mm ': ■ 1 t laufc^affi^i 5 12 V 1 i- CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRAj|Y r ^:i BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND GIVEN IN 189I BY HENRY WILLIAMS SAGE DATE DUE _^J^Fi^'V !,^ mzzuT^L. aB ai»Ba.M«. ■ -If; 7 -B? p. inu^- ^ Ga.YLORD PRINTED INU.S > ■^ / / X Cornell University Library PA 3135 .R54D7 The dramas and dramatic dances of non-Eu 3 1924 022 692 861 THE DRAMAS AND DRAMATIC DANCES OF NON-EUROPEAN RACES By the same Autltor THE ORIGIN OF METALLIC CURRENCY AND WEIGHT STANDARDS Demi/ fi'po. 15.S 'iiel New Eilition in jirejKiration " It is the induction which is the real strengtli of the present work. The collection of sure facts is so large, and the facts themselves hang so well together, that we cannot help accepting what they point to — at least until we see whether an adversary can make an equally good collection on the other side. But we do not expect to find this done." — Econonur Journal THE EARLY AGE OF GREECE, Vol. i Demy Svo. ^!l.s A'^ezv Edition in priqiariition (Vol. 11 nearly ready.) "Nil more Incid piece of argument has been produced for many years. Mr Ridgeway takes no step which is not sure. He trusts neither to prejudice nor to, speculation. He admits nothing save facts, and being an eminent anthropologist he does not reason as though Greece were a province set in a vacuum far apart from the civilization of the world." — Spectator THE ORIGIN AND INFLUENCE OF THE THOROUGHBRED HORSE Dfiny 8r(j. 12.s' Qd -net " It is the simple truth that no such addition has been made in biology to the study of a domesticated animal since Harwin wrote. ...Pregnant as these pages are with living human interest, they are charged also with facts and suggestions of the greatest biological value." — At]ie)urain " In thus dividing domesticated hor.ses into two main types Prof. Ridgeway will, we think, command the consent of most naturalists..., As regards the mam thesis, the reviewer is in perfect accord with the author of the work." — Nature " We may at once congratulate Prof. Eidgeway upon the thoroughness of his research, upon the marshalling of his facts and the soundness of the arguments which he has put forth in support of the idea that the Liljyau horse of remote times is the true ancestor of the Arab and ergo of the English thoroughbred." — Tlie Field " He establishes, to our thinking, beyond controversy, the three points upon which his whole argument rests." — Indian Field THE ORIGIN OF TRAGEDY WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE GREEK TRAGEDIANS Demij y-i'O. 6.S 6d net "His showing of the importance of a tomb as a central object round which the play works, is not only striking, but also convincing. It is one of those things which seem obvious when they are told us, yet it reqirires some genius to see them for the first time — His views on the causes of the difference between the treatment of the Satyric drama and that of Comedy are also highly ingenious and seem to us to go far to explain the great mystery, viz., why these two which were certainly spc.ntive plays meant to produce hilarity by their often obscene tun, should have been systematically kept separate by the Greeks." — Atheuccum " Prof. Piidgeway's lecture to the Hellenic Society in that year (1905) made a real epoch. It gave the first suggestion to scholars that Tragedy was essentially a grave ritual, a commemoration of the death of some worshipped hero. The theory was at once accepted by many leading authorities." — Tinier " Mr liidgeway's general theory appears to me to be impregnable." Mr Andrew Lang in )[ornin(i Post "As an anthropologist Mr Pvidgeway starts from the living lu'cscut and thrusts aside the dead past. The consecrated tradition he luiocks into smithereens, or, to be tragically elegant, Xa/cr/i'ei els d^di-etaf. — "It is the easy mastery of each subject and the flash of native genius that commend Bidgeway's writings to those who can only learn from him." Prof. Basd Gildersleeve in Americuii Journal of Fliilology CAMBRIDGE UNIVEllHITY PRESS THE DRAMAS AND DRAMATIC DANCES OF NON-EUROPEAN RACES IN SPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE ORIGIN OF GREEK TRAGEDY WITH AN APPENDIX ON THE ORIGIN OF GREEK COMEDY BY WILLIAM RIDGEWAY, Sc.D., F.B.A. HON. LL.L). (ABERDEEN), HUN. LITT.D. (uUlU.IN AND MANCHESTEK) DISNE\' I'KOFESSOR OF AKCHAEiiLOGY AND BKEKETON HEADER IN CLASSICS IN THE UNIVERSITY IJF CAMHKIDGE PRESIDENT OF THE Ri lYAL ANTHROPOLOGICAL INSTITUTE OF CKEAT BRITAIN AND I1';ELAND, igoS-IO PRESIDENT OF THE CLASSICAL ASsCjCI ATl^iN OF ENGLAND AND WALES, 1914 GIP-FOKD LECTI:RER ON NATURAL RELIGION IN THE UNIVERSITY OF ABERDEEN, 1909-II HONORARY TiIEHIBER OF THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETIES OF PARIS AND BRUSSIiLS, AND OF THE ARCHAEOLfjGICAL SOCIETY OF ATHENS, ETC. These our actors, As I foretold you, were all spirits. Shakespeare, Tern, iv, i, 148-9 Cambridge : at the University Press '1^ l-if^ 0^3,0 CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS C. F. CLAY, Manager aanaoii: FETTER LANE, E.C. COmbmjf): loo, PRINCES STREET m 1. » t A' ^M i*i .t . A A, iacta gark: G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS Bflmbaa, Calcutta anii iBatiras: AL\CAIILLAN AND CO., Ltd. OvontD: J. M. DENT AND SONS, Ltd. rokoa: THE ^LARUZEN-KABUSHIKTKAISHA AN rights reserved LVCIAE VXORI CARISSIMAE PREFACE rpHE present volume is a sequel to my Origin ofTrcu/edy, published J- in 1910, or rather it is an expansion of a short chapter in that work, wherein I had briefly given some evidence from the dramatic performances of Asiatic countries in support of my doctrine of the origin of Greek Tragedy. As all the criticisms of that book have been founded upon the Solar Myth, the Tree and Vegetation Spirit and Totemic theories of Kuhn, Max Mliller, Mannhardt, McLennan, and nw friend Sir James Frazer put forth in his famous Golden Bough, I have been compelled to examine in my Introduction (pp. 1-64) the principles on which those doctrines severally depend, whilst in the rest of the work concurrently with my own direct investigations I have tested the validity of those various theories upon which Professor A. Dieterich, Dr L. R. Fai-nell, Miss J. E. Harrison, Professor G. G. Murray, Mr F. M. Cornford, Mr A. B. Cook and Professor A. B. Keith have based their respective hypotheses for the origin of Greek Tragedy proper, Satyric Drama, Greek Comedy, the Great Games of Greece and the Drama of Hindustan. The materials here presented formed the subject of a set of public lectures delivered at Cambridge in the Michaelmas Term of 1913. On December 10th of the same year the leading results of that course were laid before the British Academ}- in a paper, a summary of which appeared in the Athenaeum of December 20th, 1913. Although the work (the Addenda and the Ajjpendix excepted) was already in type at the outbreak of the War, I must crave the reader's indulgence, if he shall find in it an inordinate number of defects, since in the months that have elapsed no man save one devoid of all lov(? of country and utterly insensate could have con- centrated his attention on questions which can only be regarded as mere trivialities in presence of the stern and sad realities that confront us day by day. It only remains for me to offer my heartiest thanks to many old friends and former pupils as well as to others who have aided me in various ways : to Sir John H. Marshall, K.C.I.E., Director- General of the Archaeological Survey of India, to whom I am indebted for all the valuable information (pp. 172-206) on the viii PREFACE Hindu drama and dramatic porforinances supplied to mc by his staff, Rai Bahadur Pandit Radha Krishna, Director of the Archaeo- higical Museum of Muttra, Pandit Hirananda Sastri, Director of the Lucknow Museum, Mr D. R. Bhandarkar, Superintendent of the Archaeological Survej^ Poona, Mr H. Hargreaves, Superintendent of Hindu and Buddhist Monuments, Lahore, Mr Narain Mahadeva, of the Archaeological Survey, Poona, Mr H. Krishna Sastri, Officer in charge of the Government Epigraphical Department for India, Pandit Hira Lai, extra- Assistant Commissioner, Nagpur, and the staff' of the Office of the Archaeological Survey of Bengal, Bankipur ; to Rai Bahadur Pandit Radha Krishna I am especially indebted for his great kindness and trouble in obtaining for me a fine set of photographs, a selection from which is re2Jroduced in Figs. 11-18, 21, 24-39. I am also indebted, through Sir John Marshall, to Mr M. Zaff'ar Hassan, Assistant Superintendent of the Archaeological Survey, Delhi, for the photographs reproduced in Figs. 6 and 7 and for the information respecting them (p. 85), whilst I am further indebted to Sir John Marshall for a fine series of coloured drawings (two of which are reproduced in Figs. 56-7) illustrating the Burmese play ijf Waytlidndaru, and through him to Mr Taw Sein Ko, wdro had the drawings made and also supplied nther information on the Burmese Drama ; to Miss Barbara Freire-Marreco for generously placing at my disposal the Hopi tales embodied in pages 364-74 and for the photographs frdui wdiich Figs. 78-84 are taken; to the Rev. T. J, Pulvertaft, il.A., Secretary of the Spanish and Portuguese Reformed Churches, for his account of the dance in the Seville Cathedral and fi;ir the photugraph of the Seises repniduced in Fig. 1 ; to Mr E. M. W. Tilh'ard, M.A., Ftdlow of Jesus College, Cambridge, and now serving his country in the trenches as lieutenant. King's Own (Royal Lancaster Regiment), for the photographs of Palermo Puppet-players reproduced in Figs. 22-3, and f)r the description of them (p. 169); to the authorities of the British Museum for allowing me to figure the Javanese masks and puppet (Fig. 45), the Dukduk mask (Fig. 73), and the North-west American Nulmal mask (Fig. 77) : to Mr T. A. Joyce, M.A., of the Ethnographical Department of that Museum for his kindness in having the photographs of these oljjects made, and alsfi to him ami to Mr E. Torday fir the phi:)t(jgraphs of African masks, reproduced in Fig. 57 ; to Lady Wheeler-Cuffe, and through her to Mr J. A. Stewart, I.C.S., Mandalay, for very valuable information respecting Nat-pwes and f )r the photographs rejwoduced in Figs. 88-91 ; and also through PREFACE ix Lady WheeliT-Cnffe to Dr Geis for the photograpli from which Fig. 92 is taken; and to Mr B. S. Carey, C.S.L, CLE., for other photographs of Burmese dances ; to Mr L. A. Goss, M.A., Teacher of Burmese in the University of Cambridge, for help in the Burmese section ; to Dr H. A. Giles, Professor of Chinese in the University ot Cambridge, not only for generous help, but also for permitting me to reproduce (Figs. 59-68) a selection from his beautiful coloured drawings of Chinese actors, and to Dr Lionel Giles, of the Oriental Department of the British Museum, to the Rev. W. E. Soothill and to the Rev. G. Owen, for very valuable aid in my Chinese section ; to Mr E. J. Rapson, M.A., Professor of Sanskrit, Dr R. A. Nicholson, Lecturer in Persian, and to Mr R. H. Macleod, I.C.S., Reader in Indian Law, all in the LTniversity of Cambridge, for help in my Indian and Persian sections ; to Prof W. Gowland, F.R.S., and to Prof J. Mavor, M.A., of Toronti;i University, for the photographs reproduced m Figs. 69-72, to Prof. K. Hamada, of Kyoto, and to Mr A. E. Price, Assistant-Secretary of the Japan Society, for help in my Japanese section ; to Mr Wilfred Beaver, for inf;irmation respecting the West Papuan tribes (pp. 345, 397); to Dr Zuynholz, Director of the Royal Dutch Ethnological Museum, Leyden, for the photographs reproduced in Figs. 46, 47 ; to Mr R. M. Dawkins, M.A., Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge and late Directur of the British School at Athens, for permitting me to reproduce a selection from his fine set of Karagoz Shadow-puppets (Fig. 48); to Mr E. C. Quiggin, M.A., Fellow and Lecturer of Gonville and Caius College and Monm Lecturer in Celtic, to Mr F. W. Green, M.A., Mr F. W. Hasluck, M.A., late Fellow of King's College, Cambridge, Librarian of the British School at Athens, and to Mrs Margaret Gibson, LL.D., Ph.D., for useful references and other help ; to Col. Sir R. C. Temple, Bart., CLE., to the Rev. John Roscoe, M.A., to Lt.-Col. P. M. Sykes, C.M.G., CLE., to Mr and Mrs Max Ferrars, and to the Council of the Royal Anthropological Institute, for permission to reproduce illustrations from their several publications ; and finally, to the Rev. T. Grigg-Smith, B.A., Gonville and Caius College, for much help in compiling the index. WILLIAM RIDGEWAY. Flendyshb, Fen Ditton, August 6th, 1915. TABLE OF CONTENTS 8ECTI0N I I'AGE Introductiou — The Origin of Greek Tragedy — the Old Theory — Ridgewiiy's theory of the Origin of Greek Tragedy and of Tragedy in general — Solar ilyths, Tree Spirits and Totems — Sir James Frazer's views on Drama — Dr Farnell's theory of the Origin of Attic Tragedy — the Sacred Drama of Eleusis — the Homeric Hymn to Demeter — Trip- tolemus, Eumolpus, and Celeus — the Sacred Precinct at Eleusis — the Greater Mysteries — the Shamfight — the Eleusinian Games — the theatrical performances — Dieterich's theory of the origin of Greek Tragedy — Prof G. G. Mui'ray's theory — the Dithyramb — Glioses sacre'es — Dr Marrett and Maiia — Miss J. E. Harrison, Mr Gornford, and Mr A. B. Cook on the Great Games of Greece — Conclusion . 1 SECTION II The Sacred Dramas of Western Asia — Ali, Fatiraa, Hassan and Hussein — the Battle of Kerbela, and the Mai-tyrdom of Hussein — Adonis — Attis — Antinous 65 SECTION III Ancient Egypt — Osiris — the Greek and Egyptian sources for his history and cult — the oldest symbol of Osiris — his oldest shrines — the Passion-Play of Osiris ......... 94 SECTION IV Hindustan — the Vedie period and its literature — the Epic period and its literature — the Ramayana — the Mahahharata — the Drama — the so- called Vedic Ritual Drama — Dr Pischel's thcdry of the Origin of the Drama — the Puppet-Play — the Shadow-Play — Modern Hindu dramatic performances— Rama, Krishna — the Brahman Actors of Muttra — Circular dances — the dramatisation of modern Hindu saints and martyrs — Hindu drama like those of Western Asia and Egypt arose in the propitiation and honouring of the Dead — the Veddas of Ceylon — the Tangkuls of Assam 121 SECTION V Java— its historical Drama— Puppet- and Shadow-Plays— the Shadow- Plays of Western Asia, Egypt and North Africa— the Turkish Karagoz 216 SECTION VI The religious ideas of tlie Burmese— Sir R. C. Temple and Mr Taw Sein Ko on Nats — the thirty-seven Nats — the Burmese Dravxia — Brahman and Buddhist influences — Puppet-Plays 228 xii TABLE OF CONTENTS SECTION VII PAGE The iiiiligemHis Dr;ima nf the Malay I'oiiiiisula — Companies of Actors heatlcd l)y a Shaman — Prayers to tlie s])irits before eacli per- formaiiee 262 SECTION VITI Camboelia — its Religion — its Drama 263 SECTION IX China — Ancestor- worship — Chinese Drama — the classes of plays — ^lilitary and Civil-Actors — Theatres 266 SECTION X Japan — its History, political and religious — Shinto — Buddhism — Shinto temples — Ise and its shrines — the priesthood — festivals — offip with the worship of the Dead — Initiatory Ceremonies when ]iart of such performances are merely an accretion — the Initiation thcnry of Miss Hai-rison, ilr Cornford and Prof G. G. Miu'ray devoid of any fnuidation in ~ fact — Dramatic performances in Western Asia, Hindustan, Burma., China and Japian arose from tVie ])ropitiation and veneration of the Dead, and in all those areas with the exception of Western Asia, the funeral ceremonies have grown into true Drama — in some regions TABLE OF CONTENTS xiii dramatic performances, as at Rome and in Assam, begin even before the burial of the body — the Actor, often more tliau actor, being the medium of tlie dead person wlioni lie i-epreseuts — the sacred dramatic dances of many barbaiic races are primarily directed to the Bead — the masks worn represent the sjiirits of the Dead — and the persons wlw \veai' the masks are supposed to be the incarnation of those spirits for the time — their beliefs thus coincide with those of the civilised nations of the Asiatic Continent — among some savages the Dramatic dance actually a true Drama — the white mask used by Thespis may likewise have represented the f)ead — Tragedy and serious Drama evei'ywhere a.i'ose fi'om the world-wide belief in tlie existence of the .Soul after the death of the Body — Men's minds mo\'e from the Concrete to the Abstract and not contrariwise as postulated in the Solar, Vegetation and Totemic theories of Kuhn, Max Jliiller, Mannhardt, McLennan and Sir James Frazer — Solar myths — Vegeta- tion Spiiits and Totems mei'ely Secondary Phenomena depending on the Primary Belief in tlie continued existence of the Soul aftei' the death of the B.jdv 335 ADDENDA A. The Burmese Nat-Pwes 387 B. The ' Inviting-in ' Feast of the Alaskan Eskimo — the Kazgi — Dances and Songs — Comic Dances — Group dances — Totemic dances — Dramatic dances to propitiate the spirits of Ancestors and to pro- cure a good hunting season — the Shaman — his ' Spirit-mask ' — falls into a trance — communes with the spirits — revives and promises a good season ............ 394 APPENDIX The Origin of Greek Comedy and the sudden rise of the Old Attic Comedy- Aristotle's account of the Origin of Comedy— Mr F. M. Cornford's theory — Comedy at Megara — the Sicilian school — Epicharmus and Phormis — they borrow the plot along with their themes from Tragedy — the Attic school — Chionides and Magues — their contribu- tion — Cratinus and Crates — the Sudden Rise of the Old Comedy — the Areopagus— its history — saves Athens at the time of Xerxes' invasion — establishes the Confederacy of Delos and the Athenian Heo-emony — controls all 'disorderly persons' — attacked by liphialtes and deprived of its administrative powers, B.C. 362— no censor of plays now left— accordingly Old Comedy springs forth between B.C. 362 and B.C. 3.54— Cratinus— Eupolis— Aristophanes— the dis- appearance of Old Comedy -101 Index . 425 LIST OP^ ILLUSTliATIONS FIG. 1. The Seises of Seville Cathedral 2. Punch kills the Black Doctor . 3. Piiiii-li lianas the Hangman 4. Leaders i>f the Muhari'ani procession, Yczd 5. The Muharrani at Yezd .... C. A Taziya : Muharrarn festival, Delhi 7. A Muharrarn procession with taziyas of Hassan and Husseii 8. O.siris Khenti-Amenti, with the hawk in front 9. Isis-Hath(->r ; votive plaque, Dehr-el-Bahari 10. The Tct syniliul of Osiris 11. llama, Sita and Lakshrnana going into the jungle 12. Rama's enthronement on his I'etuiMi fmni e.xile 1.3. Krishna and his playmates lurking in the bushes 14. Krishna stealing the clothes of the Gopis 1.5. Krislin.i. and E.adhika in a swing 10. Krishna in attendance on E;ulhika. . 17. Krishna helps Kadhika tn tie lier anklet 18. Krishna performs a Iiht liy the .lurnna . ID. Keliciuary nf Buddha found at Peshawar, 20. Stage fill' a religious Hindu drama . 21. Havana's niterview with Angada 22. Palermo Puppet-show .... 23. Palermo Puiipet-players .... 24. Krishna and Radhika .... 2.5. Krishna Hatters Radhik.i .... 26. The opening .scene in a Ras-lila performance by Rasdharis 27. A Company of Rasdharis duly attired for a Rasdila 28. Krishna with his brother Balram in a chariot 20. Full basdila cornijany ...... 30. A lias-lila iierformance by Sanad Brahm:in boys . 31. Vishnu as a Man-Lion .slays Hirnakush . 32. A Circular Dance ....... 33. A Chopai of ChoVjey Brahman wi-estlei's singing 34. A (Jliopai sings rascas in honour of Dhola and Maroo 35. Charidvh ceremony performed by the people 'of Braj 30. A Hind\i modern drama with all the actors 37. Kama slays Ravana and rescues Sita '?,y: Krishna and Balram slay Kansa 39. Rama slays Kumbhkaran .... 40. P.inia drama ; Cawnpore .... 41. Scene in a Rama play .... 42. liani C'liandr'a and Lakhsniaria . 43. Actors dressed for a Krishna, jilay . 44. Acti.ir dressed as Ivrishn.a .... PAGE 9 23 5.5 79 81 84 85 107 109 111 135 137 139 141 143 145 147 149 151 155 167 170 171 173 174 175 176 178 179 180 181 183 185 186 187 188 189 191 192 103 195 196 201 202 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS XV FIG. 45. Javanese historical dramatic masks and Puppet 4G. Javanese Sliadow-puppet (Arjuna) . 47. Javanese Shadow-piijipet (Batari Durga) . 48. Turkish Karagdz Shadow-play Puppets . 49. :\[ahagiri Nat 50. Hnamadawgyi Xat ..... 51. Aungbinle Sinbyushin Nat 52. Nyauug-Gyin Nat 53. JIaung Po Tu Nat 54. Maung ilinbyu Nat 55. A Burmese Marionette Princess 56. Prince Waythandara gives away the White Elephant 57. Jugaka the Brahman carries oft' the Prince's childr 58. Chinese local god ..... 59. Principal military Sheng .... 60. Subordinate Militarj' Otficer 61. Minister of State ..... 62. Leading Civili.an 63. Old Woman 64. Amazon ....... 65. Comic female character .... 66. Fast Girl 67. Low Comedy man ..... 68. The Buttoon' 69. The Kagura dance 70. Shintu temple ; Kaniakura 71. Japanese Cirls dancing with Comic masks 72. Scene from a Japanese A'^o drama . 73. Dukduk Mask ; Ilema Island, Papuan Gulf 74. African masks ... . . 75. (.'eremonial mask of wood; African . 76. Haida Chief's Totem spoon 77. Mask of Nulmal ; North- West America . 78. Indian Shrine at Wala .... 79. The Plaza Shrine at Hano 80. Ohoiki'i Dance at Hano .... 81. Sitsumovi. Branch planted at the Kaje t'e'e 82. Blue-faced Katsinas at Sitsumovi 83. Old man .sprinkling the Blue-faced Katsinas 84. Wakakatsina the Wolf shoots a Kojala . 85. The Pieliquary of Kibuka, the war-god of Uganda 86. The Relics of Kibuka .... 87. Mulongo (Umblical cord) of a Baganda king 88. The Nat's palace or shrine, Taungljyou, Bui-ma 80. Nat-kadaws salaaming the Nat 90. The Nat-kadaws with raised pointed forefinger 91. A Nat-bride neo])h3'te, to whom the Nat would n()t come 92. A Kachin Death or Burial dance at Gagan PAGE 217 221 223 227 239 240 247 248 250 251 258 260 261 269 273 273 274 275 276 276 277 277 278 279 309 311 325 329 348 :',53 355 361 362 368 369 370 371 372 373 374 380 381 382 388 389 390 391 393 THE ORIGIN OF TRAGEDY I. INTRODUCTION All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players. Shakespeare, As You Like It. In discussing the liistory of dramatic literature, all historians down to a few years since have, without cxcej^tion, confined their attention to the rise of the Greek Drama, to its imitation in Rome, to the Mysteries and Miracles of mediaeval Christianity, to the revival of the Classical form, and to its splendid development in the plays of Christopher Marlowe, Shakespeare, Caldcron, Corneille, and Racine. Moreover, aU writers instead of seeking for the origin of the Drama by a rigid application of the historical and inductive method have approached its study from the a ■priori standpoint of pure Aesthetics. But as CA'cn now the study of art with few excejjtions is almost invariably based on a priori assumptions, little regard being had to the anthropological method, it could hardly have been expected that writers on the drama would have followed other lines. Xo matter how widely historians of Greek Tragedy may have differed from each other in details, they were all pretty well agreed that certain main features in its develojjment were firmly established, but, as it turns out, this general agreement was based upon a complete misinterpretation of several vital statements of Aristotle in his Poetic, on which of course their theories had largely to be based. They held (1) that Tragedy was the invention of the Dorians in certain parts of Peloponnesus, basing this (a) on a passage of Aristotle^ in which he states nothing of the kind, and {b) on the supj^osed Doric forms in the choral odes of tragedies, although not a single truly Doric form is found anywhere in such odes ; (2) that it arose wholly out of the worship of Dionysus, whom they assumed to be an indi- genous Greek deity, although there was a consensus of opinion among all Greek writers from Homer downwards to the contrary, and though Aristotle never mentions Dionysus in connexion with ^ Poetic, iii. 'A, B 2 THE ORIGIN OF TRAGEDY Tragedy ; (3) that the Satyric drama arose in the same Dorian states out of rustic and joA'ial chthyrambs common amon<^ tlie lower classes in the same districts as those in which Tragedy was sup)50sed to ha\e ariseiU"'- a statement contrary to that supjiosed to be the doctrine of Aristotle in a famous passage of the Poetic, in reliance on which other scholars maintained that Tragedy has been c\'olved out of an ancient indigenous gross Satyric drama, but as we have shown elsewliere, Aristotle said nothing of the kind ; (4) that the Satyric drama was a kind of comic relief to the tragedy or tragedies to which it was assumed to have been always an adjunct from the earliest times, although it can be shown that Satyric dramas were only brought into Attica after 535 b. c. ; (5) that the Thymele had been always solely the altar of Dionysus ; (6) it was held that Thesiais was the first to have established Tragedy on a proper basis, some holding that his grand step consisted in merely separating the leader from the rest of the Chorus and making him interrupt the Choral parts by some sort of Epic recitation, whilst others held that he was the first to ap})ly to moral purposes the sufferings, often undeser\'cd, of heroes. A close examination of the a\'ailablc data, scanty as they are, led the present writer in 1904 to the conclusion that most, if not all, of these time-honoured doctrines had no foundation in fact, and that we must completely remodel our ^iews concerning the beginnings and develoi)ment of the Tragic Art. It was patent that Greek Tragedy in the fifth century before Christ contained two widely different elements — true Tragedy con- cerned sold)' with tlie sufferings and sorrows of heroes and historical personages, and the Satyric drama termed by the Greeks ' Sportive Tragedy ', concerned solely with Dionysus and his Silens and Satyrs. Furthermore, the Old Comedy which was held by the ancients to be and most certainly was indigenous, was j^ct regarded bj' them as wholly distinct from the Satj^ric drama. Yet if the latter sj)rang o>it of the jo\"ial and gross dithyrambs, how did it differ in its origin from Comedy ? As we have already said, the universal misinterpretation of a passage in the Poetic ^ led many to hold that Tragedy proper liad grown out of the gross Satyric drama, though in none of our extant tragedies is any trace of coarseness in thought or word to be found. Certain scholars, such as Professor von Wilamowitz-lMoellendorir,'' fomid (hllicultii'S in what was assiuncd to be the doctrine of Aristotle, ' Mahaffy, Uislorij of Greek Liieralure (1880), vol. i, ]>. 233. Chap. 4. ^ Hercules Fureits, pp. 55 sqq. INTRODUCTION 3 but never dreamed oC inquiriny whether the interpretations of Aristotle on whieli the old theory was based were right. Many scholars assumed that Aristotle's statement that Tragedy had arisen out of the grotesque Satyric drama was wrong, and tliat the latter had an independent origin in gross rustic dithyrambs. Dr. Rcisch^ re-dished this old doctrine in a paper which was hailed by Dr. L. R. Farnell " and Mr. A. Pickard- Cambridge '^ as a new revelation. But Reiseh simply repeated the old theory that both Tragedy proper and Satyric Drama were Dionysiac in origin, but each independent from the outset, his onljr proof of this assertion being a strained rendering of a phrase of Aristotle in which he followed Gomperz. But Aristotle * has given us a chronological statement of the various steps in the evolution of Attic Tragedy : (1) Aeschylus added the Second Actor, (2) diminished the parts of the Dance (Chorus), (3) and gave prominence to the dialogue ; (i) Sophocles added the Third Actor and (5) Scene-painting, (6) the short plots were suc- ceeded by those of greater length, (7) it was only late that Tragedy got free from grotesque diction by getting rid of Satyric Drama and became completely dignified, and (8) the metre changed from tetrameter to Iambic, for at the outset they used the tetrameter owing to the style of composition being Satyric and more suitable for dancing. These eight metabolae or changes fall into two classes : (rt) External — Actors, Chorus, Scenery ; {b) Internal — Plot, Diction, and Metre. Now the first five changes in [a) are certainly in chrono- logical order, and all of them are posterior to 499 b. c, when Aeschylus made his first appearance, whilst the three under {h) must be similarly regarded. For the change from the short to the long \Aot was posterior to the first appearance of Aeschylus in 499 B.C., and as the change in metre to iambic was his work also (since his elder con- temporary Phrynichus used the tetrameter almost solely), and as this last is linked grammatically in the Greek very closely (by re) to the preceding clause (the freeing of Tragedy from grotesque diction), this last process must fall within the same period as the change of metre, and certainly cannot be earli(?r than the first half of the fifth century before Christ. _ThiS exatriination shows us that what- ever was the modification referred to by Aristotle's words respecting 1 • Zur Vorgeschichte der attischeii Tragodie ' {Fesischrift fir Th. Gomperz, Vienna, 1902), pp. 561 sqq. 2 The Cults of the Greek States, vol. v, p. 230. Dr. Farnell calls Dr. Reiseh Dr. Fleisch not only here but on pp. 232 and 233. 3 Classical Review, Mareh 1912, p. .53. * W. Ridgeway, ' Tiiree Notes on the Poetic of Aristotle' {Classical Quarterly, vol. vi, 1912, pp. 242-5). B 2 4 THE ORIGIN OF TRAGEDY the Satyric drama, this could not have taken jilace before the first lialf of the fifth century Ix'fore Christ, the very jx-riod when Tragedy was shaking itself free from the Satyric drama which ^^■as finalh' su])planted by the melodramas, such as the Alcestis, wliieh in 438 b. c. took the place of a Satyric drama in a Tctralogj^ of Euripides. For as the Greek term Tragocdia included both serious Tragedy and ' sportive Tragedy " (the Satyric drama), so long as the truly tragic trilogy was followed b}' a coarse Satyric drama. Tragedy had not freed itself from ' ludicrous diction ' and attained to her full dignity. Aristotle, therefore, is not referring to the iirst beginnings of Tragedy in the sixth century, but to the state in which iVesehylus foimd it and from which he lifted it. When therefore he states that ' aforetime they had used the tetrameter because the style of composition was Satyric and more appropriate for dancing ', he is alluding not to any original development of tragedy proper from the Satyric, but rather to the period later than the introduction into Athens of the Satyric drama by Pratinas of Phlius {circa 525) and when Aeschylus had now come to the front, when still in serious tragedies, such as the Supplices of that poet himself, the dance was hardly lessened in importance, and tlicrefore such jilays were a kind of composition which might well be termed orchestikotera (more appropriate for dancing). This harmonizes well with the fact that Thespis, Phryniclnis, Pratinas, and Choerilus were all termed dancers b}' the ancients and that Aeschylus invented many new figures, the fact being that the drama was still merely an ojDcratic performance, such as we sliall find in the dramas of India, Burma, China, and Japan. This conclusion is therefore fatal both to the old view that Tragedy arose out of the Satyric drama and to the other \ie\\ newlv expounded by Reisch and adojjtcd by Piekard-Cambridge. that Tragedy did not arise out of the Satyric drama, but indepi'ndentlv 'from the satyr-play-like origin' (von don satyrsinclartigeu Vrspnina), for lx)th views assume changes Avhich nuist have taken place at least as early as Epigencs and Thespis. But far more important is it that there is no longer any groiuid Ibr the supposed contradiction between the statement of Aristotle respecting the relations of Tragedy proper to the Satyric drama and the passage in which he says, ' When Tragedy and Comedy came to light the two primary classes of poets still followed their natural bents, the lampooners became Avriters of Comedy and the K])ic poets were sueeceded In^ tragedians, since the Drama was a larger and a higher form of art.' Aeschylus thus put the truth in a nutshell when he declared tliat his own plays were but slices from the banquets of INTRODUCTION 5 Homer. But the Epic is not tlic oldest form of ]50ctry. Joy and exultation after NJctory iu battle or suceess in the ehase, the out- pourings of the anguished heart, the transports of the lover are and ever have been expressed not in set hcroie measure, but in lyrical outbursts ' with uneven numbers \^ Sueli are the rude songs out of which arose the ancient Irish Epics, and such also arc those embedded in the Icelandic Sagas. So too when Achilles sang to his harp the " glories of heroes ', he was not reciting heroic lays like a rhapsodist, but rather singing rude songs about the deeds of doughty men. As such wild lyrical utterances are subjective and do not ■ imitate ', Aristotle, as the present writer " has shown, did not include any discussion of Ij'rical poetry in the Poetic, but that he felt that it was concomitant with the Epic is proved by his pointing clearly to the few scattered personal expressions of the jioct in the Iliad and the Odyssey as being outside the Mimetic art. It is from the lyrical element in the ancient poetry that Aristotle states that Tragedy took its direct rise : ' Tragedy arose from the leaders of the dithyramb just as Comedy did from the leaders of the phallic songs which still survive in many of oiu- towns.' Though this statement of his has never been challenged, yet the old theory and the ncM'est both alike depend on tlie assum])tion that Aristotle meant that the dithyramb was the peculiar ajjanage of Dionysus, and was never used of any one else. But before we discuss this ^'ital point, let us complete our survey of the \ arions later theories of the origin of Tragedy. Ridgeway's Theory of the Origin of Tragedy. The present writer was led in 190-1 to the conclusions that (1) Tragedy proper did not arise in the worship of the Thracian god Dionysus ; but (2) that it sprang out of the indigenous worship of the dead,' especially of dead chiefs such as Adrastus, the ancient prt- Dorian and pre-Achaean king of Sicyon, as described by Hero- dotus * in a passage which is our earliest authority for Greek ' tragic dances ' ; (.3) that the cult of Dionysus was not indigenous in Sicyon, but had been introduced there by Cleisthenes (as it had been also brought into Attica and Naxos), and had been superimjjosed upon the cult of the old king; (4) that even if it were true that Tragedy proper arose out of the worship of Dionysus, it would no less have 1 W. Ridgeway, Origin of Tragedy, pp. 7-8. - ' Three Notes on the Poetic of Aristotle ' {Classical Quarterly, vol. vi, 1012, pp. 23.5-41). " For the full treatment of this snbject, cf. VV. Ridgeway, Origin of Tragedy (1910), pp. 28 sqq. ■* V. 07. 6 THE ORIGIN OF TRAGEDY originated in the worshi]) of tlie dead, since Dionysus was regarded by the Greeks as a licra^ (i.e. a man turned into a saint) as well as a god. The fact that in his most ancient shrine amongst the Bessae on Mount Pangaeum he had an oracle, as had the old heroes Tropho- niiis and Amjihiaraus at Lebadea and Oropus respeetively, strongly confirms this conclusion, which will be still fiu'ther corroborated by the evidence respecting the origin of oracles from dead kings IDresentcd in the following pages. The Sicyonians honoured their old chief with sacrifices and tragic dances for the same reasons as those for which ancestors, heroes, and saints have been, and are still being, worshipped, as we shall see, in Western Asia, India, Burma, China, Japan, and. in a word, in almost every corner of the world. A good king in his life was supposed to bring all sorts of prosperity to his people. Thus Homer- speaks of ' a blameless king whose fame goes up to the wide heaven, maintaining right, and the black earth bears wheat and barlc}^ and the trees are laden with fruit, and the sheep bring forth and fail not, and the sea gives store of fish, and all from his good guidance, and the people pros))er under him '. Nor is this doctrine confined to Greece, for it was held by the Swedes respecting Freyr, their ancient king-god, whilst conversely it was thought that under a bad king the earth refused her increase.^ When a great and good chief dies, and the arm that once brought victorj^ to his jjcople can no longer wield the spear, and though a great barrow hide his bones, all is not over. His spirit is supposed to have the same tastes and passions in death as he had in life. Within his grave he still thinks of his family and people, and if they m turn still think cif him and refresh his \'ital element with libations, best of all human blood, he will keeji sleepless watch and ward, help them in the hour of peril, and use his kindly infiuencc with Earth to make her yield her increase and to make fruitful the herds, flocks, and women of his tribe ; and what the great king is supposed to do for his tribe, the rude fore- fathers of each humble family are sujiposed to do for their kin in a lesser degree. Furthermore the Greeks believed, as countless races still believe, that what a man or a woman lo\'ed in life, they lo\'e in deatli. At a soldier's funeral we fire volleys over his grave, while an officer's charger is led after the funeral car, a survival of a time not long past when the horse would have been slain at the gra\e to accompany his master to the unseen world. Did the dead ^ Plutarcli, Quacsl. Grace. .'iC ; (If Isiile ct Osiriile, 35. - Odjisxey, xix. 107 stjq. ^ Annuls of the Four Masters, sub a.d. 10. INTRODUCTION 7 when in life love tnanly prowess and the swil't racings of athletes and horses ? At his funeral obsequies these had their place, as witness the famous games celebrated by Achilles after the burning of the body of Patroelus. There was the chariot-race, foot-race, boxing, wrestling, archery, and, most dangerous of all, the single combat. For this entered Ajax and Diomede. The former hurled a spear with such force that it jnerced the shield of Diomede and almost reached his body. Diomede's blood warmed, and soon the Achaeans saw with anxiety that he had his eye fixed upon the throat of Ajax intent on dealing a fatal woimd. Achilles likewise saw it, and promptly prevented the death of one of the bulwarks of the Achaeans by parting them asunder and giving equal prizes to both. To this we shall h&ve to re^'crt presently. In the fifth century before Christ, after the other funerary rites were concluded, the body burned or buried, the Thracians raised a barrow over the grave and ' games of all sorts were held ', in which the single combat was awarded the highest prize. '^ In the Italian Peninsula there is good evidence'" for a like practice in the fimeral games {ht,di fiinebres) held at the obsequies of wealthy Romans, for the single combats between pairs of gladiators seem to have been nothing but a continuance of the practice of earlier days, slaves only being comj^elled to fight to the death. Servius'* has the very significant remark that this was in accordance with the ancient belief that human blood should flow at the gra\'e of a dead man. It must be carefully borne in mind that there were no gladiatorial shows, save at funerals, until the Imperial times. It must also be remembered that at a wealthy Roman's funeral * immediately after the praeficae, or hired ' keeners ', in some cases followed dancers and mimes who jested freely, whilst, according to Suetonius," the chief mime {archimimus) wore a mask in the likeness of the deceased, imitated his speech and manners, and even jested at his expense. Then came the imagines, which, according to Polybius,^ were masks representing distinguished ancestors of the deceased. These were brought out from the atrium, and each was worn by a man who was chosen to resemble as closely as possible the ancestor personated and was clothed in the dress of his office. Each rode in a chariot accompanied by lictors and other insignia of office. Thus the ances- tors of the dead man escorted him to the family tomb. This drama- tization of the dead, which we shall find to be very widespread and 1 Herod. V. 8. " Scrvius, Ad Verg. Aen. iii. 67 ; v. 78. 3 Hid. ' IJion. Hal. vii. 72. 5 Vesp. 19. " vi. 53. 8 THE ORIGIN OF TRAGEDY primitive, led naturallj' to rcjj;ular dramatic pcri'ormanccs as part ol' the i'uneral games. Thus the Adelphi of Terence was performed at the fmicral obsequies of Aemihus Paulus in 160 b.c. But it was not merely at tlie actual obsequies that chariot-races, single combats, and contests of athletes took place. In the case of men pre-eminent among their fellows similar performances were repeated periodically in the recurring seasons. Thus Pindar ^ not only tells how Pelops shares in the honours of the blood-offering, where he lies buried by Alpheus stream and has a much-frequented barrow, but how Heracles founded the games beside the ancient tomb of Pelo])s, and how from afar he beholdeth the races. In life the dead may have loved the dance and been honoured with dances, as Da\dd was by the Hebrew women on his return from the overthrow of the Philistines, whilst wicked Herod was so charmed by the dancing of Salome that he gave her the head of the Baptist, and as we ascribe to our gods our own feelings, dances are held in Jionour of them. Thus Da-\id himself danced before the Lord when he brought back the Ark from Shiloh. Let not the critic say that such practices arc not Arj'an, for ' of the many religious cere- monies to be witnessed in the Cathedral of Seville ', writes Mrs. Villiers \A'ardell,'- ' none is so supremely interesting as the dances before the High Altar of the boys known as the Seises. These dances take place every year on the three days of Carnival, at the Feast of Corpus Christi, which falls at the end of May or the beginning of June, and during the octave of the Immaculate Conception, which begins on December 7th. The dances take place at the foot of the High Altar, and are accompanied by a stringed orchestra and by the organ. The boys — ten in number — wear pages' eostimie of the period of Philip III, and these costumes are made as follows : there is a tunic and knickerbockers of either blue or red damask (Fig. 1), with stripes of gold galon. Red is the colour for the Carnival and the Feast of Corpus Christi, and blue for the Feast of the Immaculate Con- ception. A very curious featm-e of these costumes is Las Aletas or wings, which are made of the same stuff as the rest of the eostimie and -which hang down from the shoulders at the back. Las Aletas were the wings of the original boys who were dressed as a no-els. 0\'er the shoulders and across the breast the boj's wear scarves of white taffetas, which are fastened on the shoulder with a rosette. They wear collars and cuffs of white lace and sombreros a hi eliain- berga, ox hats, which are turned uj) directly in front (Fig. 1). Tliese hats are made of blue or red damask and are lined with white, and 1 01. i. !)1 ; X. 30. - Siiaiii of Ihe S'lHiiiisli (London, 1909), pp. 231-2. INTRODUCTION o 10 THE ORIGIN OF TRAGEDY arc adorned willi a tuft of plumes, blue or red, according to the season '. My friend the Rev. T. J. Puhertaft, to whom I am indebted for the photograph here reproduced (Fig. 1), thus writes : ' I went to the cathedral expecting to be shocked, and got quite close to the chancel rails. To my great astonishment I saw boys dance a beautiful minuet, and somehow or other, hypnotized by the motion and music, I lost count of time and everything else. It was a wonderful expe- rience. There was not a trace of frivolity in the performance, and the whole mise en scene was most impressive. One story is worth repeating. When the Pope some centuries ago wished to suppress all religious dances in churches, he was asked to permit the Seises (there were originally six dancers) to continue. He issued a bull saying that they could continue until their clothes were worn out. The canons still always put a patch of the old garment on the new, and in this way obey the order of his Holiness.'^ But the Andalusians do not stand alone in such ideas of what is pleasing to Divine or sacred personages. In ancient Sicily, Venus of Eryx was the most famous of all deities. With Christianity she, like many another pagan divinity, was turned into a Christian saint, and by the modern Sicilians she is thought to dance before Christ in heaven, as is shown by the following quatrain : O santa Venera, Si bella, si tenera, Che in Paradiso Tripa avanti Gesii.'- But ancient Greece supplies striking instances of the use of dances to honour the dead besides those performed at Sicyon in honour of Adrastus. For example, at Athens on the third day of the Anthesieria, a very ancient festival of the dead, pots of cooked xege- tables were offered to the gods and to the dead, and there circular dances {kvkXiol \opoi) were performed similar to those held on solemn occasions at this hour (Fig. 32) in India and elsewhere. But amongst primitive j^eoples all dances are mimetic and pantomimic, and this holds true of not a few of those in vogue amongst ci\'ilized nations, as in the case of the Japanese Bon Odori, and to this rule the Greeks were no exception. As we shall find the dead honoured by mimetic dances in Burma, China, Japan, and numberless other ' In ii letter dated February (i, 1914. - For this verse I iini indelrted to my fiieiid Mrs. Margaret Y. Gibson, LL.D., Pli.U., who heard it in Sicily. INTRODUCTION 11 places, we need not be surprised lo find Adrastus of Sicyon honoured with dances which aUuded to his great sorrows. That dead saints and martyrs who have suffered much in life are supposed to be pleased by having their woes kept in continual remembrance after death has been put beyond doubt. ^ I also pointed out that the white masks, the only kind used by Thespis, were entirely unsuitable for Dionysiac representations, but cminentl}'' adajited for those of ghosts. In support of this ^'iew of the origin of Tragic masks much evidence from many regions will be adduced. Finally, I urged that Horace was right in his account of the grand step made by Thespis in the development of Tragedy. In earlj' days the tragic chorus and its dithyramb were closely attached to the tombs or shrines of heroes, and were only performed on festival occasions at sacred spots, as was the case with the Mysteries and Miracles of mediaeval Europe. Thespis detached his chorus and dithyramb from some particular slirine, possibly at Icaria, his native place, and taking his company with him on wagons, gave his performances on an extemporized stage when and where he could find an audience, not for religious purposes but for pastime (as he himself said) and for gain, and I thus explained^ Solon's out- burst of anger at his presentations. Thus, not merely by defining more accurately the role of the actor, but by lifting Tragedy from being a mere piece of religious ritual tied to a partieidar spot into the greatest form of literature, he was the true founder of the Tragic art. For the moment we shall pass over the question of the dithyramb, which will be more fittingly discussed a little further on. Solar Myths, Tree spirits, and Totems. For more than half a cen- tury three theories have exercised a potent influence on many sides of Classical and Anthropological studies — the Sun myth of Kuhn and Max Miillcr, the Tree worship of Mannhardt, and the Totemism of J. F. McLennan. As the authors of the latest theories of the origin of Tragedy have laid them all under contribution, it wiU be necessary at this stage to make some remarks upon them. The first of these theories were the product of the German Com- parative philologists, who in the first glow of that new study believed that they had in it a most powerful instrument for historical investi- gation. But its founders started with a fundamental misappre- hension of human nature by assuming that the primitive Aryans had a language consisting of abstract verbal roots, such as AK, ' to be sharp ,' from which all sorts of nouns, such as equus, ' the swift 1 Ridgeway, op. cil., p. 60. - Op. cil., pp. 36-7. la THE ORIGIN OF TRAGEDY one,' and the like, \vcre derived. They thus assumed that the primitive Aryans could do perfectly what few most cultured people of to-day can only tlo imperfectly — think in abstracts. Yet they mii^'ht ha^•c remembered that so far from verbal roots being ante- cedent to nouns tA'i'u in Sanskrit and Greek there are whole classes of denominative \erbs, i, e. verbs derived from nouns, and that living languages are daily recruiting their verbal system by new formations from previously existing nouns, thus demonstrating that the names for objects come first, and that ^'erbs and A'crbal roots are derived from them. There must be a Captain Boycott before there can be a verb to boycott. This fundamental error of the jjhilologists was due to the fact that they looked at things from the a priori standpoint begotten of Metaphysics, and though the}' were always talking loudly of Science and Scientific method, in practice they resolutely turned their backs upon it and took that easy primrose path of guesswork still trodden by their ^■otaries. It is not surprising, therefore, that when this school began to investigate primitive religion they eontemjrtuously flung aside the traditions and beliefs of the Hindus, Greeks, Latins, and all other peoples respecting the origin of most of their own gods — that they were human beings deified after death — and they boldl}' denied that these gods and heroes had ever been human personalities, and maintained that they were mere personifications of the phenomena of Nature and their changing processes. Thus not onljr were Apollo and Heracles, but also Agamemnon, king of men, jMenelaus, Achilles, Odysseus, and all the other stately worthies of the heroic age of Greece, regarded as mere phases of the Sun myth, just as their svicecssors in the school of a priori speculation now regard the same heroes as mere manifestations of abstract Vege- tation spirits. Yet any one conversant with Greek literature and the history of Greek thought might have realized that it is only at a late stage of de\-elopment that even the Greeks were capable of generalization. Aristotle has well emphasized this when he records as a great step the enunciation by Xenophanes of the Unity of the Universe. Again, it is certain that whilst in the latter part of the fifth century before Christ, a few philosophers at Athens, such as Socrates and his school, were discussing the One in the Many — the Universal and the particular, the great mass of the Athenians had exactly that attitude towards Nature and its phases as that set before us by Aristophanes in his Clouds in the person of Strepsiades, the elderly Athenian gentleman, with his simple theo- logical beliefs and his crude and very concrete ideas respecting the INTRODUCTION 13 causes of rain and other physical phenomena. The late Dr. R. F. Littledale dealt a crushing blo\v to the Sun myth theory when he proved tliat Professor INIax Miiller on his own principles was only a Solar myth, whilst the late Sir Alfred Lyall delivered a still stronger attack on the same theory and its assumption that tribal gods and heroes, such as those of Homer, were mere reflections of the Sun myth by proving that the gods of certain Rajput clans at this present hour -were really warriors who founded the clans not many centuries ago, and were the ancestors of the present chieftains, ^lany examples of the same kind, not only from India, but from Burma, China, and Japan, will be presented in the course of our inquiry. The theory, however, was not killed, but only scotched, for there is an inexpugnable love of what is false and fantastic deep down in the hearts of the great majority. It would therefore have been strange if this moribund theory had not sought a fresh lease of life by obtruding itself into fields hitherto immune, and accordingly in the last few years it has again reared its head in alliance with Mannhardt's Tree spirit, that other darling of the Folk-lorists, and also the manifold speculations that ha\-e sprung out of Totemism. I may at once state that whilst Sir James Frazer holds that Vegetation spirits and the phenomena embraced under the term ' Totemism ' are primary and absolutely independent of the belief in the existence of the soul of man after the death of the bod)% the present writer has already strongly maintained elsewhere ■"■ that Vegetation spirits and Totemic beliefs are merely secondary pheno- mena, all depending on the primary belief of mankind in the con- tinued existence of the soul after the death of its carnal covering. It is with extreme reluctance and with genuine sorrow that I have found myself compelled to differ on this fundamental question from one of my oldest and best friends. It is suffrcient at this stage to point out that the main object of this investigation is to test by means of the Inductive method the truth or falsity of our respective theories, for if my view should turn out to be right, it will follow at once that my theory of the origin of Tragedy is also true. Sir James Frazer takes as his starting-point ^ the httle lake of Nemi, near Aricia in the Alban hills, on the northern shore of which stood the grove and sanctuary of Diana Nemorensis (who, however, was not the oldest personage here venerated). In this precinct there 1 In my Gifford Lectures delivered at Aberdeen, 1909-10 (as yet only published in summary), and Jour. Hell. Slud., vol. xxxi (1911), p. xlix. 2 The Golden Bough (ed. 2), pp. 1 sqq. It THE ORIGIN OF TRAGEDY grew a tree in charge of a grim figure armed with a sword and ever on his guard against surprise.^ He was both a priest and a murderer, and in his turn would meet a violent end : The priest who slew the slayer And shall himself be slain. From that tree no branch might be broken save by a runaway slave, who. if he could, might do so, and thus be entitled to challenge the priest to mortal combat. If he slew him, he reigned in his stead with the title of King of the Wood {Rex Nemorensis). There was a legend that this barbaric custom was Scythian,- since Orestes after slaying Thoas, the Tauric king, had brought hither the image of the Taiu'ie Diana, to whom in her old home every hapless stranger was sacrificed. In one of his freaks Caligula hired a stalwart ruflian to kill the holder of this grim priesthood, and it is known that the succession continued at least into the time of the Antonines. The Dianeum itself has been excavated in modern times, and proved by the relics to be of great antiquity. Two other beings shared the holy spot. One was the hero Virbius, identified with the Greek Hippo- lytus, killed by his horses on the shore of the Saronic Gulf. To please his patroness Diana (so went the story), x\csculapius brought him back to life, but Zeus was so wroth with the bold leach that he condemned him to Hades, whilst Diana surreptitiously bore her favourite to this sequestered spot. The other was the nymph Egeria, whose name is that of a great local family, one of whom, Manius Egerius, first set up the cult of Diana in what may ha\'e been his own family sanctuary. From him sprang a long and distin- guished line. Hence the proverb. ' There are many Manii at Arieia.' The connexion of this family with the sacred grove may not ))e without some importance for our investigation. The branch which the candidate for the ghastly priesthood had to pluck was said to be that golden bough which Aeneas under the monition of Sibyl had culled to be his passport to the abode of the dead, but it is imjiortant to note that there is no proof that the candidate was restricted to any one bough. Sir James Frazer '^ holds that this golden bough, which Virgil likens to the mistletoe that grows on the oak, was the mistletoe itself ' seen through the haze of poetry or popular superstition ', and thinks that he has shown grounds for believing that the priest of the Arician grove, the King of the Wood, personified the tree on which grew the Golden Bough. 