Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v2.c14.4

Language: English

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Superstition of this kind is well-known to be spread throughout the world. Witches steal small children, and eat them or use them for their magical purposes; all kinds of spirits do harm to the mother, carry off the small beings, and put their changelings in their stead, suck children’s blood, and so on. Garnett, *The Women of Turkey*, etc., i, 13, 70, 231, 315; ii, 22, 245 (and on this *Zschr. f. Ethnol.*, Bd. 26, p. 560); Żmigrodski, *Die Mutter bei d. Völkern d. arisch. Stammes*, 124 ff.; Hartland, *The Science of Fairy Tales*, New York, 1891, pp. 93-134; Fr. S. Krauss, *Slav. Volkforsch.*, 60, 64, 66, 67, 68, 72, 146, 148, 153 ff.; etc. As probably most primitive peoples believe that a man can make only one child, and that with twins there must be either an uninvited fellow-worker or a supernatural being at work, so in one of the twins there is often seen a supernatural visitor from magical realms. But as it is not known which is a man's own child, both of them are often reared. But in other places, indeed, both are forthwith killed, or there is means to find out which is the intruder, exactly like the real changeling in European tales. There is a great number of these tales of changelings. As an example let only Kirchhof's *Wendunmuth*, iii, 516 f. be given.

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A delightful account of the wise oracular utterances which are made especially by the swarm of aunts, godmothers, and woman-neighbours about a supposed magical being of this kind, is given by Juho Reijonen, a pleasing Finnish novelist of our day, in his *Vaihdokas* (The Changeling). Indeed, Żmigrodski states: "Witch and lying-in woman are in Aryan tradition almost one and the same" (*Die Mutter*, p. 177). The death of a woman in child-bed is always a magically dangerous misfortune in India (see e.g. *Anthropos*, vi, 872 f.; vii, 85 f.; iv, 68); she becomes, at least in the belief of some primitive tribes, a very evil spirit, called Churel or Chorail, which wanders about with the feet turned backwards. Billington, *Woman in India*, p. 100; Crooke, *Things Indian*, Lond., 1906, p. 131; *Popul. Relig.*, etc., i, 269-274; *Anthropos*, iv, 679 (Pahariya); vii, 649, 659 (Khond); *Zeitschr. für Ethnol.*, Bd. 6, p. 344. Cp. Ploss-Bartels, ii, 579 ff.; Żmigrodski, 148; E. H. Meyer, *Mythol. d. Germanen*, 31; 56; 101 f.; cp. 43; A. Jeremias, *Allgemeine Religionsgesch.* 2, p. 53 (among the old Babylonians). In the belief of the Urau they are clothed in white, and have a pleasing face, but a coal-black back. *Zschr. f. Ethnol.*, Bd. 4, p. 344 (after Dalton). Like those who have met an accidental death, women that die in child-bed are buried by the Nāgas in the jungle without any rites.

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And yet the Empêo at any rate among them believe that only women dying in child-bed, and men that have fallen in the fight or been killed by tigers are allowed to go forthwith to the highest god. *Zschr. f. Ethnol.*, Bd. 30, p. 353. This reminds us of the Breton belief: A mother who has died in child-bed need only fly through purgatory, and then goes straight into heaven. Żmigrodski, *Die Mutter*, p. 142. A like belief is found, too, among the Mohammedans, in old Mexico, in Sumatra, in Steiermark, and so on. The uncanny and the holy or the divine are very near akin not in India only. The woman thus snatched away was at that very time highly unclean, and she also suffered an unnatural, premature death, as do for instance the criminal and the soldier, together with whom she often appears. The ghost of a person that has thus died is, however, powerful and often malicious. In India, indeed, the robber or murderer that has been put to death becomes a kind of god. See my *Daçakum.*, pp. 31, 358, and on that *Bhāratiyanātyaçāstra*, iii, 40 ff.; the eerie tale "The Cry from the River" in R. W. Frazer, *Silent Gods and Sun-Steeped Lands*, Lond., 1906, p. 90; Crooke, *Popul. Relig.*, etc., i, p. 228; ii, 199 (also Dubois-Beauchamp, 449; 548; Fuller, *Studies of Indian Life and Sentiment*, p. 95, and especially 96); and Thurston, *Omens and Superstitions*, etc., pp. 162, 178, 179, 209.

