Book Title: Indian Antiquary Vol 59
Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Charles E A W Oldham, S Krishnaswami Aiyangar, Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarka
Publisher: Swati Publications
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SEPTEMBER, 1930
THE MYSTERY AND MENTAL ATMOSPHERE
details of their belief the Yezidis are found to be truly in the Inner Atmosphere, for they consist of scraps of every faith that has come their way through the ages, Zoroastrian, Christian, Jewish, Muslim. Their religion is largely a pure hagiolatry.
The same characteristics of the Inner Atmosphere as those above indicated are observ. able in Burma, where your lecturer once resided for several years. The modern Burmese is a professed Buddhist of an ancient and pure type. The professed religion of his leading classes is of a highly refined morality, but deep down in this lofty Outer Atmosphere is a very strong current of both the Inner and Inmost Atmosphere, beyond which the peasantry have not progressed, for the whole nation are firm believers in spirits, or nats, as they call them. Everywhere there is an open cult of these spirits, some derived from the ghosts of human beings, who are acknowledged to have lived historically and many of them not long ago, and some from beings, who are really deifications of almost all known natural and even imaginary objects. The religion of the Burmese folk then is in reality hagiolatry tempered by a definite philosophy acquired from teachers of Indian-not Burmese--nationality. There is besides a deep current of an ancient Inmost Atmosphere, derived from the earliest days when the Burman was still connected mentally only with the mentality of his forbears of a Chinese race.
One more brief notice, and this important aspect of the subject must be left. In volume IV of the Folklore Record, 1886, pp. 213 ff., J. S. Stuart-Glennie, writing on Folklore as the Complement of Culture in the Study of History, commences his discussion by quoting from my own book, The Legends of the Panjab, 1883, as follows: "The average villager one meets in the Panjab and Northern India is, at heart, neither a Muhammadan, nor a Hindu, nor a Sikh, nor of any other religion as understood by its orthodox-or to speak more correctly, its authorised-exponents; but his religion is a confused unthinking worship of things held to be holy, whether men or places ; in fact, hagiolatry." On this Stuart-Glennie remarks: "A similar conclusion was the chief result of my study of Greek Folksongs. These Folksongs show that, notwithstanding the reign of Christianity for nearly two thousand years, Christian ideas and sentiments have not only not substituted themselves for, but have had hardly any effect even in modifying, Pagan ideas and sentiments among the Greek folk. Similar conclusions have been forced on Folklore students even in Scotland, the people which, of all others perhaps, may be imagined to have been most profoundly affected by Christianity. Referring to a conversation we had last autumn (1885), Mr. MacBain, the Rector of Raining's School, Inverness, and a first-rate Gaelic scholar, thus writes: "Proofs are accumulating in my hands to the effect that up to about 1780 the Highlands were Pagan, with a Pagan Christianity, or rather superstition,' and I [Stuart-Glennie might give many eurious illustrations of the Paganism that still (1886] exists, or till very recently existed, in Scotland."
The view of Burmese religion given above serves to introduce us to the last, the Outer Atmosphere, charged to the full with highly civilised philosophy, of which a clear instance from Europe is to be found in Charles Singer's From Magic to Science, recently published, where he gives an illuminating account of the belief of Hildegard of Bingen in the mid-twelfth century. It is not propoeed to enlarge on this Atmosphere, since we can observe it without difficulty. It is in fact that in which we all of us here have our being, and we cannot but be aware that within our minds we have, besides the outer philosophy-however greatly it may overwhelm everything--an Inmost Atmosphere of ghosts and goblins, with their attendant customs and ceremonies of magic, and an Inner Atmosphere of superstition also attended by customs and ceremonies which are still magical in their tendenoy.
Now, in these remarks only the fringe of the subject has been touched upon, but if they have fired any of those who have heard them to take up and examine the main thesis, it will be found that there is more than plenty of work to be done. I have shrunk from appearing
