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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[DECEMBER, 1895.
is about March, all hang lanterns in front of their houses.43 The Chinese have passed from the stage of scaring the dreaded dead to the stage of pleasing the beloved dead. In Canton, during the yearly festival for the unmarried dead, after dark, boats glide down the river a mass of lanterns. In front and at the sides of the lantern boats are small fire boats. In the front fireboat a gong is beaten to attract spirits. In the big lantern boat priests chant hymns and throw burning paper clothes and paper money into the river. The paper clothes and paper money are supposed to be refined by fire so as to be useful to the naked craving unwed ghosts who float on the water. Oil lamps in clay vessels are drawn after the lantern boat to serve as guides to the spirits.
For more than 300 years after Christ, the use of ceremonial candles, torches and lamps in Christian Churches was not general. Tertullian ( A. D. 205 ) and Lactantius ( A. D. 303) scoff at the use of lights by day. The early gods,' they say, 'need lights because being of the earth they are in darkness. Let us not blaze,' says Gregory of Nazianzen (A.D. 373), like a Greek temple at holy moon. The ceremonial use of lights in connection with Christian worship is supposed to have begun with the placing of a light on the tombs of martyrs and with the illumination of churches on high days. By the eighth century the blessing of the lamps and candles on Easter Eve was a widespread ceremony. The font was baptized with lights, and the early converts, after baptism, held a lighted candle. Lights were kind led when the Gospel was read, and lights were carried at funerals and hang over graves. Candles and lamps were also lighted before pictures and images, and were presented as a thank-offering on recovering from sickness. 45 Other early fire rites were forbidden. In A. D. 680, a council penalized the kindling and the leaping over fires in front of workshops and houses at the time of new moon. 56
Few people have shewn a more marked trust in light as a guardian against evil spirits tban the Mexicans. The chief Mexican dread is the great day at the end of the cycle of fifty-two years, when the sun may rise no more, and man may be left a helpless prey to evil spirits. To prevent man's rain, the only hope of the Mexican priesthood was by raising a new light or fire to scatter the evil influences that might prevent the sun from rising. To raise a new fire on the evening before the dreaded day, the gods, that is, the priests in the garments of the gods, leaving their shrines and temples, marched forth to a hill-top. And, when the kindly influences of the Pleiades were at their strongest, on an altar on the hill-top, the chief priest slew a human victim and on a wooden shield fastened to the victim's chest kindled fire by rubbing. From the New Fire a great pyre, on which the victim was laid, was kindled, and from the pyre-flame torches were lighted, and the New Fire was borne speedily by special runners over the whole land. The dawn and the sunrise of the next morning shewed that the virtue of the guardian light lad prevailed. The gods marched back to their shrines, the temples were cleansed, the people dressed in festive garments, Light had routed evil and saved Mexico from rain.7
The above examples illustrate the working of two leading religious laws; that the Guardian is the squared fiend, and that the Guardian needs guarding. Though so great a guardian, light, like fire, has failed to free itself from its early shadow, the fiend-element, known to the Hindus as the hideous iron-tusked Kravyâd 48 that underlies its guardian nature. To the Egyptian fire was a wild boast. The Hindu and the Shân agree that the blaze of camphor and the flare of torches are required to scare the twilight fire-fiends. To the Hindn the morning sun is Vishņu the preserver, but the midday sun, the terror that walketh at noon-tide, is Mabâdêy the destroyer. So the lesser lights that inlay the floor of heaven, though grouped by faith into guardian shapes, shoot baneful glances at mankind which have to be soothed by the star which rules the moment of each man's birth. With the Greeks and Romane, *Kid's China, p. 302.
" Mrs. Gray's Fourteen Months in Canton, p. 212. 45 Sunith's Christian Antiquities, pp. 993-998. 46 Grithm's Teutonic Mythology, Vol. II. p. 626; Moncure Conway's Demonology and Devil-Lore, Vol. I. p. 67. 17 Mayer's Mexico, p. 129.
8 Wilkin's Hindu Mythology, p. 23. 9 Wilkinson's Egyptians, 2nd Series, Vol. II. p. 463.
