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LECTURE III.
133
but very lately, we have magnificent descriptions of Jumala, the deity of the sky.
Jumala meant originally the sky. It is derived, as Castrén has shown (p. 24), from Juma, thunder, and la, the place, meaning therefore the place of thunder, or the sky. It is used first of all for sky, secondly for the god of the sky, and thirdly for gods in general. The very same word, only modified according to the phonetic rules of each language, occurs among the Lapps (p. II), the Esthonians, the Syrjanes, the Tcheremissians, and the Votyakes (p. 24). We can watch the growth and the changes of this heavenly deity as we catch a glimpse here and there of the religious thoughts of the Altaic tribes. An old Samoyede woman who was asked by Castrén (p. 16) whether she ever said her prayers, replied: "Every morning I step out of my tent and bow before the sun, and say: “When thou risest, I, too, rise from my bed.” And every evening I say: “When thou sinkest down, I, too, sink down to rest." That was her prayer, perhaps the whole of her religious service: a poor prayer it may seem to us, but not to her: for it made that old woman look twice at least every day away from earth and up to heaven ; it implied that her life was bound up with a larger and higher life; it encircled the daily routine of her earthly existence with something of a divine light. She herself was evidently proud of it, for she added, with a touch of self-righteousness : There are wild people who never say their morning and evening prayers.'
While in this case the deity of the sky is represented, as it were, by the sun, we see Jumala, under different circumstances, conceived as the deity of the sea.
