161. • Golden Manual, p. 139. Bombay Gasetteer, Vol. XV. p. 203.
1 Op.cit. Vol. V. p. 50. * Op. cit., loc. cit.
Dalton's Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal, p. 282. 10 Hislop's Aboriginal Tribes of the Central Provinces, App. III. 11 Tylor's Primitive Culture, Vol. II. p. 233. 12 Gill's Polynesia, p. 9.
13 Tylor's Primitive Culture, Vol. II. p. 233. 16 Op. cit., loc. cit.
16 From MS, notes. 16 In Melanesia ancestral spirits are often asked to worry a rival (Jour. Anthrop. Inst. Vol. X. p. 286). Worrying spirits are of two kinds : & neglected guardian and a dead man come back to claim property (Tylor's Primitive Culture, Vol. II. p. 180). The Khonda believe that sickness is used by an angry guardian (Macpherson's Khonds, p. 75). So among the Romans when the parentilia, or dead festival, was not kept, Rome was heated with funeral fires, & ghastly crowd thronged the streets and howled (Ovid's Fasti, Vol. II. p. 566).