'Hence if that tree was the oak, the King of the Wood must have 1 Strabo, 109. 41 (Didot). - Strabo, he. cil. ^ GoUlai Dough (cd. 2), vol. iii, pp. 449-50. INTRODUCTION 15 been tlie personification of the oak tree spirit. It is tliereforc easy to understand (writes lie) that before he could be slain it was necessary to break the golden bough. As an oak spirit his life or death was in the mistletoe on the oak, and so long as the mistletoe remained intact, he, like Balder, could not die. To slay him, therefore, it was necessary to break the mistletoe and probably, as in the case of Balder, to throw it at him, and to complete the parallel it is only neces- sary to suppose that the King of the Wood was formerly burned, dead or alive, at the midsummer fire festival annually celebrated at the Arieian grove. The perpetual fire which burned in this grove, like the perpetual fire under the oak at Romove, was probably fed with the sacred oak wood, and thus it would be in a fire of oak that the King of the Wood formerly met his end. At a later time, as I have suggested, his annual tenure of office was lengthened or shortened, as the case might be, by the rule which allowed him to live so long as he could prove his divine right by the strong hand. But he only escajDcd the fire to fall by the sword. The rite was probably an essential feature of the ancient worship of the oak.' According to Sir J. Frazer, Virbius was a tree spirit and must have been the spirit of the oak on which grew the golden bough, for tradition said he was the first of the Kings of the Wood, whilst he also holds Balder to have been an oak spirit. ' It is at least highly significant (he con- tinues) that amongst both the Greeks and Italians the oak should have been the tree of the supreme god, and that at his most ancient shrines both in Greece and Italy this supreme god should have been actually represented by an oak, and that so soon as the barbarous Aryans of Northern Europe appeared in the light of history they should be found amid all diversities of language, character, and country, nevertheless at one in worshipping the oak and extracting their sacred fire from its wood. The highest place (he holds) in the Aryan pantheon must certainly be assigned to the oak.' He concludes that ' Down to the Roman Empire and the beginning of our era the primiti^•c worship of the Aryans was maintained in its original form in the sacred grove at Ncmi as in the oak woods of Gaul, of Prussia, and of Scandinavia, and that the King of the Wood lived and died as an incarnation of the supreme Aryan god, whose life was in the mistletoe or Golden Bough '. The reader will observe that these conclusions are largely built upon ' supposes ' and ' suggestions ', whilst at least one of his fundamental propositions — that in his most ancient shrines both in Greece and Italy the oak was the tree of thct supreme god — is contradicted by the well-attested facts that at Olympia, the chief 16 THE ORIGIN OF TRAGEDY seat of Pan-Hcllcilio Zeus, the sacred tree of that god was not the oak, but the wild ohve. and that in the saerifiecs to Zeus and also to Pelops ' the wood of the white poplar was used and no other \^ l\Ioreover, this belief, so prevalent amongst folk-lorists, that the oak was the only or ehief sacred tree amongst European peoples is at variance with another well-known fact. In ancient Ireland, although St. Patrick is said to have had a sharp controversj^ with a Druid who lived under an oak, yet of the five famous sacred trees mentioned in the Book of Leinster, which fell or were destroyed in the seventh centurj^ of our era,^ only one was an oak,^ the others being a yew, and three ashes. The reason why certain trees and other objects were held sacred may be found in beliefs still common in Ireland itself. Any day in St. Joseph's cemetery, Cork, people of both sexes may be seen passing to the solid stone tomb of Father Mathew, the ajjostle of temperance ; some of them are rubbing off the dust from the tomb, and applying it to rheumatic parts of their body or taking it internally. In loneh^ country churchyards people ma}' likewise be seen taking earth from the grave of some pious priest, sometimes even eating it on the spot. The reason is that the spirit or aniina of Father Mathew and other holy persons ))crmeates not only the clay, but the massive tombs under which lie their mortal remains. The Greeks held exactly the same belief, as is clear from the following story. Not far from Libethra, on Mount Olympus, was the tomb of Orpheus. One day a shepherd lay down upon the grave about noon and went to sleep. Bvit as he slept he was moved to sing verses of Orpheus's in a strong sweet voice. So the herdsmen and ploughmen in the neighbourhood left e^'ery man his work and hastened to listen to the song of the sleeping shepherd, and with their jostling to get near the shepherd, they overturned the pillar and the \n'n that was on it. Whether this story is true or not matters not for my purpose, but it demonstrates that the Greeks believed that the anima of the dead was in his grave and could enter into one who lay upon it.'* But what holds true of graves of earth and stone, holds no less true for trees. In parts of Ire-land no one will use for firewood, even in places and seasons when fuel is very scarce, a tree which has grown in a churchyard. I know of a case where such a tree lay luitouched for se\'enteen years. Again, in another part of Ireland there stood 1 Pans. V. 13. 3 ; 24. 3. - Facsimile, 199b, 200 o, cited by Rev. T. Olden, D.U., Tlie Church of Ireland, \^. 5. ■' As the mistletoe is not indigenous in Ireland, the sanctity of Irish oaks was not due to the growth of this parasite upon them. '' Pans. ix. 30. 9-10. INTRODUCTION 17 by the roadside at a dark and dangerous corner an asli tree on which ■were cut a rude cross and heart, and at the foot of whieli lay a small heap of stones continually added to by fresh pebbles cast on it by wayfarers. The reason was that one dark night a miller named Ryan had upset his heavily laden cart and was himself crushed against the tree. Hence it had become, if not sacred, at least sacer. If it can be shown that in other parts of the world trees have been and are still held sacred because they grew or grow on or near the remains of a dead man, or because some one has been done to death upon or near them, we maj^ arrive at a very different solution from that of Sir James Frazer and his school respecting the strange rite at Nemi. But ancient Greece and Rome again come to our aid. Every one knows the storj' in Virgil's Aeneid in which he relates how Aeneas and his followers landed on the coast of Thrace and proceeded to kindle a fire ; how to their horror the bushes plucked from a mound oozed with blood ; how the hero himself on going near found that it was the barrow of young Polydorus, Priam's youngest son, mur- dered by the Thracian king Polymnestor, and how the lad's ghost spoke to him from out a tree. Again, when Hyrnetho, the daughter of Temenus, king of Argos, and wife of Diphontes, died, her husband took up her dead body and brought it to the spot which was after- wards called Hyrnethium, and they made a shrine for her and bestowed honours upon her. In particular a rule was made that of the olives and all the trees that grew there no man might take home with him broken boughs or use them for any purpose whatever, but they leave the branches where they lie because they are sacred to Hyrnetho.^ Again, in the front of the king's palace at Benin '" stood awful juju trees on and near which hmnan sacrifices were continually made. These were not to strengthen the spirit of a supreme god who dwelt in the trees, but they were to appease the spirits of the king's ances- tors who lay buried there, and who had to be propitiated with constant draughts of human blood. Let us now return to Nemi and the golden bough, which Aeneas ])lueked to protect him as he fared to the abode of souls, a legend which seems to point to some connexion between the sacred oak and the dead. Moreover, the oak had the right of sanctuary, for the runaway slave who succeeded in grasping a branch of it could not be summarily dispatched, but might challenge the priest to mortal combat. Elsewhere the present writer has shown •' that in Greece as well as in other countries sanctuaries and asjdums arose, and still 1 Paus. ii. 23. 3. ^ H. L. Roth, Greid Bcinn, pp. 173-5 ; cf. pp. 181, 187. 3 Origin of Tragedy, pp. 138 sqq. ; pp. 174 sqq. C 18 THE ORIGIN OF TRAGEDY arise, round graves from fear of tlie anger of the mighty dead within. If the suppliant can reach the tomb or sacred spot wherein the soul of the dead hero or dead eliief is sujiposed to dwell, he remains in safety until he he tried or otherwise disposed of. Now as such sanc- tuaries, e.g. that at Taenaruni in Laconia, were largely resorted to by runaway slaves, and as each claimant for the Nemi kingship was such a fugitive, there seems a prima facie case for inquiring whether this oak was regarded as the residence, not of the supreme god of the Aryans, but of some disembodied human soul. Now as in this grove there was worshipped a personage who bore the name of Egeria, that of the great local family who had there set up the cult of Diana, may not this oak have been held sacred and have had human blood shed beneath it from time to time, because it grew on or near the graves of the Egerii, and was thus thought to be the abode of some departed spirit of that house ? In our inA-estigations, which of course will be mainly concerned with Tragedy, we shall be obliged to test Sir James Frazer's hypothesis here given and also his doctrine of Totemism, because the latest theory of the origin of Tragedy is based on his doctrine that Vegeta- tion spirits and Totem animals are jirimarj^ phenomena and stand rigidly apart from any belief in the existence of souls after the death of the body. A further fundamental principle of his Vegetation spirit doctrine is the assmnption that Dionysus, Demeter, Osiris, Adonis, and Attis and such-like personages had never been human individuals, but always Vine, Corn, and other Vegetation abstractions. Finally Sir James Frazer makes dramatic performances arise in the dramatization of the seasons by primitive men. ' The spectacle of the great changes ', writes hc,-"^ ' which annually pass over the face of tht' earth, has powerfully impressed the minds of men in all ages, and stirred them to meditate on causes of changes so vast and wonderful. Their curiosity has not been purclj^ disinterested, for even the savage cannot fail to see perfectly how intimately his own life is bound up with tlie life of nature, and how the same processes which freeze the stream, and striji the earth of vegetation, menace him with extinc- tion. At a certain stage of development men seem to have imagined that the means of a^'crting the threatened calamity were in tluir own hands, and they could help or hasten or retard the flight of the seasons by magic art. Aceordinglj^ they performed ceremonies and recited spells to make the rain fall, the sun to shine, animals to multiply, and the fruits of the earth to grow. In the course of time the slow advance of knowledge, which has dispelled so many cherished 1 Ailoiiis, Atlis, Osiris (ed. 3, 191-1-), vol. i, pp. 3 sqq. IXTUODUCTIOX 19 illusions, convinced at least the more thoughtful portion of mankind that the alternation of summer and winter, of spring and autumn, were not merely the result of tlu'ir own magical rites, Ijut that some- deeper cause, some mightier power, was at work behind the shifting scenes of nature. They now pictured to themselves the growth and decay of vegetation, the birth and death of living creatures as effects of the waxing or waning strength of divine beings, of gods and god- desses, who were born and died, who married and begot children, on the pattern of human life. ' Thus the old magical theory of the seasons was displaced, or rather supplemented, by a religious theory. For although men now attri- buted the annual cycle of change primarily to corresponding changes in their deities, they still thought that by performing certain magical rites, they could aid the god who was the principle of life in his struggle with the opposing principle of death. They imagined that they could recruit his failing energies and even raise him from the dead. The ceremonies which they observed for this purpose were in substance a dramatic representation of the natural processes which they wished to facilitate ; for it is a familiar tenet of magic that you can produce any desired effect by merely imitating it. And as they now explained the fluctuations of growth and decay, of reproduction and dissolution, by the marriage, the death and the rebirth or revival of the gods, their religious or rather magical dramas tm-n in great measure on these themes. Thej^ set forth the fruitful union of the powers of fertility, the sad death of at least one of the divine partners, and his joyful resurrection. Thus a religious theory was blended with a magical practice.' On these assumptions, IMiss Harrison, Mr. F. M. Cornford, and Professor G. G. Murray have based the latest theory of the origin of Tragedy. It may at once be said that Sir James Frazer has not been able to make good his propositions, that magic is a stage prior to. religion, that men-bf gan to dramatize natural phenomena, and to set forth the fruitful union of the powers of fertility, and the sad death of at least one of the partners and his joyful resurrection before they had long been dramatizing human life, for in the course of this investigation it will be shown that religion is as early as magic and that the drama- tizations of such as those just cited, only make their appearance at a relatively late period, and long after dramas based on human life and its sorrows have been in vogue for generations. Dr. Farnell's Theory of Attic Tragedy. As Dr. L. R. Farnell has propounded a theory of t\v: origin of Attic Tragedy based on the c 2 20 THE ORIGIN OF TRAGEDY sim]ilc assumption that seasonal dramatic performances are primitive and antecedent to ilramas Ijased on liunian life, it will be best to dis- pose of his arguments before we proceed to deal with the other theory which depends both on the assumjrtion of primitive seasonal dramas and also on Sir James Frazer's other assumjjtion that Dionysus, Demeter, Osiris. Adonis, and Attis, and like personages were Vine, Corn, and other kinds of Vegetation spirits and never human beings. Dr. Farnell ^ holds that Attic Tragedy arose out of ' a European winter nuimmery ', for the following reasons which I have refuted elsewhere at length." (1) He depends on the epithet Melanaegis (of the black goatskin) applied to Dionysus of Eleutherae. a village on the borders of Roeotia and Attica, whose obscene cult was brought to Athens by one Pegasus of Eleutherae. Rut I have shown that Dionysus had no monopoly eitlur of goatskin dresses in general or of black goatskins in particular, since the Eumenides are described by Aeschylus as wearing like garments. (2) Again, he relies on the story of a single c'ombat l^etwcen Melanthus on behalf of the Athenians and Xanthus the Roeotian champion, in which Melanthus by the aid of Dionysus of the Rlack Goatskin slew Xanthus. In this Dr. Farnell sees a struggle between Rlack man (Melanthus), Winter, and Fair man (Xanthus). Summer, and he thinks that this is supported bv a fact pointed out by Dr. Usener that there was a ^Macedonian festival called Xandika, but the evidence from the story of Melanthus and Xanthus is just as unsubstantial as the phantom seen by the former, for it is easy to turn any tale, ancient or modern, into a nature m\th ; there is every reason for belie\ing the substantial accuracy of the non- miraculous ]jart of the story. (3) He also relies on a mumming play of modern Thrace in which tlie performers wear goatskins, but he omits to mention that the performers also wear foxskins and deer- skins, so that no special significance can be assigned to the goatskins. (4) He lays great stress on the story of the Minyan Psoloeis (' Sooty ") of Orehomenus, but this is still more futile than his other nasons, ibr this name was neither ap[)lied to the child Hippasus who was slain by his mother Leuci])pe and her sisters, nor yet to the women of that family. All Plutarch states in the passage to which Dr. Far- nell refers is that the name Aeoleiue was still a})plied to the women of the house of Minyas, but he makes no such assertion about the ap]ilication of the term Psoloeis to the males of that race. Dr. Far- nell's argument depends upon the assumption that in each ease we 1 .Jour. IJell. Slitd., vol. xxix (1909), p. xlvii ; Tin' Ct(//.v of the Greek Slates, vol. V, p. 2'.','), note A. ''■ Origin iif 7'ragedif (1910), pp. 73 .S'jiy INTRODUCTION 21 h;n-c Black man killing Fair man. But the Psolocis, ' the Sooty ones ". did not kill cither the boy Hippasus, nor the Aeolciae, in historical times, nor were they themselves killed. Aceordinfrly they cannot be equated cither with Melanaegis or Melanthus or the ' goat- men ". who kill a goat-man in the Thraeian mummery, nor is there any trace of any connexion between the Psolocis and the goat. Finally, Dr. Farncll ignores the fact that in historical times the human ^■ietim at the Agrionia was not a boy, but one of the women of the house of :Minyas, but the latter cannot be identified with a boy representing a slain young god. But Dr. Farneirs theory breaks down not only in details but in principle. Sir James Frazer and others have at least some grounds for the ^•iew that primitive men try to strengthen the Vegetation or Seasonal spirits or other natural phenomena by rude dramatizations, such as the lighting of bonfires on Midsummer Eve to keep the Sun's heat from failing, and of the Yule log at Midwinter to help him to regain his warmth. But surch^ no primitive man ever went through a series of magical dramatizations in order to strengthen Winter (Black man) to kill Summer (Fair man). Dr. A. B. Keith, who, as we shall sec, also under the inspiration of Sir James Frazer, finds the origin of the Hindu drama in the slaying of the dark Koravas by the fair Panda\'as. at least escapes Dr. Farnell's fantastic assump- tion. But Dr. Keith omits the verj' important point that in the Hindu story the fair Pandavas were led to \'ietory over the dark Koravas by Krishna ' the Black \ a fact in itself fatal to his theory. The truth is that Dr. Farnell and Dr. Keith would have found a less irrational basis for their respective theories in that scene of Punch and Judy (Fig. 2) in which the fair-eomplexioned Punch kills the Negro doctor. In this ancient puppet play thejr have, at least, a genuine case of a fair man killing a black man, and that too without anj' aid from another black man. (Cf. pp. 157 sqq.) The Sacred Drama of Eleusis. In the ordinary scholar the name of Eleusis awakes no thoughts of the struggles of athletes and of panting steeds, but of the mystic rites of Demeter and Persephone, and of the annual performances of sacred dramas. Yet for Pindar and his contemporaries the Eleusinia meant notable contests worthy to be ranked with the other chief games of Hellas, a fact which indicates that in early times the most important part of the festival was not the celebration of mysteries. But from Mannhardt down- wards all writers on Greek religion have fixed their attention mainly on the latter element and have assumed that Demeter was the Corn spirit, and her daughter Persephone the young blade of wheat. 22 THE ORIGIN OF TRAGEDY Elciisis has thcrci'ore become a chief corner-stone of the Vegetation spirit theory, and from tlic seed sown by Mannhardt in the rich srjil of Eleusis has spnnig a goodly crop of tares. For example, Mr. ,J. C. Lawson has assumed -"^ that the Eleusinian rites were a great Spring Vegetation ceremony continued in the Christian Easter, quite regard- less of the fact that the festival fell about the autumnal equinox, and that the Greeks themselves regarded it as a harvest thanksgiving when the tithes from the corn were offered to the deities and heroes. As we haA'e seen above (p. 19), Sir James Frazer cites as typical examples of his supposed primitive dramatization of natural pro- cesses 'the union of the powers of fertility', and Eleusis has been taken as the best example in Greece of such dramatic performances. Moreover the latest theories of the origin of Tragedy rest mainlj' on the supposed antiquity of the sacred dramas there, in •s\-hich was enacted the marriage of Zeus and Demeter. 'At Athens,' writes Sir James Frazer," ' and probablj' elsewhere, the \ine-god was married to a cpiecn in order that the vines might be loaded with clusters of grapes. There is reason to think that a marriage of a different kind intended to make the fields wave with yellow corn was annually celebrated not many miles off beyond the hnv hills that bound the plain of Athens on the west." In the great Mysteries solemnized at Eleusis in the month of September the union of the sky-god Zeus with the corn-goddess Demeter appears to have been represented by the luiion of the hierophant with the priestess of Demeter, Avho acted the parts of god and goddess. But their intercourse was only dramatic or symbolical. Sir James Frazer adds that he followed the interpreta- tion of the evidence of M. P. Foucart and Miss J. E. Flarrison." The former,'' however, regards Demeter as simply the Egyptian Isis and argues against Sir .lames Frazcr's vegetation theory. The latter states her case in her section on ' The sacred marriage, and the sacred birth at Eleusis ' : ' lacchus, as we have seen, was defined as the child Dionysus at the breast,' but for any ceremony of his birth or awakening under the name of lacchus we look in vain. laechus is Athenian. No one ventured to say that he was born at Eleusis, but by a most fortunate chance the record is left us of another mother and son at Eleusis, and we know too that the marriage of this mother and the birth of this son were the central acts, the ciilmination ' Modern Greek Folklore and AiieienI Greek Eeligioii, pj). .572 sqq. - The Golden Bough (ed. 2), 1900, vol. ii, p. i;!8. ■' Prolegomena to Greek Ueligion (1003), pp. 54!)-30. ' Les Mijfiteres d'jileusis (cd. 2), 1914, pp. 181 sqg. INTRODUCTION 23 of the whole ritual of the Mysteries. We owe this kiiowlcdf^e to the anonyinous treatise which has already furnished tl\e important HBI iifPWi ' r Fig. 2. Punch kills the Black Doctor. A drama of Summer killing Winter! details as to the Mysteries of Phlya.'^ The author of the Philosojjhou- mena is concerned to prove that the heretical sect of the Naassenes got their doctrine from the ceremonials practised by the Phrygians. 1 Cruiee's Edition (Paris, 1800), p. IGO. I 24. THE ORIGIN OF TRAGEDY The Phrygians, the Naasscne says, assert that god is ' a fresh ear of grain reajjed '. He then goes on to make a statement of supreme importanee, and ' following the Phrygians, the Athenians when they initiate, at the Eleusinian rites, exhibit to the Epoptae the mighty and marvellous and most complete Epoi^tic mystery, an ear of grain reaped in silence. And this ear of grain the Athenians themselves hold to be the great and perfect light tliat is from that which has no form, as the hicrophant himself, who is not like Attis, but who is made a eunuch by means of hemlock and has renounced all carnal generation, he by night at Eleusis, accomplishing by the light of a great flame the great and unutterable mysteries, says and cries with a loud voice, "Holy Brimo has Ijorne a sacred Child, Brimos," that is, the mighty has borne the mighty ; and holy, he (i.e. the Xaassene) says, is the generation that is spiritual, that is heavenly, that is from above, and mighty is he so engendered.' ' The evidence of the writer ', says Miss Harrison, ' is indefeasible as regards the rites themselves.' But whilst it is ' indefeasible ' for the rites as practised in his day, it by no means follows that it is of any value for the rites of Eleusis as practised in the sixth century before Christ, as assumed by Miss Harrison, Sir James Frazer, and the rest. It might as well be postulated that the doctrine of Papal Infallibility, which was onh' formulated in the latter half of the nineteenth century, was one of the doctrines of the early Church. To put it briefly, the whole theory of the sacred marriage between the Sky-god and the Earth-goddess at Eleusis depends entirely upon writers who all lived after the Christian era, and who described with accuracy the performances at Eleusis in their own time. The Philosophownena itself, on which Miss Harrison mainly relics, was not written earlier than the second century after Christ, whilst Hippolytus, Tertnllian, Arnobius, Asterius, and Pscllus are all se^'eral centuries later. An examination of the very full data which we possess respecting the sanctuary and cults of Eleusis will demonstrate that Zeus had no part whatsoever in its worship before the Christian era, that Dionysus-Zagreus was unknown there until the fourth ccnttirj^ before Christ, and that the only Father god recognized in the sacred precinct in the centuries immediately before Christ was Poseidon. Thus the whole superstructure raised upon the unwarrantable posttdate that what the Christian writers described as the practice and doctrines of Eleusis in their own days were primaeval at that hallowed s])ot, must tundjle to the ground.'" 1 W. HidKCwuy, ' Origin of Grout Games ot Greece ', Jour. Hell. Stud., vol. xxxi (I'Jll), p. xlix. INTRODUCTION 25 The Homeric Hymn to Demeter is our oldest document and dates from the scventli ecntm-y B.C. The main features are as foUows. Phito carried off Persephone from the Mysian pkiin (not, as in the later version, from Enna in Sicily). Hw mother heard her shriek as it rang through the hills and over the seas. For nine days she roamed in vain search for her child. On the tenth Hecate met her with torches and asked her of her grief. The Mother made no answer, but sped forth with Hecate with lighted torches and went to the all-seeing Sun, who told her that Zeus had given her daughter to Pluto. Demeter left Olympus and went to the haunts of men, her form disguised, and no man or woman beheld her until she came to the well-built town of sage Celeus, then chieftain of fragrant Eleusis. Sad at heart she sat by the wayside close to the Virgins' Well, whence the folk of Eleusis drew water. There sat she in the shade of an olive like to an ancient dame long past the season of child- bearing, such as nurse the children and keep the houses of kings. Then came the daughters of Celeus, son of Eleusis, to draw water. -"^ The maidens, four in number, asked who she was, and whence she came. She answered that her name was Dos, and pirates had led her over the sea to Thoricus, in Attica, where the slave-women were landed and made ready supper hard by the ship. Thence she had fled from her master and fared to this place. She begged them to take her to some house, to do work meet for an aged woman. ' I could deftly handle a babe, take care of the house, and spread the bed of my master in the nook of the well-built dwelling, and manage the work of women.' Then Callidice told her the names of the chief men of the place — Triptolemus shrewd in counsel. Diodes, Polj'xeinus and blameless Eumolpus, and Celeus our noble sire. The maids said they would ask their mother to take the old dame as a nurse for their infant brother Demophon, the only son of the house. They told their mother, who straightwajr bade them fetch the aged dame and promised her a guerdon as nurse. The maidens sped with the tidings and guided the stranger home, clad in a sable robe and with her head all veiled. She refused at first to sit down, until lambe with her rude jests made her smile. Then Metaneira offered her wine, but she refused it and asked for a posset of barley and water and mint. She became the nurse of Demophon, who was the sole joy of her heart, and she resolved to make him immortal by plunging him each night into the embers, until one night Metaneira caught her in the act. In motherly anger she assailed the nurse. Demeter re\-ealed herself in awful majesty and declared that she 1 105 sqq. 2(5 THE ORIGIN OF TRAGEDY would have made tlie eliild immortal had it not been for his mother's folly. ' But this cannot be, so when Demophon grows to man's estate, the Elcusinians shall all day long be engaged in strife. I am revered Demeter. Let the folk build for me a great temple {naos) and beneath it an altar below the town and the lofty wall above the well Callichoron and on the jutting hill I will teach you mjr rites that hereafter you ma}^ duly perform them and assuage my anger.' Then she strode forth from the palace. On the morrow Celeus told all to the folk and bade them foimd a shrine upon the jutting hill, and they hearkened to his behest. But Demeter kept apart from the gods ; that year was grievous for men. In ^-ain the oxen drew the plough, for the sown barley had no yield. Then Zeus sent Iris to Demeter to her shrine at Eleusis, and god after god was sent by the Father, but all in vain. ' Xe\'er ', said she, ' will I mount to Olympus and let forth the fruit of the earth, until I behold the fair face of my child.' Then Zeus sent Hermes down to Ereljus to fetch Persephone up, who ever grieved for her mother. Pluto obeyed the behest, and Persephone leaped forth in jo}% but Pluto had already given her the seed of a pomegranate so she could not always remain -with Demeter. Hermes then bore her back to Eleusis. Like a Maenad on the wild mountain-side Demeter sprang to her daughter. The great goddess's wrath was appeased, and Zeus ordained that Persephone should spend two parts of each year with her mother and one part with Pluto. Demeter went back to the Rharian plain at Eleusis, then lying all barren because of her wrath. The barley had not shot up, but soon the ploughlands bristled, and the whole earth brought forth in plenty. She went to the kings that bring forth dooms, Tri])tolemus and horse-goading Diocles, the mighty Eumolpus. and Celeus, leader of folk, and taught them her sacred rites. They ordained a holy rite for all, her holy rite which none must neglect or di\'ulge, for dread awe of the gods restraineth utterance. Blest is he who hath beheld them, for even in death doth differ the hap of him wlio hath been admitted and of him that hath not. Let us now put together all the references in this Hymn which may be regarded as having in them some element of historical truth, and then we sliall cheek them off by the material remains found on the site and the evidence of the classical jjcriod. The statements fall into three classes — the tojjography of Eleusis, its local history, and its ritual. (1) Demeter sits by a well some little distance from the town ; (2) there is a fortress on a hill, (3) on a spur of which the sanctuary of Demeter is set up, higher than (i) the well Callichoron ; (5) hard INTRODUCTION 27 by is the Rharian plain covered with rich crops ol' barley ; (C) when Callidice tells Demeter that Triptolemus, Dioclcs, Polyxeiiius, Eumolpus, Dohchus, and Celeus are the leading men of the place, Triptolemus comes first iu the enumeration and he holds the same position in the other two lists of the chieftains. (7) Finally it appears that orgia were instituted, with a secret ritual. Although logically we ought to deal first with the topography, it is more suitable to treat first the legendary history, since it is that which gives its importance to the place. Three names stand out in this history — Triptolemus, Celeus, and Eumolpus — in the earliest and the latest times, and the two great families who controlled the cults in the historical period and held the two great offices of torchbearer (daduclms) and hierophant traced their lineage from these three heroes. (1) Triptolemus. The Hymn does not mention the pedigree of Triptolemus, but the later legends make him the son of Celeus, or else make him and his brother Eubulus the sons of an Argive priest who brought with him the rites to Eleusis and there married a native woman. An Orphic hymn says that the brothers were sons of Dysaules, and that Demeter taught them the use of corn as a reward for information about her daughter. Some verses ascribed to Musaeus declare Triptolemus to be the son of Oecanus and Gaea, whilst the story in the Alope of Choerilus made Triptolemus and Cercyon sons of a daughter of Amphictyon the Attic king, the father of Triptolemus being Rharus, that of Cercyon Poseidon. ^Manifold as are these legends, they all agree in making Triptolemus an abori- ginal chief of Eleusis, whilst one of them makes him a son of Celeus, whose family is so prominent in the Homeric Hymn ; the descendants of Triptolemus were the priests of the place in classical times. Finally Zeus never appears in the pedigree, though Poseidon does. Demeter is said to have taught Triptolemus to make a plough, till the soil, and sow corn. Tradition made the Rharian plain the first experimental farm, whilst in classical times not only were the cakes used in the rites at Eleusis made from the barley grown thereon, but some barley from that same spot was the prize for the ^'ictor in the Elcusinian games. Yet it is essential to note that the Homeric Hymn says not a word about the bestowal of the art of agriculture on Triptolemus by Demeter. On the contrary, as we have seen, that poem represents the Rharian plain as covered with a rich crop of barley when Demeter came to Eleusis. Moreover Metaneira supplied her with barley water to drink ; in other words, barley meal mixed with water, the universal food of the Greeks in the Homeric age, 28 THE ORIGIN OF TRAGEDY ' barley meal, the marrow of men '. Thus Triptolcmus had already a leading position at Eleusis long before the legends which represent him as taught by Demeter had ever arisen. The Hymn makes Demeter impart to him and Eumolpus eertain rites, but not the gift of eorn. Tlic Ili/inii therefore celebrates not the birth of agricul- ture, but the introduction of mystic rites into Eleusis, and represents their introduction as long posterior to the art of the sowing of corn and the invention of the plough and the wagon, which in all the later legends are bound up with Triptolcmus. But as the Hymn represents Triptolemus as the most important personality connected with the spot, we may not unreasonably infer that there was some very ancient cult connected with the name of Triptolemus, who was held in grateful memorj^ by his people for having brought to them the gift of eorn long before the orgiastic rites were introduced from Thrace by Eumolpus. One fact comes out clearly, the close connexion of the cult of Tri])tolemus with that of Demeter from first to last. (2) Eumolpus. If Triptolemus Avas an autochthon, all traditions agree in representing Eumolpus as a Thracian settler, though he is variously described as a warrior who came with a band, or as a priest who brought mystic rites, or again as a bard. By one account he arrived when Eleusis was at war with Athens. The prevalent tradi- tion was that in the war, which was certainly a historical fact, Eumolpus was the Eleusinian captain. Two of his sons fell in the battle. Peace was concluded on the terms that the Eleusinians should perform the mysteries by themselves, but were in all other respects to be subject to Athens. These sacred rites were celebrated by Eumolpus and the daughters of Celeus. These later statements support the Homeric Hymn and show that from the first the local families had a great share in the rites. Triptolemus and Celeus are regarded as no longer alive, for in none of the versions do they take part in the war, the command of which falls to Eumolpus, which indicates that a foreign family had come in and by some great service had become more powerful than the old native family, and this new element had brought in new rites of its own. This is confirmed by the priestly offices and the families which held them in classical times. The chief priest or hierophant was always a Eumolpid. He was vowed to chastity and was usually an elderly man. The family held the office until it became extinct about A. D. 380. The second priest was the Daduchus or Torehbearer, and he was always from the family of Triptolenms,^ vuitil it became ' Xcn. IIcll. vi. 3. 3. IXTUODUCTION 29 extinct in the first ]iart til' the fcnirth century a. c. At that time the Lyeomidae. to which Tlicmistocles belonged, and who had at Phlya a family worship of Demeter, obtained the olfiee. The third priest was the Keryx, chosen from the family of Ceryces, who by one story were descended from Ceryx, the younger sou of Eumolpus, but by their own account were from Hermes and Aglaurus, daugliter of Ceerops, the old Athenian king. There was a fourth priest called Epibomius, but no family had a monopoly of this office. There were se^'eral other minor officials, with wdiom we are not here concerned. The e^'idcnce dra-\vn from the great offices lead to the conclusion that from a remote antiquity the Eleusinian ceremonies comprised at least two sets of family cults, the one native, that of the family of Triptolemus, the other foreign, that of Thracian Eumolpus. In the fourth century b. c, when the Lyeomidae succeeded to the office of Torchbcarer on the extinction of the Triptolemidae, they probably brought from Phlya their own family cult of Demeter, which was possibly Orphic. From the very important part played by the Triptolemidae in the political as well as in the religious life of Athens down to their extinc- tion, we may fairh^ infer that the oldest element in the ceremonies was that which belonged to them, though their religious importance had been overshadowed bA' the descendants of Eumolpus, who had almost certainly brought in new rites. The Sacred Precinct at Eleusis. Pausanias ^ saw a tomb which both Athenians and Elcusinians agreed was that of Eumolpus, and he states that there is a temple of Triptolemus, and another of Artemis Propylaea and of Father Poseidon, and a well called Callichoron, where the Eleusinian women first danced and sang in honour of the goddess. They say that the Rharian plain was the first to be sown and the first to bear crops, and therefore it is the custom to take the sacrificial barley and make cakes for the sacrifices out of its produce. Here is shown what is called the threshing-floor of Triptolemus and the altar. There is also a well called the flowery, where the daughters of Celeus first found Demeter sitting, and which therefore may be identified with the Virgins' Well of the Hymn. Though Pausanias makes no mention of either a theatre or a racecourse outside the precinct, yet we know from inscriptions that both existed, and that the stadium, in which doubtless were held the races {Spofioi crraSiaKOL, also mentioned in inscriptions), lay close to the theatre. To these games we shall presently return. Excavations have revealed outside ' i. 88. 2. 30 THE ORIGIN OF TRAGEDY the precinct a l)eehi\'c tomb, almost certainly the resting-place of one of the chieftain families, who were already there in the latter part of the Bronze Age. Inside the precinct there was found a grave with pottery of the so-called Mycenaean (Bronze Age) style, rude terra-cotta figures like those from Tirj'ns, Mycenae, and the Argi\e Heraeimi, and also two gold plaques with Mj'cenaean decoration. The statuettes here found ha^'c been assumed by M. Foueart without sufficient evidence to be representations of Isis. There can be no doubt this precinct was the residence, burial-place, and famil}' shrine of the chieftain family descended from Celeus and Triptolemus. The old temple {7iaos) was burned by the Persians (480-479 B.C.). The new building was the work of Ictinus, the architect of the Parthe- non. Close to the steps leading to the Great Propylaea built in Roman times was found an ancient well, with great probability identified as the Callichoron of Pausanias. Inside is the Small Propylaea, built on the site of a large tower. In front of this stood from the second century before Christ the tem])le of Artemis Propy- laea and Father Poseidon. From the inside of this small portal a paved way led to the Telesterion, the Hall of Initiation, built in Roman times. On the west of this path lie the remains of a shrine of Pluto and Persephone, which cannot be earlier than the fifth century B.C., though much older remains have been found and also two ^"oti'^•e reliefs, one of wliich was dedicated liy a priest of Pluto, Perse- phone and Eubulus, brother of Triptolemus. The Telesterion was a N'ast hall sup].)orted by rows of columns with tiers of steps all round, (jn which the Initiated sat to watch the sacred performances. The e.\ca\-ations show that foiu- .smaller edifices all stood on the same site, two of the walls belonging to the archaic temple of the Homeric Hym n. Now although the Hymn refers to a naos of Demeter, and though Pausanias saw a temple of Triptolemus, not a trace of any such separate temples has been discovered. Herodotus termed the principal building Anaktoron (King's House) ; Strabo indeed speaks of the sanctuary [Itieron) of Demeter and the enclosure {sckos) of the Mystae, but this docs not imply any separate temple of the goddess, but only a sacred precinct. As there are the remains of no less than five buildings on the site of the Telesterion, it follows that that spot seems to have always had on it the one and principal edifice, and accordingly it appears that Anaktoron, Megaron, and Telesterion were all names for the same building, or rather for the building which for the time being stood on the site of the ' King's House '. The INTRODUCTION 31 absence of separate temples for Demeter and Triptolemus can now be explained. The literary and monumental c\'idcnce leads us to the following propositions : (1) There was a building termed the 7iaos of Demeter which contained an altar to that goddess when the Homeric Hymn was written ; (2) the Persians burned down the Anaktoron at Eleusis, but we are not told that this was specially the shrine of the goddess ; (3) it is hard to dissociate ihis Anaktoron from the Naos of the Homeric Hymn : (4) Pausanias makes no mention of any naos of Demeter, nor does any other ^viiter or any inscription yet discovered point to any such building in the classical period ; (5) the Telesterion, called also the Megaron and the Anaktoron, must be regarded as the only edifice actually devoted to the service of Demeter and Perse- phone ; (6) that of later times was built on the same site as the Anaktoron burned by the Persians ; (7) the chief naos mentioned by Pausanias he ascribes to Triptolenuis, but of this not a trace has been found either inside or outside the precinct ; (8) there is one solution for this problem, first proposed by the present writer,^ it is that the Naos or Megaron, or Anaktoron or Telesterion, was the joint pro- perty of Demeter and Triptolemus. This is exactly analogous to the oldest temple at Athens, which in the Iliad is termed the Naos of Athena, in which she set the hero Erechtheus, ' whom the youths of the Athenians propitiated with bulls and rams,' whilst in the Odyssey the same building is termed ' the strong house of Erechtheus ', i. e. the fortress of the Acropolis, to which Athena returned after her visit to Scheria. As has been shown by Sir James Frazer, in inscrip- tions this famous shrine, the oldest at Athens, is regularly termed ' the temple i^neos) of the Polias ', ' the old temple of the Polias ', ' the old temi^le of Athena ', or ' the old temple of Athena Polias ', whilst in the literature from the time of Demosthenes and in Pausanias it is styled the Erechtheum, ' the house or the shrine of Erechtheus.' In its east end Athena was worshipped, in its west stood a common altar of Erechtheus and Poseidon, the ancestor of the royal house of Athens. As at Eleusis there is the ancient fortress, the grave of its ancient lord within the precinct, and a beehive tomb without, so beside the Erechtheum was the tomb of Cecrops, whilst within the temple itself may have been the grave of Erechtheus. As the cult of Athena Pohas first began in the palace of the Athenian chieftain, on the Acropolis, where his descendants the Eteobutadae continued to be the priests of Erechtheus and Poseidon and the priestesses of Athena to the last, so at Eleusis in the Homeric Hymn Triptolemus 1 Journal of Ilelknic Studies, vol. xxxi (1!)1T), p. xlix. 32 THE ORIGIN OF TRAGEDY is represented in conjunction with Eumolpus as setting up the worship of Demeter. But we may have no doubt that the descen- dants of Triptolemus as long as they survived acted also as the priests of that hero, since an inscription presently to be cited (p. 35) will show that sacrifices were made to both Triptolemus and his brother Eubulus, whilst a later inscription (329-328 b. c.) proves that Eubulus shared a priest with Pluto and Persephone. The grave found within the sacred precinct with its Bronze Age offerings points clearly to an ancient cult of the dead. We may therefore conclude wth high probability that at Eleusis, from the Bronze Age downwards, there was the worship of a local hero or heroes, whose Anaktoron (King's house) under various names became the temple of later times, and whose remains may have lain in the grave inside the precinct, whilst it is not unlikely that the beehive tomb outside the precinct was the grave which both Athenians and Eleusinians agreed was that of Eumolpus. It is improbable that by the time of Pausanias the beehive tomb had been covered up, and it was probably this remarkable sepulchre which was pointed out to him as that of the Thracian settler. The well-ascertained facts that the great extension of the Telesterion and the building of the great portals took place in Roman times point unequivocally to the con- clusion that the development of the Mysteries on a large scale did not take place earlier than the fifth century b. c, and probably very much later. If it should turn out that certain features in the long series of ceremonies point clearly in the same direction, it may ultimately be made probable that the great festival of Eleusis originated, like those of Olympia, Deljihi, Ncmea, and the Isthmus, in some local cult of the dead. Let us now return to Demeter, the supposed Corn spirit. The Ilijmn, however, nowhere states that she was the first to give corn to Eleusis or to the rest of the world. Moreover, the ' sacred threshing-floor ' at Eleusis mentioned both b}' Pausanias and in an inscription is termed not the threshing-floor of Demeter, as it ought to have been, Avere she from primitive times the Corn spirit, but the threshing-floor of Triptolemus, who is thus regarded as the patron saint of the local agriculturists, just as we shall find an historical king in Burma, and the local gods in China and Japan, who are well known to have been human personages, playing the same part in our day. If it can be shown that the worship of the dead was the oldest, or at least one of the oldest, parts of the rites at Eleusis, and, further- more, if we can find a place to which the Eleusinian rites had been INTRODUCTION 33 brought, and it should turn out that the cult of the dead was there a central feature, we shall ha.x'e gone far to jirove that the rites of Demeter were to propitiate the dead, and to seek their favour for the crops by offering them the firstfruits as is being done at this hour in numerous regions mider the sun. At Pheneus in Arcadia there was a sanctuary of Demeter surnamed Eleusinian, and they celebrated mysteries in her honour, alleging that rites similar to those of Eleusis were instituted in their land. ' Beside the altar in the sanctuary of the Eleusinian goddess is what is called the Petroma — two great stones fitted to each other. Every second year, when they are celebrating what they call the Greater Mysteries, they open these stones, and taking out of them certain writings, which bear on the Mysteries, they read in the hearing of the Initiated and put them back in their place the same night.^ On the weightiest matters the Pheneatians swear by the Petroma. There is a round top on it, which contains a mask of Demeter Cydarea. This mask the priest puts on his face at the Greater Mysteries and smites the underground folk {vwoy^OoinoL) with rods.' There can Ix' no doubt that these underground folk are the dead, and we shall find numerous facts to show that the wearing of such masks is a regular feature at this hour in ceremonies connected with the propitiation of the dead. But let us return to Eleusis itself and its ceremonials in the historical period. We have already pointed to the existence of the Bronze Age grave inside the precinct as evidence of a cult of the dead. Let us now survey concisely the various elements in the great festival as we know them in historical times. With the facts before us we shall then be in a better position to test the relative antiquity of the ^'arious parts. There were both the Lesser and the Greater Mysteries. The former were an outcome of the rites of Eleusis and were set up at Athens probably about 600-590 b. c, possibly on the advice of Epimenides. They were held at the end of February or the beginning of March, the actual day Ijcing uncertain. With them we have here nothing to do. The Greater Mysteries. As we are not here concerned with the preliminaries held at Athens and the procession from thence to Eleusis bearing the playthings of lacchus, both of which must be later than the planting of the Eleusinian cult at Athens some time after 600 B.C., we shall proceed at once to the ceremonies at Eleusis. (1) On the 20th of Boedromion about midnight the lacchic procession arrived. (2) Next morning swine were sacrificed to Demeter and offerings were also made to Hermes Enagonios (' presiding over '^ Paus. viii. 15. 