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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[SEPTEMBER, 1895.
Dargå festival, indecent songs are sung.28 The Vaishnava priests of South India sing obscene songs, which, the more they are stuffed with dirtiness, the more they are liked.2 In South India, the scalptures of most temples are obscene. Niches are filled with figares of men and animals in shameless positions.30 According to Pliny, the Romans of his time bad the pots they quaffed from graven with fair portraits of adulteries, 31 It is because of its evil-scaring power that the ling is a cure for barrenness.32 The Beni-Isra'il midwife, when she draws off into salt the Evil Eye that is blasting the child, abuses the person whose sight has worked the mischief,38 The Shânâr exorcist beats the possessed, and uses the most filthy language he can think of.34 In Central Asia, most of the comedian's representations are obscene, often vivid and witty, and approved by rounds of laughter.36 Before Muhammad's time Arab men and women used to worship naked at the Ka'abr.36 Two of the stones worshipped at Makka in pre-Mubammadan times.represented Asaf and Nagilah, a man and woman who had committed whoredom. As the Prophet was unable to stop the worship, he allowed it to continue as a token of respect for divine justice.37 In Japan, Yo and In, the male and female principles, are placed at the doors of Buddhist temples.38 On New Zealand tombs phallic sculptures, symbolic of the vix generatriz' are common.30
Among the Papuans and also among the Turkomâns funeral rites are performed by naked women.40 So Alexander the Great ran naked round Achilles' tomb. In Tartary and in South Africa, people used to scold at the thunder and lightning to drive them away.42 In Madagascar, on the birth of a child in the royal family, the greatest licentiousness was allowed. The Romans, when there was a plague or a famine, acted a play in which the gallantries of Jupiter were shewn. The early Christians considered it lacky to meet a harlot in the morning. The same belief is widespread in India. The harlot is the sin-trap or scape-goat. The Turkoman horse-doctor or saint, in Bonvalot's Heart of Asia, tells the owner of the sick horse: "You must strip yourself naked, hold the horse by the tail, and kick him on the quarters while I pray."'46 Among the Red Indians, Minnehaha, at the request of her husband Hiawatha, when the noiseless night descended, laid aside her garments wholly and with darkness clothed and guarded, unashamed and unaffrighted, walked securely round the corn fields, drew the sacred magic circle of her footprints round the corn fields, to protect them from destruction, blast of mildew, blight of insect, Wagenin the thief of corn fields, Paimosaid who steals the maize-ear."7 In Greece, when it has. not rained for a fortnight, young girls choose one of their number, who is from eight to ten years old, usually a poor orphan, strip her naked, and deck her from head to foot with field herbs and flowers. The others lead her round the village singing a hymn, and every house-wife has to throw a pailful of water on the naked girl's head.48 In Germany, standraise laughter. Lack is gained by clearing the air of spirits. To clear the air of spirits two influences must unite. each powerful over one of the two great swarms of unhoused spirits. The two influences required are,- soaring influence to put to fight the host of man-bating irreconcilables, and squaring influence to draw and house the army of friendlies and neatrals. This dual soaring and housing power of the male and female organe seems traceable to two experiences. First to the experience that the organs are the source of the great healer, urine, and so are a home to the squarable and a terror to the irreconcilable ; and second to the experience that, as the source of being. these organs are a haunt and a fount of spirits, a home, in later phrase a symbol, of ancestral and other guardian influences, and therefore, like other guardian homes, at once a dread and a jail to man-hating wanderers. The shouts are as potent as the organs, boonuse, from the experience that in the name dwells the spirit of the object named, it follows that to shout the names of the organs has the same effect as to shew the organs themselves.
28 Ward's View of the Hindus, Vol. I. p. 119. 29 Dubois, Vol. I, p. 150. 30 Op. cit. Vol. II. p. 350.
31 Pliny's Natural History, Book vi. Chap. 22. 32 Moor's Little, p. 57.
33 Bombay Gazetteer, Vol. XVIII. pp. 526, 527. 34 Dr. Caldwell in Balfour, p. 550.
85 Schuyler's Turkestan, Vol. I. p. 137. 36 Burkhardt's Arabia, Vol. I. p. 178.
37 Sale's Kuraan, I. 27; Herklot's Quinun-i-Islam, p. 65. 38 Reed's Japan, Vol. II, p. 27.
5 Fornander's Polynesian Races, Vol. I. p. 47. 40 Earl'. Papuans, p. 109; Schuyler's Turkistan, Vol. I. p. 18. 41 Potter's Antiquities, Vol. II. p. 333.
13 Hahn's Teini Goam, p. 99. 43 Sibree's Madagascar, p. 253.
4* Hume, Vol. II. p. 41. 18 Smith's Christian Antiquities, p. 1461.
48 St. James's Budget of 20th December 1888, p. 9. 67. The Song of Hiawatha, Vol. XIII. The custom is taken from Schoolcraft's Oneota, p. 83. 18 Grithm's Teutonic Mythology, Vol. II. p. 594.
