Indian Antiquary Vol 27

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 28

24
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
(JANUARY, 1898.
her. One day the king happening to come before her undressed, she upbraided him for breaking his promise, and disappeared. In the Konkan, the lower classes believe that the spirit Mužja can have connection with women, and it is said that, if a man can accomplish the penance and rites described in the kalpa tantra, he can have connection with the fairies called Yaksbinis. In India, spirits are supposed to visit women at night in the form of a dog, cat, or other animal. In Ceylon, if a child is born with hair and teeth it will probably be killed as the offspring of a demon-father. The belief, that spirits had connection with men and women, continued in Europe till the middle of the eighteenth century. The Romans believed that their sixth king Servius Tullius was the son of a hearth-spirit. The Greeks believed that the people of Cyprus were descendants of female-spirits, 45 and St. Augustin (A.D. 650) considered it imprudence to deny that female spirits or Succubi lie with men or that male spirite or Incubi lie with women. 6 In Skandinavia, it was believed that spirits bad intercourse with men and women.7 In the early Iceland stories dwarfs have children by women, and the Laps of Finlana held the same belief. The Gauls believed that certain demons violated the chastity of women.49 In 1660, Sir T. Browne50 held that spirits associate with human beings of both sexes. In Middle-Age England (1000-1400), there was an incubus in every tree which attacked women, so that it was not safe for them to go up and down.61 Barton (1621) believed that there never had been a time in which so many lecherous devils, satyrs and genii had shewn themselves as in his own days.62 In France, as late as 1750, a Mass was said in the abbey of Soissy to keep the nuns from the power of the fairies,63 and in Scotland, in 1690, it was believed that Incubi and Succubi came and slept with men and women. The Incubus or fiend-lover was specially hard to scare. Neither the names of Jesus and Mary, the Sign of the Cross, nor relics had any power over him,55 In Seventeenth-Century Europe, the Huns were believed to be the children of Incabi.56 Luther held that spirits have intercourse with men.57 The wife of a Crasader was said to have a son by the spirit of the Tweed.58
As in other branches of belief the two great influences, development and degradation, have always been at work affecting man's view of the character of spirits. Under the influenco of development the early unfriendly spirit by being housed and honoured rises to be the house guardian, the tribal guardian, the universal guardian. Under the influence of degradation the lower guardians of the earlier faith become subordinate evil influences. Dêr in the Brahmaņ religion is a guardian: the later Zoroaster (A, D. 300) degrades the Dêv to an evil spirit. In the Rig Veda the Asurasoare gods : in the later Atharva-Veda the Asuras are fiends. The Daimon of classic Greece becomes the Christian demon.co Similarly, the leading guardian
41 Tylor's Primitive Culture, Vol. II. p. 190.
#2 Dubois, Vol. II. p. 59. 45 Journal Asiatic (Ceylon) Society, p. 19.
** Pliny's Natural History, Book xxxvi. Chap. 27. 15 Lookie's European Rationalism, p. 26.
* Op. cit. p. 28. 47 Mallet's Northern Antiquities, p. 511.
18 Scott's Border Minstrelry, p. 440. 41 Brand's Popular Antiquities, Vol. II. p. 521. 50 Browne's Religio Medici, ed. 1800, p. 42. 61 Chaucer's Wife of Bath's Tale.
62 Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, pp. 118, 194, 498. os European Rationalism, Vol. I. p. 25.
4 Op.cit, Vol. I. p. 143; Tylor's Primitive Culture, Vol. II. p. 189. 05 Black's Folk Medicine, p. 87. 66 Reginald Scott's Discovery of Witchcraft, p. 512.
67 Henderson's Folk-Lore, p. 7. Note to Lay of the Last Minstrel.
Barth's Indian Religion, p. 42. Go The use of the divine and guardian daimon of Socrates (B. C. 400) illustrates this feeling. An honorable meaning was attached to the word daimon, at least till A.D. 150, when Celsus called upon men to give up Christia. nity and worship the demons or ministers of God. In a less honorable sense deimon was used of a magician's paredror or familiar (Smith'a Christian Antiquities, p. 1075). The oarly Christians held that the gods of the Pagans were demona who had taken the names and the incense of the popular divivities (Jamieson's Sacred and Legendary Art, Vol. II. p. 523). Jacob Grimm further notices that the idea of the (Christian) devil is foreign to all primitive religions. Porhaps it would be more correct to say there is a strain in the Christian idea of the devil foreign to the character of the evil spirits of the earlier religions. Satan's fight with God, his hatred of man, his immortality, are all late ideas. Still in the Christian devil remain the evil spirits of earlier times : His going about as a roaring lion, his riding the storm, his delight in destruction, are all early. "One large slice of the devil," says Grimm (Teutonic Mythology, Vol. III. p. 1020), " is from the old giant, only the devil is harsher and crueller." The saying (Notes and Queries, Fifth Series, Vol. IV. p. 265) that the devil built St. Vigean's Church three miles west of Arbroath in Scot