1-2. t D 34 THE ORIGIN OF TRAGEDY frames '). the Charitcs, Artemis, and Triptolcmus. (3) The 22nd and 23rd were the days of the Mysteries and the ceremonies were held at night. The evening of the 22nd was probably tlie \a/xndSa>v 7)fxepa, ' the Day of the Torches,' symbolical of the search for Persephone by her mother, witii torches, as related in the Hymn, and which seems thus to have been the oldest dramatic element in the rites. This was apparently performed by and for the novices (Nartheko- jjlioroi), who made the sjanbolical quest crowned with myrtle, wearing fawn-skins, and carrying wands. It has been supposed that the drama of the quest for Persephone by her mother was presented in the great hall on this night, but it is not certain. (4) This was followed by the partaking of the sacred posset {kiikeon) of liarley meal and water flavoured '\^"ith mint in memory of the refreshing of Demeter after her long vain search when she came to Eleusis, as stated in the Hymn. (5) Then came the handling of the sacred objects by the faithful. These seem to ha^'e been exhibited by tlie Hiero- phantes (The Shower of Sacred Things), and in answer to his interro- gation the neophyte replied, ' I ha^\• fasted, I have drunk the ])0sset. I luiA-e taken from the chest, I have ]nit back into the basket and from the basket into the chest.' What these relics or objects were we are not told ; our only authority for this is Clement of Alexandria. The ceremonies on the 23rd seem to have been much the same. But they were especially given up to the Baccld, the more highly initiated, usually termed Epnptae. These probably also looked upon, or touched sacred symbols or relics, and to the priest's questions uttered the response, ' I have eaten from the tambourine. I ha^'e drunk from the cymbal, I ha\'e c'arried the kcrnos, I have passed within the veil.' There is a doubt whether this ritual belongs to the Great or Lesser J\Iysteries. but the facts point to the fornnr. According to Athenacus tlie Kernos Avas an earthenware vessel, having many little cups fastened within, in which were white poppies, wheat, barley, pulse, vetch, ochroi. lentils, and it was carried after the fashion of the Uknon (winnowing-fan). In another passage he gi\\-s a fuller list from Polemon, in which are included sage, beans, spelt, oats, a cake, hone)', oil, wine, milk, unwashed sheep's wool. There seems little doubt that we have here offerings of all sorts of firstfruits [TrayKapTTia). That firstfruits were offered at the Greater Mysterit's is put bevond all doubt by an Eleusinian inscription ^ found at Eleusis itself and dating from before the Piloponnesian War (431 B.C.) : ' Let the Ilierophantes and tlie Dadoticliox conmiand tliat at the mysteries 1 Dittcniicrocr, Sjillnge, Xo. i:',. INTRODUCTION 35 the Hellenes shall offer firstfruits {dnapy^aL) of the crops in accordance with ancestral usage. To those who do these things many blessings will come, both good and plenteous crops, whoever of them do not injure the Athenians nor the city of Athens nor the goddesses.' But this is not the only point on which this inscription is of the first importance. It also recites the personages to whom offerings are to be made out of the firstfruits : ' to each of the two goddesses a cow, three years old, with her horns gilded, a victim without blemish, each to Triptolemus, to the god and the goddess (i.e. Pluto and Persephone), to Eubulus (the brother of Triptolemus), and a cow with gilded horns to Athenaia.' Let us observe that there is not a word about Zeus, who according to the prevalent view was the consort of Demeter from the most primitive times at Eleusis and whose supposed union with her as performed in the centuries after Christ is assumed to have been the central part of the ritual from the remotest age. Yet surely, if the fertilitj^ of the earth depended upon her union with Zeus, it was not merely ungrateful, but very imprudent of the Priest of Eleusis to exclude deliberately the Sky-god from any share of the firstfruits in the production of which he is assumed to have been all-important. No wonder, then, that when the present writer pointed out this fatal defect in M. Foucart's and Miss Harrison's doctrine of the Sacred Marriage, with characteristic candour Sir James Frazer at once gave uj) the theory, and, in spite of my friend Mr. F. M. Cornford's efforts to bolster it u^d,-^ has omitted it from his third edition of the Golden Bough, though still adhering to his view that Demeter was the Corn sj^irit, a doctrine which, as we have seen, is contrary to the evidence of our oldest document, the Homeric Hymn. ^ Essays and Studies presented to William Ridgeway on his Sixtieth Birthday, 191.3, pp. 153-66 (' The anapxtii and the Eleusinian Mj'steries '). Mr. Cornford thinks that in tlie siroi mentioned in tlie inscription cited above, i.e. the cornpits for storing the tithe-corn, corresponding to our Old English ' titlie-barns ', lie has an analogy to the mundiis lately discovered at Rome by my brilliant friend Comm. Boni. He next identifies the well Callichoron at Eleusis as a siros, and thinks that the aparchai were ceremonially placed in this or at least the portion preserved for seed for the next year (of which there is no proof), where it lay from harvest to the Eleusinia, which he supposes (again without proof) to be a festival to inaugurate the sowing for the next year. The corn stored from harvest to the beginning of October, he thinks, was Persephone, and that the opening of the Siros was the Anodos or Coming-up of the goddess to the upper world. But as Pausanias compares the well Callichoron with the Flowery Well where the maidens drew water, he evidently regarded the Callichoron as a true well tor water, as has been also proved by its excavation. To store up the seed corn for the next year in a well of water would certainly have astounded Demeter and Triptolemus. D 2 36 THE ORIGIN OF TRAGEDY On the afternoon ot the hist day of the Mysteries ('23rd) was held a funetion of great significance, probably far older than the performances of the preceding days. This was termed the Plemochoai, and it was beyond donbt an offering to the dead, such as the Choai at the Anthesteria. Tlie plemocJwe was a small cuj) shajoed like an inverted top. Two of these were used, one filled with wine, the other with water, the contents of the one being thrown to the east, of the other to the west, whilst according to some the mystic words hue, kue ('make rain, conceive') were uttered, but of this there is no proof. This concluded the Mysteries proper, just as the more drastic method of bidding farewell to the dead by beating the ground with rods ended the Eleusinian rites at Pheneus. There is not a word about Zeus or Dionysus, either as Zagreus or lacchus. It therefore follows that not only had Zeus no cult there in the fifth century B.C., an inference confirmed by the fact that he had no separate cult or shrine there in the time of Pausanias (a. d. 180), and that although there was bj' that time a temple to a Father god, that building which seems to be not older than the second century B. c. was shared by Artemis Propylaea with Father Poseidon and not Father Zeus. It therefore follows that the cults of Zeus, lacchus, Zagreus, and Dionysus were not indigenous at Eleusis, but were later additions, like thost' of Artemis, Poseidon, and Flermes. all being introduced posterior to 350 b. c. Next let us examine further the ]3ersonages to whom offerings were made in tlie fifth century b. c. P'irst come the two goddesses, then next in order Triptolemus, then follow another divine pair, the god and the goddess, then Eubulus, brother of Triptolemus, and finally Athena herself. Her ])laee at the end is explained by her having been added to the ancient Eleusinian list after the conquest of Eleusis liy Athens and the sharing of the Mysteries between both communities. Two pairs of divine personages are now left, each pair being innne- diately followed bj' a hero, the two goddesses by Triptolemus, Pluto and Persephone by Eubulus. But we have seen that apart from the temple shared bj' Artemis and Poseidon there were ordy two build- ings used for cult purposes, the Anaktoron shared, if we are right, between the two goddesses and Triptolemus, and the small temple sliared between Pluto, Persejjhone, and Eubulus. But it may lie taken as a sound principle that when a hero or heroine is found sharing a temple or a festival with a great divinity, the tem]ile or festival has originally belonged to the hero or heroine, and tliat the cult of the greater personage has been superimposed u])on it, for no INTRODUCTION 3T one will plant tlu' cnlt of some minor hero or heroine upon that of a great deity. As the oldest name for the Telesterion seems to have- been the King's House {Anaktoron), we may infer that Demeter and Persephone were there later than Triptolemus, and similarly we may infer that in the small temple Eubulus was worshipped before Pluto and Persephone. Thus the oldest objects of cult in the sacred precinct were the native heroes. There is yet another remarkable fact presented by the list of person- ages. Neither Eumolpus nor any one of his family has any share in the firstfruits. This bears out all the traditions that Eimiolpus was a stranger from Thrace who came with certain orgia, that he played a leading part in the struggle with Athens, and that accordingly his famil)' got the chief power, as is proved by the fact that the chief priesthood, that of the Hierophantes, remained in his family far into the Christian era. This absence of an}^ eidt of Eumolpus harmonizes admirably with the view that the beehi-\'e tomb outside the 23recinct. which, if I am right, was that seen bj* Pausanias also out- side, was that which the Athenians and Eleusinians agreed in calling the tomb of Eumolpus. All these facts and inferences harmonize completely with our oldest document the Hymn, which represents Triptolcnuis and Celeus as the chief figures at Eleusis, and barley as already growing plentifully on the Rharian plain and in common use before Demeter came, and which represents her as bringing the certain orgia, Avhich she entrusted to Triptolemus and Eumolpus. Moreover, local tradition made the sacred threshing-floor belong to Triptolemus and not to the goddess. All these facts point clearly to there being two cults at Eleusis, the oldest that of the ancient chieftain family connected with the grave found in the precinct, the other the cult of Demeter, also connected with the dead brought in at a later time by Eumolpus from Thrace and superimposed on the family rites of the Triptolemidae, who continued to be the Torch- bearers down to their extinction. If it should now turn out that not only were the rites of Demeter connected closely with the worship of the dead, and that Trij^tolcmus and his brother Eubulus had a share of the firstfruits, and that accordingly there was also a second cult of the dead, but that the funerary ceremonies which ended the Mysteries proper were succeeded by a sham-fight and athletic con- tests, the cumulative evidence will go far to establish that the Eleusinian mysteries arose out of the cult of the dead, and not out of the Avorship of a Corn, Vine, or any other abstract Vegetation spirit, or of the Egyptian Isis. The Sham-Fight. On the next morning (24th) the Balletus probably 38 THE ORIGIN OF TRAGEDY took place.-' Tliis was a sort of sham-fight jjossibly enjoined by the Honieric Hymn," which resembled the Lithoholia ^ at the festival of Demia and Auxesis at Troezen. Lenormant saw in the word Balletus a dcriA-ative from the herb balls as a symbol of resurrection. But from what wc ha^'e seen already, the reader will hardly accept this fantastic suggestion, which has no basis in fact. The Games. On the morning of the 2ith and also in the after- noon were held the Eleusinian Games (dywve^ aTaSiaKoi), doubtless in the stadion. These were the contests celebrated by Pindar, and which tradition declared to be the oldest in Greece. They were still a famous race-meeting far down into Roman Imperial times. They were termed the Eleu.yi)iia, and they are described by a scholiast on Pindar as being held ' after the gathering of the fruits of Demeter and as a thank-offering to her '. The prize was a measure of barley from the Rharian plain. A. Mommsen long ago acutely remarked that the name Eleusinia, which in classical times included the whole festival, and especially came to connote the Mj'steries, was originally nothing more than the name of the games. He also saw that the term Demetriaka (' of Demeter ') was probably a late addition. Else- where I have pointed out various instances in which the name of a great hero or of a god was gi\'en to festivals which had originated in the worship of local heroes. Thus in later times the lolaea at Thebes were also termed the Heracleia, the games of Heracles, whilst the Tlepolemeia held at Lindus in Rhodes in honour of Tlepolemus were later termed the ' games of the Sun ' (Helieia). Originally the Eleusinian games seem to have been annual and to have lasted two days, but in the later period they were overshadowed by the theatrical representations given by the ' artists of Dionysus ', which were held on the 25th, thus leaving only one day for the games. Were these games from the first in honour of Demeter and her daughter ? If so, it is strange that there is no mention of them in the Homeric Hymn, but only of the institution of the orgia in her honour. The same poem, as we have seen, regards barley as antecedent to Demeter and Triptolemus as the leading personage of the jDlace, whilst his name was also linked with the sacred threshing-floor, the cliief memorial of the discovery of corn. Now as the prize in the Eleu- sinian games was a measure of barley from the Rharian plain with which Triptolemus in later legends is so bound up, and with which the goddess is never associated, we are led to the conclusion that the games were not originall)' held in honour of Demeter, but in that ' Athcn., 400 1), 407 C ; Ilosych., s.v. ; it is also termed rvnTiil. - 2C7-8. ' Pans. ii. 32. 2. INTRODUCTION 39 of Triptolemus, wlio shared witli Dcmctcr his ^inaldorou. As we found a close parallel to this last feature in the relation l^etween Athena and Ereehtheus in the Erechtheum at Athens, so too have we a like parallel between the Panathenaic games and the Eleusinian. The former were held in honoin- of Athena and Ereehtheus. But, as we have seen before, when a lesser personage is found sharing with the greater sueh an honour, w'e infer that, like lolaus and Tlepolemus, he was originally the sole owner. We may therefore safely conclude that Ereehtheus and not Athena was originally the object of the Athenaic, called later the Panathenaic, games. If Triptolemus shared his house with Demeter as Ereehtheus did lus with Athena, why should not Triptolemus also share his games with Demeter as Ereehtheus did with Athena ? Theatrical Performances. In later times theatrical performances seem to have taken up the second day of the Games (25th). The plays were part of the service, and the performers became a kind of priests. Dionysus had such a priest Actor, and even Antinous, the favourite of Hadrian, another such. The plays were held on the 26th and 27th, and possibly in the latest period on the 28th. Let us now remove the later accretions from the ceremonials at Eleusis — all the prehminaries at Athens and the procession to Eleusis from the first part, and from the end the dramatic performances given by the ' artists of Dionysus ' in later days — which included the Sacred Marriage of Zeus and Demeter, their chief feature in Christian times. The elements now left consist of the dramatization of Demeter's vain search with torches for her lost daughter, the offerings to the dead, the sham-fight, and the Games. In other words, a regular funerary celebration, such as those common in Greece and Thrace, and of which we shall find many examples amongst the Assamese, Japanese, and other races of to-day. But we IvAxe found reason for beheving that two cults had been combined at Eleusis, the family rites of the descendants of Triptolemus, and the orgia of Demeter brought in by Eumolpus and celebrated by the Eumolpidae. We also saw that the Eleusinian rites borrowed by the Pheneatians were distinctly connected with the cult of the dead. Now, as the firstfruits were offered to Demeter and Persephone, and to Tri- ptolemus and his brother Eubulus, the essence of both eelel^rations consisted in the veneration of the dead, and accordingly the element common to each was the Plemochoai. As we proceed, we shall find the strongest evidence for believing that the firstfruits are offered to the dead, not to abstract Corn spirits, which only arise at a later stage from the freneralization of some local hero or heroine. This we shall 40 THE ORIGIN OF TRAGEDY find true of various Corn mothers. Maize mothers, Harvest and Food goddesses. Here is not the place for treating of Demeter at length. Let it suffice to say, as I have tried to show elsewhere, that the beautiful mytli of Demeter the All-mother had as its foundation the dead liody of many a himian mother.-"- Dieterlch's Theory of Tragedy. In 1907 the late Professor Albreeht Dieterieh - put forward the theory that Greek Tragedy had arisen out of the ]Mysteries of Eleusis, urging that as Aeschylus was himself a nati\ e of that deme he had simply developed his tragic art out of the saered dramas of his native place. His follower, Professor G. G. Murray,-^ thus describes this theory : ' He has shown that the characteristic of the Sacer Lndus in the Mysteries was a Peripeteia or Re\"ersal. It was a change from sorrow to joy, from darkness and sights of inexplicable terror to light and the discovery of the reborn god. Such a Peripeteia is clearly associated with an Ana- gnorisis, a Piceognition or Discovery. Such formulae from the Mys- teries as dapaelre, Mvarat, tov 6iov aeaooafiivov — HiiprJKafj.n', (Tvy)(aipo)fi(i> — "Etpvyop kukov , ^jvpov ap.iij'ov imply a close con- nexion betweiii the Peripeteia and the Anagnorisis, and enable us to understand «'liy these two elements arc regarded by Aristotle as normally belonging to Tragedy. Now Peripeteia of some kind is perhaps in itself a necessary or normal part of any dramatic story, but no one could say the same of Anagnorisis. It must come into Greek tragedy from the Sacer Lucius, in which the dead God is Recognized or Disco^ ered. So far Dieterieh. But we may go much further than this.' I have deliberately gi\'en Dieterich"s view in the words of his follower, because I am thus free from any suspicion of wresting his meaning. Now his theory rests entirely on the assumption that the sacred drama at Eleusis, in which were enacted the marriage of Zeus and Demeter and the birth of the child, -\vas already the central point in the Mysteries of that place before the birth of Aeschylus in 525 n. c. But as we have demonstrated that Zeus had no part in the cults of that sacred j^lace until after the Christian tra, and that Zagreus had no connexion with it until after 370 B.C., it is absurd to assume that Aeschylus based his tragic art on the sacred drama -^^hich onh' arose in Roman times when the great poet had been in his gra\c for more than five centuries. Indeed, the ^ Giflord LecUiros, delivered at Aberdeen, 1909-11. ^ 'Die Entstelumg der Tragodie ' {Archiv f. lieligioiisivisscnschafl, vol.xi, 190S, pj). 103-90); Kleiiie Werl(e (1911), pp. 414-39. . ^ Miss Harrison's Themis, pp. 341-2. INTRODUCTION 41 ancients tliemselvcs hcltl that so far from Aeschylus borrowinfr from the priestly performances at Eleiisis, the latter borrowed from him. Thus Athenaeus^ tells us that 'Aeschylus invented the beautiful dignified robe (of Tragedy) which the Hierophants and the Daduchi copied and still wear ". But even those who hailed Dieterich's theory (as thc}^ do every- thing else from Germam^) as ' epoch-making " and accepted his funda- mental assumption of the primitive Sacer Lndux of Zeus and Demeter at Elcusis, felt its insubstantiality on minor points. Thus Mr. Pickard- Cauibridge. who in his long review of my Origin of Tragedij- in which after a vain struggle he gave up the old orthodox theory, yet thinks that ' there is some prosjiect of a solution on somewhat different lines from those on which Professor Ridgeway works — a consideration of the Dionysiac worship itself in its chthonian aspect ', was nevertheless ' not ready to adopt Dieterich's suggestions as they stand ', but rested his hopes on the followers of Dieterich. i. c. ' on the general assumption that the chthonian and theromorphic beings, vegetation spirits and the like, are prior to the belief in the existence of the spirits of the dead '. But as Aeschj-his. who certainly knew more about ' chthonian aspects " than Dieterich and IMr. Piekard-Cambridge, held that they were the dead,'' the ' chthonian ' path on which Mr. Cambridge blindly entered led him straight to my theory — that tragedy arose in the worship of the dead. Again. Professor Murray says that ' we can go much further than Dieterich ' (and as we shall see, probably fare still worse) ; he himself and by imjilication his col- laborators INIiss Harrison and Mr. Cornford feel the difliculty that whereas in the late sacred drama at Eleusis on which their whole theory depends, the Re^-ersal was from fear to joy, when it was announced to the Mystae that the mother had been safely deUvered and that the god was reborn, on the other hand the essence of Tragedy is a Reversal from happiness to sorrow. This obvious weakness has led Professor Murray and his partners (in whom Mr. Cambridge fondly trusts) to a theory, or rather a modification of Dieterich's theory, of the origin of Tragedy still further detached, if possible, from fact than that of their master. Professor Murray's Theory of Tragedy. This latest theory of the origin of Tragedy — a mere modification of the Sun-myth, Vegetation spirit, and Seasonal drama— with which we have already dealt in the ^ i. 39 E : KQi Alcrxi^os Hi ov jiovov i^evpi rrju rijir UToKrji evnpineiav Km aefiuoTrjTa, fjp (riKoKjaines o'l Upocpavrai ku'l 8aSovxni apiyiivwurai, kt\. 2 Classical Review, March 1912, with my reply, ibid., .June 1912, py,. 134-9. " Sup/il. 24-5 : liapvTiiJ.01 x^oi'i'J' ^'J'o'S Karixovri^i. 42 THE ORIGIN OF TRAGEDY onsc of Dr. FaviuU, is srt r Diimysus : ' Come. O hero Dionysus." which Air. Cook has obligingly (_nieuded into ' Come in the spring. O Dionysus ".'■ Slu' further adds that boys at puberty were initiated at this Year- Feast into a tribal m_\-stery or Dromenon, and that out of this s))rang the Drama. But there is not a scrap of e\ idenct' to show that in any state in ancient Greece boys were initiated at festivals, either in the Spring or at any other time. At Athens they certainly were not initiated at any of the four festivals connected witli the nami' ol' Dionysus, two of which fell in the Spring. There was, however, a most ancient Ionic festival, the Apaiuria. on the third day of which, termed Koureotis, fathers took the children born in that year, or such as were not registered, and introduced them to the assembled members of their respective Phratrics. a \ ictim being offered for each child. But so far from this festi\al taking its name from Koiuoi initiated at the age of puljcrty. it derived its appellation from babes : and so far from being held in the Spring, it was celebrated on tlie 13th of Pyanepsion, i.e. the last days of October or the first days of No\-ember. Again, festivals of Dionysus were not confined to Spring, as Miss Harrison assumes. Thus it was at midwinter that the Cynaethians of Arcadia held their famous festival in honour of Dionysus, which best illustrates Pindar"s phrase ' the ox-driving dithyramb of Dio- nysus ".- For the men with their Ijodics greased with oil picked out ^ I'lut. Quaes/. Gruec. xxxvi : iXdilv fjpoi iluii'vire ki-A., which Mr. Cook, on the ground that this voc. ot rjpcos is not found elsewhere, emends into ASeii' rjp' - l*:nis. viii. 19. 15 ; Ridgewuy, Origin of Tragedy, p. 6. INTRODUCTION 45 from a herd ol' cattle ' that bull which the god put into their heads to take, hfted him up bodily and carried him into the shrine for saerilice ". The Dithyramb. As all theories of the origin of Tragedy take as their starting-point Aristotle's statement that ' Tragedy arose from the leaders of the dithyramb ', it is essential to ascertain wliat he meant by that term. Strange as it may seem, no scholar before the present writer essayed to settle this question. All writers had assumed that Aristotle regarded the dithyramb as peculiar to and restricted to Dionysus, and in reality the Dionysiac theory of the origin of Tragedy depends on this passage, the references to the Satyric drama and Satyric style which occurs a few lines lower down, and on some half-dozen references to the dithyramb in other authors. Let us first take the scattered references : (1) Arehiloehus (670 B.C.) declares that when 'his brain is thunder-smitten with wine he knows how to lead a fair strain in honour of king Dionysus, a dithyramb ', but he does not say that when sober he would not have sung a dithyramb in honour of some other god or hero ; (2) Arion trained a chorus at Corinth in the time of Periander to sing a dithyramb, but this does not pro\-e that he did not or would not have composed dithyrambs on otlna- heroes or gods ; (3) this last view is supported by the fact that Simonides (born 567 B.C.) in the generation after Arion wrote a dithyramb on the hero Menmon ; and (4-) that Bacchylides, his nephew and younger contemporary, composed two dithyrambs on Theseus and one on Apollo ; (5) Pindar in an allusion to Arion's dithyramb at Corinth speaks of the ' ox- driving dithyramb of Dionysus ', but, as I have pointed out elsewhere, this phrase only refers to such a custom as that of the Cynaethians (mpra, p. 44) and does not prove that Pindar thought that the dithyramb belonged only to Dionysus ; (6) Pratinas, who intro- duced the Satyric drama into Athens, termed Dionysus Thriambo- Ditlnjrambos ; and (7) Euripides called him Dithijrambos. But in the recently- found Delphic ' Dithyrambie Paean ' on which Miss Harrison builds so much, Dionysus is termed Paean. Yet on the strength of this neither she nor any one else would venture to main- tain that the 2Kiean as a literary form belonged exclusively to Dionysus, for it was composed in honour of Apollo, Artemis, and various other gods. (8) Finally, Miss Harrison relies most on a passage in Plato,^ in which, when discussing the various kinds of odes, he says : ' some are prayers to the gods, and these are termed hymnoi ; others of an opposite sort might best be called thrcnoi ; another sort paeans, and i Legg. 700 B. 40 THE ORIGIN OF TRAGEDY auotluT — the birth of Dionysus, I suppose (oi'/xai), is termed dithy- raiiihos.' His remarlv (' I suppose ') shows that he is not at all clear on tlie point. In view, therefore, of these loci classici, we must con- elude that at no time v/as the dithyramb any more the exclusive property of Dionysus than the jMean was that of Apollo. But what did Aristotle mean by the dithyramb from which he says that Tragedy arose ? His \\ords make it clear that he knew only of one kind of dithyramb, for he does not say that Tragedy arose from the worsliip of Dionysus either here or elsewhere in his volu- minous writings, nor does he say that it arose from the dithyramb of Dionysus, or from the ancient dithyramb, or from the chthj'ramb of Archilochus or from that of Arion. Now, as all modern scholars admit the soundness of the princi])le by which difficulties in an author's meaning or in his use of words should, if possible, be explained from liis own \\Titings, it is important to discover what meaning Aristotle attached to the term dithyramhos. Did he regard it as restricted to Dionysus or as common to gods and heroes, as was certainly the ^iew of Simonides and Baeehylides in the end of the sixth and the beginning of the fifth centuries n.c. ? Fortunately we have the means of forming an opinion, and that too not from his other writings but from very definite passages in the Poetic itself.'- Just a page before the famous passage with which we arc dealing, he describes- ditJiy- ramhoi as a kind of Mimesis, and cites as an example of that form of literature the Cyclops of Timotheus. the famous dithyrambic poet and musician of Miletus (447-357 B.C.), who wrote some eighteen dithyrambs on various suljjeets, including one called the Pang of Setnele. It may be said that the Cyclops was Dionysiac, since Eurijiides" play of that name was Satyric, but let us turn to another passage,^ some five pages after that on the origin of Tragedy. He is discussing the question of ethos in Tragedy and the need of consistency in the characters. As a breach of this rule, he cites the threnos of Odysseus in the Scylla. which was beyond doubt a dithyramb, and that too by Timotheus. It is therefore clear that Timotheus wrote dithyrambs on heroes, and not merelj- on DionN'sus. It is also certain that Aristotle only knew one class of dithyrambs, the dithyramb, and that as he cites as examples of it the dithyrambs of Timotheus, which were addressed, like those of Simonides and Baeehylides, to heroes, as well as to Dionysus, he held that the dithyramb had for its themes heroes and gods other than Dionysus. ' \V. Ridi^t'way, ' Three Notes on Poelic of Aristotle ' (C/iissical Qiiaiiciii/. 1912, pp. 241-2). ° Poelic, 1448 a 14. » 14.54 a 30. INTRODUCTION 47 ArLstotlc thus held that Tragedy sprang from a dithyramb which was not restricted to Dionysus, but was common to heroes and gods, and as sueli inekided Dionysus (termed IIeros\ as well as tlieos) amongst its themes. It cannot therefore be assumed any longer that because Aristotle makes Tragedy arise out of the dith.ijmiiib it therefore arose from the worship of Dionysus. -^ But it may be said that we do not know what Aristotle meant by heroes and gods. Yet there is no doubt that he held the same doctrine as that of all Greeks from Homer down to the latest times, and this cannot be better stated than in the words of Pausanias when speaking of Lycaon : ' For the men of that time by reason of their righteousness and piety, were guests of the gods and sat M'ith them at table : the gods openly visited the good with honour and the bad with their displeasure. Indeed men were raised to the rank of gods in those days and are worshipped down to the present time. Such were Aristaeus and the Cretan damsel Britomartis ; and Heracles the son of Alcmena ; and Amphiaraus son of Oeeles, aud moreover Pollux and Castor.' 1 Choses Sacrees. But Miss Harrison and her partners aver that such heroes, some of whom were deified, were ' onl}' ]:)rojections ' into choses sacrees. What is a chose sacree ? It is only the French for a ' holy thing '. But as soon as we examine the objects which are deemed ' holy things ' by various peoples, both ancient and modern, we find that such ' hoh' things ' or ' relies ', to use the proper English term, are (1) either a jDortion of some loved or revered human personage, a lock of hair, a tooth, such as that of Buddha in Ceylon, numerous remains of mediaeval and even modern saints, such as the famous arm-bone of St. Botolph. carried in procession in its silver case on great festivals at Burv St. Edmunds. Greece was no exception to this practice. Great care was taken of the bones of famous men, such as Leonidas and Themistocles, and the possession of the bones of departed worthies, such as Orestes, Tisamenus, and Melanippus, was of great importance to their owners, whilst we know that in Arcadia the bones of the dead were regularly worshipped. (2) The next class of relics are objects worn by or once possessed by some loved or venerated person, e.g. Nelson's cocked hat that he wore at Trafalgar, the shirt in which Charles I was executed, the so-called Crown of Thorns worn by Christ on Calvary for which St. Louis gave an enormous price and built the Sainte Chapclle at Paris. (3) A place or object at or in contact with or near which some famous or vene- rated person met his or her end, or into which his spirit is sujjposed 1 viii. 2. 4. 48 THE ORIGIN OF TRAGEDY to haw passed, wlicthrv it be animal, tree, or stone, e.g. the Cross of Calvary, and the St'jnilehre in which Christ lay. (4) Men also regard natural objeets, sueh as rocks, mountains, trees, and rivers as sacred because they are thought to be inhal)ited by the spirits of the dead, and by a natural extension of this belief they frequently revere, as having magical powers, stones and other natural objeets of unusual form or colour, such as crystals, or fossils — for example, belemnites, commonly tleenied thunderbolts from heaven, or even stones wrought into axes and arrows, which amongst peoples who have reached the stage of metals, are universally believed to be thunderbolts or ' elf- shots '. Sueh are the chases sacrees of civilized races, and sueh we shall find to be those of barl^arous races also. But it may be said that there are sham relics. Certainly, but unless people believed in the great importance of real ones, there would be no market for the forgeries. It is therefore the human indi\idual and not the cliose sacree which is primary and antecedent, for a clwse can only become sacree by being, or being Ixliex'ed to bi', part of some human indi^'idual, or to have been once owned ))y or have been in close contact with his or her remains, or to be inhafjited by his or her spirit or something analogous, and accordingly sueh rtlics are only secondary phenomena. Mana. This will be the proper place to discuss the term mcuia, whieli has come into the nomenclature of Comparative Riligion from Dr. R. R. Marett's essay on Pre-Animistic Religion. i His statements have not unreasonably been taken to mean that there was a pre- animistic stage in the tvolution of Religion, though he now disclaims this interpretation,- yet hardly with success. He writes : 'It would be untrue to deny that the term pre-animistic was used by me designedly and with chronological reference. What I would not be prepared to lay down dogmatically or e\'en provisionally is merely that there was a jire-animistie era in tile history of religion when animism was not and ne^•erthel^■ss religion of a kind existed. For all I know some sort of animism in Tylor's sense of the word was a primary condition of the most primitive religion of mankind. Rut I beheve that there Were other conditions no less primary. Moreover, I hold that it can be shown conclusi^•ely that in some cases animistic interpretations \vA\\- been superimposed on what previ(jusly bore a non-animistic seiisi'. I wfmld go farther still. I hold that religion in its psychological as])ect is fundamentally a mode of social behaviour.' Elsewhere he adds with relVrence to his statement of his invn theory : ' In regard 1 Folk-lore, .June, 1900, |i|>. 1(;2-S2. 2 Threshold of licligioii, prcl'. Ici cd. 1, p. ix. INTRODUCTION 49 to religion thus unclei'stood, I say not th;it its evolution proceeds from abstract to concrete, which would be meaningless, but that it proceeds from indistinct to distinct, from undifferentiated to differentiated, from incoherent to coherent.' '^ Let us now examine his various contentions. (1) If mana is ' no less primary ' and is not more primary tlian animism, why does Dr. Marett place mana under the head of ' pre-animistic religion ', in Avhich he admits that the qualifying adjective is used ' designedly ' with a chronological reference ? (2) The evidence presented by Dr. ;Marett does not seem in any wise to substantiate his statement that ' it can be shown conclusively that in some cases animistic inter- pretations have been superimposed on what previously bore a non- animistic sense '. Even if it could, this by no means proves that animism did not precede in time the vague notions attached to certain objects which later received full animistic interpretation. (3) As Dr. Marett holds that ' religion in its psychological aspect is funda- mentally a mode of social behaviour ', let us test his other statement that ' the evolution in religion proceeds from indistinct to distinct, from undifferentiated to differentiated, from incoherent to coherent ' by an appeal to the facts of primitive society. In modern civilized communities consanguinity and relationships through marriage play so unimportant a part, that we are perfectly content with the word ' uncle ' for father's brother and mother's brother, with the word ' aunt ' for father's sister and for mother's sister, and so on. Yet the old civilized races, such as those of Rome, Greece, and India, were much more careful in differentiating these relationships and con- nexions, for they had one term for a father's Ijrother, another for a mother's brother, one name for a father's sister, another for a mother's sister. The Greeks were not content with one name for half-brothers and half-sisters, but they had separate terms to express half-blood on the father's side and half-blood on the mother's, and they had special words to express ' husband's brother's wife ' and the like, and the same hcjlds true in a still higher degree for Sanskrit, in which there is a host of terms for blood and marriage connexions for which we have no equivalents. Let us next examine the nomen- clature of the lower races such as that of the Austrahans, amongst whom religion and social organization are inextricably bound up, and where, if Dr. Marett is right, we should find in the highest degree vagueness and indefiniteness. But here we meet the very opposite, for they have separate terms for every one of the highly compKcated relationships and connexions that result from their very elaborate 1 Ibiil., p. xi. E 50 THE OlilGlX OF TIIAGEDY tribal, clan, and lotcniic (li\ isioiis. The fact is that mankind in the ki-wcr stages, so far from l^cinir ^■alJ;^le, inch-finite, and undilTcr- cntiating in matters of A'ital concern to his ^-ery existence, on the contrarj' has a power of discrimination and differentiation a]5parently as great, if not greater, becanse more concentrated and circumscribed in its action than that possessed by civihzed men in regard to matters which they from tlieir standpoint deem of vital importance. We may go further and point out that so far from the lower animals being ^'ague and undifferentiating, they have in tlieir own limited spheres a ])ower of differentiation by sight, sound, and smell, in matters ^'ital to them utterly miknown to civihzed man, though found in some degree in siicli races as the Australians, whose powers in tracking men or animals is too well known to need elaboration. Dr. 3Iarctt"s hj-po- thesis is therefore refuted by well-established facts. But is he more right in assuming tliat iiuina is as primary as animism ? Let us turn to his own examples of what is termed mana by the men of the Pacific Isles. ' Codrington ", he writes,'- ' defines mana in its Mclanesian sense as follows : " a force altogether distinct from physical power, which acts in all kinds of ways for good and evil and which is of the greatest advantage to possess or to control." Or again he says : " it is a power or influence, not pliysical, and in a way supernatiu'al, but it shows itself in physical force or in any kind of power or excellence a man possesses." It is supernatural just in this way, that it is what works to effect e\erything which is beyond the ordinary' power of men outside the common processes of nature.' He illustrates this point b}' examples : ' If a man has been successful in fighting, it has not been his natural strength of arm, quickness of eye, or readiness in resource, that has won success ; he has certainly got the mana of a spirit of some deceased warrior to empower him conveyed in an amulet of a stone round his neck or a tuft of leaves in his belt, in a tooth hung upon a finger of his bow hand or in the form of M'ords with which he brings supernatiu-al assistance to his side. If a man's pigs multiply antl his gardens are productive, it is not because he is industrious and looks after his jJroperty, but because of the stones full of mana for pigs and yams that he possesses.' But in the first case cited, it is clear that it is only an ordinary case of relics and that mana depends on a primary belief in the existence of souls after the death of the body, and thus mana cannot be regarded as primary, but rather as secondary and dependent. In the second case, if it can be shown in the folloAving pages that these ^•ery races and numbers more pray to their dead ancestors to make their pigs and yams prosjjcr, ' Op. cil., p. lOk INTRODUCTIOX 51 and offer to the spirits of tlu-ir dead the lirstfruits, Dr. Marett's second instance is no less fatal to liis assumption, for the stones full of maiia may be the dwelling-place of spirits of the dead. ' From Polynesia '. Dr. Marett proceeds, ' comes much the same story. Tregear in his admirable comparative dictionary of the Polynesian dialects renders the word, which may be either noun or adjective, thus: "supernatural power; divine authority, having qualities which ordinary persons or things do not possess." He seems to distinguish, however, what might be called a secular sense, in which the term stands generally for authority or, as an adjective, for " effectual, effective ". He cites copious instances from the various dialects to exemplify the supernatural mode of mana. Thus the word is applied in Maori to a wooden sword that has done deeds so wonder- ful as to possess a sanctity and joower of its own ; in Samoan to a parent who brings a curse on a disobechent child ; in Hawaian to the gods, or to a man who by his death gives efficacy to an idol ; in Tongan to whoever performs miracles or bewitches ; in Mangarevan to a magic staff given to a man by his grandfather, or again to divination in general, and so forth. In short, its range is as wide as those of divinity and witchcraft taken together.' As instances of the so-called secular use. Dr. Marett cites the cases of a chief's tabu, a healer of maladies, a successful pleader, or the winner of a race. But in all these cases we have ordinary examples of animism. Thus the wooden sword and the magic staff fall under ' relics ', the ' gods ' we shall find to be only the spirits of the dead, the idol became the abode of the spirit of the man sacrificed to it, whilst the power of a chief, of a caster out of devils, of witches and the like all depend upon the same antecedent belief in the existence of disembodied human spirits. We shall find that the potency of all the secret societies of the Pacific and elsewhere rests entirely upon the general belief that their members have special communion with and control over the spirits of the dead, and that their initiation ceremonies are con- cerned with the latter. There is thus no reason for believing cither that mana is pre-animistic in time, or that mankind proceeds from the undifferentiated to the differentiated in matters of religion any more than in those of society. Miss Harrison and her partners argue that behind Dionysus there was never any human reality, but that the god was only the result of the group-thinking of his thiasos of Satyr daimons and Maenads. Yet they might as well argue that neither Dominic, nor Francis of Assisi, nor Muhammad, nor Christ himself ever existed, but that they are the mere 'projections' of the 'group-thinking' of the Dominicans, E 2 32 THE ORIGIN OF TRAGEDY Franciscans, ^Muhammadans, and Christians respectively. Nay, they might as well maintain that the German Kaiser has no material existence, but is a mere ' projection ' of the ' group-thinking ' of his tliiasos of Prussian Guards. But to this point we will revert again. As we have seen above, persons of exceptional prowess, wisdom, and virtue were deified and worshipped by the Greeks, and were honoured after their deaths by periodical celebrations at their tombs, and such too shall we find to be the case in Hindustan, Burma, China, and Japan, and from this practice the Greeks themselves held that the great games, such as those of Olympia, Pytho, Nemea, the Isthmus, the Panathenaea, Hyacinthia, and the hke had their origin. Nor can it be maintained that such celebrations belonged to a mist)' antiriuity, for when Timoleon, the liberator of Sicily, died in 336 B.C., games were established in his honour, and the people of Amphipolis founded similar games in honour of Brasidas after his death in ■i22 b. c. Yet under the spell of the Mannhardt-Frazer theory, my friends ^Ir. A. B. Cook ^ and 'Sir. F. 'SI. Cornford" have sought to prove that the great games of Greece, such as those at Olympia, arose out of a contest similar to that for the priesthood at Nemi. Mr. Cook holds that in mythical times the Olympic contest was a means of determining who should be king of the district and champion of the local tree-Zeus. The holder of the office for the time being was analogous to the Rex NeDiorcn.iis of the Golden Bough — an incarnation of the Tree- and Sky-god, and like his Italian parallel, defended his office against all comers until he was finally defeated and superseded by the successful combatant. Mr. Cook bases this ^•iew on a statement of Plutarch ^ that the Olympic contests once included a monomaehia, wliich had later been abolished. He goes still further, for he maintains that the Olympic victor was treated with special honour in his lifetime and not infrequently worshipped as a hero after death, not because he was a successful athlete, but because he had once been an incarnate god. Mr. Cornford accepts this last part of Mr. Cook's hypothesis as ' fundamentally correct ', whilst he adopts the first part with certain modifications, as he thinks that the terms ' king, god, incar- nation of the tree-Zeus, may all be somewhat misleading ", and he holds that ' a weather magician like Oinomaos, though a late theology may see in him the temporary incarnation of a god, goes back to a time when there was no god to )je incarnated", and that ' the sky-god is only a projected reflex of this human figure of the magician who claims to command the powers of the sky and to call down its rain and thimder by virtue of his own mana '. 1 Themis, p. 220. - Ibid., pj). 220 xiy,/. » Quacst. Hijinj)., p. 675. IXTllODUCTION 53 ' We shall be on safer ground if we restrict ourselves to the simple primitive group consisting of the weather magician, who wields the fer- tilizing inffuences of Heaven, and the tree which embodies the powers of the Earth — the vegetation which springs up when the thunder shower has burst, and Heaven and Earth are married in the life-giving rain. To this we must add the conception with which Dr. Frazer has made us familiar, of the limited period of office enjoyed by such a personage. The individual on whose vigour and exceptional powers the fertility of earth depends, cannot be allowed to continue in office when his natural forces fall into decay. Hence the single combat, in which he has to make good his right to a renewed period or die at the hands of his more vigorous antagonist. Now in some cases at least this period of office was not merely limited bj' the duration of its holder's natural strength, but it bore some fixed relation to the year and to the seasonal ej^ele of vegetable life in nature. In other words the term of office was a "year" — a term which, as we have seen, may denote a lunar or solar year, or a longer period of two, four, or eight solar years, a trieteris, penteieris, or cnnneteris. During this period, long or short as it might be, the tenant of the office represented, or rather iifl.s. the power which gOA'erned the rains of heaven and the fruits of earth ; at the end of it he was either continued for a new eniautos or was violently dispos- sessed by his successor. Further, since the eniautos itself could be concretely conceived as a daimon carrying the horn of plenty, the contents and fruits of the year in the more abstract sense, we may think of the temporary " king ", as actually being the eniaidos-davnon, or fertility spirit of his " year ". ' When the year is fixed by the solar period, we get festivals of the type of the Roman Saturnaha, the Greek Kpoina (with which the Saturnaha were regularly equated in ancient times), and the single combat appears as the driving out of winter or of the dying year by the vigorous young spirit of the New Year that is to come. It is as eniautos-daimon, not at first as "incarnate god" or as king in the later poUtical sense, that the representative of the fertility powers of nature dies at the hands of the New Year— in this combat we may sec, in a word, the essential feature of a Saturnalian or a Kronian festival: ^ But formerly Mr. Cornford, on the ground that the Cronia at Olympia were held at the vernal equinox, maintained that they were a Spring Vegetation festival. The present writer, however, jjointed out that at Athens the Cronia were held in the end of July or the beginning of August, at Rhodes in the latter part of August or the 1 Op. at., pp. 222-3. 54 THE OPvIGIN OF TRAGEDY first j)nrt of Septeiiibcr, whilst the Thcssalian Pcloria identified with the Cronia synclironized with the Roman Saturnalia, and were thus held at midwinter. Jlr. Cornford has now changed his front, and without letting his reader know the facts about the Cronian celebra- tions at Olympia, Athens, and Rhodes, is no less dogmatic and lays down that it was a midwinter festival to celebrate the triumph of the New Year over the dying one. But was the year dying at the vernal equinox ; was the New Year triumphing over its dead prede- cessor in July, August, and September ? In view of these facts we must resolutely reject Mr. Cornford's interpretation of the single combat at Olympia. Rut we have seen (p. 7) how at the funeral games of Patroclus, the single combat nearly issued in the death of one of the champions. This offers a simple and natural reason for the abolition of such a contest at Olympia. ■*■ If it be urged by my opponents that a Homeric combat between heroes whom they assume to be mere embodiments of the Year-Daimon is worthless as c^-idence, I can point to the fact that such combats were in use amongst the Thracians of historical times, and that too at funeral celebrations (p. 7). I have also given reason for believing that the gladiatorial combats at Roman funerals were the survival of contests similar to those at Thracian funerals, and I cited the significant remark of Ser\'ius that this was in accord with the ancient belief that human blood should flow on the grave of a dead man. Finally, we saw reason for believing that the combat at Nemi itself on which Sir James Frazer, Mr. Cook, Mr. Corn- ford, and others raise such lofty structures may prove to have been in honour not of a Yegetation abstraction, but of a concrete dead man. If the truth must be told, Mr. Cook and Mr. Cornford would find more solid ground for the theory of the incarnation of the Tree spirit in the Hangman (Fig. 3) of Punch and Judy than in the priest at Nemi, in Phorbas who hung his victims' heads on an oak, or in Sinis who tied his captives to a pine tree.^ Had not the Hangman, too, his gallows tree, and had he not on it hung others, and in his turn was not he (like the priest at Nemi, Phorbas, and Sinis) doomed to be hung by that still more crafty ruffian Punch ? In this case, they would have at all events a popular puppet-play, belonging to a class of great antiquity, of which we shall presently have much to say (pp. 157 sqq.), and they would not have been driven to so many conjectures and suppositions to fill up the story. ^ Quacsl. Sipiip., p. C75. - For a contutution of Jlr. A. B. Cook"s theory of Phorbas and Sinis, see Jlr. E. M. W. Tillyard's 'Theseus, Sinis, and the Istlimian Games" {Jour. IIcll. Sliid., vol. xxxiii, UJ13, pp. 29G-3f2). IXTKODUt riON 55 Elsewhere ^Mr. Cornford deseriljes Peloi),s as ' the younj^f year-n'od whose marriage was celebrated in the suiniuer '. The ritual Avould be Fig. 3. Punch hangs the Hangman. [Tliat Priest who slew the slayer !] appropriate to a seasonal feast of a Kronian (Saturnalian) character, at which the young year-god, standing for a young and growing thinking nature, was initiated or inaugurated as ' King ' for his Year, under the doom of ' death and resurrection '. Furthermore he takes 56 THE ORIGIN OF TRAGEDY as the true aeeoimt ol' the fouiulatioii of the Olyni])ic games one of the local myths which Pausaiiias heard at Olj'mpia in the second half of the second century after Christ. According to this the Idacan Heracles set his hretjiren the Idacan Dactyls to run a race and crowned the \ietor '\\ith a branch of wild olive, of which the)' had such an abundance that they slejit on heaps of its I'resh green leaves. ' There is no need ". says 'Sh. Cornford, ' for lengthy comment. The games are traced back to an original foot-race held by young men (Kourctcs) from Crete, presumably analogous to the young unmarried Karncatai of Sparta. The race, wc may suppose, determined who slKjuld be tlie Kouros — the Greatest Kouros — of his year. The winner recei\'ccl n.ot a prize of commercial value such as was usual in funeral games, but a symbol of his oflicc, as vegetation-dfli;)(o/! — the branch of the sacrctl tree. This branch reminds us of the golden bough and perhajis links the foot-race of the young men to the contest between the young and the old king. For in the famous wood at Nemi it was he wlio succeeded in tearing a bough from the sacred tree who had a right to contend in single combat with the King of the Wood for succession to his ofliee.' ^ Rut this later local legend on which Mr. Cornford builds so much was treated with contempt by Pausanias - himself, as we know from another passage (which I pointed out when ^Ir. Cornford first put forward his \ie'\^' in jiublic). When discussing the relative anticpiit}' of the Lyeaean and Panathenaic games he says : ' I here lca\'c out of aceoimt the Olympic games because they are traced back to a period earlier than tjie origin of man, the legend being that Cronus and Zens wrestled at 01ynii)ia and that the first who ran there were the Curetes.' This passage of itself is fatal to IMr. Cornford's theor3\ But he has ignored a still more important authority. Pindar '^ more than six centuries before Pausanias explicitly declared that the Olympic games ' were fomidcd beside the ancient tomb of Pclops '. It is obvioirs that any theories of the origin of the Olympic games, which rest only on a legend rejected by Pausanias its narrator, and on a fantastic interpretation of the single combats held at funeral games, must be siunmarily rejected. Rut JNIr. Cornford's theory breaks down also in details as well as in principle. He finds an analogy between the race of the Curetes at Olympia and the plucking of the branch I.)}' the competitor at Ncmi. Yet there is not the slightest reference to any foot-race in the ' Themis, \>i>. 2.3.J-0. - viii. 2. ]. ■' Ol. X. 30; of. Miss W. M. L. Hutcliinson's scarcliiiiy review of Tlicmis {C/ass. h'n\, \ul. xxvii, 1913, ])]i. 132-4). IXTHOUUCTION 57 various stories relating to that sacred sj^ot. Again, he assumes that the wild olive at Olympia is parallel to the oak at Nemi, regardless of the faet that Sir James Frazer's theory depends on the assumption that the supreme god of the Arj'ans always dwelt in an oak tree, and that the King of the Wood was the incarnation not of any kind of tree spirit, but only of the oak-tree spirit, which was itself the Sky-god. He thus contravenes his master's teaching in one of its most vital points. We have now disposed of the fundamental assumptions upon which INIiss Harrison and her partners base their theory of the origin of Tragedy — the supposed primitive Sacred Marriage, or Sacer Ludus at Eleusis, with which also disaj^pears Dieterich's theory of the origin of Tragedy, that the Dithyramb was a Spring vegetation ceremony in honour of the YeaT-Daimon, at which j'ouths were initiated, that heroes and gods were only ' projections ' into chosen sacrtes by ' group-thinking ', and the views of Sir .James Frazer, Mr. Cook, and Mr. Cornford respecting the origin of the Olympic games, whilst at the same time we have seen grave reasons for doul)ting the validity of Sir James Frazer's theory of the Tier Xemorenxis at Nemi, on which so many and vast superstructures have been raised. We are now in a position to deal with Professor G. G. Murray's contribution — his modification of Dietcrieh's theory of the origin of Tragedy. Let us hear his own account of the joint cflorts of himself and his collaborators.-"^ ' The following note presup})oses certain general views about the origin and the essential nature of Greek Tragedy. It assumes that Tragedy is in origin a Ritual Dance, a Sacer Ludus, representing normally the Aition or supposed historical Cause, of some current ritual practice ; e. g. the Ilippohjtiis represents the legendary death of that hero regarded as the Aition of a certain ritual lamentation practised by the maidens of Troezen. Further, it assumes in accord with the overwhelming weight of ancient tradition that the Dance in question is originally or centraUy that of Dionysus ; and it regards Dionysus in this connexion as the spirit of the Dithyramb or Spring Dromenon, an " Eniautos Daimon '', who represents the cyclic death and rebirth of the world, including the rebirth of the tribe by the return of the heroes or dead ancestors. These conceptions, it will be seen, are in general agreement with the recent work of Dieterich," also with those of Usener ^ as developed by Dr. Farnell * and the ^ Themis, pp. 341 sqq. ^ Archiv f. Religionswissenscliaft, vol. xi, pp. 163-9C. ^ Ibid., vii, pp. 303-13. ^ Cults, vol. v, p. 235, note A. 5S THE ORIGIN OF TllAGEDY indications of the Macedonian munnncries described by Mr. Dawicins and otliers. I must also acknowledire a large debt to Professor Eidgeway's Tomb-theory, the more so since I ultimatel}' chffer from him on the main question, and seek to show that certain features in Tragedy which he regards as markedly foreign to Dionysus-worship are in reality natural expressions of it. It is of course clear that Tragedy, as wc possess it, contains many non-Dionj-siac elements. The ancients themselves have warned us of that. It has been inllueneed by the Epic, by hero cults, and by various ceremonies not connected with Dionysus. Indeed, the actual Aition treated in Tragedy is seldom confessedly and obviously Dionysiac. It is so sometimes. Sometimes it is the founding of a torch-race or the original reception of suppliants at some altar or sanctuarj^ But it is much more often the death or Pathos of some hero. Indeed, I think it can be shown that every extant Tragedy contains somewhere towards the end the celebration of a iabu tomb. This point we must gladly concede to Professor Ridgeway. I wish to suggest, however, that while the content has strayed far from Dionysus, the forms of Tragedy retain clear traces of the original drama of the Death and Rebirth of the Year Spirit.' Let us now examine the postulates on which Professor ^Murray's theory depends, and which of themselves are sufficient to raise doubts. He assumes (1) that mankind in its primitive stages has no individual thinking, but this is not supported by any cogent facts ; (2) that man revered the abstract before the concrete, the Universal before the Particular, a proposition refuted (pp. 12-13) by the history of the whole human race ; (.3) that men did not worship or revere actual human heroes, such as Brasidas and Timoleon, and that those of whom we read in Homer and other early Greek literature never existed, but were mere ' projections ' into choses sacrecs by ' group-thinking ' of pre-existing abstract conceptions of the Year Spirit. But we have shown (pp. 47-]). 