Indian Antiquary Vol 54

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Stephen Meredyth Edwardes, Krishnaswami Aiyangar
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 73

MARCH, 1925)
BOOK-NOTICES
69
Afterwards he was in Bombay for varying periods memory of great religious emotion and of solid occasionally and saw its immense progress until the kinahip with unknown people from far distant days of the plague, when fear was great and the countries. But these exalted ideas are tempered courage of very many magnificent, when men went by sentiments of a meaner character. The poliabout quietly and the funeral pyres at the burning tical consequences of the Haj are of but feeble ghata wore always alight; and then again, not many
growth." years ago as a man's life goes, when the motor car
After a close analysis of the haram and the variand other things had once more greatly changed the
ous tabus and rites connected with it-particularly superficial aspect of the city. One know of course
the ritos of ihram, known by the technical name that the police existed. They were in the streets
of miqdt (plural mawdqit), he investigates the hisand their superior officers were acquaintances, but
tory and character of the famous Ka'aba, which how life and property were kept safe and the strug.
is to-day an irregular cube of heavy stonos, congle to secure that safety were unknown quantities.
taining the black stone which forms, as it were, Ono read, equally of course, of riots, strikes and
the focus of the pilgrimage. The Ka'aba has been disorders, but they did not personally concern one,
destroyed more than once. Abd-el-Malik bin and whatever the period, either in the old Bombay
Merwen, for examplo, rebuilt it in A.D. 693 in the or the new, the feeling always was that one was in
form which it was supposed to have had in the the forefront of life-up to date in fact and that
time of the Prophet. It was later reconstructed there was no reason to be anxious as to the safety
by El Walid bin al Moghaira, who transformed it of property. The book lifts the veil and shows uz
from a simple enclosure into a regular temple or clearly how great the difficulty of preserving life
mosque, covered by & terrace. Later again it and property has always been ; how continuous
was destroyed and rebuilt by. Ibn ez Zubair, who the anxiety and the labour and the self-sacrificing
addod now features, including a second door. skill and thought that has been bestowed by many
The author explains fully the character of the mon devoted to the public welfare. Thinking over
alterations and restorations of the haram which these things, one cannot but be grateful to them,
have been carried out since the seventh century. and to Mr. Edwardes for explaining their work so
As regards the black stone, he suggests that in well,
ancient pre-Islamic times the Ka'aba may have R. C. TEMPLE.
boon the shrine of a pagan Arab deity, Hobal. LE PLURINAGE A LA MEKKE; ETUDE D'HISTOIRE
There is some evidence that in the time of the RELIGIEUSE. By GAUDEFROY-DEMOMBYNES.
Prophet's youth it was surrounded by divers idols Annales du Musée Guimet, Tome XXXIII; and served as a kind of pagan pantheon, and that Paul Geuthner, Paris. 1923. .
the principal deity was the black stone, regarded The author describes this work as "notes for as "the right hand of Allah on earth" or "the the study of the rites of the pilgrimage." It is eye of Allah." He indicates that the sanctity much more than that ; for he has given in great of this stone was derived from the fact that it was detail the result of a prolonged enquiry into the the cornerstone of the haram, and that in this various ceremonies and rites connected with the rospect its worship was identical with the reverenco Muhammadan pilgrimage to Mecca, into the his- accorded to, and the sacrificial rites connected tory and character of the principal buildings and with, comor-stones among the Assyrians, Babyodifoes round the Ka'aba, and into the significance lonians, Egyptians, and Hebrews. When the and origin of the customs which are imposed upon Prophet founded his monotheistío faith, he was the devout Hdji. He has not touched upon the foroed, like the original propagators of other creeds, political spect of the Haj, considering this to be to assimilata a good deal of pagan custom and of far low importance than the religious mapest, superstition; and, consequently, when the old "I wooxcopt," he writus," certain personages shrine of the haram became the dwelling of the of avowed sanctity and the shoal of profesional One God, the black stone wal permitted to retain bogan, the entire population of Mocca lives by lite sanctity as the corner-stone of the transfigured mad for the pilgrimage. It prepares it, loads it, shrine. Some of the rites formerly connected •xploite it, and that done, it sinks into a somnolent with the Ka'aba and its black stone have been oxdatno, broke only by low intrigue, mongre abolished in the course of ages ; and two of them, aaloulation and potty passion. The pilgrimage which are described by old Muhammadan writers, placu sa surovole on the brow of the Yunalman indicate that the worship belongod to a very anand give him, without doubt, an inotiaceable cient form of popular and pre-Islamic superstition.