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With the Indian doctrine that punishment atones, blots out any guilt and reproach, is probably connected on the other hand the teaching of the old verse which I quoted in that note to the Daçakum., and which, for instance, is also found in Vasistha, xix, 45; Manu, viii, 318; Nārada, Pariçishta, 48: The criminal punished by the king goes without a spot into heaven, like the pious man. Cp. my *Hindu Tales*, pp. 9-10 (note). In Sicily, too, as I point out in the Daçakum., executed criminals are prayed to and worshipped. Cp. Hartland, "The Cult of Executed Criminals at Palermo," *Folk-Lore*, vol. 21, p. 168 ff.; vol. 7, p. 275; *Primitive Paternity*, i, 77. And in general anyone meeting his end by violence is outside the course of nature, and becomes a god, an evil spirit, etc. "There is a deified Pootra in every Rajput family—one who has met with a violent death." Tod, *Rajasthan*, i, 298, note; cp. 659-60; Hartland, i, 77; *Zschr. d. Ver. f. Volksk.*, Bd. 2, p. 185; *Zschr. f. Religwissensch*, Bd. 8, p. 258. Much valuable information is given especially by Crooke, *Pop. Rel.*, i, 43, 44, 46, 62, 96, 99, 115, 119 129, 138 ff., 147, 189 ff., 230 f., 234 ff.; Crooke, *The North-Western Provinces*, 252. Here we find included the suicide, who in the law writing, the Purānas, and elsewhere is branded as evil;

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even the attempt at suicide is, indeed, to be heavily punished (Mahānirvānatantra, xi, 72 f.), and as an offence bringing loss of caste must be atoned for by works of mortification and "Penance of the Purse", that is, by giving cattle (Parāçara, xii, 5-8; cp. Vasistha, xxiii, 18 ff.). If a kinsman loses his life by his own hand, or in some other "unnatural" way (execution, water, fire, lightning, a beast, battle, accident, etc.), then his death does not make his kinsfolk unclean, and for the suicide there must be no pyre, no tears, no death-gifts, nor any other pious rite, otherwise heavy vows of mortification must be undertaken, as must no less be done by him who even cuts the cord of a hanged man. Gautama, xiv, 9 ff.; Manu, v, 89, 95, 98; Vishnu, xxii, 47, 56, 58-60; Vasistha, xxiii, 14 ff.; Yājñav., iii, 6, 21, 27; Parāçara, iii, 10; iv, 1-6; Kautilya, transl., 341.23 ff.; Garuda-Pur., Pretakalpa, 4.104-112, 160; 40.4 ff.; 44.24-29; 44.1-5; Baudh.-Grihyas., Pitrimedhasūtra, iii, 7.1 ff.; Mārk.-Pur., xxxv, 45; Agnipur., clvii, 32; 159.2-3; 158.37, 39-41; often in the Vishnupur.; etc. How uncanny the man is who has died by his own hand, is seen clearly also from Parāçara, v, 10 ff. The Çraddha on the 14th day of the half-month is forbidden for the ordinary dead, but prescribed for him that has been slain with a weapon. Yājñav., i, 263; Caland, *Totenverehrung*, bottom of 44 to 45.

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Sacer means “holy” and “cursed”—he that has been raised above sin and earthly mankind through blissful death in battle, and the shameful outcast from the caste appear side by side in the laws we have quoted! Cp. with this subject of death by violence, for instance, *Zschr. d. Ver. f. Volksk.*, Bd. 14, p. 31 ff.; 322 f. (and the references there); Caland, *Totenverehrung*, 74; *Zschr. f. Ethnol.*, v, 187; Crooke, *Anthropos*, Bd. 4, p. 68 (Nāga); ibid., 464 (Dravidian peoples); Hosten, ibid., p. 682 (Pahariya, India); *Anthropos*, Bd. vii, p. 649 (Khond); Hartland, i, 182 (Pahariya). And the very animal one kills can become a destroying being. So the Hindu, when a snake has been killed, carries out the same death rites as he does in honour of a kinsman (Rāmakrishna, *Life in an Indian Village*, 1891, p. 135, from south India; Thurston, *Omens and Superstitions*, etc., 1912, p. 123); and these often discussed ideas are very well expressed in the 46th rune of the Kalevala, where the bear, the strong king of the Finnish forests, is appeased with the most reverential ceremonies and the most honeyed words, and he is told that it is not men who have taken his life, but that he fell himself out of the fir-tree to his death. Cp. Crooke, *Pop. Rel.*, ii, 212.

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The appeasing of the captured bear here referred to seems, however, to fit in first of all with the bear-worship of the Aino, the Gilyaks and other Amur peoples, which finds its highest expression in the famous bear-festival of the Aino and the Gilyaks. Of this festival among the last-named people, and what is connected with it Leo Sternberg has given a very good account in his excellent article on the religion of the Gilyaks, *Zeitschr. f. Relgnswiss.*, Bd. 8, p. 260 ff.; see especially 272 there. The bear-cult of the Aino and a long set of details belonging to it, as also the ideas lying behind it are treated at length by Frazer, *Golden Bough* 2, 1900, Bd. ii, 374 ff.