1!I7 S(jq., with figure which is licre reproduced (Fin. I) liy the kiud permissiou ot Lt.-Col. Syl Pans. i. 4. .5. " Ixiii. = j,; .lc;«'irfix. 115. WESTERN ASIA 91 a Phrygian shepherd beloved l)y Cybek', wliilst a seholiast on Liieian represents him as lier son.'- First ol' all, let us note that the folk-lore story of his preternatural origin on which Sir James Frazer depends for his vegetation theory is many centuries later than Hermesianax, in whose account there is nothing miraculous, Attis being merely represented as slain by a wild boar, a not infre- quent occurrence in days when the peasant had no better weapons than his rude spear against fierce beasts. At Pessinus, near which Attis was buried according to one legend, there was a shrine of the Great Mother, very famous in late classical times, when it was tended by eunuch priests called Galli. But we know from the irrefragable evidence of Strabo - (which Sir .James Frazer has apparently overlooked) that the fine temple there and its eunuch Galli were of quite late origin, a fact amply corroborated by the circumstance that the regular name for the eunuch priests of Cybele both at the Artemisium of Ephesus and at Rome was Galli. But it was only some time after 279 B.C. that the Gaulish tribes crossed into Asia and one of them made the old Phrygian town of Pessinus its capital, and accordingly the Gallic priests must be posterior to that date. ' In old days ', says Strabo,^ ' certain chiefs enjoyed the emoluments of the priesthood, but now their honours are diminished.' From these words it is clear that before the Gaulish conquest the local chieftain clan held the priestly office, as was commonly the case with royal families, and that there were no eunuch priests until after that event. Priests were often bound to chastity, and thus the legend which makes Attis a celibate priest who broke his vow may have had a foundation in fact. There are not a few cases of such breaches of sacerdotal vows in ancient authors. The sanctuary apparently consisted originally of a temenos or sacred precinct, until the Attalid kings at some time after 250 B.C. built a fine temple and colonnades of white marble. But it owed its real fame and importance to the fact that the Romans in the dire straits of their struggle with Hannibal and in obedience to a Sibylline oracle fetched from Pessinus to Rome (204 B.C.) a famous statue of the Great Mother. The outstanding facts, then, are : (1) there was at Pessinus an ancient sacred enclosure, possibly the burial-ground of the chieftain family ; (2) they worshipped in it a goddess named Agdistis, who in the later myth was made into a monstrous hermaphroditic demon ; (3) Attis was the son of a Phrygian of importance ; (4) the late legend points in the same direction, as it makes him the bride- groom of the daughter of the King of Pessinus ; (5) he was also 1 Frazer, loc. cit. ~ 48«, 9-20 (Didot). ^ Strabo, loc. cil. 92 THE ORIGIN OF TRAGEDY said to be buried close by on Mount Agdistus ; (G) in one story he is said to ha\'e been eoiif^'enitally a eunuch, in another vowed to chastity, stranye characteristics for a spirit ot fcrtihty ; (7) it is clear that the eunucli ]:iriests were estabhshcd only after the coming of the Gaids (after 279 B.C.), and possiblj^ only after Attains I had defeated the latter, become master of Pessinus, and built the famous temple. This is confirmed by the fact that Galli became the generic name for the jiriests of Cybele at Rome and elsewhere, as at the Ephesian Artcmisium, where the ajjpearanee of Galli in later times has no significance, since we now know that only at a very late period was the worship of Cybele superimposed upon that of Artemis, who herself had supplanted an old Carian heroine; (8) the form of the legend which makes Attis unsex himself was probably in- vented, as Sir .James Frazcr suggests, to explain the existence of the Gallic eunuch priests at Pessinus and is therefore later than 279 B.C. ^^'e may therefore conclude with some probability that in Attis, as in Adonis, we ha\'e one of those cases in which the tragic fate of some 25erson. whether he was slain by a boar or died on his wedding- day, has led to his deification. If it shoidd turn out that in some, at least, of the rites and shrines of Cybele rc])rescntations of the body of Attis were exhibited, as in the cases of Hassan and Hussein, of Adonis, and, as we shall soon see, of Osiris, tlien the e^'idence "ill point still more directly to his having been once a youth, whose tragic fate, like that of various Hindu historical jiersonages presently to be cited, impressed his contem- poraries and led to his worship. It seems likely that with the cidt of Cybele Attis also passed to Rome in 204 b. c, as the Galli certainly accompanied their goddess. It seems clear that in the last century of the Rei)ublic and under the Empire Attis played no mean part in the spring festi\'al of the goddess at Rome. On IMarch 22 a pine-tree was cut in the woods and a bough of it was placed by a guild of tree- bearers in the sanetuarj^ where it was treated as a divinity. But once more it must be jiointed out that all the authorities cited for this ritual fiy Sir James Frazer ^ are quite late, such as Julian, Johannes Lydus, Arnobius, Firmieus Maternus, and Sallustius Philo- sophus. The trunk of the tree was swathed like a corpse with woollen bands and decked with \iolets, since these flowers, said the legend, sprang from the blood of Attis, as red roses and red anemones did fro)n that of Adonis. But these flower stories arc useless as evidence that Adonis or Attis or any one else was a vegetation ^ Op. cil., vol. i, p. 207. WESTERN ASIA 93 spirit. It might as well be argued that because the local Cambridge- shire legend says that the beautiful purple pasqxie-flower (^ineinoiic pidbvtilla), which grows on the Devil's Ditch, sprang from the blood of the Danes killed there in their great defeat b}^ Edward the Elder, therefore all Danes were vegetation spirits. The effigy of a young man, doubtless Attis himself, was tied to the middle of the stem. On the next day there was blowing of trumpets, and the third was the day of blood. The Archigallus or High Priest drew blood from his arms and presented it us an offering, whilst his subordinates performed a frantic dervishlike dance and gashed their bodies with kni\'es and potsherds. ' This ghastly rite jDrobably formed ', says Sir James Frazer, ' part of the mourning for Attis,' and in this he is probably right, when we recall the similar practices at this hour in honour of Hassan and Hussein. It must be confessed that there seems no more e\'idence for making Attis an ancient Asiatic vegetation dixinity than for regarding as such the grandsons of ^Muhammad. Antinous. But Adonis, Thammuz, and Attis were not the only handsome youths of Western Asia who were loved, deilied, and honoured with temples and festivals. On coins of Bithynium ^ in Bithynia, struck in the second century after Christ, is the legend ANTINOON eEON HnATPIZ and tlie Hermes-like figure of a young man with a shepherd's crook, with a bull beside him, a tall plant or shrub before him, and a star over his head. On coins of Delphi, Calchcdon, Smyrna, and other places he is termed hero (HPHS ). As he is called god and hero, and has with him two objects which the Vegeta- tionists always take to be sure indications of fertility and tree spirits — the bull and the shrub — and as on some contemporary coins of Bithy- nium appears Aphrodite, 'the great goddess of fertility,' there is as much evidence on these coins that Antinous was a vegetation spirit as has ever been adduced for Adonis or Attis, or even Dionysus himself. No one can doubt that the school referred to woidd have long since claimed Antinous as a deity of vegetation were it not for the ample historical evidence respecting him. A native of Bithynium, of low origin (possibly a shepherd, as he carries a crook), and of singular beauty, he became the favourite of the Emperor Hadrian, and accompanied him on all his expeditions. On one of these he perished in the Nile (a. d. 122), either by accident or suicide. Hadrian's grief knew no bounds. He rebuilt and named Antinoopolis, the town of Besa near the spot where his favourite was drowned, enrolled his name among the gods, caused temples to be erected to him in Egypt, 1 Head, llhloria Nuinorum (2nd ed.), p. 511. 9J. THE ORIGIN OF TRAGEDY ;ind a is})lrndkl shriiic ;it Mantineia (tlic mother-city of Bithynia), on coins of which town Antinous appears, as well as on those of many other places ; ^ he had games celebrated in liis honour, statues erected to his memory in all parts of the empire, whilst in one of his sanc- tuaries even oracles were delivered in his name, as they were in that of Dionysus on the Pangaean Mount and at Amphiclcia in Phocis. Finally, a star between the Eagle and the Zodiac was termed the soul of Antinous and bears his name to this hour. If a catamite could be raised to the godhead, be honoured with games, festivals and shrines, statues and coins, on the last of which he is accompanied by what Sir James Frazcr and his followers, Mr. A. B. Cook, Miss Harrison, Mr. Cornford, and Professor G. G. Murray, assume to be unmistakable tokens of a vegetation sjjirit, we may safely rest in our conclusion that Adonis, Attis, and others like them, such as Dionysus and Aristaeus, were once real hiunan personages like Hassan and Hussein. III. ANCIENT EGYPT We have seen how Sir James Frazer linds in the cults of Adonis, Attis. and Osiris ' striking examples of the decay and rejuveneseenee of nature and of those ceremonies with which (as he assimics) mankind thought they could help the god who was the principle of life in his struggle with the opposing principle of death, and of the "religious" or rather "magical" dramas which turn in great measure on these themes \ Osiris. As the annual celebration of Hussein is to-day a chief feature in the religious life of the Shiahs of Egypt, and as the cere- monies performed at least at one Muhammadan shrine in the Delta (p. 7-1) at this hour present several features which recall those appertaining to the cult of Osiris, which for several millenniums held the foremost ])lace in the sjiiritual life of the ancient Egyptians, this will be a not unfitting place in Avhich to survey the facts resjjecting that divinity, and to ascertain whether he was simply a corn spirit, as held by Sir .lames Frazer, or a phase of the Daemon of the Year, as assumed by Miss Harrison, Mr. Cornford, and Professor G. G. Murray, or whether he is not really as historical as are the sons of Ali and Fatinia. Ample material for determining this question is pro- vided for us by inscri)5tions and sculptures on Egyptian monuments going back as far as tln' Sixth dynasty, Ijy numerous ])a)n'rus texts, many of which are of great antiquity, and which not infrequently arc 1 Head, op. cil., |)p. 242, i40, .512, Ac. ANCIENT EGYPT 95 illustrated with pictures t)l' \arious scenes in tiic life and cult oi' Osiris and Isis. by a wealth of material representations of the divinity and his sjx-eial symbol extending over very many centuries, and finally by the accounts of his cult in its later phases furnished by Herodotus, Diodorus Siculus, Plutarch, Julius J'irmicus Materiuis. ^laerobius, and others. Herodotus, our earliest classical authoritjr, informs us that Isis and Osiris were the only gods worshipped by all the Egyptians, and he terms Isis the Moon (Selene^), and Osiris Dionysus," after the ordinary practice of the Greeks and Romans, who habitually identified the gods of other iDeojDles with their own, often from some very superfieial resemblance. Elsewhere ^ he identifies Isis with Demeter, for he states that the Egyptians hold Demeter and Dionysus to be the rulers of the dead, that the EgyiDtians were the first to promulgate the doctrines of the immortality of the soul, its transmigration into the lower animals, and its reincarnation after a j^eriod of thirteen thousand years in a human shape. He was led to his identifications by the fact that the Egyptians sacrificed swine to Isis and Osiris, as the Greeks did to Demeter and Dionysus,* and, secondly, because he thought that their festival in honour of Osiris agreed exactly with the Greek celebration in honour of Dionysus, except in the matter of choruses, and the use not of phalli but of indecent mechanical toys about a cubit long, which were carried round the ^-illages, preceded by a flute-player and followed by the women. ^ Diodorus and Plutarch both refer also to an obscene symbol of Osiris, but there is not the slightest evidence for this in the native Egyptian material remains or papyrus texts. We shall find, as we joroceed, that Osiris, in the course of several thousand years, had attached to himself the symbols of various local cults which he had overshadowed or absorbed. Now as the old king Men was represented by indecent images, many specimens of which survive, it seems highly probable that by the time of Herodotus the people had attached to Osiris the symbol of the rjld king. Herodotus ® was told by the Egyptian priests that in the earliest period of their history the king was always a god, although his subjects were men, and that Horus, son of Osiris, after overthrow- ing Typhon, became the last of these divine monarchs. From what we know already, and what we shall learn as we j^roceed in our investigation respecting the deification of kings, not only after death, but even in their lifetime, we may not unreasonably infer from the statement of Herodotus that Osiris and Isis were once human rulers of Egypt. This prima facie case will be amply substantiated by the native Egyptian evidence, as well as by other Greek writers. 1 ii. 42. - ii. 47. ^ ii. 123. * ii. 47. ^ ii. 48. " ii. 144. 96 TIIK 015IGIX OF TRAGEDY xVlthough in chrouolof^ficul order wc ouirht to take first the account of Diodorus, who flourished in the last half of the first century before Christ, yet, as that given by Plutarch in his famous treatise De Iside et O.sitidc accords much more closely with the native accounts of Osiris, we shall take the latter first. The myth relates ■"■ that Osiris was the child of Cronos and Rhea, that he was born on the first of the fi\'e e])are\-iously ; he in\'ented letters, and instituted the worship of the gods ; he invented arithmetic, music, and sculpture, and devised a system of astronomy. lie was the conlidential scribe of Osiris, who in^-ariabl}' took his ' Book I, cliap. 11, sqq. ANCIENT EGYPT 101 advice on all matters. Osiris raised a great host and resolved to go about the world teaching mankind to plant vines and sow wheat and barley. When he had made all ready in Egyj^t, he entrusted the whole kingdom to Isis, making Hermes, his trusty scribe, her assistant. Of the forces left at home he made Heracles, his kinsman, a man of great strength, the commander. Osiris took with him Apollo (in Egyptian, Horus), Anubis, who wore a dog's skin, Macedo, who wore a wolf's skin, Pan, and various skilful husbandmen. As he marched through Ethioioia, a troupe of Satj^rs was presented to him ; he was fond of music and dancing, and therefore added them to the company of musicians which he had in his train. Having taught the Ethiopians the arts of tillage and husbandry, he built several cities in their country. Pie set governors over the land and continued his march. On the borders of Ethiopia he raised the river banks, took precautions to keejD the Nile from inundating the neigh- bouring country, and constructed canals with floodgates and sluices. He then marched by way of Arabia into India, where he built many cities, including Nysa, in which he planted the ivy plant. He took part in several elephant hunts, and faring westwards he brought his army across the Hellespont into EuroiJc. In Thrace he slew Lycurgus, a barbarian king, who refused to adopt his system of government. Osiris became a benefactor of the whole world by finding out food •which was suitable to man, and after his death he gained the reward of immortality and was honoured as a god. For some time the priests concealed the manner of his death, but at last some of them, unable to keep the secret, divulged it. Osiris Avas in fact murdered by his wicked brother Typhon, who broke up his body into twenty-six pieces, and gave a piece to each of his fellow conspirators, to make them as guilty as himself, and thus to force them to place him on the throne of Osiris and to defend him when once there. ' Isis, with the aid of her son Horus, avenged her husband's murder and got possession of the throne of Egypt. She searched for and found all the fragments of her spouse's body but one. These she reunited by means of wax and aromatic spices, and thus restored the body to its natural size. She then sent for the priests and told each of them that she was going to entrust to him the body of Osiris for burial, and she assigned to them one-third of the country as an endowment for his cult. She also ordered them to dedicate to Osiris one of their cattle, and to pay to it both in its hfe and after its death the same veneration as they did to Osiris. The priests obeyed, and the animal dedicated to Osiris was the bull. They renewed their mourning for him over the graves of two bulls in 102 THE OPvIGIX OF TRAGEDY particular, Apis and Miic\is.-' Isis also bade them make models of the missing part of Osiris, and they were adored in the temples and generally held in great veneration. Isis then vowed never to marry again, and she spent the rest of her days in dealing forth justiee amongst her subjects, excelling other princes in almsdeeds to her own jjeople. After her death she was numbered among the gods ; her tomb, according to some, is at Memphis, to others at Philae. She is rejjuted to ha\'c discovered many simples, and to have had great skill in leeehcraft. Even as a goddess she takes thought of healing men's bodies, and to all who seek her aid she ajjpears in dreams and gives them relief. Persons of whom phj^sicians have despaired have been restored to health by her, the lame have been made to walk and the blind to see by her potent aid. Among the remedies which she is said to have discovered was one which could restore the dead to life. When her son Horus had been killed and thrown into the water by Titans, by giving him this medicine she not only restored him to life, but made him immortal. From his mother Horus learned the arts of physic and divination, which he used for the good of men." ~ Our next classical authority is Julius Firmicus Maternus, who flourished in tlie fourth century of our era. He wrote a treatise, De errore profanarum religionum ad Constantium et Constantem Augusios. This work must have been written before a.d. 350, in which year the Emperor Constans died. The object of the essaj' was to show, as Clement of Alexandria had done long before, the falsehood of the different forms of pagan belief, to trace the steps by which men fell away from the service of the true God, by raising mere men to the rank of deities and by personifying the powers of Nature. Concerning Osiris he thus writes '' : ' Osiris and Isis were brother and sister, and Typhon was the husband of Isis. Typhon, on discovering that Isis had an illicit passion for her brother, treacherously slew him. He tore the body in pieces and scattered the quivering limbs along the banks of the Nile. Isis, in horror, thrust her husband, Typhon, from her, and taking with her her sister, Nephthys, and the dog- headed Anubis, she resolved to seek the limbs of Osiris and to bury them. With the aid of Anubis she found and buried them. Osiris, who had been a just man, was henceforth worshipped in the temples imdcr the form of a portrait figure. Typhon, on account of his pride, haughti- ness, and arrogance, was held in abomination. In the shrines of Osiris his murder and dismemberment were annually commemorated with weeping, wailing, and great lamentation. His worshippers 1 Strabo, 085.48, 682. .•!G, 084.9. = Diodonis Sic. Book I, chap. 35. " Ed. Miinter, 8vo, Hauniac, 1820. ANCIENT EGYPT 103 shaved their heads and beat their breasts, gaslied their slioulders, and inflicted other ;vounds on their bodies in imitation of tlie cuts and gashes that Tyjilion made in the body of Osiris. Wlienever possible tliey cut into the scars left by the gaslics of the preceding year, in order that the remembrance of tlie hateful murder of Osiris might be renewed in their minds. AVhen they have done this for a certain numl^er of daj'S they pretend that the mutilated remains of the god ha^-e been found and reunited. Then thej' turn from mourning to rejoicing. Those who defend these practices say that grain is the seed of Osiris, that Isis is the Earth, and that Typhon is heat.' Elsewhere he states that in the mysteries of Isis a pine-tree was cut down and hollo'wed out, and that from the pith was made a figure of Osiris, which was then buried, and after the lapse of a year was burned.^ It is clear that Firmicus Matcrnus, like other ancient writers, believed that Osiris had been a real king, deified on account of his virtues and tragic end, whilst it is no less apparent that he regarded as a later accretion the doctrine of those who defended the cult of Osiris on the ground that grain was his seed, or in other words, that he was a corn spirit, as held by Sir James Frazer. Moreo\'er, the wailing and self-inflicted wounds of his votaries resemble so closely the practices in memory of Hussein (p. 78), that we are constrained to hold with Firmicus Maternus that the like acts in the temples of Osiris were in commemoration of a dead hero rather than mere magical rites to ensure fertility. Macrobius {flor. a. d. 400) held that Osiris is the Sun and Isis the Earth, in the case of Osiris repeating what had been said by Diodorus four centuries earlier, and in the case of Isis the view given by Plutarch in the phj^sical explanation of the legend cited above (p. 99). Macrobius,- in support of this view that Osiris is the Sun, states that the Egyptians represent the god in their hierogljqohs under the form of a sceptre with an eye in it, and that by this they indicate that the god is the Sun, who from his exalted position looks 1 Mythologici Latini (ed. Commelinus, 1399, p. 299) : ' In Isiacis sacris de pinea arbore caeditur truncus. Huius trunci media pars subtiliter excavatur. Illis de seminibus factum idolum Osiridis sepelitur. . . . Sed et ilia alia ligna quae dixi, similis flamma consumit, nam etiam post annum ipsorum lignorum rogum flamma depascitur.' - Salnrn., Book I (Panckoncke's ed., vol.i, p. 253) : ' nee in occulto est neque aliud esse Osirin, quam solem, nee Isin aliud esse, quam terram, ut dixinius, naturamve rerum . . . hinc Osirin Aegyptii, ut solem esse asserant, quoties hieroglyphicis litteris snis exprimere volunt, insculpunt sceptruni, inque eo speciem oculi exprimunt, et hoc signo Osirin monstrant, significantes hunc deum solem esse, regaliquc potestate sublimem cuncta despicere.' 101 THE ORIGIN OF TRAGEDY down upon the Universe. He thus repeats the aeeount of the hieroglyphic name of Osiris given by Diodorus and Plutarch, both of whom, however, as we have seen, interpreted it as ' many-eyed '. Let us briefly survey the chief points that emerge from these various accounts of Osiris and Isis. (1) Herodotus, Diodorus, Plutarch, and Julius Firmicus Maternus all agree that Osiris was once a mortal man, the first three regarding him as an ancient king of Egypt or of part of Egypt. (2) This is confirmed by the accounts of the murder of Osiris, and the dismemberment and subsequent embalming of his body, ^^'hich clearly indicate that the Egyptian sources on which the Greek writers drew, regarded Osiris as a mortal king. This we shall find amply substantiated bj^ the numerous figures of Osiris, in which he is regularly represented as a mummy or as a dead man laid out for burial. (3) Herodotus, Diodorus, and Plutarch all refer to the lohallus as the special symbol of Osiris, to its worship in shrines and its use in festivals. But for this we shall find not the slightest proof in the whole range of native Egyjitian evidence. It will probably turn out that the Greeks confused the cult of Men, in which the phallus had part, with that of Osiris. (4) Herodotus, Diodorus, and Plutarch all identify Osiris with the Greek Dionysus, Herodotus certainly and the other two probably being led to this identifieation, partly by their false supjDosition that the phallus was the symbol of Osiris, partly by the fact that Osiris was represented as a beneficent king, who not only taught his peo})le the use of cereals, but also of wine. Diodorus and Plutarch thus attribute to Osiris a close con- nexion with Nysa and a great expedition into India and back, one making him return by the Hellespont to Thrace, punish Lycurgus, and establish himself there exactly as in the legends of Dionysus. (5) Without doubt these arc quite late Greek additions to the story which probably arose in Ptolemaic times in Egypt. This is eon- firmed by what we have found in the story of Isis. (6) Herodotus identifies that goddess not only with the Moon (Selene) but also with Demeter, citing as evidence the similarity of the sacrifices and rites at the festivals of both goddesses. This identification of Isis with the Earth-Mother Demeter became general in classical and post-classical times, since Diodorus, Plutarch, and Macrobius all identify her with the Earth. (7) This identification of the goddess Isis with Demeter led to the wholesale adaptation of the story of the coming of Demeter to Elcusis, told in the Homeric Hipnn to Demeter, to the legend of Isis and her arrival and subsequent behaviour at Byblus. Wc may therefore regard the Dionysiac and Demeter element in the story of Osiris and Isis as wholly un-Egyptian, and ANCIENT EGYPT 105 consequently any theories built upon them with reference to the origin of the cult of Osiris must be rejected. (S) As we move from the earlier to the later writers, the human Osiris and Isis are steadily fading and physical explanations are steadily forcing their way. With the lirst four authorities Osiris is an old Egyptian king. Although Herodotus identifies him with a Greek god, it is not with the Sun, but with Dionysus, the Thracian hero ; a view likewise held by Diodorus and Plutarch. The latter two, however, have, in addi- tion, physical explanations which identify Osiris with the Sun or the Nile, and Isis with the Moon or the Earth, as Herodotus has already done. Finally, Macrobius has only one explanation — that Osiris is the Sun, and Isis the Earth, the human element having now com- pletely disappeared. (9) The Greeks were perhaps led to identify Osiris with the Sun, because one of Osiris' bulls — the Mnevis — was adored at Heliopolis, the citj' of the Sun, where there took place in the time of Herodotus ^ a festival held in honour of the Sun-god. As we proceed it may turn out that Osiris, in addition to absorbing into himself many old local Egyptian divinities, finally even became merged into the cult of the Sun. (10) Herodotus " distinctly shows that there was a rude dramatic performance connected with what he thought was the cult of Osiris (p. 95), but which may well; have been rather that of Men. Firmicus Matcrnus, moreover, shows that some sort of Passion Play, with wailings and laments, recalling those for Hussein at the Muharram (pp. 78 sqq.), took place in the festivals of Osiris. Our next stej^ will be to examine the large mass of native Egyptian evidence collected by Dr. E. A. Wallis Budge ^ in his valuable book, Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection, a work to which I have been continualljr indebted in writing the following section. Osiris from the Egyptian Sources. ' The idea of the god-man, Osiris,' writes Dr. Budge,'* ' was developed naturally from the cult of the ancestor, who, having been a man, was sujjposed to be better able to understand the wants of living men than the great unknow- able God, whose existence was but dimly imagined.' Again he writes^ : ' Osiris as the typical god-man, who died and rose again, is repre- sented in the form of a mummy (Fig. 8), or at all events in the form of a dead body, which has been made ready for burial. This form is a development of an ancient presentment of a dead chief or ancestor, for Osiris took the place of the tutelary ancestor-god who was honoured and worshipped in every ^•illagc of the Sudan of any size 1 ii. 63, 09. ^ ii. 48. ^ London, 1911. '' Op. cit., vol. i, p. 22. ^ Op. cit., vol. i, p. 30. 106 THE ORIGIN OF TRAGEDY from time inmuiiiorial. This anccstor-yod was chosen to be the patron and protector of the \-ilhigc on account of either the strength or the wisdom wliich he had (hsphiyed \vhen upon earth, and many modern traxeUcrs ha\'e put on record that figures of ancestors still occupy prominent positions in African villages and settlements. Often they stand under a rude canopy formed of branches and leaves, which is supported by poles, but sometimes, like the figures of spirits and gods, they are pro\'ided with small huts or houses. As it has always been the custom to reserve ceremonial burial for the bodies of kings, chiefs, and men of high rank, it is clear from the traditional accounts of the burial of Osiris and of the numerous ceremonies which were performed in connexion with it that he must have been a great and powerful king. ^loreovcr, the figure of the god which appears on se])ulehral stelae of the latter part of the Middle Empire, and the reliefs sculptured on the walls and pillars of temples of the New Empire, to say nothing of the fine vignettes in papyri of the XYIIIth and XlXth dynasties, all represent him as a great king, and in all essentials and special characteristics of the god they agree' No representations of Osiris have come down to us from the Ancient Empire, but ' it is, however, well known that the position of Osiris as the god-man was well established in the minds of the Egyptians at the beginning of the Dynastic period, and that even at this remote time he was regarded as the head of a small company of five gods, each of whom was endued by his worshippers with human attributes \ Osiris was a good, benevolent, and just king, who was murdered by his brother Set. Isis, his sister and wife, was a faithful and loving consort, who protected him and his interests with unre- mitting care during his life, and cherished his memory unceasingly after his death. She endured sorrow, pain, and loneliness in bringing forth his son, Horus, in the papyrus swamp. ' As he grew up she taught hinr that it was his duty to avenge his father's murder and encouraged a warlike spirit in him. Nephthys, her sister, attached herself to her with loving faithfulness, and assisted Isis, by word and deed, in all the trouble which she suffered through the murder of her husband and through the poisoning of her son Horus. Set was the husband of Nephthys and begat by her An-pu (Anubis), who acted as embalmer of Osiris. Thus we see that the Egyptians regarded these gods and goddesses as a sort of Holy Family." ' Isis was the ideal wife and mother and the perfect woman, and even before the death of the last native king of Egypt she held in the hearts of her worshippers a position somewhat similar to that held by ANCIENT EGYPT 107 Fig. 8. ' Osiris Khcnti-Amcnti ' with the hawk in front. ^ 1 My own specimen. 108 THE ORIGIN OF TRAGEDY the Vir^riii Mary in the hearts of many Oriental Cliristians in Egypt, the Suchm, Abyssinia, and ^\'estern Asia.'^ ' Somehow and somewhere " the behef arose that this particular god-man Osiris had risen from the dead, as the result of a series of magieal eeremonies, which were performed by Horus, his son, under the direction of the great magician-priest, Thoth, and with the hel|j of the embalmer or medicine-man, Anuliis, and it grew and increased until it filled all Egypt. The fundamental attractions of Osiris- worship were the humanity of the god and his immortality, and to these were added later the attributes of a just but merciful judge, who rewarded the righteous and punished the wicked. That these appealed irresistibly to the Egyptians of all periods is proved by the absorption into Osiris of all the other gods of the dead in Egypt.' I have thought it best to give this admirable statement in Dr. Budge's own words, as he cannot be suspected of having a bias towards any particular doctrine of the Origin of Greek Tragedy or of Tragedy in general. But it was not merely the other gods of the dead whom he absorbed, for clearly ' from the Xllth dynasty downwards there is hardly a local god of any importance with whom Osiris was not sooner or later identified ". Grain-spirits, tree-gods, animal-gods, reptile-gods, bird-gods, all were absorbed by Osiris, and additions to his attributes continued to be made until his original form disappeared under a mass of confused and often contradictory descriptions.^ ' But so long as the priests ga\'e to the people, whose old local gods had been dispossessed by Osiris, the essentials which their beliefs demanded, they were content.' ■" 'We are able to identify from the Egyj^tian texts the originals of many of these additions. He thus becomes identified in the first ])lace with the corn spirit, and is then widened into the spirit of \-egetation in general. By becoming the god of vegetation in general he ))ecame regarded as the controller of the seasons, and thus invaded the prerogatiA'e of Thoth, the magician-priest and rain- maker, and finally, as the part played by the Nile in the economy of Egypt was all-important, he e\-entually became endowed with the powers of Hep, or Heper, the great god of the Nile. In the papyrus of Hunefer his throne is placed l)y or above a lake of water. From this fact arose the late [jhysical explanation gi-\-en by Plutarch, by which Osiris is identified with the Nile and his death with the falling of that ri\'er. He is identified with the Bull-god, Apis and Mnevis, and in The Baolc af the Dead lie is addressed as the Bull of Anient et, 1 Op. (it., vi)\. i. pp. 28-:i0. - Ibid., pji. '22-3. '■' Ibid., p. 22. ^ Ibid., p. 18. ANCIENT EGYPT 109 i.e. the bull of the otlier world.'" The leniale counter]iai't of an early Bull-god was the Cow-goddess, Ilathor, whose aneient shrine and cult-image in the shape ot a cow lias not long since been discovered by Professor Navillc at Dehr-el-Bahari, where numerous votive ]ilaques (Fig. 9), with representations of the goddess in her later phase with hmiian head and cow's cars are likewise found. But the attributes of Hathor were absorbed bv Isis before the downfall Fig. 9. Isis-Hatlior. Votive plaque, Dehr-e!-Bahari.^ of the Ancient Empire, probably about the same time as the Bull-god was merged in Osiris. This identification of Osiris with Apis was known to Diodorus (pp. 101-2), who also identifies him with the Mnevis bull worshipped at Heliopolis,^ but Herodotus identifies Apis, not with Osiris, but Epaphus.* Strabo describes the shrine of Apis at Memphis, the colour of the sacred bull — Ijlack all over save for a white 1 Ibid., p. 19. - From a plaque given me by my friend Mr. C. T. Currelly, O.lNIeclj., Director of the Royal Museum, Toronto, Canada. 3 Strabo, 682. 30 sqq. (Uidot). " ii. 153. no THE ORIGIN OF TRAGEDY blaze on tlie forehead aad a few small white spots on his body — as well as the niode of housinff him and of showing him to visitors. The same writer mentions the sacred Hathor cow at MomemjDhis.^ The bull Apis was supposed to incarnate the living soul of Osiris, and according to Plutarch- this animal was begotten, not by a bull, but fjy a generati^-e ray of light from the moon which rested on his dam at the time of conception. With all this absorption of the attributes of other deities it is not surprising that the phallic symbol ascribed by Greek writers to Osiris and his cult, and on which recent writers build so much, was not his until quite late, but really that of Men, the old king. There is some evidence that Osiris was at one time considered as a Moon-god, even by the Egyptians them- selves. Thus Plutarch states that the twenty-eight years of the reign or life of Osiris signify the twenty-eight days of the lunar month, and that the fourteen pieces into which his body was rent similarly typify the fourteen days which elapse between that of the full moon, on which he perished, and the new moon. Plutarch, no doubt, offered an explanation current in his own day when physical theories of the gods were universal, and it is quite possible that he drew from some Egyptian source. Thus a text at Dcnderah '^ states that Osiris was torn into fourteen pieces, but several other texts mention sixteen. The Book of the making tlie Spirii of Osiris enumerates eighteen, whilst Diodorus {sujyra, p. 101 ) gives the number as twenty-six. From this it is clear that the number fourteen must have only been suggested in the period when it had become the fashion to jDhilosophizc the gods into astronomical phenomena. ' Apart from the fact ', writes Dr. Budge,'' ' that Osiris is actually called "AsarAah", i.e. "Osiris the Moon", there are so many passages which prove beyond all doubt that at one period at least Osiris was the ]Moon-god, that it is dilfieult to understand whj' Diodorus stated that Osiris was the Sun and Isis the Moon. The Egyptian texts suggest that in late times the Sun-god of Night may have been regarded as a form of Osiris, and in the last section of the Book Am-Tuat we see the mummied form in which he passed through the Tuat, or Other World ; but Osiris the Moon-god and the Sun-god were two entirely distinct beings, and the Egyptians ne\'er confounded them, whatever the Greeks may have done.' It may, howe^•er, be pointed out that the identification of Osiris with the Sun made by Maerobius as well as by Diodorus, may have ^ Strabo, 08.5. .31. - Stjmpos. vol. viii, p. 80.5. '* Budge, op. cit., vol. i, pp. 380-7. ■* Osiris and the Egyptian liesurrection, vol. i, pp. 21-2. ANCIENT EGYPT 111 originated from the i'aet that in the hiter period the eidt of the Mnevis bull, one of the chief forms of Osiris, at Helio])olis was of great importance, and may have blended with that of the Suu-god himself, who gave his name to the place. Herodotus ^ in one passage at least, like Diodorus, identified Isis with the Moon. The Egyi)tian evidence seems to confirm the view that the tendency to make Osiris into a ]\Ioon-god and to fit the years of his reign or life and the parts of his body on to the lunar months, like his identification with the Sun, came only in the last stages of the evolution of his cult. The Oldest Symbol of Osiris. As we have seen, the dismemberment of Osiris forms one of the most important features not only of the myth but of the cult. Isis is supposed to have erected a tomb or shrine at each place where she found and bm-icd one of the fragments of her spouse. Naturally, such relies became sacred objects of adoration, e.g. one of the earliest things connected with his cult is the object known as the tet (Fig. 10). Some have thought it a tree-trunk, others a tree with branches, which seems very unlikely ; others, again, a coffer or framework made of a tree-trunk, in which the relic of Osiris venerated at Busiris was kept. In The Book of the Dead this object is associated with the backbone and vertebrae of the god. Dr. Budge holds that it is a con- ventional representation of a portion of his spinal column. The oldest form of this j^art was probably represented by a part of the back Avith portions of the ribs attached to it. In the course of time this was fitted with a stand, and the familiar later form arose. ^ Dr. Budge thinks that it was really the as sacrum of Osiris which was confused with a portion of the backbone in early times. The Oldest Shrines. The tet was chief pride of Tet, Tetu, or Tattu, the metropolis of the Ninth Nome of Lower Egypt, known to the Greeks as Busiris. It seems certain that Busiris w^as the oldest of all the shrines in the north, but it was never as important as Abydus, its great rival in the south. Herodotus,* however, in his description Fig. 10. The Tet symbol of Osiris (enlarged).'- 1 ii. 47. 3 Op. cil., vol. ii, p. 199. - Made of syenite ; in my own possession. * ii. 59. 112 THE OIUGIX OF TRAGEDY ot the six chief shrines of Efjypt and tlieir festivals, states that the most important sanctuary of Isis was atEusiris. ByStrabo's time-*^ the place seems to have l)een of no importance and its people had a bad name. The temple or place at Busiris in which the let was worshipped, probably the temple of Isis, was in later times called Per-seker, i.e. 'the House of Silence'. 'At a very early period Osiris was assimilated to the tet, and the ceremony of " setting up " the let became the equi^-alent of the rcconstitution of the backbone and of the body of Osiris generally. The tet can hardh' have been a tree with branches, but it may have been confused with a tree-trunk, or coffer, or framework made of a tree-trunk, in which the relic of Osiris was kept.' - It will be obserxxd that amid all the conjectural origins of the td, no one, not even the most prurient, has ever suggested that it was a phallus. If Busiris had the tet, Abydus was reputed to possess the head and even the whole body of the martyred king. It was most certainly the oldest of all the shrines in the south, if not the most ancient in Egypt. ' As the symbol of the city and its name was the coffer or basket M'hich contained the head of Osiris, with plumes above the coffer and the serpent passing through it,^ the connexion of the cult of Osiris with the town must have been very ancient. It stood not far from the Nile on a canal leading from the great river, and at no great distance from Xetat or Xetit, near which Osiris was murdered by Set. It was more natural for Isis when she found her husband's dead body there to take it to Abydus than to any more remote town.' Before the establishment of the cult of Osiris there, the people venerated Seker, the god of Death, the two Ap-uati gods, Anubis, An-her, Khenti-Amenti, and others. But by the end of the Sixth dynasty Osiris had become the chief god of the district, and all the local forms of the gods just enumerated had become subordinated to him. His fame spread widely, and those who could afford it desired to be buried near the shrine of the man who had died and risen again. ' Even in the Pyramid texts ', says Dr. Budge. ^ 'we find it tacitly assumed that the kings for whom they were written had each become an Osiris, and the name of Osiris is actually prefixed to the names of some of them.' It looks as if these kings were con- sidered reincarnations, thus resembling the Imams of the Shiah Mrislems and certain reincarnatif)ns of Vishnu which we shall preserrtly meet in India (|). 13G). Those who could not afford to buy a tomb at Aliydus for tluir dead had to content themseh'es with 1 081. 38 (Didot). - Budsc, Oj>. cil., vol. i. p. .32. ■' Ibid., vol. ii, p. 1. ■* \'ol. i, p. :,2. ANCIENT EGYPT 113 bearing thither the mummy and Avith letting it tarry there a brief space in order that it might benefit from proximity to the shrine. Sueh mummies were then brought home again and laid to rest in their family graves. Abydus naturally throA^e on those who resorted thither, especially at the time of the great festival held at the close of the year. Nothing is known of the history of Abydus and its Osiris cult from the end of the Vlth to the beginning of the Xllth dynasty.-^ It was under the kings of this latter period that the cult and the sanctuary rose to great importance, especially the dramatic performances held there. From an inscription we learn that a king, probably Usertsen I, made offerings to the god, and that Usertsen III was a still greater benefactor. The inscription of I-kher-nefert, an official of the latter, informs us that his roj^al master ordered him to go to Abydus, build a sanctuary for Osiris, and to adorn his shrine with some of the gold which the god had enabled him to bring from Nubia after his victorious campaign in that country. I-kher-nefert accordingly built a shrine - with sweet-smelling woods, inlaid with gold, silver, and lapis lazuli, and made shrines also for the other gods. He drew ujd rules for the priests and for the celebrations throughout the j^-ar ; he provided a new boat for Osiris, and added a suitable shrine, in which the figure or statue of the god was to be set ; he also made a statue of the god adorned wdth lapis lazuli, silver-gold, turquoise, and precious stones of all kinds. He likewise provided apparel for the festival attire of the image, and, in addition to the ordinary priest, he appointed another with the title of Sa-mer-f, ' his (the god's) beloved son,' who minis- tered in the sacred house, and had charge of all ceremonies and the sacred property of the god and of the shrine. He dressed the statue for the festivals on the full moon and new moon in each month, and had an assistant, who had also to be a man of ' clean fingers '. To the very important contents of the second part of this inscription we shall soon return. Under the New Empire it was boldly asserted that Abydus pos- sessed the veritable body of Osiris, and the symbol of Osiris— Tet (Fig. 10) — is described as ' the holy Tet in Abydus '. Sometimes the Tet is surmounted by the horns, feathers, disk, &c., which belong to Osiris, or Osiris Khenti-Amenti, and sometimes by the head and bust of Osiris, or by his head with horns and plumes on the top of it. Rarely Khenti-Amenti is represented as an old man, whose head 1 Budge, op. cii., vol. ii, pp. 2, 3. - Jbid., pp. 4-5. I 114 THE ORIGIN OF TRAGEDY forms the base of the Tet, on which rest the feathers, horns, &c., whieh are the attributes of Osiris. A very unusual form of Osiris or Osiris Un-nefer is found on a reUef at Abydus. On a high pylon-shaped pedestal is a kneeling human figure, on the neck of which stands a Tet, within the loop of the symbol of life, which takes the place of the head and neck. The figure is described as Osiris Un-nefer, dweller in the temple of Men-maat-Ra, and is entreated to give every kind of physical well-being to him (i.e. the king).-*- Strabo tells us that the people of Abydus honoured Osiris, but that contrary to the practice in the case of the other gods, neither singer, flute-player, nor harper sang or played a prelude to the sacri- fice.'- He briefly describes the shrine under the title of the Me- mnonium, constructed of massive stones, ' a king's house marvellously wrought with single blocks of stone, as is the labyrinth, but not so complicated, and there is a well lying in a hollow, into which one has to descend through an arched passage roofed with single stones of surpassing size and workmanship.' ■* This well is apparently that mentioned on the stele of Menthu-hetep of the Xltli dynasty, who says that he built it by the order of Horus, i.e. the king. But Dr. Budge thinks that 'it is far more likely that he only cleared it out and lined it with stone '. The well was called Ha-hetepet, and was guarded by a god named Qa-ha-hetep, who allowed no one to approach it. The ground about it was called the ' region of offerings, the holy land, the mountain of Amentet '."* The Egyptians apparently thought that by means of this well their offerings could be dispatched direct to the other world for the use of the god. The ' roarings or noises ' that were heard in the well may have been caused by the fall of the offerings into it. Close to it was the chamber whieh contained the relic of Osiris. This well has been supposed to lie a mile and a half away from the Memnonium, in the plain of Abydus, at a spot now known as Umm al-Ka'ab. ' mother of pots,' from the amount of pottery found there, now identified as Peqer, and as the burial-place of the kings of the First Egyptian dynasty (p. 116). That Strabo was right in regarding the Memnonium as the shrine of Osiris can no longer be doubted. A remarkable discovery made this ^ Budge, op. cii., vol. i, p. 53 (\^'itli illustration on p. 51). - 691.47: eV 5e tt/''A/3u6gj Ti^iiXTi T6v''0(Ttpiv' eV fie Ttu ifpw tov ^Oaipidos ovk e^€(7TLv ovT€ (tidoif ovTE avXj^Trji/ ovr€ yp-aKTT)V aTrapxeadaL rw Oeco Kadcnrep to'ls aWois ^ Ibid, G90. 40 : vTrep fie ravTrjS rj ''AjSvboi, eV fj ru MippomoPj (BauiXaov Bavfia(TTo)S Kareo'KevatTpei'oi' 6\6\i6op kt\. ' Budge, op. cit., vol. ii, p. 12. ANCIENT EGYPT 115 very year by Professor Naville has set the matter at rest. By the term Memnonium, Herodotus ^ means not a building dedicated to a god, but the king's palace at Susa. Strabo seems to regard it as the house of a dead rather than of a living king," for he applies it not merely to the shrine of Osiris, but to the Egyptian labyrinth, and also speaks of other Memnonia at Thebes. ' The temple of Seti I ', urates M. Naville,* ' bears the character of what is called a Me- mnonium.' Since it was dedicated to Osiris he inferred that the tomb of the god ought to be somewhere near. Acting on this supposition he disco^•ered that between a door found two years ago and the temple of Seti I there was ' a complete sanctuary, evidently of the time of the Pyramids, very much ruined, but built Avith huge materials, ... a building quite unique amongst the numerous temples and tombs of the Nile Valley '. There is first a hall, 30 m. by 20 m., divided into two aisles, and a nave. The two aisles had ceilings made of granite monoliths, which cannot be called slabs, since they are six feet thick. The nave was probably open. There must have been sixteen cells in the side walls. The nave leads to an end wall of red sandstone, not far from Seti's temple. Only on this wall were inscriptions found in the great hall, and these give the name of Menephtah. They are distinctly funerary, such as the representation of the two principal amulets put near the deceased. A small door in the wall led to another chamber of the same breadth as the large hall, but only five metres long. This chamber, built of large blocks, is perfectly preserved. On one side and on the ceiling are engraved or painted funerary scenes of the time of Seti I. It was empty, but the texts on the wall show that it is the burial-place of Osiris. These give the concluding portions of what may be called the ' Book of the Under- world '. But as M. Amelineau found no well at Umm al-Ka'ab, nor has Professor Naville as yet discovered one at the Memnonium, this problem still awaits solution. The Passion Play of Osiris. We have already found some allusion to dramatic performances in honour of Osiris in the Greek authors, but from none of these can we get any detailed information. Fortu- nately the royal official I-kher-nefert, in the second part of the inscription on the stele cited above, has left us a brief, though invaluable, account of what seems to be undoubtedly the Osiris Mystery Play as annually performed at Abydus. He apparently had to organize the performance, and informs us of the parts which 1 V. 53 : (S (iaa-iXrjia to Mf/jfowa Kakeoixiva. Cf. V. 54 : tovto (Susa) yap Mf- 2 690. 41 (cf. 693. 5), 693. 19. ^ Times, March 6, 1914 (p. 4). I 2 116 THE ORIGIN OF TRAGEDY he himself acted. ' I performed the coming-forth of Ap-uat when lie set out to defend his father ; I drove back the enemy from the Neshmet Boat ; I overthrew the foes of Osiris ; I performed the " Great Coming-forth " ; I followed the god in his footstej^s ; I made the boat of the god to move and Thoth ... I provided the boat of the Lord of Abydus called Kha-em-Maat (i. e. " appearing in truth ") with a cabin shrine, and I put on him his sjDlendid apparel and ornaments, when he set out to go to the region (?) of Peqer ; I directed the way of the god to his tomb in Peqer ; I avenged Un-nefer on the day of the Great Battle; I overthrew all his enemies on the dyke (?) of Xetit ; I caused him (Osiris) to set out in the Boat, which bore his beauty. I made the hearts of the dwellers in the East to expand with joy, and caused gladness to be in the dwellers in Amentet (the West), when they saw the Beauty as it landed at Abj'dus, bringing Osiris Khenti-Amenti, the Lord of Abydus, to his palace.' -^ Dr. Budge ~ thus explains it. It a^Dpears from the inscription that already in the Xllth dynasty Ap-uat was regarded as the son of Osiris, and that he acted as the leader of the expedition of Osiris, which was represented by a procession formed by the priests and the people. Ap-uat walked in front, next came the boat containing the figure of the god and a company of j^riests or followers of the god, and the rear was brought up by a crowd of jjeople. The boat of the god was then attacked by a crowd of men who represented the foes of Osiris, and as the god was defenceless, Ap-uat engaged them in combat, beat them off, and the procession then continued on its way in the temple. Then followed the great Act of the Osiris Play — the ' Coming-forth of Osiris from the temple after his death and the departure of his body to the tomb '. A solemn service was performed in the temple before the body was carried from it, and offerings having been eaten sacramentally, the procession set out for the tomb. When it reached the door of the temple it was received by a vast crowd of men and women, who raised the death-wail, and uttered piercing shrieks and lamentations, the women beating their breasts. On . the analogy of the description given by Herodotus ^ of the sham-fight which formed part of the festival held at Papreme in honour of the god whom he terms Ares, and in which many men were injured, often fatally. Dr. Budge supposes that at Abydus there was a like sham-fight when the body of Osiris passed out from the ^ Budge, op. cit., vol. ii, pp. 5-11. - Ibid., pp. 5-12. ' ii. 08. ANCIENT EGYPT 117 temple, and this well explains the statement of I-kher-nefert that he ' overthrew all his (Osiris') enemies on the dyke (?) of Netit ' (p. 112). He thinks that this fight commemorated the great battle at Netit, not far from Abydus, where Osiris was slain. Apparently the body of Osiris could not be found, as I-kher-nefert played the part of the leader of the search-party, and their wanderings probably occupied three days, during which the sham-fights between the followers of Osiris and those of Set were repeated at intervals, and great lamentations were made. All these events were represented by the words ' the Great Coming-forth ', which had for every Egyptian a solemn significance. At last the body was found, but by whom we are not told. From another text, howe\Tr, we learn that it was discovered by Isis and her sister Nephthys. I-kher-nefert seems to have acted the part of ferryman for Thoth and to have gone in a boat containing a figure of that god to fetch the body of Osiris from Netit for burial. From other texts we hear of the mummification of the body after it was brought from Netit, and of the elaborate ceremonies performed in connexion with it by Horus and his four sons. We further learn that two feathers of the Maati (apparently goddesses of truth) were fastened on the coffin or coffer of Osiris, that his head was tired with a bandlet, and that a model of his enemy Set was placed at his feet. Then the body was carried to Peqer, which is now known to be a place in the plain of Abydus, about one and a half miles from the Memnonium.-'^ Here were found the tombs of the kings of the First dynasty, among which is that of King Khent, identified by the Egyptians as the tomb of Osiris. Moreover, the famous cenotaph of Osiris, made probably under Dynasty XXII, was found at this spot by M. Amelineau. The identification mentioned above dates at least from the XVIIIth dynasty, and may be much older, as Budge thinks. The men of Dynasty XVIII showed their belief in the doctrine by building the cenotaph at Peqer. I-kher-nefert proceeds to relate how he jijcrsonated the avenging of the enemies of Osiris on the day of the Great Battle, which of course is the great decisive struggle in which Horus defeated Set and his confederates, thereby avenging his father. I-kher-nefert evidently played the part of Horus and led the victorious army in the sham- fight. The foes of the god were routed with great slaughter, for it is clear from The Book of the Dead (chap, xviii) that large numbers of Set's followers were slain or captured. The prisoners were probably beheaded at the tomb of Osiris, and it is not unlikely that their blood 1 Budge, op. cii., vol. ii, p. 8. 118 THE ORIGIN OF TRAGEDY was poured out ou his sanctuary. Whether in the dramatic per- formance I-klicr-nefert actually offered human victims is not clear, but it is not improbable that he did so. Human victims were certainly sacrificed at Busiris, for we read how ' the Tchatcha (chiefs) on the festival of the breal^ing and turning up of the earth at Tattu (Busiris) slay the fiends of Set in the presence of the gods who are therein (Isis and Osiris), and their blood runneth about among them as they are smitten '. It thus seems highly probable that prisoners of war and criminals were slain at the annual festival to propitiate and invigorate the spirit of Osiris, just as similar unfortunates were sacrificed in Dahomey and in Benin at the annual ' customs ' to appease the sjjirits of the king's ancestors. Then followed the most glorious act in the Osiris Passion Play. Once more the god appears in the Neshmet Boat, and returns to his palace alive again. By virtue of his own divine power, of the cere- monies of Thoth, Horus, and the latter's four sons, by virtue of his having eaten the eye that Horus had cut out of his own face and given to him, by the vengeance ^vrcakcd on Set and his friends, and by the libations of their blood poured on his tomb, Osiris has become once more a living being. The crowd of pilgrims from East and West rejoiced with a great joy to see their god-king once more alive in their midst. How long the performance lasted is not certain, but it seems not unlikely from I-kher-nefert's description that it extended through several weeks. ^ On the occasion of a visit from Nefer-hetep, a king of the Xlllth d3masty, the priests met him with a statue of the god, and they performed the miracle plays on the way to the temple. The play was also acted at Busiris with elaborate ceremonies, and, as we have seen above, with the accompaniment of human sacrifices. Similar mysteries were performed at Heliopolis (Anu), Letopolis (Sekhem), Buto (Petep), Taui-rekhti, An-rut-f, and Re-stau. Let us sum up the facts that emerge from our inquiry. (1) The evidence points to the conclusion that Osiris and Isis were as real personages as Ali, Fatima, Hussein, and Hassan ; (2) that he was a chieftain of some part of Egypt ; (3) that as in the chieftain family of the Koreish tribe there was a dynastic quarrel, so, too, was it in this ancient Egyptian royal house, and that as Hussein perished by the machinations of Yezed the Polluted, so Osiris was slain by the craft of Set ; (4) that his widow and son eventually took vengeance on his murderer and secured the throne of Egypt ; (5) that the virtues and sufferings of Osiris and Isis sank so deeply into the hearts ^ Budge, op. cil., vol. ii, p. 12. ANCIENT EGYPT 119 of the people that, like many another chieltain or chief tainess, they were made into heroes or gods ; (C) that his cult spread, and that not only Avere shrines set up to him in many places, but his worship absorbed that of various old local hero gods, whose attributes he took over, while the same holds good of his consort Isis, just as Zeus at Olympia and Apollo at Delphi were respectively endowed with the wild olive and the bay-tree of the older cults ; (7) that amongst these cults Osiris took over not only that of the god of Heliopolis, but also that of the old God-king Men, with whom the phallus was a special symbol ; (8) that from this chiefly the Greeks identified Osiris AAith Dionysus as well as from the story of his having discovered the virtues of wine ; (9) that it is ujdou this accretion of late myths that Sir James Frazer and his followers have based their theory that Osiris was a Corn or Vegetation Spirit ; (10) that as time went on Isis similarly absorbed into herself older cults such as that of Hathor the Cow-goddess, and that as Osiris took over the attributes of Hep, or Hetep, the god of the Nile, so Isis became the Earth- Jlother, and was thus identified by the Greeks with Demeter, whilst others again identified her with the Moon, just as her consort had been blended into the Sun-god of Heliopolis ; (11) that it was the essential humanity of both Osiris and Isis that exercised so great an influence on the Egyptian mind, just as it was and is the like element in Demeter and Hussein which had and has so powerful an attraction for the ancient Greeks and the modern Persians ; (12) that just as to-day the Passion Play of Hussein moves the hearts of the Egyptian Shiahs by jDortraying the sorrow of Ah, Fatima, Hassan, and Hussein, so the Miracle Play of Abydus, forty centuries ago, was in no sense meant to honour a mere abstraction or to reinvigorate the year, but to keep in continual remembrance the sufferings and, as they believed, the resurrection of Osiris, the Egyptian Prince of Martyrs. In view of evidence such as that here summarized, it is not sur- prising that Sir James Frazer in the new edition (3rd) of his work should have virtually abandoned his theory so far as Osiris is concerned. For although in the opening pages ^ of that work he re- tains his old doctrine, yet in the preface - he admits that the African analogies which Dr. Budge cites and to which he himself has added other examples, point to the conclusion ' that under the mythical pall of the glorified Osiris, the god who died and rose again from the dead, there once lay the body of a dead man ', and he thereby admits in this case my view that dramatic representations arose in the worship and propitiation of the dead. Moreover, 1 Adonis, Aiiis, Osiris (Srd ed., 1014), vol. i, p. 4. _ - p. ix. 120 THE ORIGIX OF TRAGEDY elsewhere ^ he asks the pertinent question, fatal to his own theory, ' If Christ lived the life and died the death of a man on earth, may not Osiris have done so likewise ? The immense and enduring popularity of his worship speaks in favour of the supposition ; for all the other great religious or semi-religious systems which have won for themselves a permanent place in the affections of mankind have been founded by indi^ idual great men, who by their personal life and example exerted a power of attraction, such as no cold abstractions, no pale products of the collective wisdom or folly could ever exert on the minds and hearts of humanity. . . . Certainly we shall do less violence to the evidence if we accept the unanimous tradition of ancient Egypt on this point than if we resolve the figure of Osiris into a myth pure and simple.' But Sir J. Frazer apparently thinks that he can save a remnant of his theory by jettisoning Osiris - and by asserting that ' a broad distinction seems to sever the myth and worship of Osiris from the kindred myths and worships of Adonis and Attis. For while Adonis and Attis were minor divinities in the religion of Western iVsia completely overshadowed by the greater deities of their respective Pantheons, the solemn figure of Osiris towered in solitary grandeur over all the welter of Egyj^tian gods like a pyramid of his native land lit up by the last rays of the setting sun when all below it is in shadow. And whereas legend generally represented Adonis and Attis as simple swains, mere herdsmen or hunters whom the fatal love of a goddess had elevated above their homely sphere into a brief and melancholy pre-eminence, Osiris uniformly appears in tradition as a great and benefieent king '. But this attempt breaks down at once ; for not only does Sir J. Frazer hold that the essence of the Osiris cult was the death and resurrection of the god, but he also directs all his learning to show that such too was the case with the Adonis cult, whilst in his treatment of Attis his object is the same. The difierenec, then, between Osiris and the two minor deities is only- one of degree and not of kind, and we shall find in India beside a great god once a human king, such as Krishna, many minor deities often of quite recent date, who in life were just as humble as Adonis and Attis, whilst in Burma beside the cult of deified kings we shall meet that of a trader in tea. Again, Sir J. Frazer seems to assume that because in legend Adonis and Attis are simple swains ' elevated by the fatal love of a goddess into a brief and melancholy pre- eminence ', they are to remain as vegetation spirits. But because Antinous, a low-born Bithynian, was ' elevated by the fatal love " of 1 Vol. ii, i'P> 159-00. - Vol. ii, pp. 158-9. ANCIENT EGYPT 121 a Roman emperor, himself counted as a god, into a ' brief and melancholy pre-eminence ', is he to he regarded merely as a cold vegetation abstraction ? With Sir James Frazer's failure of faith in his leading doctrine, what becomes of the flimsy edifices reared by his followers upon his former theories ? IV. HINDUSTAN AVhen we turn to Hindustan we meet with a series of psychological phenomena very similar to those which lie at the bottom of the religious beliefs of Western Asia and Egypt, of which we have just been treating. But the literary aspect of Hindustan and its Aryan conquerors differs longo intervallo from that of Egypt, Asia Minor, and Persia, especially in all that appertains to the drama. In the Rig-Veda, the earliest hymns, some of which are more than three thousand years old, and according to some of the best modern authorities, even date as far back as three thousand years before our era, we have a mass of lyrical poetry far older than the literary monuments of any other branch of the Indo-European family. This is already marked by a simple beauty and refinement as well as by a skilful handling of language and metre, which clearly prove that we are here face to face not with the first rude stammerings of a savage people, but rather with the outcome of a long period during which generations of singers had gradually evolved a distinct literary diction and sense of form. This earlj^ literature is essentially religious, as it consists of invocations and prayers to the great gods to bless the suppliant with gifts of cows, horses, chariots, gold, and soma-drinks. The Vedic Literature as a whole falls roughly into three periods. The first, that of the Four Vedas, is the outcome of a creative age, in which hymns and prayers were composed chiefly to accompanj^ the pressing and offering of the soma, or the oblation of melted butter to Indra, Surya, Agni, and other gods. But these Vedas themselves in turn differ widely from one another in date and in contents. By far the most important is the Rig-Veda or ' Verse-Veda ', the foundation of all the rest. It consists almost wholly of prayers to or praises of the gods, such as Indra, Surya (the Sun), Agni (Fire), the Asvins, Ushas (the Dawn), the Maruts (Winds), and the like. But there are other jDoems, which are not devoted to praise, jirayer, or incantations, but set forth purely heroic exploits. Thus there are three ''" which celebrate the glories 1 Rig-Veda, vii, 18, 33, 83. 122 THE ORIGIN OF TRAGEDY of tlic Siidas under tlic leadership of their great chief Vasishtha, and these are rightly deseril)ed ■* as ' the family expression of joy over the victories of the great king, one of the few whose names are more than words to us in Vcdic liistory '. Again, there are others in which figures Visvaniitra," a personality just as historical as Vasishtha. Next in age comes the Soma-Veda, which has practically no inde- j^endent value, as it consists almost wholly of stanzas from the Eig-Vcda, arranged solely with reference to their place in the Soma sacrifice. The Yajur-Veda consists not only of stanzas mostly borrowed from the Rig-Veda, but also contains original prose formulas, while, like the Soma-Teda, its contents are ordered with a view to sacrificial ritual. These three Vedas were alone reckoned as canonical in early times, and were subseciuenth' for this reason known as ' The Threefold Knowledge ' (trayi-vidyat). The fourth collection, known as the AtJiarva-Veda, belongs to a far later period, as Manu the lawgiver knows only the three just described, whilst the Brah- mans themselves admit its more recent origin. One-sixth of it is prose, and about one-sixth of its hymns are also found in the Rig- Veda, especially in its Tenth Book, from whence Professor Whitney held that its contents may be later than this Tenth Book itself, ' although these two now stand nearly connected in import and origin.' There are reasons for believing that the Aiharva-V eda grew up amongst the Saindhavas, i.e. the people of Sindhia, the region between the Indus and the Jhelum. Professor Whitney, the editor of the Atharva-Veda, thus describes it : ' As to the internal character of the Atharva hjaiins, it may be said of them, as of the Tenth Book of the Rig-Veda, that they are prodvietions of another and a later period, and the expressions of a different spirit from that of the earlier hymns in the other Vedas. In the latter the gods are ap- ]iroaehed with reverential awe indeed, but with love and confidence also : a worship is paid them that exalts the offerer of it. The demons embraced under the general name of Rakshasa arc objects of liorror, whom the gods ward off and destroy : the divinities of the Atharva are regarded with a kind of cringing fear as ogres whose ^vrath is to be deprecated and whose favom- curried, for it knows a whole host of imps and hobgoblins, in ranks and classes, and addresses itself to them, directh' offering them homage to induce them to abstain from doing harm. The mantra prayer, which in the older Veda is the instrument of devotion, is here rather the tool of supcr- ^ A. B. Keitli, ' Tlie Vcdic Akhyana and the Indian Drama ' (Jourii. Roy. As. Society, Kill, p. 1000). - liig-Vvda, iii. 33, &c. HINDUSTAN 123 stition. It wrings from the unwilling hands of the gods the favours which of old their goodwill to men induced them to grant, or by a simple magical power obtains the fulfilment of the utterer's wishes. The most prominent feature of the Atharva-V eda is the multitude of incantations which it contains. These are pronounced either by the person who is himself to be benefited, or more often by a sorcerer for him, and are directed to the procuring of the greatest variety of desirable ends.' Again, Professor JMacdonell writes,^ 'in spirit it is not only entirely different from the Rig-Veda, but represents a much more primiti^-e stage of thought. While the Big-Veda deals almost exclusively with the higher gods, as conceived by a comparatively advanced and refined sacerdotal class, the Atharva-Veda is in the main a book of spells and incantations appealing to the demon world, and teems with notions about witchcraft current among the lower grades of the population and derived from immemorial antiquity.' It will be obser^'ed that both the distinguished scholars whose words have been cited, like all other writers on these questions, regard the lower phase of religion seen in the Atharva-Veda as belonging to one and the same race as the authors of the hymns of the Rig-Veda, Professor INIaedoncll regarding the latter as the expression of a refined sacerdotal class, the Atharva as that of the lower classes. Moreover, he begs the question by assuming with Sir James Frazer that magic is a stage prior to religion. Bvit this assumption is hardly borne out by the facts. When the Aryans entered India, their religion was very similar to that of their close kinsmen, the ancient Persians. The former worshipped, as their chief divinities, Indra (whom the Greeks identified with Zeus), the Sun {Siirya), Fire (Agni), the Winds (Maruts), and other similar elemental powers. The. Persians, according to Herodotus,^ made no Ullages (ayaXixaTo.), altars, or temples, and regarded as fools those who did so, because, says he, they do not believe that the gods have human forms, as do the Greeks. But it is their custom to ascend to the summits of mountains and there to sacrifice to Zeus, as they term the whole compass of the heavens. They sacrifice also to the Sun, the Moon, the Earth, Fire, Water, and the Winds. To these alone have they sacrificed from of old, but later they have learned to make offerings to Aphrodite Urania from the Assyrians and the Arabs, the former of ^vhom call her jMylitta, the latter Alilat, whilst the Persians themselves term her Mitra. He thus describes the Persian method of sacrificing to any of the gods enumerated. They neither build an altar nor kindle a fire when about to sacrifice, 1 Ilislonj of Sanskrit Literaiure, p. 31. ^ i. 131-2. 124 THE ORIGIN OF TRAGEDY neither do they employ libations, the flute, ehaplets, nor barley meal. Anj' one who wants to sacrifice, leads the animal to a clean spot, with his own tiara wreathed usually with myrtle, and calls upon the god. He must not pray for blessings for himself only, but he prays for the welfare of all the Persians and for the king, for he (the sacrificer) himself is included amongst all the Persians. When he has cut up the victim and boiled the flesh, he strews on the ground very soft grass, by preference trefoil, and then places on it all the meat. When he has arranged it a Magian standing by recites over it the genealogy of the god. The position held by the Magian reminds us of that of the priest [hotar, ' summoner ') in a Vedic sacrifice. But the important feature for us to observe is that the worship of these great elemental deities was not confined to ' a refined sacerdotal class, but was the religion of all the Persians ', and, accordingly, in the ease of the Persians it cannot be alleged that magic came before religion. Furthermore, it is clear from Herodotus that the Persians were led from contact with their subjects the Assyrians to embrace the uncleanly cult of Aphrodite Urania, who was identical with Ashtaroth, ' the abomination of the Sidonians.' But not only did the}' learn gross religious cults from their subjects, but, as Herodotus ^ frankly tells us, they learned from the Greeks for the first time unnatural vices. Unless, therefore, a very strong body of positive evidence to the contrary can be produced from India, tliere is a very strong jjritna facie case for believing that the religion of the Rig-Veda was not merely that of ' a refined sacerdotal class ', but of all classes of the Aryan invaders ; and on the other hand that the gross phases and forms of religion presented to us by the Atharva-Veda must be regarded as indigenous cults taken over by the conquerors from their aboriginal dark-complexioned subjects, just as the Persians adopted the worship of the great Asiatic goddess from the Assyrians and the Arabs. The present writer has elsewhere - argued that the Magi who resisted so strongly the Achacmenian kings of Persia, were the native priests. For it is certain that the Magi were always Medcs, and not Persians, whilst it is no less clear that Zoroastrianism, the religion of the Magi, was not the religion of their Persian eoncjuerors, but simply a development of the primi- tive beliefs and practices of the aboriginal tribes, whose custom it was to give their dead to the beasts and birds, and whose priests the Magi were. It is not unlikely that the Brahmans who were the dominant spiritual power in Northern India at the time of Alexander's invasion, ^ i. litj. ^ Early Age of Greece, vol. i, p. 543. HINDUSTAN 125 and we know not for how long before, and who to this hour play so astonishing a part in the social and religious life of India, were not solely the priests of the Aryan conquerors, but included also the shamans of the aborigines. It has been pointed out that the very black Brahmans of Southern India are not merely the result of constant intermarriage of Brahmans wdth the aboriginal Dravidians, but that in many cases they may be the descendants of native Dravidian priestly families admitted into the ranks of the Brahmans. But as the Kshatriyas are the warrior caste, there seems no doubt that they represent the fierce Aryans who conquered Northern India. That there was a great struggle between the Aryan Kshatriyas and a priestly caste, not neeessariljr Aryan, although it may have had a large Aryan admixture, is shown by the manifold accounts of the contest between Visvamitra, the Kshatriya sage, and Vasishtha, the Brahman Rishi, a strife very frequently alluded to in the Rig-Veda itself. Just as the Achaemenid kings of Persia had an endless struggle against the Magi, so the warrior Kshatriya chieftains had plainly an endless contest with the Brahmans in which they ultimately succumbed, and as the Magi continued to hold their influence long after the Achaemenid dynasty had passed away, so the Brahmans still dominate Hindustan. The Persians found in the lands which they had subjugated peoples in what may be termed the Lower Animism. In a like condition were all the races of Hindustan conquered by its Aryan invaders, and in such a condition they practically remain to this hour. Their religion, like that of all people in the same phase, consists prac- tically in the reverence for and fear of spirits. The good and friendly spirits are those of ancestors, whilst the evil spirits are usually those of enemies or of those who have met violent and cruel deaths, or have died in a state of impurity. Transmigration of souls forms a regular concomitant of the beliefs of all these peoples, many of whom once gave or still give their dead to the beasts. Thus, although Brahmanism and its outcomes. Buddhism and Jainism, have been predominant in India for more than two thousand years, they play but a small part in the daily life of the masses, whose life centres in the cults of disembodied spirits, whether we call them heroes or heroines, gods or goddesses. The worship of the dead in many phases lies at the bottom of the practical religion of all classes of Hindus, whether they be Aryan or the non-Aryan tribes of the jungle, a ' universal necrolatry ', as it was happily termed by the late Sir Alfred Lyall.i 1 Asiatic Researches, 1st ser., pp. 24 sgg. 126 THE ORIGIN OF TRAGEDY We ha^'c scon ([). lOS) that a chief feature in tlie development of the cult of the old king Osiris was the merging into him of all the other gods of the dead. India furnishes excellent parallels for this ])henomenon. ' It would seem ', writes Lyall,'- ' that the honours which are at first paid to all departed spirits come gradually to be concentrated as divine honours upon the Manes of notables. Probably the reason is that they must continue influential in the spirit world. For, so far as I have been able to trace back the origin of the best-known minor provincial deities, they are usually men of past generations who have earned special promotion and brevet rank among disem- bodied ghosts by some peculiar acts or accident of their lives or deaths, especially among the rude and rough classes. With com- munities of a higher mental le^'el, different motives for their selection prevail. Popular deifications appear to have been founded in their simplest form on mere wonder and pity, as for mental and bodily afflictions, an affecting incident, such as the death of a boy bridegroom (now the god Dulha Deo) in the midst of his own marriage procession (p. 184.) ; or on horror at terriljle and lamentable deaths, as by suicide, by wild beasts, by murder, or by some hideous calamity. The Bunjaras, a tribe much addicted to highway robbery, worship a famous bandit, who probably lived and died in some notorious way. Any renowned soldier would certainlj^ be worshipped after death, if his tomb were well known and accessible. M. Raymond, the French commander, who died at Hyderabad, has been there canonized after a fashion ; General Nicholson, who died in the storming of Delhi (1857), was adored as a hero in his lifetime in spite of his violent persecution of his own devotees, and there are other known instances of the commemoration of Europeans who have been feared or loved.' Lyall points out that these cults, which often find expression in shrines, and even grow into temples well endowed, are at first simply the outcome of the popular mind, but that the Brahmans later on take care to give the origin of any such cult an orthodox interpretation. ' The saint or hero is admitted into the upper circles of divinity, much as a successful soldier or millionaire is recognized by fashionable society. Of the numerous local gods known to have been living men, by far the greater portion derive from the ordinary canonization of holy personages.' ' This system of canonizing has grown out of the world-wide senti- ment that rigid asceticism and piety, combined with implicit faith, gradually develops a miraculous faculty. The saint or hermit may 1 Op. cii., pp. 27-8. HINDUSTAN 127 have deeper motives, the triumph of the spirit over corrupt matter, of A'irtue o\-er vanity and hists, or the self-purifieation required of mechaeval magicians and mystical alcliemists before they could deal with the great secrets of Nature ; but the popular belief is that his relentless austerity extorts thaumaturgic power from reluctant gods. And of him who works miracles do ihcy say in India, as in Samaria they said of Simon Magus, "this man is the great power of God '' : wherefore after death (if not in life) he is honoured as divine indeed. . . . When such an one dies, his body is not burned, but buried ; a disciple or relative of the saint establishes himself over the tomb as steward of the mysteries and receiver of the temporalities ; vows are paid, sacrifiee is made, a saint's day is added to the local calendar, and the future success of the shrine depends upon some luck}' hit in the way of prophecy or fulfilment of prayers. . . . The number of such shrines is great and is constantly increasing, whilst some of them have already attained the rank of temples, and are richly endowed and collect great crowds at the yearly pilgrim gatherings,' like those at the great Muhammadan shrines, such as Meshed and Tanta of which we have already spoken. How the cult of a human being, which at first is confined to the actual spot where his or her body lies, can be generalized and tilti- mately spread over a vast area like that of the worship of Dionysus in Thrace and Greece, of Osiris in Egypt and of Hussein in Western Asia, can be well illustrated from Indian religion. ' Human sacrifice ', writes Sir Alfred Lyall,^ ' has always been common in India as a last resort for appeasing divine wrath, when manifested in a strange and inexplicable way ; and it is suspected to be still the real motive of occasional mysterious murders. Ghand Khan is a demon rather than a deity, but his tomb is worshijoped on one bastion of every mud-fort in the Dekhan. The legend (without doubt founded on fact) is, that a man thus named was buried alive under some bastion of which the building had been supernaturally thwarted until this sacrifiee was made, when all hindrance and mysterious opposition ceased at once.' What is here said of Animism in India and the rise of cults holds equally true for Burma, Siam, China, and practically for all Asia. Let us now return to the Vedic literature and its two clearly defined systems of religion. The sharp contrast between its older and later portions is well paralleled in the contrast not less sharp between the Homeric poems and Hesiod's Thcogomj and Works and Days. Again, the great difference in the religious and social ideas of the Homeric poems and those of classical Greece, even those of Athens ^ Op. cil., p. 25. 128 THE ORIGIN OF TRAGEDY licrsclf, have been a sore stumbling-block to seholars, who have searched in vain for an explanation of the fact that the conceptions of the gods as set forth in Homer are as noble as, or more noble, than tJiose held in the golden days of Greece and later. India supplies a like contrast between the lofty and noble conceptions of the gods in the Rig-Veda and the gross and hideous forms of mediaeval and modern Hinduism. In the case of Greece the present writer has offered an explanation for apparently contradictory phenomena by pointing out that in the Iliad and Odyssey there are reflected the social and religious ideas of the Acheans who descended from Central Europe and entered the Aegean basin by at least 1400 B.C., and by 1200 B.C. had made themselves the masters or overlords of the mainland of Greece and the islands. On the other hand, in the gross conceptions of the gods revealed in Hesiod's Theogony and in the manifold cults of classical and posVelassieal Greece are mirrored the social and religious conceptions and practices of the aboriginal race. The conquerors were never more than a handful, like the Franks in later times, and, like the Aryans in India, were soon absorbed into their subjects, a process almost certainly helped by marriage with the native women, and their descendants soon sank to the lower moral and religious plane of the aboriginal population, though at the same time imbuing it with some nobler elements. Just as Greek seholars had ignored the ethnology of Greece, so liave their Sanskrit brethren left on one side that of Hindustan. History clearly proves a similar series of phenomena for India. Age after age martial tribes with a morale as robust as their physique have swept down like tornadoes on the plains of Hindustan and made the aboriginal Tibeto-Burman and Dravidian tribes into hewers of wood and drawers of water. But the physical and moral fibre of the invaders soon suffered decay under the fatal influence of climate and admixture, and the dark aboriginal races have remained the only permanent element in the population of the peninsula. So, too, it is the religious and social ideas of these primitive races which, though at times suppressed, invariably reassert themselves and drag down the conqueror to their own lower level. How far these views may explain the gradual degradation of the great deities of the Rig-Veda in the subsequent historical and literary periods, the reader must judge for himself as we jiroceed. The Epic. To the Vedic literature succeeded the Epic, which, like the former, is essentially religious, whilst the succeeding Sanskrit literature ' is abundantly profane ', though a moralizing spirit pervades it as a whole. The religion which permeates the Epics is. HINDUSTAN 129 hoAvever, very different from that of the Rig-Veda. In tlie latter, Indra, Varuna, Siirya, Agni, Uslias (Dawn), and the Maruts arc, as we saw, the objects of prayer and sacrifice, but in the new period tlie three great divinities are Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva. It must be carefully noted, however, that Brahma, the first of this Triad, does not appear in the Veda, nor even in the Brahmanas. Moreover, he is represented in monstrous form ; his colour is red, he has four heads, four arms, in his hand is a sceptre, or a spoon, or a string of beads, or his bow, or a water-jug, and the Veda. His consort is Saraswati, a goddess of learning also called Brahmi. He is called Hansavahana, goose-rider. Vishnu is mentioned in the Big-Veda, but he is not in the first rank of gods. Even this Vishnu has very little in common with the Vishnu of later times. He is occasionally associated with Indra. In the Brahmanas Vishnu acquires new attributes, and is invested with legends unknown to the Vedas, but still far removed from those of the Puranas. IManu mentions him, yet not as a great deity. But when we come to the Epics and the Puranas he is now the second member of the Triad. In these works he is regarded as the Creator and Supreme God. He is pietorially represented in human form slumbering upon the serpent Sesha, and floating on the waters. Siva is utterlj? unknown to the Vedas, although another name of his, Rudra, is found. The Rudra is fierce as well as beneficent. In the Epic he is a great god, but regarded rather as a personal deity than as a Supreme Divinity. He is the great destrojdng and dissolving power. But dissolution implies reproduction, and Siva is regarded as the reproductive power, which is perpetuall)^ restoring that which has been dissolved. He is por- trayed as a fair man with fi^-e faces and four arms, but is often represented as seated in profound thought with a third eye in the middle of his forehead, contained in or surmounted by the lunar crescent. His matted locks are gathered up into a coil like a horn, which bears upon it a symbol of the river Ganges, which he caught as it fell from heaven. A necklace of skulls and a serpent collar hang round his neck, which is itself blue. In his hand he holds a trident. His garment is the skin of a tiger, a deer, or an elephant. He usually ha-s his bow. There can be little doubt that, as is held by the best authorities, Siva was originally a real man who gradually rose to the great place which he holds now in the divine hierarchy by the process so well described by Lyall. With the domination of this triad, two of which are monsters in form, the great gods of the Rig-Veda have sunk into a subordinate K 130 THE ORIGIN OF TRAGEDY position, thoui,'li Iiidru is still conipurutixely prominent as the king of a Sanslcrit Valhalla. Again, whilst in the Vedic literature transmigration of souls docs not figure, and there is a ^vide gulf fixed between men and gods. in the Sanskrit literature, on the other hand, transmigration is ver_v prominent, and aecordingly Ijeings pass by gradations from Brahma through men and animals to the lowest forms of existence, and to this doctrine is ])robably due the fantastic elements which stamp this later j^octry. Vishnu comes down to earth in the guise of various animals, sages and saints wander freely between hea\en and earth, human beings visit Indra in his heaven. But, as we have pointed out, the tloetrinc of the transmigration of souls is a regular concomitant of the lower animism wherever it is foimd, from ancient Egypt and modern Africa, through the numberless tribes of Asia, to the Pacific Islands, and North and South America. The dirierence between the liig-T'eda and the later period can be readily explained by the different attitude towards the soul after death taken up by the Vedic Aryans and the aborigines of Hindustan. Like tlie Homeric Achcans and worshippers of Odin, the Aryans of the Uig-Veda burned their dead, a practice which seems to ha\-e sprung up in South-central Europe. ^ Once the bod}' was burned, the soul went away to the abode of disembodied spirits, nevermore to return. On the other hand, the Semites, ancient Eg3''j)tians, and practically all the races of Asia regard the burning of the body as the worst of calamities. They belie\'e, as we have seen above (pp. 74-5). that the soul keeps close to its mortal remains in the grave, or else if eaten b}' beasts or birds, that the spirit as well as the body passes into the animal which has become its tomb. Whilst those who burned their dead thought that the action of the fire was purificatorj' and purged the spirit from its carnal contamination, on the other hand those who bury their dead or gi\e them to beasts ^'iew with horror the burning of the body, because it involves the destruction or misery of the soul. ^Vhilst the Vedic Aryans burned their dead, the aborigines of the Peninsula, as in great part they still do, buried their dead, gave them to the beasts, or threw them into some stream in the hopes that they might reach the Ganges. This fimdamental difference in the beliefs respecting the soul between the concjucrors and their subjects seems to explain the great difference in the religious conceptions of the Vedic and the Epic periods, and, as we shall soon see, may probalaly explain why there is no real evidence for any true drama in the Rig-J'eda. If the souls ' \\'. Ui(t:^ewuy, Tlie liiiiii/ Age of Greece, voL i, pp. .52,'l— i. HINDUSTAN 131 of the dead were not with their bodies in the grave, but had departed to Yama nevermore to return, there was no need to propitiate them with representations of their exploits or sorrows. Foremost in importance in the hiter literature comes the Epic, which is generally assigned to the period 500-50 B.C. The epic poetry falls into two main classes, the first of which comprises legend {itih(i»a). narrative («A7»/«««), and ancient tale (jntrana), whilst the second is termed artificial epic [Kavya). The Mahahharata is the oldest example of the former, the Kamaijana of the latter. The Kamayana and the Mahahharata occupj' in Hindu literature a position somewhat analogous to that held by the Iliad and the Odyssey in ancient Greece, whilst in some degree the Puranas may be compared with the Theogony of Hesiod. Thus, just as the exploits and the sufferings of the Achean families of Mycenae, Ithaca, and Phthiotis, and those of Priam of Troy and his family form the themes of the Greek epics, so the deeds and checjuered fortunes of the great Aryan house of Ayodhya supjjlj' the subject of the Ramayana, whilst the Mahahharata deals with the good and the evil hap of Pandu the Pale and his five famous sons who dwelt at Indroprastha, and of their cousin Krishna, in their struggles with the Koravas of Hastinapura,^ the Troy of the Indian Epic. Again, as the Tale of Troy and the fortunes of the heroes who destroyed that town provided the chief themes for the Greek tragedians, Aeschylus himself declaring that his plays were but ' joints from the banquets of Homer \ so the Ramayana and Mahahharata not only furnished the chief plots for the Sanskrit classical drama, but even to this hour supply the most pojDular themes for the dramatic performances of modern India, thus demonstrating that the close connexion between the Greek epic and the Greek drama so strongly emphasized by Aristotle is no less true of the epic and the drama of Hindustan. For the illustrations (Figs. 11-18) of the Ramayana and Mahahharata stories from actual scenes in modern Rama and Krishna plays, as well as for many others (Figs. 21, 24-38), I am indebted to the unwearying kindness and trouble of my friend, the eminent Indian scholar and archaeologist, Rai Bahadur Pandit Radha Krishna, Director of the Muttra Museum. The Ramayana Is in the main the work of a single jjoet, Valmiki, and is homogeneous in plan and execution. There is good reason for believing that it was composed in Kosala, the country ruled by the ^ Indroprastha lay on the Jumna not tar from the modern Delhi, whilst some fifty-seven miles north-east of the latter city lie the ruins of Hastinapura (Elephant City) on an ancient bed of the Ganges. K 2 132 THE ORIGIN OF TRAGEDY race of Ik.shvaku in Ayodhya, the modern Oude, since we are told in Book VII, canto 43, that the hermitage of its author, Valmiki, lay on the south bank of the Ganges. Rut it may well have taken its final shape at Mathura, the modern Muttra, one of the seven sacred cities of India, lying on the right bank of the Jumna (the ancient Yamuna), some fifty miles south of the Ganges. As we shall soon see, Muttra to this hour is a great seat of the worship of Rama, and has played the foremost part in the development of the Indian drama. From a beautiful episode in the poem it is not unlikely that Valmiki himself was the inventor of the famous sloka metre, whilst another passage predicts his immortal fame : As long as mountain ranges stand And rivers flow upon the earth : So long will this Ramayana Survive upon the lips of men. This prophecy has been well fulfilled, since no poem has been more poj)ular in India down to the present daj'. Its story, like the tale of Troy, has provided the theme for many another poem as well as for Sanskrit dramas. Again, just as the recitation by rhapsodes of the Iliad and the Odyssey delighted countless genera- tions of Greeks, so that of the Ramayana enthrals the hearts of unnumbered mj'riads of the Indian peoples, as, for instance, at the great annual llama festival at Muttra. But be it remarked that it is the story of the sufferings of the human Rama, and not those of Vishnu, which have such a magnetic attraction for the masses of India. The Ramayana is distinctly older than the ^lahabharata, since there are allusions to it in the latter, though itself unknown to the former. Thus the author of the Mahabharata, Book VI, cites two lines from the Ramayana, attributing them to Valmiki, whilst the author of Book VIII of the Maliabharata presupposes a knowledge of the Ramayana as represented in the Bombay recension. There is only one reference to Buddha in the Ramayana. and that is in an interpolated passage. The genuine work is therefore pre-Buddhistic in origin, whilst the Yavanas, i.e. the lonians or Greeks, arc only twice mentioned, once in Book I and once in Book IV, which .lacobi has shown to be an interpolation. These additions, therefore, must have been made sometime after 300 b.c. The cumulative evidence leads to the conclusion that the genuine f)ortion of the Ramayana, Books II-VI, were composed not later than 500 B.C., whilst the more recent portions were not added until the second century B.C. and later. The social condition of India as HINDUSTAN 133 presented in the Ramayaua is that of a number of petty kings, whilst in the Maluibliarala we are confronted witli a great empire, a state of tilings eorrespondiag to that existing in the fourth century, when Alexander invaded that region. ^ Lassen and Weber think that the Eamaijcuia refers to the first conquest of the Dravidian peoples of the Deccan by the Aryans : on the other hand, Jaeobi, followed by Macdonell, holds that it contains no such allegory, but is based on Indian mythology. ' The foundation of the second part would then be a celestial myth of the Veda transformed into a narrative of earthly adventures according to a not uncommon development.' Yet we have learned on a preceding page (p. 126) that the Hindu gods are not mere personifications of the phenomena of Nature, such as winter and summer, nor yet abstract vegetation spirits, but are to be regarded in almost every case as having once been men or women, whose exploits, virtues, or sufferings deeply impressed their contem- poraries. AVe must therefore reject Jacobi's method of interpreting the epic and look to some great chieftain and his family as the theme round which the poem grew up. The original is probably an epic on a king of Ayodhya. Tiie main story of the liamayana opens with an account of that town under the rule of Dasaratha, who, by three wives, had respectively three sons, Rama, Bharata, and Lakshmana. Rama is married to Sita, daughter of Janaka, king of Videha. Dasaratha, now old, announces in a great assembly that he desires to make Rama his heir. This was received with great rejoicing by his subjects on account of Rama's popularity. But Kaikeyi, one of the king's three wives, who had borne Bharata to him, wishing that her son should succeed to the throne, reminded the king that he had once offered her the choice of two boons, of which she had never yet claimed the fulfilment. But the time had now come, and she called upon him in discharge of his promise to make Bharata his heir and to banish Rama for fourteen years. The king, after vain endeavours to resist her demand, sends for Rama and informs him of his fate. Rama bears the news nobly, and prepares to depart for exile. His wife, Sita, and his other brother, Lakshmana, resolve to share his fortunes and wander forth with him (Fig. 11). The aged king withdraws from Kaikeyi and, living entirely with Kaushalya, Rama's mother, finally dies of grief for his banished son. Rama meantime has lived happily with Sita and his brother in the 1 As this section was already in type before my friend Professor E. .1. Rapson's admirable book Ancient India (Cambridge, 1914) was published, I was unable to make use of it. 131 THE OllIGIN OF TRAGEDY wild forest of Daiidaka. On Dasaratha's death, Bharata is summoned to the throne, but witli great noVjihty refuses the succession and sets out for the forest to bring Rama back to Ayodhya. Rama, though much moved by his brother's behaviour, declines to return until he has fulfilled his vow of exile. He hands over to Bharata his gold- embroidered shoes as a sign that he hands over his rights to him. B>it Bharata, on his return to Ayodhya, places Rama's shoes on the throne, and keeping the royal umbrella over them holds comieil and dispenses justice at their side. Rama now sets about the task of overthrowing the giants that infested the Dandaka forest and were a terror to the pious hermits who dwelt therein. By the aid of the sage Agastya, he obtains the weapons of Indra and opens successful operations against the demons. Their chief, Ravana, enraged and determined on revenge, turns one of his followers into a golden deer, which appears to Sita. While Rama and Lakshmana give chase at her request, Ravana, disguised as an ascetic, carries off Sita by force and wounds the \-ulture Jatayu, which guarded her abode. Rama, on his return, is filled with grief, but as he burns the remains of the vulture, a voice frf)m the pyre proclaims to him how he can subdue his foe and regain Sita. He straightway makes a solemn alliance with the chiefs of the monkej's, Hanumat and Sugriva. AVith the help of the latter Rama slew the giant Bali. Ilanuiuat, meantime, crosses from the mainland into Lanka, the island of Ceylon, the territorj^ of Ravana. Here he finds Sita wandering disconsolate in a grove and tells her that help is at hand. Hanumat slays many demons and then returns and reports his discovery to Rama. A plan of campaign is then arranged ; the monkeys nairaculously t build a bridge from the mainland to Lank a with the aid of the god of the sea, and over it Rama leads his host, slays Ravana, and recovers his lost Sita (Fig. 12). She undergoes the ordeal of fire, and thus, free from all suspicion of infidelity, is brought home by Rama in triumph to Ayodhya, where he reigns gloriously in association with his generous brother Bharata (Fig. 12), and brings to his subjects a new golden age. Such is the bare outline of Valmiki's epic. But by the addition at a later date of the first and last books this epic has been trans- formed into a glorification of the god Vishnu. It is treated on this wise. Ravana, the demon king, had obtained from Brahma the boon of lacing invulnerable to gods, demi-gods, and demons, but had abused this immmiity in so terrible a fashion that the gods were filled with despair. At last they remembered that in his arro- gance ]{avana had fiirgotten to hig for iumiunitj' against men, and HINDUSTAN 135 'o be ■3 -J 136 THE OIUGIX OF TRAGEDY lV)rthwith they im|(lorf Vishnu to be rchicarnated as a man for the (lestriietion of ]la\'ana. The great god aecordinglj' consented to be born as Kama, and the overthrow of the wicked king of Lanka is thus l)rought to pass. At the end of the Seventh Book Brahma and the other gods come to Rama, do olaeisanec to him, and declare that lie is really Vishnu, the glorious lord of the discus. Professor Mae- donell ^ states that ' the belief here expressed that Rama is the seventh incarnation of Vishnu, the highest god, has secured to the hero of our epic the worship of the Hindus down to the present day. That ijclief, forming the fundamental doctrine of the religious system of Ramanuja in the twelfth, and of Ramananda in the fourteenth century, has done much to counteract the sjjread of the degrading superstitions and impurities of Sivaism both in the south and in the north of India.' But this seems somewhat to overstate the case, for we shall see good reason for belie^"ing that it is the human side of the hero-god Rama-Vishnu, and not the di^•ine, which has made the Ramajjana so pojiular to this hour. The Mahabharata, or the Great Battle of the Descendants of Bharata. There can be no doubt that the poem has reached its present portentous size of 200,000 slokas from a long series of accre- tions, moral, religious, and philosophical, gathered round an original epic nucleus which had a real historical background, since a passage in Book I declares that the poem had at one time contained only 24,000 slokas laefore the episodes (Upakhijuna) were added, that it originally consisted of only 8,800 slokas, and also that it has three l)eginnings. Ilenee it has not imreasonably been inferred that the poem as it now stands is the result of at least three stages of develop- ment from the time when it first assumed definite epic shape. The epic incident on which grew up this vast fabric describes the eighteen (hiys' fight between the Koravas, headed bj' Duryodhana, and the Pandavas, led by Krishna and Yudishthira,, the eldest of the five sons of Pandu the ' Pale '. These two families were cousins, both being descended from King Bharata, son of the heroine Sakuntala. the subject of the most famous of Hindu dramas, the Sakuntala of Kalidasa. There seems e\"ery ground for believing that the poem was based on an ancient war between the neighbouring and related tribes of Kora^'as and Puru Panchalas, who later formed one people. From passages in the Yajw-Veda, and in the Kathaka, the germ of the story can be traced back to a date which can hardly be later than the tenth century ])efore Christ, and may of course be earlier. There is e\-cry probability that the storj- was first embodied in ^ A History of Sanskrit Literature (1900), p. 283. HINDUSTAN 137 r: f^ 'c3 O C3 > .t: o ry: o >— ; '^ C c r. fl ci ^ tl = K] " ffi ^ fe -^ te; 138 THE OKIGIN OF TRAGEDY ballad form, and there seems ecjiially little doubt that Dhritarashtra, who figures prominently in the epic, was a real personage. The original epic was probably composed on the tragic fate of the sons of Kuru, who with justice and virtue on their side perished through the treachery of their kinsmen, the victorious sons of Pandu the ' Pale ', with Krishna the ' Black ' at their head. It must be carefully borne in mind that, although at the present day Krishna is the most popular of all the deities of Hindustan, it is as one who had been once only a mortal that he is especially celebrated in Hindu mj'thology. The name Krishna, ' black,' occurs in the Veda, but without any reference to the great hero. Thus Indra is stated to have slain many thousands of Krishnas, in which there is probably an allusion to the dark-skinned aborigines, with whom the fair Aryans were ever at war. The hero-deity Krishna, on the other hand, is represented as of the Yadava race, being descended from Yadu, one of the sons of Yayati. The Yadavas from old had been a pastoral people and dwelt on the Yamuna (.Jumna), in Vrindavana, on its western side, and in Gokula on its other. In those days Kansa, rajah of the Bhojas, after deposing his father, Ugrasena, ruled in the city of ^Nlathura (Muttra), near Vrinda- vana. Ugrasena had a brother, by name Devaka, who had a daughter named Dcvaki, who married Vasu-Deva, son of Sura, also a descen- dant of Yadu. From Vasu-Deva and Devaki sprimg Krishna. His reputed father was brother of Kunti, wife of Pandu, and thus Krishna was tirst cousin of the three elder Pandava princes. According to legend, his dark complexion was regarded as a very unusual feature in his family. There are two summaries of his exploits in the Maha- hharata, and he is said to have been present at the swayamvara of Draupadi, declaring that she was properly won by his cousin Arjuna. There seems little doubt that the hero lived in the Epic age, when the Hindus had not advanced far beyond their early settlements in North-western India. When he was born, Kansa, as we have seen, was King of Mathura, near Vrindavana. As it had been foretold that a son born of Devaki should slay him, Kansa took steps to destroy all her children. When, however, Krishna, her eighth child, was born, his parents fled with him, and the tyrant thereupon gave orders, like Flerod of Jewry, for a general massacre of all male infants. Henceforward he became the chief persecutor of Krishna, and was eventually slain by that hero (p. IK)). The latter's parents had given him in charge to the cowherd Nanda, who removed the child to Gokula. When he grew to man's estate, he persuaded Nanda and the cowherds to give up the worship HINDUSTAN 139 cq >, e a; 5 be « rt 'jk lQ O ^C "^ C3 >. 3 ■^ o ■J-2 — ; M SI 'Ci :^ a- -J 140 THE OltlGIX OF TRAGEDY of Iiidra and to \\(irsliip thf mountain G(>\'ardhaiia. He then migrated w ith all his pe(ij)le to the eoast of Gujerat, where he oeeupied and fortilied Dwaraka. When the Panelavas were reigniny at Indro- ]irastha, Krishna paid them a visit and went out hunting with them in the Khandava forest. He ]net his death by aceident. A hunter, seeing him at a distanee, mistook him for a deer and killed him with an arrow. His cousin Arjvma then proceeded to Dwaraka and performed his funeral obsequies. A few days later Dwaraka itself was swallowed by the sea. It is thus quite clear that the Hindus regard Krishna as ha"\'ing been once a mortal king. He is now, as we have seen, come to be a great deity, being the eighth avatar of Vishnu, or rather a direct manifestation of Vishnu himself. The slaying of Kansa by Krishna, as we shall soon see, was the subject of the earliest dramatic performance recorded for us in Hindu literature. According to the Mahabhasliya, ^vhich cannot be later than the first century after Christ, in this performance the Granlhikas di\ided themsehes into two parties ; those representing the followers of Kansa had their faces blackened, those of Krishna had their faces red, and ' they expressed the feelings of both sides throughout the struggle from Krishna's birth to the death of Kansa '. On this story alone Dr. A. V>. Keith ^ rests his belief in the theory of the origin of tragedy still held by Sir James Frazer and Dr. Farnell, and with which I have dealt at length on earlier pages (18-21).- ' The mention of the colour of the two parties', he writes, 'is most significant; red man slays black man : the spirit of spring and summer prevails o\'er the spirit of the dark winter. The parallel is too striking to be mistaken ; ^w are entitled to say that in India, as in Greece, this dramatic ritual slaying of winter is the source whence drama is derived.' This too is the only reason that he gives for his opinion expressed in the same place that ' Ridgeway's theory of the origin of drama from the festivals in honour of the dead . . . seems to be still imiDrobable, as an explanation of the origin of tragedy '. But Dr. Keith forgets that the Red men -who slay Black men are them- selves led by Krishna the ' Black ', and thus Red men led by Black man slay Black men, which on his own principle can only mean that Winter aided by Siuumer slays Winter. Plainly, then, Winter is divided against himself and commits suicide. The judicially- minded reader will opine that in the slaying of the Negro Doctor >- Jour. Roijal Asiatic Soc, 1911, p. 1008 (' The Vedic Akhyana and the Indian Drama '). ^ CI'. Origin of Triigeilij, pp. 7',i-ii. HINDUSTAN 141 a 1^ a J3 6 142 THE ORIGIN OF TRAGEDY bj' Punch \vitliout the aid of another gentleman of colour (Fig. 2) ^vc ha\e really more cogent evidence for Punch and Judy being a drama of Summer slaj'ing Winter than that on which Dr. Keith bases his theory of the origin of the Hindu drama. Moreover, when we recall the fact admitted Ijy Dr. Keith himself of the conquest by the fair- eomplexioned Aryans of the dark aborigines of Hindustan, and their admixture as time went on, and when we are further told that Krishna the Black was quite different in colour from the rest of his race, it is but natural that the Yadavas should be represented with ruddyfaces, and the followers of Kansa as the dark-skinned aborigines. Dr. Keith might just as reasonabh^ see a combat between Winter and Sunnner in any of the many battles between British troops and native armies in the long struggle which eventuated in the conquest of India. Tlie evidence for repeated invasions of Hindustan hy men of light colour from beyond the mountains is as good as that for its conquest by the white race from the western seas. Krishna, who eventually was made the eighth avatar of Vishnu, a god regarded by Dr. Keith as the Sun. must also be held by that scholar to be the Sun-god, or at least the spirit of light and spring. But as all traditions agree in making Krishna black. Dr. Keith thus represents the Sun-god himself as a black man, which may be regarded as the wildest of all the many vagaries of his school. No doubt he could cite in support of his ^'icw the words of Shakespeare's Prince of Morocco : Mislike me not for my complexion, The sable livery of the burnished sun, To whom I am a neighbour and near bred, as e\'idence that a black man was a proper symbol of the sun. But though this would be distinctly stronger evidence than that on which he rests his ^^hole case, no ordinary person is likely to admit its cogency. From the references to Sir James Frazer's Adonis, Attis, Osiris (ed. 2) in the appendix to Dr. Keith's translation of the Sanklnjana Aratiijaka'^ the source of the latter's inspiration is clear. But as Sir .James Frazer in his third edition of his work (1914) now admits that ' under the mythical pall of the glorified Osiris . . . there once hay the bod}' of a dead man ', Dr. Keith shares the fate which awaits all who rear lofty and pretentious structures upon the quick- sajids of conjectural folk-lore.- 1 Pp. 78, 80 (bis), 82, 84. 2 Mr. E, P. Horrwitz in liis bright little book. The Indian Theatre (1012), pp. 178-9, is also under the spell of the Golden Baugli and Adonis, Atlis, Osiris, when dealing with the origin of the Indian drama. HINDITSTAN 143 Fig. 15. Krishna and Radhika in a swing. The Rasdharis are Bengali lads of some company (ilandala) attached to a temple belonging to some Vishnuite committee of disciples of Goranga, who flourished in Bengal in the reign of Akbar and who is regarded as an incarnation of Krishna, as King George V is now (p. 182). (From a native picture.) 144 THE ORIGIN OF TllAGEDY Elsrwhcrc Dr. Keith ^ discusses the Hindu festival called the Mahavrata, ' which in the accepted system of the Vcdic sacrifices forms the second last day of the Gavamayana Sattra, which lasts a year and is a symbol of the year.' ' There can, however,' writes he, ' be no doubt that this position of the day is rather artificial, and that the Mahavrata marks the commencement of the year. The priestly ingenuity which has transferred the Mahavrata to the second last day of the year has created a duplicate in the Caturvimsa, the second day of the Gavamayana, but it is easy to see through so obvious a manipulation.' Much more obscure is the relation of the Mahavrata and the Visuvaiit Day, which in the accepted system is reckoned as the middle of the Gavamayana. Professor Hillebrandt holds that ' the Visuvant and Mahavrata have been interchanged by the priests, and that originally the Mahavrata fell on the summer solstice and the Visuvant began the year at the winter solstice '. But the accepted view, says Dr. Keith, places the Mahavrata at the winter solstice. Others have regarded six monthly periods as referring to the equinoxes. Dr. Keith disposes effectively of Pro- fessor Hilleljrandt's arguments for the transference of the Mahavrata from the summer solstice to the winter. Krishna, the eighth a^•atar of Vishnu, a god held by Dr. Keith to be the sun, ought to have his birthday at the winter solstice. If this were so, there would be more to say in fa\'our of Dr. Keith's assumption that Krishna and his ruddy-faced followers represent the victory of sun and light over darkness. But is this really the case ? On the contrary, as we shall see soon (p. 184). the birthday of Krishna falls in the fifth month of the Samvat era, i.e. in July or August, a season not particularly appropriate for the re-birth of the Sun-god or the renewal of light and spring. The evidence shows that Krishna was a human hero who, like Osiris, was ultimately identified with the sun. Until Dr. Keith and his school can adduce some more cogent reasons, we may rest content in the belief that the first Hindu drama of which we hear had nothing whatever to do with solar festivals, but that, like the dramas in honour of Hussein and Osiris, it was a commemora- tion of some great man and some memorable struggle, not between nature powers, but between rival elans or races. This will be amply corroborated by the evidence available from India itself. It will suffice to point out here that if the Greek Drama arose, as Dr. Keith supposes, in the ritual slaying of winter, it seems curious that the Great Dionysia sliould have been held in April, by which time the ' The Sanlihyann Aramjiika, with an Appendix on the Mnliavrciti, Royal Asiatic Soc, Oriental Trans. Fund, vol. xviii. pp. 873 sqi/. HINDUSTAN 145 Greek winter was nearly dead of itself, and there was therefore no need to reslaj^ the slain. Fig. 16. Krishna acts as an attendant to his sweetheart Kadhika. {From a native painting.) Dr. Keith i points out that whilst the Mahavrata ritual ' cannot be later than the eighth century B.C., it is of considerable interest that it contains no trace of vegetation spirits such as can be found 1 The Sankhijana Aranyaka, with an Appendix on the Mahavrata, Royal Asiatic Soc, Oriental Translations, vol. xviii, p. 85. 140 THE ORIGIN OF TRAGEDY in ancient Mediterranean rituals, and this fact renders us entitled to be cautious )>efore necessarily assuming that all these vegetation and fertility sjicUs involve the conception of a vegetation spirit, an idea not readily verified in the other Vedic texts. No doubt in the later Hindu religion among its strange characteristics are many which depend on the idea of a vegetation spirit, but in such cases non- Aryan influence is certainljf at work, either adding a new aspect of religious thought or bringing into the foreground an aspect which for some reason or other was not prominent in the mass of concep- tions which may be termed Vedic religion '. As we proceed in our inquiry we shall find evidence in many quarters indicating that vegetation spirits come only late in the growth of religious ideas and are not to be regarded as primary. Megasthenes, the envoy of Seleucus I to the court of Chandra Gupta {circa 300 B.C.), when stating that Heracles was worshipped at Mothura, i.e. jMathura (Muttra), the birthplace of Krishna, of which we shall presently have much to say, was singularly happy in thus identifying Krishna with the great Greek hero, who, though regarded simply as a mortal man in Honrer, was later raised to Olympus, just as Krishna, the Pandava captain, has become the most popular of Hindu gods. The various steps towards this complete apotheosis can be traced in the Mahahharata. Additions and interpolations have raised him to divinit}^ and it is in his character of the ' divine one ' that he delivers a famous song, the Bhagavad-Gita, in which he is represented as expounding to Arjuna his own philosophical doctrines. This is a production of a comjoaratively late date, though now made part of the great ej)ic. In this he is made to declare himself to be the Supreme Being. He says : ' All this Universe has been created by me, all things exist in me,' and Arjuna is made to address him as ' the supreme universal spirit, the supreme dwelling, the eternal person, divine, prior to the gods, unborn, omnipresent '. The divine character of Krishna having been thus established, it was still further developed in the Hari-vansa, a later addition to the Mahahha- rata, whilst in the Puranas, especially in the Bhagavaia Purana, it attained its fullest expansion. In it the life of Krishna from his earliest days is related with minute details, and it is upon this portion of his life that the Hindu mind delights to dwell, and that the most popular plays are based. The mischievous pranks of the child, the sports of the boy (Figs. 13 and 14) with the Cowherds and the Cow-maidens (Gopis), and the amours of the youth, especially with Radhika (Figs. 15-17), are the subjects of boundless wonder and HINDUSTAN 147 3 L 2 148 THE OKIGIN OF TRAGEDY delight. Thougli much ol! tlic story of his childhood and youth is of comparativcljr modern invention, yet the incidents of his relation with the Pandava princes are amongst the most ancient. Thus, though he may be now regarded as a mighty deity, it is upon Krishna as a mortal man that the Hindu mind has loved to dwell from first to last. The Mahahliarata is thus not merely a heroic poem (Kavj-a), but is a compendium of moral and philosophic teaching. Its title, Karshna- veda. 'Veda of Krishna' (who is the eighth avatar of Vishnu), the oecurrcnee of a famous invocation of Narayana, and Nara (names of Vishnu), and Sarasvati, wife of Vishnu, at the beginning of each of its larger sections, and the prevalence of Vishnuite doctrines throughout the work, jirove it to have been smriii of the ancient Vishnuite sect of the Bhagavatas. It is now clear that although the cult of Vishnu was grafted upon the Rainayana and the Mahahliarata at a later date by Vishnu sects, the poems centre, not in the deeds of Vishnu but in Rama, king of Ayodhva and Krishna of ^Mathura, the Pandava captain, and that both poems bear names derived, not from Vishnu but from Rama and Krishna. We are therefore inevitably forced to the conclusion that it is the strictly human and not the divine element which has tln-ough long ages drawn to them the love and veneration of the Hindus. 'In tlie Tedas we hear chieflj' of the worship of the great divinities ; the Epics present the actions of heroes as mortal men, whilst the Puranas celebrate the powers and the works of gods and represent a later and more extravagant development of Hinduism, of which they are in fact the Scriptures. But the chief part of the Puranas is held to be very old and priraiti^'c. Thus, though the Puranas belong especially to that stage of the Hindu religion in which faith in some divinity was the prevailing principle, they are also a valuable record of the form of Hindu belief, which came next in order to that of the Fedas, and in which the latter had hero-worship grafted on to them.' This form had been extensively established in India by the time of the Greek invasion. But it is not at all impossible that already in the Vedic period the veneration and worship of heroic men, such as Vasishtha, existed side b)^ side with the worship of the divinities. But another and no less important phase of religion and one which exerted a powerfiil influence on Hindu literature was to follow closely on the Epic. Though the doctrines of Sakya jMuni, the Buddha, find no place in the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, there HINDUSTAN IJ.9 Olj '3 c o t3 c ^ o c " I ° 150 THE OllIGIX OF TRAGEDY can be no question that the prcacliing of Gautama Buddha, the Liglit of Asia, had ah-cad}' powerfully affected Indian thought when Alexander led his troops down the eastern slopes of the Hindu Kush. No one has ever doubted that such a man as Gautama once lived and taught. Gautama was a family name of the Sankhyas of Kapi- lavasu amongst whom the Buddha was born, some time in the sixtli century before the birth of Christ, and there can be just as little question that he died, or to use the Buddhist phrase, attained Nirvana, in 477 B.C., whilst within the past few years his cremated relics, contained in a little urn (Fig. 19), have been discovered by Sir J. 11. Marshall, K.C.I.E., at Peshawar, in a place which Flindu tradition had persistently regarded as the resting-place of his mortal remains. He was thus a contemporary of Cyrus, Cambyses, and Darius Hys- taspes, and died in the reign of Xerxes. Cyrus had reduced to subjection the Indian tribes of Gandharas and Asvakas ; and Darius had extended his sway to the Indus. It was in the reign of the latter sovereign that Scylax the Greek was said to have travelled in India and to have navigated the Indus (509 B.C.). Moreover, in the host led by Xerxes into Greece in 480 B.C. there were contingents of Gandharas and Indians, whose costume and fashion of armature are described by Herodotus. In 327 B.C., Alexander, fresh from the overthrow of the Persian king, crossed the great mountain range and reached the Indus, arriving at Taxila in 326 b. c. In that city, whose stupendous ruins are now being explored b}' Sir .1. H. Marshall with signal success, the Greeks first beheld the ' wise men of the Indians ' and marvelled at their asceticism and strange doctrines. On the river Jhelum the great Emathian conqueror defeated Porus, king of the Puravas, whose name seems simply that of his own tribe. Forthwith the victor set up satraps over what is now the Punjab and Scindh, sailed down to the mouths of the Indus, and returned through Gedrosia. After Alexander's death Eudemus, the Greek satrap, had Porus assassinated, and this crime led to a suceessfvd rebellion, headed by a young adventurer named Chandra Gupta, known to the Greeks as Sandracottos. This able man made himself master of the Indus region by 315 B.C., dethroned the king of Patalaputra (Patna), made that city his own capital, and by 305 b. c. had possessed himself of the whole valley of the Ganges. Thus was founded the famous Maurya dynasty, which lasted until 184 B.e.^ His empire was the greatest yet known in Hindustan, extending from the mouths of the Ganges to the Himalayas. Seleucus, now king of Syria, sent ^ E. J. Rapson, Ancient India, pp. 99-112. HINDUSTAN 151 ]\Iegasthenes to the court of the Indian conqueror at Patna, where he resided for some years (circa 300 B.C.). But though it is clear from Megasthenes that the disciples of Gautama Mere already numerous and powerful by 300 B.C., it is no less plain from the same passage that Brahmanism was still the Fig. 19. The Reliquary of Buddha found at Peshawar.i dominant religion. Just as Christianity had to wait for three cen- turies before it became the State religion of Rome, so two centuries had to elapse before Buddhism found its Constantine, who appeared at last in Asoka, the grandson of Chandra Gupta. This great man extended his goodly heritage, and, having become a warm adherent of Buddha, spread his tenets pari passu with his temporal dominion. ' The illustration is from a cast which Sir J. H. Marshall presented through the writer to the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. 152 THE ORIGIN OF TRAGEDY even planting it as far south as Ceylon. But after his death the sceptre was wielded by feebler hands, and by 200 B.C. the Greeks of Baetria had begun the conquest of Western India, where their sway continued for some fourscore years. In his Indica, of which only fragments embedded in Strabo and other writers have survived, Megasthcnes not only set out the military and civil organization of the empire of Chandra Gupta, and described the geography and extent of India and its productions, but also makes mention of the ascetics who dwelt in forests, and of the two chief sects of philosophers, whom he terms respectively Brachmanes and Garmanai or Sannanai, clearly meaning the Brah- mans and the Buddhists ; and he adds the important remark that the Brahmans were the more popular. ^ By the Indian Zeus he clearl}' means Indra, and by Dionysus, who was worshipped in the mountains, Siva. He also states that the people of the plains wor- shipped Heracles, especially in the city of IMothura. Now% as this is beyond question Mathura (Muttra), the birthplace of Krishna, it has been universally assumed that by Heracles Megasthenes meant that god. But it must be remembered that as Krishna is not known to the Buddhist Sutras, it is not impossible that by Heracles the Greek traveller meant the older hero, Rama, whose cult to this day is so jirominent at ^Muttra, near or at which the Ramaijana itself took shape, whereas the Mahahharata, in which the glories of Krishna are enshrined, is a ])roduct of Western India. Now since the Hindus regard Rama as the seventh and Krishna as the eighth incarnation of Vishnu, it seems certain that the cult of Krishna was later than, and was accordingly superimposed on, that of Rama at Matluira. Why this took j^laee is not far to seek. In some famoiis lines Xcnophanes pointed out that the Ethiopians made their gods like themselves, in dark colour, woolh' hair, and flat noses, whilst the red Thracians represented their deities with red liair ; Aristotle went still further and alleged that just as men make their gods in their own images, so do they also liken to their own the lives of their gods. This princi[)le is still at work, and no better example of it can be cited than one in a Roman Catholic church at Algiers, mvieh frequented by negroes, where the Madonna is repre- sented as a negress. The Hindu Pantheon furnishes examples no less striking. Indra, the great god of the Arj'ans of the Rig-Veda, is represented as fair-complcxioned, like his people ; so too in the epic are the great Aryan families of Ayodhya, to which Rama and Pandu the Pale belonged, since in that family the birth of a child 1 Strabo, 606. 25. Ed. Didot. HINDUSTAN 153 of black complexion, like Krishna, is regarded as a special phenome- non. As the blond Aryans dwindled away and were absorbed by intermarriage, physically as well as morally, into their subjects, the masses of dark-skinned aborigines naturally adored with especial warmth and veneration a hero ^A'ho embodied their own physical aspect and their own morals. That his cult was a revolt against those of the Arj'ans seems clear from the legend that he incited the cowherds of Gokula to revolt against the cult of Indra, the great fair-eomplexioned Aryan deity. We may thus regard the super- imposition of the cult of Krishna upon that of Rama as marking a recrudescence of the aborigines and their cults, since in Krishna the Black and his loose morals were mirrored their own physical and moral characteristics. The Drama. ' The earliest forms of dramatic literature in India ', writes Professor Macdonell, ' are represented by those hymns of the Rig-Veda which contain dialogues, such as those of Sarama and the Panis, Yama and Yami, Pururavas, and Urvaci, the latter being the foundation of a similar play composed much more than one thousand years later by the greatest dramatist of India.' ^ But the fact that certain poems are in dialogue form, and that some of these have formed themes for true dramas at a later period, does not in any wise indicate that even the first step towards drama proper had been taken. Theocritus wrote idylls in dialogue, but no one would dream of terming them dramas, whilst, though the Iliad and the Odyssey are full of dialogues and furnished the themes for a large proportion of the extant Greek tragedies, some four or five centuries elapsed between their creation and the dcvelojDment of anything like a true tragedy. As the doctrine that in the Rig-Veda we have the beginnings of the Indian drama has of late met with much favour, it will be advisable to discuss briefly the main grounds for this theory. Besides the vast body of hymns in the Rig-Veda which embody the praises of the gods in whose ritual they were employed, there is a comparatively small number of hymns, such as those to which Professor Macdonell alludes, for which the great commentator Sayana gives no technical ritual use. These generally have a dialogue form, or may be deemed to have that form. The technical term for such hymns was Samvada, but there seems no doubt that they could also be included in the more general term itihasa (legend), and possibly akhyana (narrative).- Now upon this class of hymns have 1 A Jlistory oj Sanskrit Liieralurc (1013), p. .3-16. ^ Dr. A. B. Keith, 'The Vedic Akhyana and the Indian Drama,' Journ. Rny. As. Society, 1911, pp. 979 sgg. 15-t THE ORIGIN OF TRAGEDY been built two well-known theories. The first is the so-called akhyana theory of Professors Windiseh and Oldenberg, supported by Professors Pischel and Geldner, the last of these preferring the term iiihasa to akliyana for this supposcel form of literature, which is thought to ha^■e been essentially a mixture of prose and verse, and which was narrative in character. Rut with the natural liking for direct speech, the narrative e\-ery now and then is supposed to ha^ e taken the dialogue form, just as in the Homeric poems the poet shows so marked a preference for direct speech, and in these passages it is held that verse was normally used. Finally, as there is no sign of prose in the extant hymns, Professor Oldenberg has to assume that Avhilst the verse was carefull}' handed down the prose was lost. Vedic Ritual Drama. The other theory is that put forward in germ in 1869 by Professor Max Miiller, when explaining a hymn to the ^laruts.i This was developed with great ability by Professor Levi.- who claimed that in the dialogues of these hymns arc to be seen the signs of an Indian drama ; he further urged, in support of this assumption of a very early Hindu drama, the love of the Indians i'or song and dance. But it is needless to point out that both song and dance may exist for generations without ever being developed into a true dramatic form ; he further argued that these dialogue hymns were not a mere product of the poet's fancy, but that he reproduced in them scenes which he himself had actually beheld, and he supposes that the priests availed themselves of this means of bringing vividlj^ before the people the majesty of the gods and their laws. In this primitive drama he thinks that he recognizes the restriction of the actors to three, and also a chorus, human or divine. This theory has lately been given fresh life by the powerful advocacy of Professor Leopold von Schroeder and Dr. Johannes Hertel. But, as Dr. Keith well points out, ritual dialogue must be sharply dis- tinguished from dramatic ritual. The ritual dialogue in the ancient Indian sacrifice was not dramatic, but merely liturgical, like many parts of the English Church services ; for example, where the clergyman says, ' Lift up your hearts,' and the people reply, ' We lift them up unto the Lord.' In this there is nothing mimetic, and therefore nothing dramatic, since mimesis is the essence of drama. Professor von Schroeder fails to observe this fundamental though simple distinction. Thus he claims the famous Frog hymn of the Eig-Veda ^ as dramatic, and suggests that it was recited or rather sung by a party of Brahmans beside or standing in a pool or tank with frogs 1 Big-Veda, i. 16.5. - r'ollowcd by Ilorrwitz, Tlie Indian Theatre, pp. 23— 1. ^ vii. 102. I HINDUSTAN 1.55 1— ( pq rt iH > o o tf OJ tfi +j a ^ ^ o 6 ^ C^l _D 156 THE ORIGIN OF TRAGEDY in it, and straiglilway compares it with the Frogs of Aristophanes and the numerous otlier Greek comedies with beast-names, suggesting tliat tlie whole was derived from a mimetic Frog dance, the frog l)eing one form of the vegetation spirit. As Dr. Keith ^ well points out, it is notliing more than a rain-spell, is not a dramatic repro- duction at all, and to call it a drama is only to confuse the issue. Again, Professor von Schroedcr claims as a drama ' the harmless little hymn, liig-Veda i.\. 112, which has ever been regarded as the utterance of a Brahman while the Soma is being pressed, showing his desire to win a rich patron even as other mortals seek other things to satisfy them, and makes it into a scene of revelry by a masked crew of vegetation spirits dancing to music and singing the song '. At the furthest this would be only a case of dramatic ritual and not real drama. Professor Winternitz in a stud}^ of the whole issue, whilst admitting the validity of the ritual drama theory in certain hymns, maintains, however, that it only ]5ro\-ides an alternative to, not a substitute for, the ' narrati^•e ' doctrine, to which in certain other cases he still adheres. Dr. Keith, after a searching analysis of the facts and the arguments built on them, has come to the conclusion that neither theory affords a satisfactory solution of the problem. In view also of the fact that the Mahavrata (pp. 145-6) shows no trace of any cult of a vegetation spirit, we may safely follow Dr. Keith in rejecting the ritual drama theory leased on the non-ritual hymns of the Hig-Veda, which, as we ha\-e already said, contains poems purely historical, such as those that deal with the exploits of Vasistha and Yisvamitra. We are thus brought to the conclusion that nothing in the nature of true drama was developed in India until long after the Vedie period, a \'icw in complete accord with the fact already cited, that the earliest reference in Plindu literature to any true dramatic performance is that to the dramatization of the exploits of Krishna, who. as we saw, does not even appear in Vedie literature. ' The origin of the acted drama is, however, wrapt in obscurity.' says Professor Macdoncll, ' nevertheless the evidence of tradition and of language suffice to direct us with considerable probability to its source. The words for actor [iiata) and play {naiaha) are derived fry Mildred C. Tawney (Mrs. K. N. Vyvyan) (London, 1902). 158 THE OIIIGIX OF TRAGEDY puppet-play of that country, and would assign to a like origin all the puppet-j)lays of mediaeval and modern European countries, but maintains that ' it is not improbable that the puppet-play is in reality everywhere the most ancient form of dramatic representation. Without doubt ', he adds, ' this is the case in India, and there, too, we must look for its home.' But before he marshals his evidence for India he writes : ' The art of the puppet-player was alwaj's more or less a mystery, receiving no substantial encouragement from the cultured classes. Thus Xenophon ■'• makes the puppet-player from Syracuse declare that he esteems fools above other men because they are the spectators of his puppet-plays, and consequently his means of livelihood. But it must be at once pointed out that this — the earliest reference to puppet-shows in Greece which has reached us— dates only from the fourth century before Christ, and that there is not a scintilla of evidence to indicate that the Tragedy of Thespis, Phrjaiichus, and Aeschylus, or the Comedy of Cratinus and Aristophanes, had their origins in anything of the kind. We do not even hear of mechanical dolls in Greece at that period, though such certainly were already known in Egypt. Thus Elerodotus " in describing the ritual of Osiris (p. 95) declares that it is identical with that of Dionysus in Greece, except that instead of phalli, the Egyptian women carried obscene images representing Osiris, which were worked by a string, round the fields to ensure fertility. This passage indeed indicates that such contrivances were not known in Greece, and even if they had been, they would have been very far removed from anything like a puppet-jjlay. There is therefore no evidence for the existence of such plays or shows prior to or contem- poraneously with the great dramatists. It is therefore reasonable to infer that the puppet-show arose later in the period of decadence, first perhaps to enable countrj'-folk to see a cheap reproduction of the great dramas performed at Athens and in other cities, and later to please the passing fancy of even the Athenians, since it is clear that puppet-shows at one time after the golden age of the drama were not patronized merely by the villagers. For Athenaeus ^ tells us that the Athenians gave to Pothinus the famous puppet- player ' the stage from which the actors of Euripides had once ^ Symp. iv. 55 : 'AXX,a ^a At", et/^f;, ovk eVl rourw /^eya (^poro). 'AXX' fVi Toi jii^v ; ' Ettj vi] Aia To7s dfjipo8''](;. ■' Sal. II. vii. 80-2. HINDUSTAN 169 From that time down to our day Sicily, Italy, and Europe in general ha\-e never been without the puppet-show, as can be established by passages in Roman and later writers.^ One of the most remarkable is that still flourishing at Palermo in Sicily, its early home.- My friend Mr. Eustace Tillyard, Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge, has in the present year not only attended on mj^ behalf the entertainment given by one Greco and his sons and daughters (Figs. 22, 23), but taken for me the photographs here reproduced. There is no endless iteration of the same performance as in Fundi and Jndy, for there is a complete cycle for a year. But let not this rouse false hopes in any vegetationist breast of seasonal performances of Winter, Spring, Summer, and Autumn. The cycle begins with the conversion of Constantine the Great and continues into the Middle Ages. Naturally Charlemagne and his paladins figure largely in it, especially Roland, whose puppet is shown in both our illustrations. It is hardly necessary to argue for the historical character of the founder of Constantinople or of Charles the Great. This Sicilian puppet-play thus forms in the West a sort of counterpart to the liamayana in the East. But as a Syraeusan was exhibiting puppet-plays in Greece some fourteen centuries before there is any real evidence for their use in India, we are led to the conclusion that if there has been borrowing, India rather than Europe has been the borrower. In face of these facts we must reject Dr. Pischel's ingenious theory that not only the Hindu but other dramas arose out of the Hindu puppet-play and its derivati^-e the shadow-play, whilst we shall find later that neither in India nor in the various countries to which they have passed have these puppet performances been used to dramatize the struggle between Winter and Summer, nor are their exhibitions in any wise connected with the vegetation ceremonies. If, on investigation, it should turn out that not only in earlier times, but down to our own da}', recitations and dramatic perform- ances of plays founded upon episodes in the liamayana and the Mahabharata are still closely connected with great religious festivals, and that furthermore there is indubitable evidence that it is still the practice to honour with dramas, or with prayers before dramas, personages who were undoubtedly human beings, sometimes these plays being held in shrines erected in honour of an historical king, we shall have gone far to pro^-e that in India, as in ancient Greece, ^ Persius, v. 129 ; Appulcius, T)e Miinilo, c. 27. The reference given by Lewis and Short, s.v. pupulus, to Arnob. vii. 215 does not refer to a puppet, but to little figures offered to gods. - H. Festing .Jones, CaslcUinaria and other Sicilian Diversions, pp. 5isqq. 170 THE ORIGIN OF TRAGEDY Fig. 22. Palermo Puppet-show ; tlie puppet is Roland. HINDUSTAN 171 Fig. 23. Palermo Puppet-players. 172 THE OraGIX OF TRAGEDY such celebrations arose first in honour of the noble dead, and were only later extended to the cults of the great divinities, such as Vishnu. Incidentally, we shall have demonstrated the inaccuracy of Dr. Pischcl's assertion that the puppet-show is the only form of drama known at the j^resent day to the masses of India, and we shall have added a further proof of the untenability of his thesis that the Indian drama arose out of the puppet-play. It will be seen that not only in many jmrts of Hindustan are there dramatic representations of the exiDloits of Rama and Krishna taken from or based on the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, but also in honour of the monkey -king, Hanumat, as well as in honour of Vishnu himself; that these are regularly performed by Brahmans upon solemn occasions and in sacred places ; whilst we shall also find abundant proof for the enactment of dramas in honour of famous kings and other historical personages, and those, too, on festival days or in temple precincts. If this should be demonstrated by the testimony here appended, we must inevitably be led to the conclusion that the Hindu drama did not arise merely in the worship of the god Krishna, as is assumed by Professor Maedonell and others, but arose in the far wider principle — the honouring of noble and famous men and women, into which category Krishna himself undoubtedly falls. We have seen above that Rama and Krishna are the two great heroes of Hindu mythology, the former being the theme of the Ramayana, the older of the two great epics, whilst the Pandava princes, headed by their kinsman Krishna, form the subject of the epic nucleus of the Mahabharata. We also saw that the Ramayana probably originated in Eastern, the Mahabharata, in Western India. In the following pages are embodied the results of inquiries made for me by my old friend, Sir J. H. Marshall, K.C.I.E., Director-General of the Archaeological Survey of India. The replies to his queries here set out have been furnished in all cases save one by the learned native officials of the Archaeological Survey Department, who natur- all}'' ha^-e a familiarity with j^rimiti^-e dramatic performances still surviving, very difficult for any European to obtain. To these gentlemen, as well as to Sir J. H. Marshall, I wish here to offer my licartiest thanks, especially to Rai Bahadur Pandit Radha Krishna, Director of the Archaeological Museum, Muttra (the ancient Mathura), who, in addition to the very important information here appended, has taken great trouble in procuring for me a large set of photographs from life or from native paintings, from a selection of which most of the illustrations in this section have been reproduced. In a letter dated April 12, 1913, he writes : ' On the Indian New Year's Day HINDUSTAN 173 coming off usually in the end of March, or early in April, some portions of Ratnayana were recited, and leaves of the nim-tree and sugar-candy pieces distributed in the temples, and the Calendar called Ptiftra read to the people assembled. Offerings of jjaisa P'lG. 24. Krishna (with a flute) and Radliika. (From a photograph of a performance, the actors being Rasdhari boys of the Malhura district.) (pice) were then made to the reader of the Puttra. These readers were either the Pandits, mostly astrologers, or the low caste Brah- mans, called Bhadaras. In this part of the country, particularly at Muttra [Mathura] and Brindabund [Vrindavana],^ ^performances ^ Vrindavana was a wood in the district of Matliura, where Krishna passed his youtli, under the name of Gopala, among the cowherds. 17-J. THE OllIGIN OF TRAGEDY i: ^ e ~ o Ui o -cp ■^' 'a HINDUSTAN 17J a- ^ 6h ^ CQ ^ 3 « Cj -o o VJ 03 bc o 170 THE ORIGIN OF TRAGEDY ft: 5= § a- a> g ■s ^ a; o C • O 2 i g -^ s fe i- HINDUSTAN 177 of plays from Rai:.a or readinLf of Rcnnayana on the New Year's Day have been done away with some ten or fifteen years. In hell of tliis, at some Bat;hichis, i.e. gardens, places of recreation resorted to by Brahmans, daneing-girls are invited and music and dancing beguile a few hours of those assembled at the Baghichis. A good deal of bhang-drinking which used to take place on New Year's Day at these Baghichis is slowly but secretly replaced by soda and whisky. In some temples Lord Krishna's Ras Lila per- formances arc performed by Kasdhari companies belonging to the Sanadhya sect of Brahmans, earning their li\'c]ihood by gi\'ing dramatic performances of Lord Krishna's exploits. ' These Rasdharis li^•e at or near Govardhan, and applaud in high terms the sanctity and magnificence of Svani Vallacharya and his descendants before commencing the Ras Lila plays. This Acharya was born in Akbar's time, and was the founder of the family of Gokul Gosains, described by Dr. Hunter in his History of India, and Mr. Growse in the Mathura memoirs [for IMathura, cf. the letter from Nagpur, which refers to the Brahmans of Mathura as training their boys to act the Ramayana, &c.]. The Ghutsthapana ceremony, in which a pitcher full of water is placed and covered with a cocoa- nut, is also performed, and commences from the Indian New Year's Day. It is being done in connexion with this season Durga Pooja in this part of the country.' ^ Rai Bahadur Pandit Radha Krishna proceeds : ' On the Ramnomi coming off on the 24th day of the First month of the Samvat era Lord Ramchandra's birthday is usually observed in this (Mathura) and other places of sanctity, and certain portions of Rainayana are sung and read in temples dedicated to Vishnu. On the 30th day of the First month the monkey-general Handman (i. e. Hanimat, Hanuman, or Hanumat) is celebrated, and his exploits and deeds mentioned in Ramayana are occasionally seen performed 1 ' Durga, commonly termed Devi, or Malia-devi, the Great Goddess, wife of Siva, and daugfiter of Himavat, i.e. the Himahiya mountains. As the sakii, or female energy of Siva, she has two characters, one mild, the other fierce, and it is under the latter that she is especially worshipped. In her terrible form she is Durga, the '■ Inaccessible ", Kali and Syama, the " Black ", and the like. It is to her in this character that blood-sacrifices are offered, that the barbarities of the Durga-Puja and Charak-Puja are perpetrated, and that the indecent orgies of tiie Tantrikas are held to propitiate her favours and celebrate her powers. She has ten arms, and in most of her hands there are weapons. As Durga she is a beautiful yellow woman, riding on a tiger in a fierce and threatening attitude. As Kali she is represented with a black skin, a hideous and a terrible countenance dripping with blood, encircled with snakes, hung round with skulls and human heads ' (DowsoN). N 178 THE OlflGIX OF TRAGEDY rq ~ HINDUSTAN 179 "2 Kj tt N 2 180 THE ORIGIN OF TRAGEDY < HINDUSTAN 181 dramatically in certain shrines dedicated to Ilandman here (Mathura). On the 29th day of the Second month of the Sam vat era, the liirthday Fig. :il. Vishnu, as a Man-lion, slays Ilirnaknsh (Hiranya-kasipu), to succour his devotee Prahlada. The attendant figures are l>akslimi, Brahma, Siva, Prahlada, and Narada. (From a native jiaiiUiiig.) of Narsingha (i.e. Man-lion incarnation of Vishnn), a representation of Lord Narsingha killing the demon king Hiranya-kasipu and his son Prahlada is dramatically jjcrformed in many streets here (Mathura) (Fig. 31). 182 THE ORIGIN OF TRAGEDY 'On the 25th (h)y of tlie Tliird month, i. e. Jaistha of the Samvat era, at the time of tlie Ganga Dusschra (Tenth Day) ceremony the villagers who eome to Mathura to bathe in the Jumna invariably (lanee, and sing in clusters (Fig. 32) the exploits of the comparatively modern Ranapur hero, Indul. The theme is the carrying off of the handsome prince, i.e. Indul, son of the Ranapur king, Oodul, when bathing in the Ganges at Rithm-, near Cawnpore, on that day. It is said that one Chittaurrekha, a witch, was enamoured of Indul's beauty and carried him off cjuietly when bathing in the Ganges. So far as I recollect, these Ranapiu- prince heroes played an important part in the history of Rundelkhand in the tenth or eleventh century a.d. ' The 26th day of the Fourth month of the Samvat era is observed as an auspicious day for making perambulation of the sacred Mathura city. Chubey Bmhman wrestlers (Fig. 33) hold an assembly (chopai), and as the people pass they sing the following song : " May Jamna help lis," poet JIaniklal Cliatiirbedi writes. " May the Maharajas ^ of England ever Ije rendered happy by motlier .Jamna, By whose favour we tlie four thousand brothers are ever so exultant. (Refrain repeated.) O Danipier Sarkar,- how auspicious and bright as tlie moon are the stars pre- siding over thy luck.' You have succoured the devotee Prahlada by slaying Hirnakush " (Fig. 31). You s))i'ing out from the pier by constantly breaking it to support thy devotee.^ You arc omnj])resent in earth, water and fire, oh ! so dear to me." ' The song goes on to refer to his Majesty the King-Emperor : " May tliy sway so liencvolent be ever in perpetuity. {Refrain repeated.) Among the Maharajalis you are Raghubansmani.* In this ocean of universe you arc Lake Mansarovar, you arc the sunshine among the illustrious, you are the tree of Paradise. Among the lovers of truth you arc the great Harkslichandra ' and you are too strong for your enemies. You are the great ]irescrver of the Universe and supporter of the poor, O Lord. O Great Emjjeror (icorge the Fifth, thy glorious Ijanner of piety is flying in the world. (Refrain repealed.) Tlie former kings » used to cut oft the heads of images, You our licgc lord take care even of them. 1 English officers serving in India. - All high olTicials in India are generally called Sarkars. ■' The dcmon-|)riiiee helped by Yishnu, when persecuted by his father, the enemy of Vishnu and religion. ■* The father of Prahlada. '' Vishnu S])rang out froni a ]iier to succour Prahlada. * The great Kamchandra, the incarnation of Vishnu the preserver. ' The greatest of the moiiarclis born in the Satyng age, remarkable for his truthfulness and liberality. * e. g. Aurungzeb. HINDUSTAN 183 Fig. 32. A circular dance. {From a native painting.) The ancient religions are supported and the Vedic hymns are uttered : In science, meditation and arts your people can well vie with the best of the Pandits ; You are the source of comforts and happiness, O glorious Brajraj.^ {Refrain repeated.) 1 The favourite and most important incarnation of Lord Vishnu — that is, Lord Krishna. 181- THE ORIGIX OF TRAGEDY None such as you has ever existed, nor will there ever be one such : Yovi are supernatural and dilTcrent from ordinary beings : You are the most exalted in the Seven Islands, the Nine parts of the world ! You are the jjiver of the four frreat blessings ' like Nandlal ^ ; Says C/iobeij Maniklal how far the poetry should run."' (Hffrain repealed.) ' Villaucrs too arc seen singing the glories of a royA couple, Dhola (p. 120), the prince of ancient Narwar of Central India, and Maro, a beautiful princess of the Mey^var family (Fig. 34). ' In the Fifth month, during the swinging ceremonies (Fig. 35) performed here, the Vaishya women specially sing songs regarding Hero and Ranjha's mutual love. Flero was a princess and Ranjha was a prince of the Punjab. This is a very ])opular theme, and appears to me to be comparatively modern. I remeinber seeing some dramatic performances of their deeds in life, but I cannot say in what historical period thej' existed. ' In the end of the half of the Seventh month of the Samvat era many modern Hindu plays (Fig. 30). rather imaginary, are performed, and appear to have originated from the Mogul period. Quite modern heroes form the themes, and appear to me not at all connected with their history. The songs sung are in ntany cases as late as 1850, or e\'en 1800 a.d. The heroes are, as I said above, imaginary, and supposed to be connected with royalties of the late ^logul period." .Vecording to notes kindly furnished by Mr. Narain Mahadeva, Head Clerk, Office of the Superintendent of the Archaeological Survey, 'Western Circle, Poona. ' in the month of Chaitra, the first calendar month of the Hindus, there is annually a great festival called Ramanavaratra. It is in connexion witli the birth of Rama, the se\enth incarnation of Vishmi, the hero of the great epic Ramayana. It commences upon the first clay of the bright half of that month and ends on the ninth day called Ramanavami, " the Birthday of Rama.'' ' IJnt as that day is obser\-cd as a fast-day. the last day is supposed to be the tenth on which the fast is broken. Diu-ing the nights of these days the pcoj^le of several villages perform b}^ way of dramas several incidents of the Rainaijana, the last scene being the killing by Ranta of Ravana, the demon-king of Lanka (Ceylon) (Fig. 37). In the same way another great festival in coimexion with the birth of Krishna, the eighth incarnation of Vishnu (in a limited sense the hero of the Bhagavata Purana), is performed in the dark half of the month of Sra\'ana, the fifth calendar month of the Hindu year. ^ Arth, Dharnia, Kani, and Moksh ; i.e. object, religion, desire, salvation. ^ .Another name of Ijord Krishna. HINDUSTAN 185 a£ C3 O O bi) C C M c -a \4 be d .S P^ o > a '~' -^ ^ p. < 2 ^ CO c c « ^ 53 ■ te S 2 ° f^ ^ a, 18(1 THE ORIGIN OF TRAGEDY ;^ e ^ &4 OQ C ■TJ a ^ CO g 15 c o !fl _c3 :^ -D ^ C ^ o HINDUSTAN 18T 5 fc< 1^ Q^ Tt ro w ^ O — o ' ^ o- ^- o T^ PQ o ji O _o 'o Em O ^ o o OJ ^ o 'ot , — , 0^ bc 4-' tc 73 ■r [3 X QJ O r-i c; ^ —• OJ 188 TIIF: origin OF TRAGEDY It commences on the first of tlie dark half of that month and is finished on the eighth, calleil Vjy Hindus Janmaslitami. The performance is ■called Krishna lAla, and in it arc represented the various jjranks which Fig. 3(i. Socnc from tlie very modern (irMni:i of Bin Badshali Z;uli, in which all the uotors arc ineUulcd. {Front a pliotogriijth of a pcifonntincr.) Krishna is supposed to have ])layed at Gokul, whither he was remo^•cd from Mathm-a (Muttra) soon after his birth at midniglit of the eighth day of the dark half of Sravana. The most important of these HINDUSTAN 189 Fig. 37. The great battle in which Rama slays Havana, the demon-king, and rescues Sita. 190 THE ORIGIN OF TRAGEDY dramatic performances is tlic killing by Krishna of Kansa, the king of Matliura, consin and arch-persecutor of that hero (Fig. 38). Mr. D. R. Bhandarkar, Superintendent of the Archaeological Survey, Western Circle, Poona, writes : ' In the Punjab there are j^erformances of the Rama Lila in Punjabi. As regards the last I ha^'c the necessary information from a Punjabi friend. Whether the Rama Lila is ]ierformed on special festivals is not clear, but I believe it is so [see next letter]. The principal episodes in Rama's life are represented by boys personating Rama, his brothers, and Sita. Grown-up men appear in other cliaraeters of the Ramayana . The performance lasts from eight to ten daj's, one hour every day. There is no dialogue or monologue, acting or music ; only the din of some nois}' instruments accompanies the representation. The performance resembles to some extent the Passion plays of the Middle Ages in Europe ' (M. P. Divatia). Mr. FI. Hargreavcs, Superintendent, Hindu and Buddhist monu- ments, Northern Circle, Lahore (April 1, 1913), writes : ' I made inquiries in Lahore, but could learn little except that there is an amateur dramatic club called the Sri Ram Natak [' Lord Rama's Play '], which has been in existence for some years, and which gives plays based on the Ramayana during the Deserah [tenth day] holidays.' Pandit Ilirananda Sastri, Curator of the Lucknow Museum, North-West Provinces, thus writes : ' I beg to say that in the Punjab at least such performances are given. At present I can name three — excluding those connected with the scenes of the Epics or Puranas — where more modern and mundane heroes are the themes. They are Gopi Chand, Puran. and Hakikat. The last-named is too modern and belongs to the late Moghul ])eriod. The former two are connected wdth a period of early Hindu history. Gopi Chand is very often represented in frescoes also. Tradition connects him with Bhartrhari, and Puran with Sali\'ahana. Both of these princes became Yogins [saints], and are believed to be Jivanmuktas [having found salvation during their earthly existence]. The fame of Gopi Chand has spread, I believe, throughout Northern India.' In a later letter (dated August 12, 1913) Pandit Hirananda Sastri has most kindly supplied me with the following ycvy valuable information respecting the three important personages named above, as well as with copies of the native jiublieations on which his accounts arc based. Hakikat wa Rai was a true martj'r. He was the son of Bagmalla Khalri (Skr. Kshatriva) of the Puri sub-caste, and a resident of HINDUSTAN 191 Fig. 38. Krishna and his Ijrother Balram slaying King Kansa, tlieir maternal uncle, King of Mathura. 192 THE ORIGIN OF TRAGEDY to to o HINDUSTAN 193 3 fa 194 THE ORIGIN OF TRAGEDY Sialkote. His inoHicr's name was Kauran. At the age of seven he was sent to scliool nnder a Mauh'i. Wlien he was twelve, he was married to the chTughter of Kirpal Singh, an Upal Khatri of Batala (in the distriet of Gurdaspur). After liis marriage, while reading in the mosque, he hapjiened to have a quarrel with his class fellows of the Moslem faith. The latter abused Bhavani (the goddess Durga, wife of Siva), whieh enraged him, and he in turn abused Fatima, the daughter of Muhammad. Thereupon the Muhammadans went to the Qazi and reported the matter to him. He at once pro- nouneed a verdict of guilty and the penalt)^ of death, according to the injunction of the Moslem scriptures. All the Qazis of Sialkote went to Amir Begh, the governor of the city, and asked him to kill the slanderer of the daughter of the Prophet. The governor, out of regard for the Hindu subjects, refused to deal with the matter, and asked the Qazis to go to the Suba of Lahore for justice. They went to him and persuaded him to abide by the decision already pronounced. The Hindu councillors tried their best to dissuade the Qazis and the Suba, but their efforts were of no avail. The Moslem administrators of justice were inexorable. The result was that two alternatives were proposed by the Suha. — either Hakikat must embrace Islam and have his daughter in marriage, or die. The undaunted lad preferred death, and was mercilessly butchered at Lahore. This event is said to have occurred when Muhammad Shah was ruling at Delhi in the year 1791 of the Vikrama era (a.d. 1731). It is said to have added largely to the dislike which men already had for the Mughal rule. ' Of these three heroes Gopi Chand is the greatest favourite. Hardly a festival occasion passes without the well-to-do people (of the old type) in Lahore and Amritsar especially getting some hheuras to give a musical performance and listening to the songs which extol Gopi Chand's virtues. These kheuras divide into two parties, each sitting on the tops of two different houses and there singing songs in turn by way of dialogue about midnight. Representations of Gopi are •\-er}'^ often to be seen at the time of great festivals, such as Dasahra and Holi. Puran is rather a favourite theme among women. His svangs, or representations, are also to be seen on similar occasions. People cannot nowadays have a performance connected with Hakikat Rai, because the nratter has assumed a political aspect. Till rcecntl}^ the play, when staged, wovild attract crowds of spectators. ' With regard to the dates at which these heroes lived, the period of Hakikat Rai alone is known definitely. It was about 1731. in the reign of Muhammad Shah, who was practically the last Mughal HINDUSTAN 195 Fig. 41. Scene in a Rama play ; Ram Chandra and Lakshmana. O 2 196 THE ORIGIN OF TRAGEDY Fig. 42. Scene in a Kama play ; Ram Cliandra ami Laksliniana. HINDUSTAN 197 emperor of Delhi. Puran (or Puran Cliand) is believed to have been the sou of Raja Salvahn, who was probably identical with Sahva- hana, the reputed founder of the Saka era. If we rely on this tradition, Puran's date will be the first century a.d. ' Gopi Chand's date is not known to me. He is said to have been the nephew of Bhartari, or Bhartrhari, who is supposed to be the younger brother of Vikramaditya. ' The story of Hakikat Rai has been turned into a regular play and staged as such. But the accounts of Gopi Chand and Puran are mostly known in dialogue forms onl}% in which they are repre- sented not only in the Punjab, but in the United Provinces and Rajputana as well. The difference is that the latter are staged on modern lines. There are, of course, actors representing the personages connected with the story, each taking his turn in time, but they may not come and go with scenes or curtains or other contrivances. ' Gopi Chand is said to be a prince of Dhara. Tilak Chand was his father and ^lainavacti his mother. Once upon a time, when Gopi Chand was in his teens, his mother happened to see him bathing with all the material befitting a raja around him. She looked at his well-developed and beautiful body, and was at once plunged into reverie, which brought tears into her eyes. As she was sitting in a window above the spot where Gopi Chand was bathing, her tears happened to fall on the body, and he at once lo(jkcd up and saw his mother M'ccping. He went to her and inquired the cause of her grief. She said that she was thinking that even such a lovely body as his would be a prey to death, which devours all, high or low, ugly or beautiful. Whj' not, then, immortalize your person by beconaing a yogin ? Gopi Chand asked her to allow him to rule for some time, after which he will resort to ]iogci. She said, " No, now or never."' Her philosophy prevailed, and Gopi Chand, regardless of his surround- ings, wi\'es, relations, and other things, went out in search of a guru. He found him in a cave somewhere near Jalandihar. Bhartari (Skr. Bhartrhari), his maternal imcle, introduced his nejihew to his own guru, who initiated him into the mysteries of yoga, and made him his chela. After some time Gojoi Chand had to go to his former relations. He called out at his palace for alms and was recognized. His wives came out with jewels, &c., and asked him to come in. He refused and addressed them as his mothers, to their great distress and embarrassment. He met his mother also, but all through he was not moved and remained firm and resolute. After this he went to his sister Champa Devi, who was married to a king of Bengal. As is usual with mendicants, he stood at the gate and asked for alms. 198 THE ORIGIN or TRAGEDY One of the iiiaidscrvnnts, wlio li;i]i))eiicd to pass by, recognized him and rcportetl it to her mistress. Tlie bewildered sister at first did not believe her, but when she went out herself to see the yogin she was mortally alllicted to find her own brother begging alms of her, calling her " JMother ". She could not bear the sight, and died of grief instantaneously. At this Gopi Chand was touched, but his guru brought him back to his senses. Thereafter he was again absorbed in his profound meditations, which the story says led him bodily to heaven and made him immortal. ' Puran Chand, generally called Puran, was the son of Salvahn (Skr. Salivahana), king of Sialkotc in the Punjab, who is probably identical with the reputed founder of the Saka era. Ichhram was the name of his real mother, and Lunan-"- that of his stepmother, whom Salvahn married in his old age. At his very birth he was taken away from the sight of his father to avert the evil ej^e from some players and was brought up in a subterranean palace. After twelve years he was brought into the j^resenee of the king, who was delighted to see him, endowed with brilliant parts, well \-ersed in sciences and arts. He was ordered to attend the durbar every day and to have a free entrance to the State councils. He was exceptionally beautiful, and heartily liked by all. ^Vhen he was old enough his father thought of getting him married. To this he strongly objected. The idea of marrying him was postponed, and Puran attended to State affairs to the great delight of his parents. One day the king ordered him to go to pay his respects to Lunan. his stepmother, who was anxious to see him. lie obeyed and went to her apartments with filial love. Lunan was all alone at the time, and instead of returning motherly kindness, fell in love with him. She was enamoured of his beautv and made an immodest proposal, which Puran resisted and somehow managed to escape. Finding her passion not satisfied, she out of revenge falsely told the king that Puran had attempted to violate her chastit^^ Thereujjon the enraged king ordered the executioners to kill Puran forthwith. The poor prince was taken to the jungle, where the headsmen out of pity cut off his hands and feet only, but spared his life and threw him into a well, which is still in existence Jiear Sialkotc. They took some of his garments drenched with blood to convince the king that his order had been carried out. After some time Guru Gorakhnath, the well-known yogin. with his disciples, came to the jungle, and taking the })rince out, cured him and initiated him into the mysteries of yoga. Puran. on aecomit of his ' lAinan was probably a chabyali. i.e. tiorn in Chamba, a pretty hill state of the Punjab, though she is commonly called Chamyari, i.e. chatnar, 'shoemaker'. HINDUSTAN 199 earnestness, sincerity, and other excellences, soon became the most beloved pupil of his preceptor. This roused the jealousy of his fellow disciples, who persuaded the guru to send Puran to a princess, Sundaran (the Beautiful), who was considered to be an embodiment of beauty, and had unnerved many a devotee before. Puran went to her and asked her to give alms, which she did. With his mind as undefiled and as pure as purity itself he returned to the gnni, who asked him to go once more to the lady and fetch food for him. This time also he came out victorious. But Sundaran, who fell in love with him, followed him, thinking that she would move the guru and win him. Her entreaties won the favour of the guru, and he ordered Puran to go with her. Puran had to obey. Sundaran all the time was building castles in the air. Puran suspecting some mischief and thinking that he might be overcome by her wiles, managed to flee from her on some pretext. The unhappy i)rincess went up to the tojj of her palace and remained gazing at Puran, not in the least suspecting the trick that he had played her. AYhcn she found that the object of her love had disappeared, she threw herself down and died of a broken heart. Puran went back to his guru, who was at first very much enraged at his being the cause of Sundaran's death, but on getting a full explanation he was highly pleased at his resolute suppression of carnal desires. He was asked to go to his parents and to live with them for some time. This he did, to the delight of his relatives and subjects, especially his mother, who had become blind on account of constant weeping over his loss, but had her sight restored when she met her dear son Puran Chand, the ' full moon ' of her eyes. Thus, having consoled his relatives, he returned to his guru to continue his yoga practices.' Mr. D. R. Bhandarkar, Poona, gives an account of the Bhava, or popular low drama of Gujerat, which seems to be the lineal descendant of an ancient primitive drama. ' It is coarse and obscene. The Bhavai is usually performed in open spaces in streets and such other public places as courtyards of temples and the like. No stage is recpiircd, no scenery, only a poor curtain, occasionally held by two men at each end ; a few torches, and a chorus of two or three men helj^ed by musical instruments of a crude nature, such as one or two brass trumpets, cymbals, and, in recent times, the all- pervading harmonium has sometimes obtruded itself. The simple surroundings and paraphernalia of the Bhavai will remind one of the similar circumstances of the Burmese drama. The performance in a Bhavai does not represent any concatenated plot or story at all, but consists of a series of unconnected individual personations of one, 200 TIIK OIIIGIN OF TRAGEDY or fit tlie most two or tlirce cliaraetcrs in each scene, either presenting some popnhir episode, or professional persons, e.g. an ill-matched married couple, the tailor, the Borah, and the like. It consequently consists of monologues or dialogues supported by the chorus reciting songs referring to the incidents represented, in singing which the actors also join. The outstanding feature of Bhavai is its obscenity. Rao Sah Sheb Mahipatran tried his utmost to improve the actors of Bltavai, who are called Bhavaya, in this matter, and to purge the performance of its indecency, but A\-ithout success. This was some forty-five or fifty 3'ears ago. Bhavai has now gradually receded from tlic city into the remoter villages and is dying out rapidly.' ]\Ir. Bhandarkar adds that 'in the case of two of the Bhavai the names of Akbar and Aurangzeb are mentioned, and in Mohanarani the heroine is the Princess Mohana of Ahmednagar, the well-known citv in the Deecan. ' The bJ/avaija, or actors, belong to a caste known by the name of Targala, whicii is mentioned in a work composed between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries.' Mr. Bhandarkar further states that ' in the Rasdharis" performance in Vrajabhasha (cf. p. 177). a performance which used to be frequent e\'cn in Gujerat over forty years ago, the actors came from the pro- vince about IMathura, belonged to the Valla-bhacharya's Vaishnava sect, and ])erformed episodes from the life of Krishna ; but I do not remember having seen any special histrionic skill in the actors. Even the Vidushaka [tlic clown] of the piece, \'iz. Lala Manasukha, the personal friend of Krishna, exhibited but ordinary j)owers. I am not sure but that these performances are held diu-ing j^articular festivals as well as on ordinary occasions.' According to ]\Ir. Bhandarkar, 'in Upper India there are perform- ances of Ramacharita in Hindi. They are held during the Dassera festi\-als and last for several days. In them a gigantic Ravana appears and is killed bjr Rama (Fig. 37), but I am not positive about this, as ray knowledge is entircl}'' second-hand and hazy.' According to a letter from ]\Ir. K. B. Pathaka to Mr. Bhandarkar (Feb. 26, 1913), there is a Canarcse play entitled Kurnara Ramanataka (' The play of the Kumana Rama '). The young Rama is identified with the grandson of Ramadeva, the last Yadava king of Devagiri, by Mr. Kittel in his introduction to his edition of Nagavarma's Canarese Prosody. There is also a Svetambara Jaina work, in which Kamuda Chandra, a Digumpara Acharya from the Karnataka is represented as defeated in a disputation by the Svetambara Aeharyas of Gujerat. This work belongs to the twelfth century. HINDUSTyVN 201 Fig. 43. Actors dressed for a Krishna play.^ 1 This and Figs. 20, 40, 41, 42, and 44 arc from photographs taken Ijy tlic Rt. Kev. Dr. G. Westcott, Bishop of Liici\>. ;335-40 ; see also Scrruricr, De Waiang poeni-a, pp. 171-2. '' According to others these unmasked performances were called Waijang ivong; ef. L. II. (Jray, ' The Dutangada ot Subnata ' (Jour. American Oriental Soc, vol. xxxii, p. 02). JA^^\ 217 Fig. 45. .lavanese historical dramatic masks (topeng) and Puppet (kUtik). 1. Dewa Kasuma, king of .Janggala ; 2. Dewi Chandra Kirana, wife of Panji Kuda ; 3. Kennoks Pcntar, daiigliter of Dipatc Sumajong ; 4. Bujul Darat, a warrior of Praljjaka ; .5. Hajamala, a friend of Prabjaka.'- ^ From a pliotograph of tlie originals in the British Museum, for which I am indeljted to my friend, Mr. T. A. .Joyce. 218 THE OlilCIN OF TRAGEDY from thr ach'cntui'i-'s of Paiiji, tlic l'H\o\iritc licro of Javaii sttjry, and tluiT ari' tlistiiictiw masks (Eig. fo, Nos. 1, 2, 4, 5) for him and tlie otiicv liistorical characters iiitrochiced. In the performances before tile so\erei^n, where maslf whom four form the band and six perform the characters. They are tiigagcd to i)lay by the night for about ten rupees (twenty-fi\'e shillings) and a supper. Buffoonery is some- times introduced to increase the zest of these entertainments with the multitude, but it does not interfere with the regular course of the performance, the actors being only disturbed occasionally by the action of an extraneous character who, whether representing a dog, a monkey, or an idiot, seldom fails to excite considerable mirth and not infrecjuently in the most interesting jjart of the performance. ' There is also a kind of pantomime or rather an assemblage of wild beasts called Barung'an ; in this entertainment, men dressed up to represent ^•arious animals are made to appear in procession and combats. This is generally performed for the amusement of children, and is only accompanied by the beat of the gong and drum.' It is not impossible that this last-mentioned performance may be a siu'xi^al of a class of ])rimiti\'e masked dances which we shall lind to ))e \ cry widespread in the islands of the Indian and Pacific Oet'ans, Africa, and North and South America. Shadow- and Puppet-plays. "In the icai/iiiigs or scenic shadows", wrote It.allles.-'- 'the sulijeet of tlu' performance is taken from 1 Op. cil., vol. i, p. aiJO. JAVA 219 the earliest period ot history and fable down to the destnietion of the Hindu empire of Majapahit (a.d. 1473). These arc distin- guished, according to the periods of history which they represent, by the terms wayaiig punva, ivayang gedog, and toayang hlitik. The different characters in the history arc in these wayangs repre- sented bj' figures about eighteen inches or two feet high, stamped or cut out of pieces of thick leather, generally of buffalo-hide, which arc painted and gilt with great care and at considerable expense so as to form some supposed resemblance to the indi- vidual intended to be personified. The whole figure is, however, strangely distorted and grotesque, the nose in particular being unnaturall}' prominent. There is a tradition that the figures were first so distorted by the Susunan Moria, one of the early Muhammadan teachers, in order to render the preservation of the ancient amuse- ments of the country compatible with obedience to the Sunni Muhammadan precepts, which forbid any exhibition or dramatic representation of the human form. " By these means," said the Susunan, " while the world in general will not imagine the figures to be human, the Javans from recollecting their history will yet be able to comprehend the characters they are intended to represent and enjoy in secret their national amusements. Or if in time they should forget the originals and confound them with the distorted resemblance, thej' will be impressed with the idea that it was only after conversion to the faith of the Prophet that their ancestors assumed the present shape of man." But the comparatively recent alteration in the figures is rendered doubtful from the circumstance of similar figures being found on many of the more ancient coins, thus affording grounds for an opinion that they existed nearly in their present form before the introduction of Muhammadanism. Their antiquit}^ is further confirmed by the existence of similar figures in the Hindu island of Bali, where, though not so much distorted, they are still far from natural. ' These figures are fastened upon a horn spike and have a piece of thin horn hanging from each hand, by means of which the arms, which are jointed at the elbow and shoulder, can be moved at the discretion of the manager (Figs. 46-7). A white cloth or curtain is then drawn tight over an oblong frame ten or twelve feet long and five feet high, and being placed in front of the spectators is rendered transparent by means of a hanging lamp behind it. The several figures are made in turn to appear and act their parts. Pre^'ious to the commencement of this performance, the Dalang, who is seated behind the curtain, arranges the different characters on each side 220 TIIK OlilGIN OF TllAGEDY of till' curtain, l)y stiokiiiL; them into a loiiji' plantain stem which is laid a.l(ini( the bottom. The hand then strikes u]i, and as the se\-eral characters present themseh'cs, extracts ot the history are repeated, and the dialogue is carried on, generally at the discretion and Ijy the imention of tlie Dalaiig. \Vithout this personage nothing can be done ; for he not only puts the puppets in motion, but repeats their parts, interspersing them with detached verses from the romance illustrative of the story and descriptive of the qualities of the different heroes. He is the soul which directs and animates the whole order and machinery of the ])iece, regulating the time of the music with a small hammer which he holds in his hand, while he recites the speeches suited to the occasion.' 1. In the ivaijang punva, or -ucayang of the most ancient times, the subject is taken from the earliest periods of fabulous history, down to the reign of Parikesit inclusive, grandson of the great hero Arjuna from whom the princes of Java claimed their descent. This is the reign of the gods and heroes of the Hindu and Javanese mythology, ' who in these representations (Figs. 46-7) are exhibited with the attributes and in the situations with which their names are con- nected in the most po]5ular poems and romances. The themes are generally taken from the liamaijuna, the poem of Mintaraga con- taining the penance of Arjuna (Fig. 40) on the mountain Indra, and the celebrated epic of the Bratayudha, fomidcd, like the Malia- lilunaia. on the war of the Panda\a princes. These poems are all written in what are termed the high measures, and are accompanied in their recital by the gamelan saJendro or full band. In the per- formance of this zi'oijtiiig the Ualang hrst recites a few verses in the Kawi language, chanting afterwards an interpretation of the passage in Javan for the use of the imlearned. As the several characters are brought forward, he himself supplies the minor dialogue between the drcDiuitis- 'pcrsnnac, keeping in general close to the original story when there is any one ])resent who could detect his de\iations : if he isperforming beforcthe ignorant, howe\'er, hefrequcntly digresses from the main story, in any way which he thinks may most readily amuse the audience. In the course of the entirtainment all the varieties of ancient wea])ons named in these poems are represented behind the transparent ciu'tain. The interest excited by such spectacles, eonneetcd with national recollections, is almost inconceivable. The eager multi- tude will sit listening with rapturous delight and ])rofoiuid attention for whole nights to these rude dramas. By means of them the louver class have an opportimity of picking \\\) a few Kawi terms and of becoming acquainted with the ancient legends of the country. JAVA 221 Fig. 46. .Javanese shadow-puppet representing the Pandava prince Arjuna, one of the great lieroes in tlie Mahabliarala.^ ^ This and Fig. 47 are from specimens in tlie Royal Anthropological ;\Iuseum, Leyden, and from photographs generously given me by the Director. Ur. Zuynholz. 222 THE ORIGIN OF TRAGEDY 2. The subject of the waijang gedog is taken from the period of history suljsequcnt to Parikesit, C(jnimencing with the reign of Gandrayana, who comes fourth after Arjuna in the hne of Indian princes who ruled at Ilastinapura and Gujerat, and including the reign and adventures of the famous Panji, circa 1155 (who, as we saw above (p. 218), forms the chief theme of the regular drama), and that of his successor Lalean, until he removed the seat of gox'ern- ment to Pajajaran (a. d. 1273). These poems being composed in a different measure, louder instruments provide the accompaniment ; and although the history of the early part of this period is written in the Kawi, the dialogue always employed the Javan translation. The adventures of Panji compose the most popular portion of it. The characters are numerous and the figures in general more highly coloured and better finished than those of the wayang punca. In bringing any hero on the stage the Dalang recites those verses of the history which relate to him, and introduces such dialogue as may give a dramatic effect to the exhibition together with such explana- tion as may make it intelligible to common capacities. 3. In the ivayang klitik the figures exhibited are more properly puppets (Fig. 15, No. 3) ^ than shadows : they arc of wood, about ten inches high, and arc made to perform their parts without the inter- \'ention of a curtain. In these are represented that portion of the historj' commencing with the establishment of the western empire of Pajajaran and ending with the destruction of the eastern empire of Majapahit (a. d. 1473). Of this, by far the most favourite scenes are found in the popular story of the adventures between the Menak •ling'ga, a chief of Balambangan, and Damar Wulan (the light of the moon), on account of the Princess of Majapahit. We have already seen the importance of the Dalang or manager in the regular or historical drama, and their place in the puppet and shadow performances is not inferior. ' In many points ', says Raffles, ' their office strongly resembles that of the ancient bards. The ceremony of gi^'ing his blessing to the first-born infant in the repetition of some particular passages of the ancient legends gives this part of his office a very peculiar interest.' According to some modern writers his name means a ' stroller ' or ' strolling-player ', whilst others have suggested that he was primarih' a priest Avho rendered worship to the ghosts represented by the shadows cast by the puppets on the curtain in the xcai/angr Though on the analogy of the Malay drama (p. 2G3), in which the head of the troupe of actors is always 1 From one of the Iiiilil; ])uppets in the Rallies Collection. Hritish Musenm. - Hazen, o;;. fi7., pp. ^.s-yi; (cited by Gray, »;). ciV., p. (j:3): ef. ,si(//™, p. 10.5 ;;. JAVA 223 I Fig. 47. Javanese shadow-puppet representing Batari Diirga, wife ot Siva. 221 THE ORIGIN OF TRAGEDY a priest or medicine-man,-' it is not unlikely that the Dalang was originally a priest who carried out rites to the dead, there is not so much evidence that the shadows on the curtain were ever regarded as ghosts. ' The usual payment in puppet- or shadow-shows for the Dalang who owns a set of wayangs and brings his own musicians is from two to three dollars for the night ; but the nobles and chiefs generally ha\'e sets of wayangs of their own, and keep a Dalang in their service. ' 4. Another simple though not very common form of dramatic representation is that termed wayang heher, in which the adventures of IMenak .Jing'ga and Damar Wvdan are exhibited. These wayang beher are simply pictures on strong paper, which are unrolled in succession and explained by the Dalang. ' 5. Another entertainment of a similar description, though not accompanied by the exhibition of figures, was invented in the time of the kingdom of Denrak and is termed trebang. The story is taken from the Arabic account of Beginda Ambia, which being rendered into Javan, is repeated by the Dalang, who with a small drum before him, and accompanied by the music of the band, gives spirit to the different parts by beating time with his hand, and varying the strength of the sound or quickness of time according to the subject. These two latter are of comparatively modern invention and not much esteemed. ' It looks, however, as if in this entertainment the Dalang was playing the very ancient role of story-teller or rhapsode, though it is quite likely that the band of musicians was a late addition.' As the most favourite themes of the true dramas and shadow-plays alike are the exploits of Panji, an actual king who reigned in the twelfth century of our era, there can be no doubt that in Java, as elsewhere, tragedy did not arise from any dramatization of Winter and Summer, of a Daemon of the Year or of a Corn spirit, but sprang from the veneration and commemoration of the illustrious dead. The Shadow-Plays of Western Asia, Egypt, and North Africa. There seems little douVjt that the shadow-plays, which are the sole dramatic performances amongst the Sunni Muhammadans of Arabia, Turkey, Syria, and North Africa, were borrowed from Java by the Arabs some time after they became acquainted with that island, still under its Hindu ruler when visited in 1345 by the famous Ibn Batuta of Tangier. Accordingly this will be the most appro- priate place for a short description of these derivatives from the Javanese drama. 1 W. Ridgeway, Origin of 'Tragedy, p. 100. JAVA 225 Karagoz. Throughout the wide regions above indicated, especially in the month of Ramadan and at shrine festivals, the shadow-play known as Karagoz ■"■ (termed Karakusch in Africa) is exceedingly popular. The performance is visually held in cafes, and begins at nightfall in a darkened room. The apparatus consists of a screen, in which is cut a square opening, covered with a thin sheet. Behind it are lighted olive-oil lamps and behind them sits the Hajaldshy or operator who corresponds to the Indian Sutradhara and the Javanese Dalang. The figures are made of camel or other leather (Fig. 48) rendered transparent, and thus the many colours with which they are painted as well as their shadows are thrown on to the screen, though sometimes they are merely of paste-board or paper. The operator presses them by means of the little sticks against the sheet. Each puppet comes up singing a song accompanied by kettle-drum and flute. The chief character, of course, is Karagoz (' BlackEye "), after whom the entire genre is named. Should any one imagine that this Karagoz play is a survival of a drama of summer or winter, he or she labours under a grievous misapprehension. As beneath the pall of the mythical Osiris lies the body of a dead man, so behind the leathern puppet of Karagoz stands the substantial figure of one who played a not unimportant role in history. lie was Baha-ed-din Karakush, an intimate friend of the famous Saladin, the contemporary of Richard Cceur de Lion. The caliph gave Karakush an important post in Egypt. He owes the perpetuation of his name and fame to a bitter attack made on him in 1209-10 by one Ibn Mammati, who lampooned him in a work intituled The Book of Emptyhead concerning the resolves of Karakush. This caught such hold of the popular mind that the name of the victim has outlived by many centuries the political incident from which the work sprung. The Karagoz of the shadow-plays is a stupid blundering simple- hearted person, wdio muddles everything that he takes in hand. His companion, Hadshejvat, represents the well-bred gentleman with pretensions to culture, who loves high-flown verbiage, and Persian and Arabic phrases, now and then reading from a Turkish classic in perverted style. Other chief characters are the fidgety, talkative Alty-Kulateh, and Deli Bekir who comes in towards the end of the piece and makes short work of Karagoz. But there are in addition a whole crowd of other dramatis jjersonac — men, women and children. Those of special interest are the types of nationalities — 1 GeoriT .Jacob, KaraghZ-KomZdicu . Heft I, ' Schejtan dolaby ' (Berlin, Mayer & MuUer, 1899), pp. v. sqq., with authoiitics there cited. This work was brouglit to my notice Ijy my old Iriend, :\Ir. F. W. Hasluck. Q 226 THE ORIGIN OF TRAGEDY thf Persian with liis hit;h lambskin hat ; the Lasc from Trebizond, who brought hazel-nuts from Constantinople ; the invincible wood- cutter from Anatolia, with his axe over his shoulder ; the Arnaut with fustiiiella and highly ornamented "weapons ; the haggling Jew, the Armenian, the Greek, and the Arab. Each is made to speak his own dialect, except the Persian, who, since his own tongue would not be understood by the audience, talks Adherbcidshanish. In Tunis the shadow-play is naturally adapted to its African environ- ment ; the Berber replaces the Arnaut, and like him carries arms ; there are also the Negro, the Maltese, and the Dancing-girl. In other regions other types are similarly introduced. Types other than national also appear ; for example, the Opium-smoker, who continually goes to sleep and snores loudly. The song sung by each figure as it appears has no reference to the plot but only to the individual figure discribed. Turkish dialect is in song, Jewish and Armenian in prose, whilst the Arab sings or hums. There are printed as well as manuscript \'crsions of the play in Arabic, Turkish, and Armenian. But there is really no fixed text, since the Hajaldshy recites from memory and can ^'arj^ it as he likes. Accordingly in the ])rinted copies the recensions often differ as in the ease of the Indian shadow-plays. The performance starts with a prologue usually delivered by Iladsheivat, in which he shows that it is not merely a shadow-play but that it mirrors faithfidly the world and teaches much. The action proceeds (juite regularly : Karagoz and Iladshejx'at meet ; the latter talks in his fine phrases, W'hich Karagoz takes up wrongly. It transpires that neither has a penny, and accordingly they resolve to start in business. Karagoz conceives the l)rilliant idea of storing up in bags cold in winter and heat in summer and of retailing the former in summer and the latter in winter, whilst he also suggests an exceedingly appropriate, but disgusting calling for his friend, who flies into a rage and calls him names. Finally, they go into partncrshijj, but the trade varies in different ^•ersions : in one they both become boatmen, in another Karagoz becomes a schoolmaster and a street-corner scribe, whilst his friend touts for customers ; in another they win a prize of ten gold ]Meees in a [joctic contest in a cafe ; in another Karagoz becomes an ice-seller and puts salt in the ices ; in another they form a com- pany for curing madmen by incantations. But Karagoz always ruins his trade by some ludicrous act of stujiidity. Sometimes there is a kind of separate piece, in which are brought on all the callings of the East, but as a rule these personages are introduced as customers of the hont'st but stujiid Karagoz, whom they ruin by JA^'A 227 Fig. 48. Turkish Karagoz Shadow-Play Puppets. ^ ^ From a set ot twenty-ftve kindly lent me by my old friend, Mr. U. M. Dawkins, who procured them in Constantinople in 1914. Q 2 228 THE ORIGIN OF TRAGEDY their swiiidlinij;. Sometimes Karagoz has no trade, but misconducts himself at ladies' baths or near a s[)irit-tree. All sorts of irrelevaneies are introduced, as in the Kasperle-Tlteater (' Little Kasper '), which in Soutli Germany corresponds to our Punch and Judy. Tliose who see in such a vegetation or seasonal drama should be warned by the historical origin of Karagoz. VI. BURMA The Nagas of Manipur, whose rude dramatic performances we liave viewed above, arc held bj^ all competent ethnologists to be closely related to the population of Burma, more especially the IMons, as is proved by their language. Sir R. C. Temple and others have demonstrated that the whole population of Burma, not only the wild tribes, but the civilized Burmese, is essentially animistic, for although they arc all professedly Buddhist, this is but the thinnest of veneers, for the whole daily life of the people depends on their ancient beliefs, and here, too, the doctrine of transmigration and rebirth is universal. ' Man ', says Tcmjile.-' ' is regarded as consisting of two component parts, body and soul. The soul is his leppya, or butterfly-spirit, called la by the Karens and Mo by the Chins. This soul can leave the body in sleep or illness, and can be recaptured. At death the souls go to the world beneath the earth, where their judge, called Nga Then by the Chins, sits, watched by his dog, under the Tree of Forgetful- ness, where they forget all their past experiences and arc unable to recall them on rebirth. The good are sent to a hea\-en, the wicked to a hell. The way to the nether world is by a ferry over a stream ; a toll has to be paid, and pro\'isions are necessary. This is the almost uni^•ersal animistic faith of the world. But its diametric opposition to the true philosophical Buddhist faith is of importance in the present inquir}^. According to Buddhism there is no soul or atma, and ' when a person dies, his karma or deed-result, survives him, and serves as a nucleus of his next existence. But according to the indigenous faith of the Burmese people, the leppya, or butterfly-spirit, survives after death, and either lives on as a disembodied spirit in hajipincss or misery, or is again reincarnated to continue its course of existence in the flesh.' We will first examine the beliefs and ]5ractices of the Chins, who may be taken as representative of the wild tribes of U]iper Burma. 1 The Tlnriij-sevni Nats, a phase of S/)irlt-WorsJiij> prevailing in Banna (witli full-page and otlier illustrations). London, Griggs, 1906, p. 9. BURMA 229 These have been well described by Rev. G. Whitehead ^ : The chief objects of worship among the Chins are (1) the Great Parent of all ; (2) the spirits who live in earth and slcy, who send rain or withliold it, who watch over the village, the rice-fields, the jungle, or some one tree or mountain; (3) the Penates, i.e. deceased forefathers, whom they fear rather than love, for while they dread their anger, they expect little in the way of blessing from them. The Chins do not worship any images, nor do they make carved representations of their objects of worship. The Great Parent is regarded as female. Mother Li. Thej' do not think that she has any male counterpart. Sex does not enter into Li's essence. She reigns on her throne in the heavens, never old and never dying. She created of her spittle the earth, sky, and sea, and also all life, animal and vegetable. She created man and imparted all his blessings. All mankind are her children, and she loves them all. She is wholly good. She had parents herself, Yin-Aw and 'Kyen, who are now dead, and, like other departed spirits, much more apt to trouble the living than to assist them, so much so that the name Yin-Aw is sometimes used to denote in brief all the spirits (Mother Li alone excepted), and that in a very vmfavourable sense. All laws and customs come from Mother Li. They offer a dog to the household spirits and rice- beer (kaung) to the spirits of the ancestors, but ne^ er to Mother Li. The Chins arc divided into forty or more clans called aso, each elan having its common ancestry called kun. The kuns arc often spoken of as male. There is also the {n)zo-yai ancestry, worshipped only by the women with an offering of dog's flesh. But of this, and of another tribal distinction called ko, little information can be got. The {n)zo-yai docs not seem to be a female ancestry, but it is reckoned to be in the female line of natural birth. One may be adopted into a different kim, for the name is used of the clan as well as of the original ancestor and of his deceased descendants, male and female ; but one's {n)zo-yai can never be changed. The Chin clans are all exogamous, but after the marriage ceremonies are over the wife is initiated into her husband's clan and has her wrists wrapped round with cotton yarn as a witness to all evil spirits that she is under the Guardianship of the kun of her husband. So, too, all children, four or five days after birth, are in like manner admitted into the kiin ; and at the same time they have their ears bored. If a Chin die, leaving a widow with young children, some months after his death she will return to her parents or elder brother, and she will be re-admitted witli the children also into her ancestral kun. ' ' Notes on the Chins of Burma," Indian Antiquary, vol. xxxvi (1907), pp. 20sqq. 230 THE OIUGIX OF TRAGEDY The cliildrcn when grown up may he re-admitted into tlieir father's Ah;?. Tlu' widow, too, may marry again, and will again be admitted into her husband's A«//. Certain sacrifices to the guardian Nat, the ]3nrmese name for spirit, are jjeri'ormed by the Mendet and Talau clans alone. When tliej' make these sacrifices, one person from each house partaking in the sacrifice brings a small measure of uncooked rice with a little cotton yarn on the top of it. A pig is sacrificed and the rice is cooked. A stand for the offering to the Nat is erected before the house where the worshippers assemble, and all the persons taking part in the sacrifice have their wrists wrapped round with the yarn. Then, after the Pasan Sayai (teacher or priest) has uttered the incantations and the Xat is satisfied and gi\'es permission, they all fall to and feast. Every year each clan will have a special sacrifice to their deceased forefathers, and will offer them pork and rice and kaung (rice-beer). The pasan sayai invites the spirits to the feast, calling over their names, and if there have been any comparatively recent deaths, say within two or three years, in the elan, the spirits of these relatives are enrolled in the kun.^ The Chins ha\'c a custom of offering firstfruits to Mother Ceres, whom they call Po Klai. They say that if she gives them but one look, they will have plenty of rice, and they tell a somewhat gruesome stor}' to explain the origin of the custom of offering firstfruits. ' Once u]ion a time a woman had a daughter. Before her death, as she lay a-dying, she said to her daughter, " After I am dead and cremated, I shall return wearing my intestines as a necklace. You must remain on the stairs. I shall come up by the back stairs and verandah. When I eome you must throw some of the Aadw-watcr (with which the corpse had been washed) over me. If you throw it, I shall become a human being again." Now when her mother came wearing her intestines as a necklace, the daughter was afraid, and durst not throw the liadu-w aXcv over her mother ; so because she dared not, this woman could not become a human being again. Yet afterwards her mother showed her where the sweet cucvmiber and pumpkin seeds were (i.e. taught her how to grow the vegetables required for their curry), and giving her a command said : " My daughter, eat the firstfruits of tlic corn in its season." So to this day the Chins eat the firstfruits of their corn as a religious function. Before the men eat, they make offerings in their yas (corn or vegetable patches) for their deceased ancestry to eat. ' The Chins also propitiate the rain-fairy Plaung Saw with offerings of cattle, pigs, and chickens, and of course with rice and corn and 1 Op. tit., \>. 207. BURMA 231 kaung (beer). When this sacrifice is Ijcing made all the women must remain standing from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. ^Vheu the Chins have sown their corn they gather together in their fields and pray the earth to lend herself, i.e. her increase, to them once again. Otherwise, the crops will be poor and their children will have fever. As already stated, after the harvest is reaped the^^ assemble in the fields to make to their ancestors and others an offering of the firstfruits, and then they can cat the new corn.' ^ ^Ve have here evidence of the all-important part played by rever- ence for disembodied spirits amongst the wild tribes of Upper Burma, although we have no record as yet of dramatic impersonation of the dead as amongst the Nagas of Manipur, yet on the other hand we have apparently some sort of official shaman or medium in the pasan sayai, whilst amongst the Tangkuls oiMa.rdi[mv the thilakapo, who for a few days represents and is supposed to be the habitation of the spirit of the deceased, seems to be some sort of medium. We shall soon find that each of the thirty-seven oflieial Nats of the Burmese is served by a medium who represents dramatically the Nat on the occasion of his or her festival. The platform erected amongst the Chins before the house on which offering is made to the Nat, recalls the icanyai built by the Tangkuls outside the house in which some person has died during the preceding year, and on which offerings are made at the ceremonj' for the dead. Let us now pass on to the highly-civilized Burmese and their beliefs concerning the dead. Although, as pointed out by Captain Forbes, ' the Burmese differ essentially from the Hindus, in many ways, by having no caste system like that of India, all classes mixing freely and without restraint, free from all caste or priestly influence,' there is much that is common to both people in the lowest stratum of belief. No better picture of the Burmese mind in matters of religion can be cited than that given in the following letter of an educated Burman to Sir R. C. Temple.2 ' I have to state that Buddhism and Brahmanism have certain beliefs in common in conserjuence of stories handed down from father to son. The wild tribes which have not received the religion of Gaudama, i.e. Buddhism, are quite as strong in this primitive faith. Not only every human being, but also every conspicuous object and every article of utility has a guardian spirit. When people die, it is said that they become spiritual bodies requiring spiritual food, and in order that these spirits or Nats may not harm ^ Op. cit., p. 208. ' Indian Antiquanj, vol. xxix, p. 110. 232 THE OIIIGIX OF TRAGEDY tho lixing, the latter make certain customary offerings to them. Some persons wlio liavc familiar spirits (i.e. famil_y spirits) make annual offerings to the Nat.s, and before making offerings to them, a small bamboo or plank house is built in a gro\'e or near a mountain, wax candles are lighted, and minor offerings are made. These festix'als are generally performed in Upper Burma. When the ceremonies are over, a pot of water is poured out slowly on to the ground, wliile certain prayers are repeated. During the reign of King Anawrathazaw (the great conqueror and Buddhist reformer of the Pagan dynasty, who reigned a. d. 1010-53) the people in Pagan worshipped the Nats daily. They used to build a small bamboo structure called a Nat-house (Fig. 88) in front of their own houses and place offerings in it dail^^ Whenever the king saw these miserable little Xat-houses he used to order his officers to destroy them, and he had all the figures of the Nats collected into one place and tied together with chains. ' The figures of these Nats arc still to be found in Pagan in a cave there. When the people came to learn about the order of the king directing the destruction of their Xat-houses, they obeyed it, but they himg up a coco-nut in their own houses to represent them and as an offering to the dispossessed Nats. The figures of the Thirty- seven Nats are still to be seen near the X'gyaung-u Pagoda at Pagan (in Upper Burma).' In the little Xat-houses before the houses of the people of Pagan destroyed by the Buddhist king we recognize plainly the ivani/ai of the Tangkuls of Manipur and the stands erected for the offerings to the Nats before their houses by the Mcndet and Talau clans of the Chins. ' The general idea of the Burmese ', writes Sir R. C. Temple,^ ' as to their purely animistic spirits has been well put by Taw Sein Ko, the chief li\'ing authority on all matters connected with the practical religion of the people. He says, Tase is the generic term a]D]3lied to all disembodied spirits which existed as hvunan beings. The Iini»za are spirits of children who assume the appearance of cats and dogs. Tlie thaije and tliabet are spirits of those who died violent deaths or of women who died in childbirth or of those who lived wicked and sinful lives. These spirits are inimical to mankind, and are repre- sented in folklore stories as having hideous bodies as big as those of a giant and with huge long slimy tongues which they can make use of as the elephant moves his trimk. They are bloodthirsty, and their special delight is to cause the death of human beings. Female spirits wlio arc in charge of treasure buried in the earth are 1 The Thirlij-scven Xals, 190G, p. K). BURMA 23.') called oktazaung. All these spirits, with the exception of the last, arc believed to roam about the haunts of men at sunset in search of their prey and to be specially active in their peregrinations in times of an epidemic, as cholera or small-pox. They are therefore frightened oft during epidemics by making a tremendous jarring noise, by beating anything that might come in one's way, as the walls and doors of houses, tin kettles, metal trays, cymbals, &c. These evil spirits are sometimes said to enter the bodies of alligators and tigers (p. 250), or to incite them to cause great destruction of hiunan life' But very much more important to the Burmese are the Nats. The family spirit or house Nat of the Burmese is a true guardian spirit, and under his guardianship every child is ceremonially placed on the se\'enth day after birth, and he is always propitiated at marriages. Evidence is not wanting to show that he was originally an ancestor, for Taw Sein Ko tells us that ' in such of the households in Burma as arc tenacious in the observance of the faith and practices of their forefathers, the charred bones of parents and grandparents are carefully preserved in cases of glass, and daily offerings of rice and other eatables are placed before them in the same manner as before the images of Buddha. At the time of the British occupation of Mandalay in 1885 a mimber of gold images representing the kings and chief queens of the Alompra dynasty were found in the palace together with a book of odes chanted whenever they were worshipped. This form of worship finds an exact counterpart in the Mongol worship as good deities of the njcines of Chingiz Khan and his family '. So also ' in the houses of some Burmese families coco-nuts, with a fillet of white muslin or red cloth tied round them, are sus- pended by a cane support from a special post called the yudaing. The Burmans have forgotten the origin of uvu, but the word or its synonym, Khun, is still used in the Chin language to signif)' the guardian spirit of a family '. (Cf. p. 229.) Such are the considerations that have caused it to be generally recognized by students of things Burmese that the local Nat or representative of the triie animistic spirit — w'hat Grant Allen in his Evolution of the Idea of God calls ' the unknown or generalized ghost ' — really is a mere ghost rather than a heathen deity. His ubiquity is beyond doubt from the most secluded hill to the most populous civilized and socially lofty centre. ""^ There are stories of the action of disembodied spirits rendering particular patches of land uncultivable, inhabiting certain trees and the like. These are all disembodied human spirits. 1 Op. ci(., pp. 10-11. 231 THE ORIGIN OF TRAGEDY Wln'n a Rurnian starts on a jonriicy (saj's Sir George Scott ^) he hangs a huneli of |)]antains or a twig of the thahija-trtc on the jjole ol' tlie buffalo-eart or the stern of the boat to concihate any spirit wliose beat he might intrude upon. The fisher makes offerings in his Xal-.\in (Spirits' Shrine) e\'ery time lie laiuichcs his dug-out ; the lonely hunter in the forest dejiosits some rice and ties together a few leaves wherever he comes across some particularly large and im]iosing tree, lest there might be a TInppin-.mung (a tree-haunting) Nat dwelling there. Should there be none, the tied-back twigs will at any rate stand in evidence to the Taw-sauug (jungle-haunting) A'«/, the demon that presides over all the forest. When there is a boat- race the opposing crews have a preliminar}' row over the course, with offerings placed on the prow for the A^at who guards that stretch of the river. Some Nats achieve fame and arc known far and wide by special appellations. Such is Maimgingyi, a spirit who is feared in all the districts round Rangoon and a-way eastward and northward as far as Pegu. He lives in the water and causes death. A special festival is celebrated in his honour, or rather in his deprecation, in the month of ^Vazo (Juh'). in which ' Lent ' begins. Others more especially known in Up])er Burma are Ryindon, Shue Byingj'i, and his brother, and a drunken Nat called Maung Mingj^aw (cf. p. 251), to whom great quantities of rice-spirit are offered. V Yingijiis is a spirit universally known among the Talaings. The chief spirit of a district usually goes by the name of Ashingyi, the Great Lord, or among the Talaings, Okkaya. Then there are generic names ; there is the Hmin Nat, who lives in the woods and shakes those he meets so that thcA^ go mad. There is the U Paha, who flies about in the clouds to spy out men to snap. There is the Akathaso, who lives in the tops of trees, Yokkaso, who li\'es in the trunk, and Buiiaso, who is content with a dwelling in the roots. The presence of spirits or witches in trees may always be ascertained by the quivering and trembling of the leaves when all around is still. The survi\'al of Animism amongst modern European Christians is as persistent as among any other people or faith that may be mentioned, and in Burma we have the usual proofs of it, the poetic author of the Soul of a People supplying them. Thus he writes : ' Some of the Nats li\'e in the trees, esjiecially in the huge fig-tree that shades half an acre without the village, or among the fern-like fronds of the tamarind, and you will often see lieneath such a tree, raised upon poles or nestled in the branches, a little house built of bamboo and thatch, perliaps two feet square. 1 Cited by Temple, loc. cit. BUKMA 235 You will be told that this is the house (Fig. 88) of a Tree-Nat. Flowers will be offered, sometimes a little water or rice maybe, to the Nat. It is not safe to offend these Nats. ^lany of them arc very powerful. There is a A"(/^ of whom I know, whose home is in a great tree at the crossing of two roads, and he has a house there built for him and he is much feared. He is such a great Nat that it is necessary when you pass his house to dismount from your pony and walk to a respectful distance. If you haughtily ride past, trouble will befall j'ou.' These Nat-houses remind us of the miniature hut, with a diminu- tive ladder leading up to it, and food within, erected at the foot of each grave for the comfort of the soul of the dead person by the Besisi of the Malay Peninsula.-^ Such Soul-houses were also placed on or near the graves bjr the ancient Egyptians. But it is not merely in trees or other such places that Nats have their dwellings. Rivers and streams also have their fair quota of inhabiters who are undoubtedly disembodied spirits. Again, Taw Scin Ko tells us that after the harvest-time of each j^car, say about ^lareh or April, festivals in honour of Nats as well as of pagodas are held. The Nat festivals arc exceedingly popular and are largely attended by the people. Those at Pagan, Amarapura, Mandalay, and Lower Chindwin in Upper Burma, are ancient and recognized institutions, which used to be supported by the royal bounty of the Burmese kings. In Lower Burma, however, which is inhabited chiefly by people of the Taking race, Nat festivals have in a large measure been replaced by pagoda festivals, because of the long subjection of the country to Burmese rule and because of the successful measures adopted by the Burmans for obliterating the nationality of the Talaings. But there is not wanting good proof of the great part once played by the worship of Nats amongst the Talaings, and of the elaborate character of their shrines. Thus we learn from the eminent Burmese scholar. Taw Sein Ko,^ that ' at Thaton, the ancient centre of Talaing civilization in Lower Burma, there is a temple dedicated to a Nat called P'o-p'o (Grandfather). The image of P'o-p'o represents an old man of about sixty years sitting cross-legged, with a white fillet on the head, and a moustache and pointed beard. The forehead is broad and the face bears an intelligent expression. The upper portion of the body is nude, and tlie lower is dressed in a check paso, or loin- ^ W. W. Skeat and C. O. Blagden, Tlie Pagan Races oj the Malay Peninsula, vol. ii, pp. 107-8. - Sir R. C. Temple, Tfie Tldrly-seven Nats of the Burmese, pp. 10-11. 230 THE ORIGIN OF TRAGEDY C'lotli of tiie zigzag pattern, so much jjrizcd by the people of Burma. The right hand rests on the right knee, and the left is in the act of counting the l:>eads of a rosary. The height of the figure is about live feet. In the apartment on the left of P'o-p'o is an image repre- senting a benign-looking uuin, or go\ernor in full oflieial dress. Facing the second image in a separate apartment is the representation of a wild fierce-looking bo, or military officer in uniform. The fourth apartment on the left of the bo is dedicated to a female Nat, who is presumably the wife of P'o-p'o, but there is no image representing her. These images arc most probably representations of a Burmese governor and his family, whose acts of justice, benevolence, and sympathy were long remembered by the people, and in whose honour these were erected as a mark of esteem, admiration, and reverence. The images are in a good state of preservation as they are in the custody of a medium, who gains a comfortable livelihood. An annual festival, which is largely attended, is held in their honour \ We shall presently find close analogies to P'o-p"o and his family in the local gods of the Chinese, who are invariably deified local personages (p. 268). At the end of Lent in October there is an illumination all along the Irrawaddy. As soon as it is dark the villagers row out into the middle of the stream and set adrift a multitude of little oil lamps, each fastened to a little float of bamboo or plantain stems. The lamps arc simply little earthenware cups filled with oil, and each supplied with a small piece of cotton for a wick. Thousands of them are sent, out by a single village. On the night of the full moon there is a constant succession of these shoals of twinkling lights floating down the whole lengtli of the Irrawaddy from above Bhamo to China Buchecr (top to bottom of the Irrawaddy in Burma), every village sending its contingent. This ceremony is in honour of ' a universally honoured pha!ja-)igi\ a lesser divinity called Shin Upago, who lives down at the bottom of the river in a hiji-pijathat, or brazen spire, where he zealously keeps the sacred days. In a former existence he carried off the clothes of a bather, and for this mischievous pleasantry is condemned to remain in his present quarters till Arimadeya, the next Buddha, shall come. Then he will be set free, and entering the Thenga sargha (church) will become a Yahanda (Arahanta, saint), and attain Nirvana. He is a favourite subject for pictures, which represent him sitting under his brazen roof, or on the stump of a tree, eating out of an alms-bowl, which he carries in his arms. Sometimes he is depicted gazing sideways up to the skies, where he seeks a place that is not polluted by corpses. Such a spot is not to be found on BURMA 237 earth, where every stock and stone is but the reeeptaelc of a departed spirit ".'- But whilst there are such myriads of Nats, some of whom are more than local, Thirty-seven of them tower aVjove their fellows. These Thirty-seven are all the spirits of departed heroes and heroines except in one instance. This is Thagya N'at, who stands first in the official list. He is no other than Indra, one of whose names was Sakra, which in Burmese became Thagya. Furthermore, all the remaining thirty-six Nats, with one exception, purport to be the spirits of persons, either themselves royal or indirectly connected with royalty. The majority of them were alive I^etween the thir- teenth and se\'enteenth centuries a.d., and some less than two hundred years ago. One of them was well known in life to the early Portuguese settlers, and is often nrentioned in their accounts. ' Qualifications for admission into this authentic list are such as might be expected — great prominence, strong personahty or striking performances during life, or one of the sudden, cruel, startling deaths or tragic terrifying fates only too common in Burman as in all Oriental historj'.' Each of these thirty-seven Nats has his or her own cult, i.e. an appropriate ceremony or festival, and an appropriate ]ilaee and time for jDcrforming it. According to so trustwortl:y an authority as Taw Sein Ko, ' as a rule images of Nats are uncouth objects, generally made of wood, with some sort of human countenance. Those of the thirty-seven rulers are being carefully preser\-ed within the precincts of the Shwe zigon Pagoda at Pagan.' Yet the specimens figured by Sir R. C. Temple," from his own splendid collection, are fine examples of indigenous art. But by far the most important evidence for the cult of Nats is that recently published by Sir R. C. Temple.'' This is a translation of a rare Burmese manuscript which he obtained in 1891 from Maung Kyaw Yan, a carver of Rangoon. It was written in 1820, but the work itself was compiled, according to the preface, in 1805 ' by the command of the Heir Apparent, Thirimahajeyyathu, afterwards Atwin AVun and Governor of Myawadi, bearing the title of Mingye Mahathihathu '. It contains an account of the thirty-seven Nats, treating of the manner in which ceremonies and festivals were held in their honour, the dress worn by the mediums at such festivals, and the music played on such occasions. The account was compiled in A.D. 1820, in the southern apartments of the Palace in consultation 1 Op. cit., p. 20. - O/i. cil., Plates i-xix. ■' Indian Aniiquurij, vol. xxxv (1900), pp. 217 siiq. 2.38 THE ORIGIN OF TRAGEDY with tlu' iniisiciaii Nga Myut Thha and Ni/a Tarok, the licad medium KawidcwuLjj'aw, and many other experts eonver.sant with the subjeet. Next follows a eom])letc list of the eanonical thirty-seven Nats, which is loliowed by a detailed aceount of each. Beside Indra. who heads the authentic lists, there are nineteen royalties, sixteen official or other personages, and one merchant. Eut for our present purj)ose the dramatic sides of the festival held in honour of the Nats has especial value. I. According to a work called the Mahagita Medanigijan, T/iagija Nat is the reprcsentatixe of the king of the Thagyas.^ He lives on the summit of ^lyimmo-daung (Mount ^leru). On festival daj's, in his honour, a large shed is erected, and in this it is proper to act various kinds of plays. AVhile these are going on there enter the Nat-ten'- or mediums, all dressed alike as men in ornamental bordered jyasos or waist-cloths. broad-slee\'ed jackets, and white shawls thrown over their shoulders, with shells in the right hand and }'0ung sprigs of the eugeniu (thatiije) in the left. They stej) forward in a graceful fashion, and standing upright, chant the Nat-than as follows : ' I am the king of the worlds that are situated in the midst of the Four Islands and are surrounded bv the Seven Encircling Seas and the Seven Ranges of Mountains (of the Buddhist cosmogony). The righteous and the pure in heart will I jjrotect, and I will punish such as are ungodly and do e^•il. Therefore have I descended from a height of one himdred and sixty-eight thousand vozaiias of twelve miles each to watch o\'er the good and over the Isad, and therefore do I pray tliat e\-ery one may avoid e^"il and clca\e fast to that which is good." Then the music strikes \ip and the ceremony concludes with the vigorous dancing of the A^c/^-inspired women. The supjaoscd \"isit of Thagya Nat to eartli from heaven at tlie Burmese New Year is known as tlu' AVater fcstixal. which commences with the firing of caimon, and ends with a general dowsing of each other bv the youthful members of the ]iopulaee and throwing water on all they dare, including Europeans and strangers. We ha\'e seen from the extracts cited above (pj). 234-5) that according to Burmese belief trees are \c-Ty commonly the abode of Nats. It might be said that these Nats arc simply ^■egl■tation spirits and are in no wise to be connected with the ghosts of departed himian beings. But the facts recorded respecting Nats II and /// in the olfieial document must at once disj)el any such idea. 1 Op. (■//., p. 71. - Tlitv seem identical witli tiiu Niil-Kdihiivs, i.e. 'Nat Brides' ; sec .Adden- dum A, )). :!S7, Figs. 8!I-!M . BURMA 239 II. Mahajxiri Nat (Via;. 40) is the spirit of Nya Tinde, son of N^a Tiiidaw. a blacksmith of Tajraunt;. Bt'ing ajiprchcnsivc of his strength and valour, the king of Tagaung tried to arrest him. He baffled such attempts by hiding himself in the woods. The king resorted to a stratagem and made his sister Swemi a queen, with the title of Thirichanda, and made her inveigle her brother to the Palace. He was then captured, tied to a saga-tree in front of the palace and burned ali^'e with the aid of a bellows. In the festival to this Nat the medium wears a paso (loin-cloth) and a jacket, both fringed with Fig. 4!I. Mahagiri Nat. a border of foreign manufacture, and a reddish-brown gilt hat. He holds a fan in his right hand and ihabye in his left. He fans himself three times and chants an ode, in which he bewails his own fate and the treachery of the king. After this he throws down the fan and the sword on the groiuid and dances. III. Hnamadaw Taung-gyishin Nat. She was the daughter of Nga Tandaw of Tagaung. When her brother was being burned alive, she asked the king's permission to pay her last respects to him. She then went where he was, and under the pretence of paj'ing her respects jumped into the fire and thus met her death. The attendants only just succeeded in saving her head, over which were afterwards 240 thp: origin of tragedy pcrforined the rites of ereniation. After their death both brother and sister Ixeame Nai-s (jii the siiga-ircc. S\ich was their evil influence that e\ery liunian ))ein<^' or animal that approached the tree died mysteriously, ami e\'entually the e\-il became so intolerable that the tree itself was uprooted and thrown into the Irrawaddy. The tree was stranded at Paj^'an, where Thiiilii(yaung was reigning as king. This happened in the foiu'th (? sixth) century a.d. The Nats apjirised the king in a dream of their sorrposed to the humanitarian doctrines of Buddhism, and because it would entail suffering in hell on those who ^\■itnessed it. In a.d. 1785 Bodaw paya, the great-great-grandfather of the last king of Burma, had new golden heads of the Nats made, and these were replaced in 1812 by the same king with larger and more finished heads of the same metal, weighing in the aggregate about two and a half pounds. These last heads arc still in existence and are being worshipped by the people. In this festival the medium wears a skirt fringed with a border of foreign manufacture, a long jacket, and a shawl embroidered with gold and silver. The shawl is worn over the head. She holds a cup of betel-leaves in the left hand and a water-jug with a lid in the right hand. She laj'S down the jug, after raising it three times, and then, holding tliabye twigs in both hands, she dances and chants an ode, in which she recounts her old happy daj's and bewails her fate and that of her brother, and the treachery of the king. The story of the hapless brother and sister, the supposed settle- ment of their disenibodied spirits in the great saga-tree, their malice towards their persecutor, the consequent uprooting of the tree, its passage down the river and landing at Pagan, its division into two separate logs (which correspond so wonderfully to the Greek Xoana), set up by the pious prince, and finally the anthropomorphizing of them (as in the case of the famous agalma of Hera at Samos) into representations of the brother and the sister, must set at rest for ever the doctrine that tree-spirits, corn-spirits, and the like are in origin abstract generalities, which were later localized. No less fatal is this to the doctrines of Dieterich and his followers — Miss Harrison, Mr. F. M. Cornford, and Professor Murray — who hold that all cults of individual heroes are based upon the prior worship of the Daimon Eniautos, ' the Year spirit,' itself but an extension of the doctrine of the Vegetation or Corn spirit. With the fall of the Daimon Eniautos goes the theory of tragedy held by these writers, that it arose in a dramatic ritual in honour of the Daemon of the Year, and that it R 242 TIIK ORIGIN' OF TRAGEDY was 011I3' later lliat into the settinjr ilms provided, tlie lives of real persons who Iiad suffered niiieh in life, like the Burmese blacksmith and his loyal sister, had been fitted. In the stories not only of these two Nais, but practically of all the renuunin<( thirty-four, we shall find exactly the same principjle — real hmnan beings, who for certain reasons, similar to those which led to the worship of Heracles, Castor, Pf)lhix, and countless minor heroes and heroines in Greece, were venerated after death, had festivals set up in their lionour, in which a dromenon, or dramatic ritual, formed the chief feature, and in which a song or ode (corre- sponding closely to the Greek Dithyramb) was chanted by the Xat-ten, or the medium in whom tlie sj)irit of the dead dwelt for the time being, and through whose mouth tlie spirit told its melancholy tale. Moreover, the presence of disembodied spirits in a tree near to or growing over the place where they suffered death or lay buried, can be ]_)aralleled from Greece. No better example need be cited than that embodied by Virgil in the Acneid,^ in the story of Polydorus, Priam's youngest son, murdered by Polymncstor, the Thracian king. All remember how the trees which grew on his grave bled when their branches were broken to kindle a fire, and how he himself spoke to Aeneas and told his own cruel fate. ^loreovcr, in the story of Hyrnetho," daiightcr of Temenus, the Dorian king of Argos, we seem to have a parallel to that of the Burmese queen. When she had been killed by her brother Phalees, her husl)and, Diphontes, ' took up her dead body and bore it to a spot which was afterwards called Ilyrne- thium. And he made a shrine for her and bestowed honours on her : in particular a rule was made that of the olives and all the trees that grew there no man might take home with him the broken boughs or use them for ajiy purpose whatever, but they leave .the branches where they lie because they arc sacred to Ilyrnetho.' The same feeling pre\'ails at this liour in many parts of Ireland, where even in winters of great severity and when fuel is scarce, no one will burn or use for any purpose trees or branches of trees which grow in a churchyard, not becaiisc of any veneration for the Vegeta- tion sjjirit or the Daemon of the Year, but because it is believed that as these trees have grown out of graves they are permeated by the spirits of the dead. Nat IV is that of a woman, by name Shwe Nabe, who died of a broken heart, when deserted fjy her husband. She is one of the very few of these Nats with whose story superhuman beings are connected. By one version she married a sea-serpent, and like Leda in the Greek ' iii. 40, .5. 2 Paus. ii. 28, 5-7. BUKMA 243 tale she laid two eggs. In her festival ' the mcditim wears a skirt fringed with a border of foreign manufacture and also a jacket with a shawl of parti-eoloured design. Her hair is loosened and divided, a portion falling on her back and another passing through the holes bored in her ears. She chants an ode and then dances with thabije twigs in her hands. In the ode she recounts the events of her )5ast life and bewails her death and the condition in which she is, and expresses regret at the faithlessness of her husband '. Nat V, Thonban Hla, was the youngest sister of the ^'aliant blacksmith (Nat II). The details of her story are given at length. ' On her way to Tagaung to sec her relatives she died suddenly in Tabedaukyit, a village west of A^'a. Her daughter Shiunemi also died of grief at the same place. They became Nats and haunted the Popa hill together with their relatives.' ' In the festival to this Nat the medium dances Mdth a matalabi skirt and pannun shawl. She then makes a change in her dress, wearing a skirt fringed with a border of Western manufacture and a spotted shawl embroidered with gold and silver. She afterwards makes a third change in her dress, wearing a scarlet silk skirt of the zigzag pattern embroidered Avith gold and silver. After liaving danced three times with the three changes of dress, a dish of cooked rice is first offered, followed successively bj' dishes of plantains, custard- apples, guavas, &c. The musicians must first play a Talaing air twice, and then a Burmese air. After dancing three times she chants an ode in which she recounts her own story and expresses sorrow at the death of her brother and elder sister and at her own fate.' In the ease of the brother and sister of this Nat we had a striking proof of the general Burmese doctrine that the spirits which dwell in trees are those of disembodied human souls and not mere abstrac- tions, whilst in the case of the Irrawaddy itself we found that the object of the great festival Avas not a river Nature spirit, but the spirit of one who is supposed to have been once a man. In the present ease we have a not inferior proof that holy mountains are not wor- shipped as the abode of some vague Nature abstraction, but because they are supposed to be the residence of a disembodied human spirit. We have already seen that the holy mountain near Teheran owes its sanctity to its being deemed the resting-place of Shahr-banu, the wife of Hussein, and that according to Burmese belief every tree, stock, and stone is a receptacle for departed spirits, whilst here we have the youngest sister of the valiant blacksmith dwelling on the Popa hill, the highest elevation in Burma, on which are set also the images of her brother and sister. When this paper was R 2 2H THE ORIGIN OF TRAGEDY read before the Aeadeiny, the President (Viscount Bryce) stated in support of the Nature spirit theory that he had seen a woman worshipping Kinchinjunga, which seen from Darjeeling is said to be one of the finest sights on earth. But an extract from a Buddhist writer/ given to me by my friend IMr. T. W. Rolleston, will convince the reader that such a moimtain is adored not as a vague Nature spirit, but as the abode of Buddha, just as the Popa hill is that of the blacksmith's sister : ' From the place of our bivouac I saw to the north-west a great snow-clad mountain : it was the Kang Rinpoehc of Tibet, the Mount Kailasa of the Hindu. Its ancient name was Kang Tise. As far as my knowledge goes, it is the most ideal of the snow-peaks of all the Himalayas. It inspired me with the profoundest feelings of pure reverence, and I looked up to it as a " natural mandala ", the mansion of Buddha and Bodhisattvas. Filled with soul-stirring thoughts and fancies I addressed myself to this sacred pillar of nature, confessed my sins, and performed to it the obeisance of one lumdred and eight bows. I also took out the manuscript of my "twenty-six desires", and pledged their accomplishment to the Buddha. I then considered myself the luckiest of men, who have been thus enabled to worship such a holy emblem of Buddha's power, and to ^■ow sucli vows in its sacred presence.' We shall presently find in Peru indisputable evidence for our \iew. VI. Taung-ngu-Shin Mingaung Nat. He was the son of Minyethin- gathu of Taung-ngu (Tonghoo) by a lesser queen, who was a native of Northern Kadu. He succeeded his father in the kingdom of Taung-ngu, wliieh he ruled under the title of Kothan Thaken Bayin Mingaung. When taken ill from a disorder of the stomach he removed his residence temporarilj^ to the Paunglaungriv River. There the smell of onions was so strong that he was compelled to return to the city, on reaching the walls of which he died. In making offerings of food to this Nat onions must be eschewed. In the festi\-al to this Nat the mediimi wears a ]}aso, fringed with a border of foreign manufacture, a jacket with broad sleeves, and a gilt hat coloured white and brown with cither a white or gold fillet. In his left hand he holds a sword b}' the handle, with the blade away from him, and in liis right hand a fan. He fu'st chants an ode in which he narrates his own stor}-, and then walks about. VII. Mrintaragyi Nat. He was known as Sinbyushin Mintara, and was the elder brother of King Mingaung I of A^■a. He is said to have 1 Tlircr Years in Tibet, by a .Japanese Biuldliist pilgrim, Etcai Kawaguchi (Tlitosophical Publisliing Society, 1009), pp. 13G-7. BURMA 245 died of rc\\i-. In the festival to tliis Nat tlie medium wears the same dress as Xei. VI. He chants an ode narrating tlie story of his own hfe. VIII. Thandawoan Nat. He was a seeretary, by name Yebya, of Taung'-nuu Bayin Mingaung. He died of malarial fe^'er at Myedu, whither he was sent to repair the village, while collecting flowers in a jungle for the king in compliance with his master's wishes. Another legend says that he died of snake-bite while collecting jasmine-flowers at night from a jasminc-trce in the courtyard in compliance with the orders of the king, with whom he was holding a conversation. The medium wears the same dress as No. VI. Holding a sword and a fan in his hands, he chants an ode in which he recoiuits his own story, bewailing the fate he met with, whilst still a faithful servant of the king and enjoying the pleasures and honours conferred upon him. The music must pla}^ a Talaing tune. IX. Shwe Nawrata was the son of Mahathihathu and grandson of King Ningaimg II of Ava. During the reign of his paternal uncle, Shwe Nangyawshin, his servant, Nga Thauk-kya, rose in rebellion. In consequence he was captured by the king, while living with his mother, and afterwards thrown into a river. The story is also men- tioned in the Burmese histories. In the festival to this Nat the medium wears a red jjoso, a red jacket, and a gold embroidered turban with a white shawl thrown round the neck. He holds a fan in the right hand and chants an ode. He then takes out a turban, or a piece of clean cloth, and twisting it into the form of a cradle, rocks to and fro three times. Lastly, he makes gestures, as if playing gon-nijin (polo). In the ode he traces his descent from the powerful kings and recounts the hajjp}' days of his life. X. Aungzwamagyi was the minister of Prince Narapatisithu. brother of King Menyineyathenga. ^Veluwadi was the wife of Prince Neyabadisithu. Her beauty had so fascinated the king that he became enamoured of her and determined to make her his wife. In order to attain his object he gave out that a rebellion had broken out at Ngasaungchan, and sent his brother, Neyabadisithu, to quell it. During the absence of the husband he took Weluwadi to wife and made her his queen by force. Neyabadisithu divined the evil design of the king and left his faithful groom, Nga Pyi, to watch the trend of affairs during his absence. The pony Thudawti was left for the groom to ride to his master. Nga Pyi was, however, delayed on the road and was executed for tarrying on the way. Aungzwa, a con- fidential ser\'ant of Neyabadisithu, was then sent to encompass the ruin of the king, the reward being a queen from the harem. Aungzwa succeeded, but was subsequently executed for reproaching t 34(5 THE OltlGIX OF TRAGEDY Xcyahadisit liii loi' failui'c to keep his promise. Auii^fzwa then became a Nat. Ill I lie I'estixal to this Nat the medium wears a paso fringed with a border of foreign inaiiufaeture, a jacket with Ijroad sleeves, and a gilt hat coloured red and white. On his left shoulder lie carries a s\\'ord \vitli thabije tAvigs in the form of a scroll on it. and in the right hand he bears a fan. lie chants an ode, and putting down the sworti and the fan he dancts. In the (jde he narrates his own story and be\vails his fate, exhorting other servants of princes to refrain from showing disrespect to their masters. XI. Xgazishin Xat 'was Kyawzwa, the go^•erll(Jr of Pinle and son of Thihathu. the founder of Pinle. He obtained five white elephants from Pinle and inherited the kingdom from his brother Uzana. who abdicated the throne. He died of illness after a reign of nine years and became a Nat. Inliis festi\'al the medium wears a court dress, hiildiiig a fan covered with one end ol his jjaso in the left, and twigs of Ihabi/e in the right hand. As he recites an ode, in which he narrates his own story, he assumes the gestures of one riding em horseback. XII. AungbinleSinbyushin Xat (Fig. 51) was son of King^Iingaungl of A^'a. and brother of King Kyawzwa. who died at Dalla. After the tleath of his father he riigned as king of A^'a. ^Vhile riding an elephant and su|)erintending the ])loughiiig of a plot of land, south of the Aungliinle Lake, he ^^'as treacherously murdered b}' the Sawbwa of Onbaung. He became a Nat under the name of Aungbinle Sinliyushin. In his festi\al the medium is dressed in high Court dress holdnig an elephant goad in the left hand, and a lasso, made f)f his white pasa. together with thuliiff twigs, is held in the right hand. He chants an ode recounting his own life, tracing his descent from a powerful line of kings, and promising to all culti\'ati)rs his supernatural assistance in securing them rich harvests ; and after exhorting them to strengthen the embankment of the lake, he holds the twigs of thahije in his right hand and mimics the sowing of seid in a held. XIII and XIV. Taungmagyi and Myauk ^Miiisinbyu Xats. By one account they were the sons of a sea-serpent, and Shwe Xalie. a native woman of Mindon. According to one legend they were the sons of Xga Tinde, afterwards Mahagiri Xat (Xo. II) by i\\v sea- serpent Shwe Xabe. The mother laid two eggs in the Male woods. After the death of the parents the two eggs were picked up by a Rishi. From these two eggs were hatched the two brothers. On their death they Were deified on the upper reaches of the river, each being represented with six hands. Another legend makes them the sons of a woodman by a sea-ser|)ent, Shwe Xabe. She laid two eggs and BURMA 247 they were given to a hunter, who sent them floating clown the river. The eggs lodged on a slab of stone and produced there two children. They M'ere said to have been suckled by a deer, which they followed as their mother. Inquiries consequent upon an oracle predicting the coming of two strong men led to their being found and brought to King Duttahaung. Later on the king became suspicious of their loyalt)', ordered them to hold a boxing-match, in which they fought so fiercely that they died, and they became Nats. In the festival of Taimgmagyi the medium wears a pasn fringed with a border of ?ri.-^-:\-^-.:;!i Fig. :j1. Aungbinle Sinbyushin Nat. foreign manufacture, a close-fitting military jacket, ear-ornaments, a red turban, and a red hat. He holds a sword in his right hand and a bunch of thabye twigs in the left hand. He mimics the sharpening of his sword, and, after cutting the thahyc twigs with it, he places it in his belt, and chants an ode in which he recounts the events of his life, dwelling on his accomplishments and feats, the cruelty of his mother, and the kindness of the rishi who suckled him and his brother with milk from his fingers, and bewailing the state he has attained. Myauk Minsinbyu Nat was the brother of the preceding. In the festival the medium wears a |ja.so fringed with a border of foreign manufacture, a close-fitting military jacket, a black turban. 248 THE ORIGIN OF TRAGEDY ear-ornaments, and black trousers. He holds a sword with both hands and chants an ode in which he claims descent from Nga Tin- daw, his grandfather, Mahagiri, his father, and Ma Swemi, his aunt, and recounts the feats he performed while in the service of the king. After this he mimics the rowing of a boat, and then dances freely and wildly as a Shan. XV. Shindaw Nat was a novice, admitted into the order of monks of the king of Ava, and entrusted to the care of the high priest of Kyauktalon Hngetpyittaung. He died of snake-bite and became Fig. 52. Nyaung-Gyin Nat. a Nat. In the festival the medium wears a yellow-dyed robe and dances wth a fan in the right hand. In the ode he recounts his own life, extolling his accomplishments and bewailing his own fate. XVI. Nyaung-Gyin Nat (Fig. 52) was one of the descendants of King Manuta of Thaton. He died of leprosy in Pagan during the reign of King Anawrata and became a Nat. In the festival the medium is dressed like that of Myauk (No. XIV). He chants an ode and dances with his fingers closed to indicate that his hands are leprous. In the ode he claims descent from King Manuta of Thaton and recounts his own story. He bewails his fate as a man and Nat, and the loathsome disease wth which he is afflicted. As a leper he abstains from all flesh that tends to aggravate BURMA 249 his condition, and in making offerings to him all flesh has to be eschewed. Even as a Nat his abode is in the hearth. Any one possessed by him itches all over the body. He is propitiated by offerings of rice-cakes placed on the hearth. In Burma he is as familiar as Mahagiri and others. XVII. Tabin Shwedi Nat was the son of King Kyinyo, the founder of Taung-ngu (Tonghoo). While he was reigning in Hanthawadi he was advised by Thamain Sawdut to remove his capital in order to escape misfortune. He removed to a temporary residence, whci-e he was treacheroushr murdered by one of his guards, the brother of Thamain Sawdut. In his festival the medium wears a paso, &c., a gold embroidered turban, and a gold embroidered scarf and a white shawl round the neck. He also wears a jacket and a gilt purple hat. Holding an unsheathed sword in the right hand, he chants an ode in which he recounts his own life. Lastly he thrusts the point of his sword into two bunches of plantain and lays them down, after lifting them up in the air. XVIII. Minye Aungdin Nat was the son of King Anaukpet Tha- lung Mendaya and son-in-law of King Thalun Mindaya. He died of excessive drinking and became a A^at. He is dressed like No. XVII ; he walks with a sword covered with a j^aso in one hand and chants an ode in which he bewails his own fate and exhorts others not to follow his example. After this he dances while playing on a harp. XIX. Shwe Thate (Sitthin) Nat was a son of Sawmun of Pagan. He was sent by his father to suppress the rising of the Shans at Kyaingthin. On reaching Hlaingdet he proceeded no further, but amused himself with cockfighting. He was, in consequence, punished by his father for disobeying his orders by having his legs buried in the earth. He died of grief soon after in that position and became a Nat. In his festival the medium wears a scarlet paso, one end of which is thrown round his neck, a scarlet jacket, a gold embroidered turban, and a gilt purple hat, coloured red on the top. He takes off his turban, and laying it down on the ground he bows down three times and chants an ode in which he bewails the cruel fate he met ^nth at his father's hands for disobedience to orders. XX. Medaw Shwesaga Nat was the queen of Sawmun of Pagan, and mother of the governor of Hlaingdet. She died of grief at the terrible fate of her son and became a Nat at Hlaingdet along with her son. In her festival the medium wears a skirt, &c., a long jacket (court dress), a white shawl, and a white scarf on her head. Walking with a rosary in her hand she chants an ode in which she relates the story of her own life. 250 THE OUI(;iX OF TRAGEDY XXI. IMauiiL; Fo Tu Xat (Eig. ry.i) was a native of Pinya, ))y pro- fession a trader in tea. On his retnrn from Thonzc, Monek, Thitjaw, Tuun,f,'l)aing, and other ])hiees, with whieh he was trading during the reign of King IMingaung I, he was killed Ijy a tiger at the foot of a hill, near Ongyau and Lekkanng \illages. On beeoniing a Nat he became friends with Shwe/.itthi Nat, the prinee of Illaingdet. They lived together and are generally known as JMin Hnaba Nat.9 (the two princes). His wife, l\Ii Ilinine, a Shan. li\'ed at Taungbaing. In this festival the medium wears a scarlet jjciso, with one end thrown round his neck, a scarlet jacket, and a scarlet turban. On his left Fig. ilauns Po Tu Xat. shoulder he carries a sword witli a piece of cloth in the form of a bundle suspended i'rom it. He hokls twigs of tliahye in the right liand and chants an ode, while mimicking the dri\-ing of oxen. Then he drinks water as a tiger. In the ode he recounts his own story, bewailing the cruel manner in which he met his death. According to this stor\' lu' died on account of his refusal to listen to the words of his wife, who strongly m-ged him not to proceed on his journey. It is said that jircvious to his death he dreamed that his top-knot, tied up by his wife, and his rigiit arm on which his wife used to rest her head, were cut off. Wc have seen aljo\e (p. '2;53) tlie Burmese belief that certain 15UKMA 251 disembodied spirits enter tlie botlies of alligators and tii;crs and incite them to mischief. It seems as if tlu' IV'a-trader Nat IVoni Ijcini; eaten or killed hy a ti^er hail somehow become merged into that animal, since his medium laps like a tiger. In New Giiijiea we shall lind a ^'^■ry similar belief. Such facts as these, combined with tlie general doctrine of the transmigration of human souls found amongst Totemist races, seem to indicate that the bilief in Totem animals, like that in Tree, River, and ^loimtain spirits, is nu-rely secondary, s[iringiiig out of the jirimary faith in the existence of luuiian souls afti'r the death of the body. Fie. .54. .M;uino ."Minljyu Xat. XXII. Yunbayin Nat was King Byathan of Zimmc. When it was annexed m a.d. 1558, by Siobyumyashin of Haiithawadi, he was taken captive to Hanthawadi and ki'pt there in honourable confinement. He died there of dysentery and became a Nat. The medium wears a jxt-so. &c., a jacket, a white turban, and a purple hat, placing on the head a bundle of coco-nuts, plantains, betcl-lea\es, and tobacco tied in a scarf, so as to leave its corners free, and raising it thrice he chants an ode. He then twice mimics a cockfight, and holding a sugar-cane in each hand he strikes each with the other ))y turns as in fencing. Then he fills his pipe with tobacco and mimics the rowing of a Ixuit. 25-.' THE ORIGIN OK TRAGEDY XXIII. Muiiiij^rMinljyii Nat (Fiif. 5 1) was the son of the Kiugof A'l'a Ijy till.- (laughter of a jaik r at AA'a. He died of excessive indulgence in litpKii' and npinni. In the lesti\al to tliis Nat the medinm wears a pa.si). &e.. a white jacket, and a gold tnrban. Covering his head with a piece of wliite clotli. embroidered ^vith silver threads, lie recites an ode in which he bewails his own fate, repents his intem- perance, and exhorts j^ouths not to indulge in the same vice, which has worked his ruin in the end. He then plays on a flute, holding it in the left hand. XXR'. ;\Iandalc Bodaw Xat Avas the son of a Brahman who was a minister of King Ariawrata of Pagan. By appointment of the king he was the guardian of the two Shwebyin in their }'-outh. 'When the two brothers were executed he was also ordered to be executed as being their guardian, while encamping at Mandale on their return froni China. AVhen the executioners came to arrest him, he made an attein])t to i scape by riding on a stone elephant, which he had aiiimah-d with life by throwing a charmed string over it. But it vas ton latt-. He was seized, bound hand and foot, and executed in Mandale (Mandalay), and became a yat. Up till now a rock in the form of an eleiihant is still to be Seen near Bodaw Nat's c&xv in !Mandale. His last words complained of injustice, and he is usually reijresentcd as holding up the tip of his forefinger. As he was called Apho (grandfather) by the two brothers, he is now called the ^Mandale Be)daw. In his festival the medium is dressed in the same way as that of the Mahagiri Xat. Fanning himself thrice with a fan, he chants an ode. Then, laying down the fan and the sword, he dances. XXV and XXVI. Shwebjdn Xaimgaw and Shwebyin Nyindaw Nats Were the sons of an Indian runner of Thaton in the ser\'ice of Anawrata. The chief duty of this man was to supply the king with flowers from ]Mount Popa. On one occasion he met an ogress, whom he took to wife. By her he got two sons, whom he placed under the charge of the king. They had to serve the king under the name of the Brothers Shwebyin when the king marched t^) China to demand Buddha's tooth from the emperor. The tooth was obtained, and on his way back the king built a pagf)da at Taungbyon. -where they encamped. By royal mandate every man was laijoined to furnish one brick for ertcting it. Presuming on the good ser\'ices they had rendered to the king, they ])aid no heed to the royal command and spent their time in courting a girl of Taungbyon. 'When the apjjointed time had lapsed, they were too late to furnish the required bricks and Mere executed for disobedience of orders. On their death thev became BURMA 253 Nats under the name of The Two Brother Nats. In their festival the medium wears a paso, &e., a jaeket with broad sleeves, and a white and purple gilt head-dress. Holding sprigs of thahye, he takes three paces forward and chants an ode. Then he changes his jacket for a short one of velvet, his paso for a scarlet one, and his hat for one of felt, and dances. Placing the plantains offered to him on a three- legged tray, and arming himself with a sword in the right hand, he mimics the hunting of rabbits and rows a boat with his sword. In an ode chanted by the elder brother he narrates his own story, recounting the services he and his brother and their father (who was, according to the song, a Ghalasi, sailor) had rendered to the king. In the ode chanted by the younger brother he recounts the past good services they had rendered the king, mentioning the heroic exploit they performed in the palace of the Emperor of China, whither they marched to get Buddha's tooth. He dwells at some length on the meanness of the king in not making suitable offerings to them. After their death they revealed themselves to the king on his return on a raft by stopping the progress of it. At their request the king granted them Taungbyon and the surrounding suburbs as their home. (See Addenda, pp. 387 sqq.. Figs. 88-91.) XXVII. Mintha Maung Shin Nat was the son of King Minyizaw of Pagan, who founded Kyaukthanbat and Putet. While a no^'iee in the monastery he died of a fall from a swing and became a Nat. In his festival the medium is dressed in yellow robes as a priest. He first chants an ode in which he narrates his own story, and then dances, playing on a harp in his hand. XXVIII. Tibyusaung Nat was the father of Anawrata of Pagan, and was deposed by his step-sons, Kyizo and Sokkade, and compelled to become a Buddhist priest. When his son Anawrata had wrested the crown from his half-brother Sokkade, the dignity and rank of a king was conferred on the old priest, who continued to reside in his monas- tery surrounded by his harem. On his death he was deified as a Nat under the name of Tibyusaung Nat. In one legend it is said that he resided in a monastery south of Para, in the village. In his festival the medium is dressed in yellow robes as a priest ; he chants an ode in which he says he taught poetry in his monastery to all learners. Then, holding a fan in the right hand and an almsbowl in the left, he walks as if he were receiving alms. XXIX. Tibyusaung Mcdaw Nat was apparently the queen of Tannct (the foregoing Nat), though the legends are silent on this point. In the festival the medium wears a skirt fringed with a border of foreign manufacture, a long court dress, a white shawl, and a scarf 254 THE ORIGIX OF TRAGEDY cinbruidcrcd witli g(j!d Ihid., pp. 17.3-5 (with fine illustrations). For important fresh matter on Nal-pwes, see Addendum .V (pp. 387-!J2). S 258 THE ORIGIN OF TRAGEDY professional ixTronncrs of tlic zappwe there are the hanpvoe or ijcinpivc, in whicli the performers are amateurs. Colonel Yule ^ writes thus : ' Eaeh performance is attended by a full Burmese oreliestra. . . . The stage of the Burmese theatre is the groimd, generally spread M'ith mats. On one, two, or three sides are raised liamboo platforms for the more distinguished speetators. Tlie crowd press in and squat on the ground in all vacant places. In the middle of the stage arena, stuck into the ground, or lashed to one of the poles supporting the roof, is always a small tree, Fio. 55. A IJurincsc Marionette Princess. which, like the altar on the Greek stage, forms a sort of centre to the action. I never could learn the meaning of this tree. The answer usually was, that it was there in ease a scene in a garden or forest should oceiu\ There is no other attempt at the representation of scenic localitjr, and I lia\'e a very strong impression that this tree has had some other meaning and origin now probably forgotten. The footlights consisted of earthen pots full of cotton seed soaked in petrolemn, which stood on the groimd blazing and flaring around the symbolic tree, and were occasionally re])lcnished with a ladleful of oil by one of the performers. On one side or both was the orchestra, such as it has been described, and near it stood a sort of bamboo horse or stand on which were suspended a variety of grotesque masks. The ^ Eiiibass}j to tlic Court of .Ivn, p. 15. llUPxMA 259 property chest of the company occupied another side of the stage, and constantly did dtity as a tlironc for the royal personages who figure so abiuidantly in their plays.' It is possible that the symbolic tree may have become a conven- tional part of the mise en scene, because it may have been customary to hold the performance in connexion with a sacred or ncd tree,-" a practice which we shall see (pp. 300-1) in Japan. Captain Forbes '" describes a most striking performance by an amateur company of children in a village. Their principal piece was the Wayihandara, in which Gautama (Sakyanuni), the fourth of the five Buddhas appearing in this present cycle, exemplified the great virtue of almsgiving. The drama is very popular, and its theme is frequently seen in the frescoes which adorn pagodas, monasteries, and rest-houses.^ It is, of course, not a native Burmese production, but simply a translation from an Indian original. The Prince Waythandara (We-than-da-ya or Vessantara), having distributed in charity all his treasures, jewellery, and everything else, at last wishes to give awaj' even the sacred white elephant (Fig. 56) to those who beg for it, which so enrages the people that they insist on his banishment by his father, who is forced to yield to the popular outcry. His wife, Maddi, refuses to separate from him, and with her two children, a boy and a girl, Zalee and Ganah, they set out, amid the pathetic lamentations of their relatives, in a chariot for the far distant wilds. On the way the mendicant Brahmans meet him, and having nothing else he offers them his horses and pursues his journey on foot, he and his wife carrying the little ones. Some time after they reach their retreat in the forest, a Brahman (Jugaka) (Fig. 57), who is the villain of the piece, finds them out in order to beg the last object the generous prince has left, his beloved children. He times his approach when the mother is absent, works on the charitable disposition of the prince, who, after sundrj^ struggles with his paternal feelings, gives his two children to the greedy Brahman. With a bleeding heart he sees the Brahman drag off the children, silencing their piteous entreaties with blows. Then the mother returns to find her little ones gone. Her agonized appeals are beautiful. All ends happily, the wicked Brahman dies of over-eating, the children being restored to their parents and the prince to his country. 1 For vahialjlc fresli information on tliis jxiint see Addendum A (pp. :!87-02). 2 British Burma (1879), p. 119. ^ L. Allan Goss, The Slonj of Wc-lhaii-da-i/a, a Buddhist Legend, slietched from the Burmese I'ersiou of the I'nii te.rl, illiislriiied bjj a native artist, p. ii. S 2 2G0 THE ORIGIN OF TRAGEDY The pictures are rejirodiieed I'rom two out of a series of twenty- two beautifully coloured drawings illustrating the various scenes of the i)lay, for which I am indebted to my friend, Sir J. H. Marshall, Director-General of tlie Archaeoloj^ical Survey of India, and to the eminent scholar, .Mr. Taw Scin Ko, already mentioned in these pages (pp. 2.'51-7), who had tliem specially executed for him by a native Fig. oC. I'riiicc Waythandiua gives a^ay tlic White Elc|iliant. artist. Sir .J. II. ^Marsliall writis ^ ol' these drawings that ' thev are exceedingly true to the plays whicli he himself has seen enacted on the banks of the Irrawaddy. The zayats and other buildings are copies of existing architecture at Mandalay, and the dresses are tliose commonly worn in Rurma — the royal ajiparel being that in vogue at the court of kings Thibaw and Jlindon Min. In their plavs the Bin-mcse are fond of keeping up the traditions of the old regal times '. C'a[)tain Forbes jirocecds - : 'It is. howe\er, siiiguhu' that according 1 In a letU-r dated Simla, .June 21), I'.ll 1. O/i. cil., p. l.-)2. l^UUMA 2C1 to Biirman ideas tlic lej^itiniate drama of hitfli art is contained, not in these plays, l^it in the puppet-shows or marionettes. The figures are often two to tlirec feet in height, and are ^'er_y cle\'erly manipulated on a bamboo platform some thirty feet long. In these pieces the action is much more complicated than in the live drama, as there is a facility afforded for introducing elephants, horses, dragons, ships, Fig. 57. Jiigaka, the wicked Brahman, carries off the Prince \Vaytliantlara's children. and supernatural beings of all sorts. The dialogue is much loftier and in more polished language, whilst the operatic portion is much larger, and a company often acquires an extensive reputation from the possession of a prince or princess who has a good voice and pleasing recitati\'e. The performers— those who work the puppets and speak for them— are always men and boys. These puppet-plays arc almost always founded on the story of one of the many previous existences of Gautama, such as the Waytlunidara before described. 262 THE OI'JGIX OF TRAGEDY (.)r clsr liistorieal draiiias, takru I'rom the actual national histor}^, but always with a ^-cry lar<,fc [)i-(i])y George C. Hazelton and Benrimo. Music by Wiliiam Furst, Duke of Yoriv's Tlieatre : Mr. Gaston Mayer's season.' (1913.) CHINA 269 Fig. 58. Chinese ' local god ' ; Hwasang, near Kucbeng, Fuhkien.^ ^ This idol was given to me in 1894 by niy cousin, Hester Newcombc, to whom it had been presented by a ' Buddlii.st ' priest whom slie Iiad converted at Hwasang, near Kueheng, province of Fuhkien, where in 189.5 she sullered martyrdom with the Rev. Robert and Mrs. Stewart and others. 270 THE OIITGIX OF TllAGEDY ixpi'csciitalions of uiieicnt historifal events divided into a number of seenes. Certain eeremonies for the expulsion of evil spirits in which a house to house visitation was made by villagers dressed in fantastic garl) may also have some connexion with the beginnings of dramatic art. Others are inclined to derive the drama from the pu]ipet-shows, which from time immemorial have been a feature of the life of the people, and they point to the fact that in many parts of China a theatrical performance is still prefaced by a display of marionettes. IIowe\'er that may be, it is certain that for the immense period of twelve hundred years after the time of Confucius no great development of the drama can have taken pilace, if indeed it can be said to have existed at all. No record of anj-thing in the nature of a modern stage-play can be traced until the reign of the Emperor Ming Hung, of the T'ang dynastj', in the first half of the eighth century. Exceptionally fond of song and dance, this emperor is said to have founded a sort of academy known as the " Pear-tree Garden ", where a com]iany of three hundred persons was personally trained by him for the production of what for want of a better name may be described as operas. Music must have constituted the basis of these performances, but it seems that the slender thread of a story was also introduced IjctwecTi the choral songs : and to this day actors in China arc often called " A]iprentiees of the Pear-tree Garden ". ' Dm-ing another long interval of five hundred years there is no e\'idenee that theatricals spread further than the Imperial Court (ir became part of the recognized amusements of the peoj^le. It was not until the close of tlie Sung dynasty in the middle of the thirteenth century that the dramatic instincts of the Chinese were really awakened. The im]5ulsc seems to have come from without, for it is precisely in the period when the all-conquering Mongols were engaged in adding the Celestial Empire to their vast domains that Chinese dramatic literature begins. ' The earliest stage-play that has come down to us, The Story of the Western Pavilion, is also one of the niost exquisite from a litcrarv j)oint of view, though more IjTieal in character and less \'igorous in action than many tliat were to folloAv. A marvellous creative ))eriod now set in, almost comparable in fertility of genius to our own Elizabethan era. Tlie names arc recorded of no less than 564 ]ilavs and of 8.5 playwrights \\\\o lived under this dynasty, and a collection of the hundred Ixst pieces has Isccn priserved to form a classical repertory, so to S))eak, of the Chinese tlicatre. Of these, one of the most famous is entitled TJie Orphan of the House of Cltao. a thrilling CHINA 271 drama based on historical facts in which cruelty and craft arc met by fidelity and self-sacrifice, with jioetic justice in the end. When the Mongol line was replaced by the native Chinese dynasty known as the Ming, the great outburst of dramatic activity had already begun to wane, and the succeeding jxTiod was comparatively poor in works of outstanding literary merit. A brilliant exception is The Story of the Guitar, a play of moral depth and beauty but somewhat exaggerated pathos, which was performed for the first time in 1404. ' Modern Chinese plays still follow, in external construction at any rate, the model of the dramas produced under the Mongols. They are usually di\'ided into four acts, with or without a jDrologue, and are accompanied throughout b)^ an orchestra consisting of songs, drums, and cymbals, beside string and wind instruments. The words are delivered in a high-pitched recitative varied by bouts of chanting in passages where special stress is required for the heightening of emotion or the utterance of moral reflections. There is, as a rule, one particular character, who breaks at intervals into song, and fulfils in some degree the function of a chorus. Few Chinese plays last much over an hour, the average length being about forty-five minutes, part of which may be taken up with " gag ". It should be remembered, however, that the acting version is considerably shorter than the printed work, as it would appear in a book. It is the rule for a number of plajrs to be performed continuously. A clash of cymbals announces the conclusion of each, but there is no other interval. This accounts for the widespread notion that Chinese plays are ridieulousl}' long, the contrary being nearer to the truth. There is no sharp distinction, such as we are accustomed to draw, between comedies and tragedies, the latter, in a strict sense of the word, hardly existing at all.' This last statement, however, must be accepted with reservation, for Dr. MacGowan, in the preface to his translation of the Chinese drama, Beauty,^ states that 'the heroine of this beautiful i&iry story lived during the late Han dynasty (a.d. 25-190). China, in those early ages, was often terribly harassed by the wild and barbarous tribes that lived bej^ond its northern boundaries, and Mongols, and Kins, and Tartars, lured by the wealth of the Flowery Kingdom, used to make savage incursions into it, and when they retired they carried with them not only the plunder of the ravaged districts, but also many of their inhabitants as well. Even royal personages were not safe from these nomadic marauders, and some of them died in exile amongst their captors. The supreme devotion of Beauty to her country, ^ Beauty, a Chinese drama, translated from the original by Rev. J. MacGowan (London, E. L. Morice, 1911). 272 THE ORIGIN OF TRAGEDY and her great sutfcrings and tragic death, have so appealed to the romance and loyalty of the Chinese, that her story has been dramatized, and no play is to-day more popular, wherever it is performed, than it '. Classes of Plays. Plays are roughly classified as Military and Civil. Military arc chiefly based, as in the case of Beauty just cited, on episodes drawn from the inexhaustible mine of Chinese history, and deal with the heroism or villany of emperors, celebrated generals, and other famous historical personages. A great deal of fighting takes place on the stage, accompanied by all manner of gymnastic and acrobatic feats. Civil plays comprise all the events of everyday life, and range from domestic drama and the comedy of manners and intrigue to farces and burlesques of the noisiest and frequently of the most obscene description. Falling somewhat outside these two main classes are the quasi-religious plays dealing with exhibitions of Taoist magic, or the very popular variety of comedy, in which priests, both Buddhist and Taoist, are held up to ridicule. Chinese actors are almost exclusively natives of Pekin, and it follows that the language thej^ speak is only intelligible in those parts of China where some form of the INIandarin dialect prevails. In man}' of the southern and south-eastern provinces the audience ha\-e to rely on their quick comprehension of gesture and facial expression. The historical i)lays, moreo\'cr, are performed in a language more concise and elevated in style than the common vernacular, and coiild not be easily followed but for the fact that every Chinese audience is perfectly familiar with the outline at least of the stories enacted. Actors. A full Chinese theatrical company is made up of fift5r-six persons. The ^'arious roles are classified and kept distinct, each actor being expected to ]ilay only one particular class of character. The principal classes are (1) Sheng, both the military Shcng, or hero (Figs. .59, (30), and the civilian Sheng. high official, or walking gentle- man (Figs. Gl, G2) ; (2) Cliing, the bold and unscrupulous -^-illain : (3) Tan, the female parts, both military (Figs. 63, 64) and civil (Figs. 05, GO), respectable and otherwise ; (-i) Tchou, the low comedy man and buffoon (Figs. 67, 68). The women's parts are, as a rule, played to perfection by men. ' Contrary' to the usual belief, women took ])art in theatricals throughout the Mongol and Ming dynasties, and a stop was only put to the practice as late as the thirteenth century under the reign of the Emperor Ch'ien Lung, whose mother had herself been an actress. Of recent years the ban has been removed and an increasing numlxr ol' women are again performing on the CHINA 273 public stage. Chinese actors arc notorioiisly among the iinest in the world, those \\'ho take female parts showing particular skill and likewise commanding the highest salaries.' Though they do not wear masks, as still in .Japan, these played a very important part in the early stage of the drama ^ Shaljby Fig. 59. Principal Military Sheng. Fig. 60. Subordinate Military Officer (Sheng). in themselves, the actors arc quite transformed by the make-up and the gorgeous clothes thej' don in full view of the public. ' The actor's life is often wretched in the extreme. Bought or hired from poverty-stricken parents at an early age, he is subjected to a very rigorous course of both histrionic and acrobatic training. In addition he has to memorize between a hundred and two hundred ^ H. L. .Joly, 'Random Notes on Dances, Masks, and the Early Forms of Theatre in .Japan ' (Trans. Japan Soc. of London, 1912, p. 39). 274 THE OllIGIN OF TRAGEDY parts so as to hr a})lc to apiicar in them at a moment's notice without rehearsal or )>roniptcr. In spite of his comparatively high intellectual standard, he is nevertheless ref^arded as a social outcast, and all his descendants, to the third generation, are debarred from competing in the public examinations.' ^ Fig. CI. Minister of State (Sheiig). Theatres. Permanent theatres in the proper sense of the word are to be found only in Pekin and Canton, and some of the larger treaty ]5orts. Even in these the accommodation is verj' simple. There is a pit fin-nished with benches and a table in front of each, and a balcony divided into a number of separate boxes. The stage is built out into the auditorium, so as to be commanded on tln-ee sides ; it must on no account face west, this being the inauspicious quarter controlled by tlie AVhite Tiger. There is no scenery, no ^ Dr. Lionel Giles, op. cil. CHINA 275 curtain, and but few accessories. Two doors at the back serve, one for entrance, the other for exit. The theatre, cxceirt where customs have been modified by foreitjn influence, is free to all, but it is under- stood that every visitor will pay for some refreshment. Open-air performances. howe\-er, are the rule throui;diout the country at larwc. Fig. 02. Leading Civilian (Sbeng). On the occasion of some rich man's birthdaj^, a troupe of players will be engaged by him for the amusement of the people, or on the festival of some local god a performance may be arranged and paid for by public subscription. A large stage, constructed of bamboo poles, planks, and matting, will be put up in any convenient place that may offer, either under a spreading tree, or in the middle of the street opposite the house of the man that pays for the show, or frequently in the courtyard of a temple, so that the image of the god himself may witness the performance, in which he is supposed to take a great T 2 276 THE ORIGIN OF TRAGEDY delight. The representation will begin at noon and go on without intermission until sunset. Plays are also a regular accompaniment of large banquets, towards the end of which the actors come in and submit a list of some fifty or sixty pieces, from which the host will jierliaps choose eight or ten. On such occasions the female portion Fio. 0:j. Old Woman (Tan) Fig. 04. Amazon {Tan). of the household will look on from a gallery wliere they are concealed behind a trellis. Owing to the comj^letc absence of scenic accessories it is obvious that a great deal has to be left to the imagination of a Chinese audience. As each character enters, he tells you himself, quite in the manner of Bottom, who he is (a custom which at once recalls the practice of the Burmese Nats) and what part he has to play in the coming drama. The members of the orchestra sit on the stage itself, and footmen wait at the sides to carry in screens, chairs, tables, and the like, wherewith CHINA 277 to represent city walls, and houses, forests, and even mountains. An actor will gravely bestraddle a stick and prance about the stage as though on horseback, without the least fear of evoking a smile, or if dead he will contrive to alter his face, and then carry himself off, making movements as though acting the part of a bearer. Again, it Fig. 65. Comic Female Character Fig. 66. Fast Girl (Tqh). is Cjuite a usual thing for a player who is getting hoarse to have a cup of tea handed to him by an attendant. A change of scene is indicated by a pantomimic action or by all the dramatis personae walking rapidly in single file round the stage.-*- There seems no doubt that the Chinese drama exercises a vevy healthy influence by teaching their national history to a people otherwise uneducated and for the most part unable to read, by ^ Dr. Lionel Giles, oji. cit. 278 THE ORIGIN OF TRAGEDY inculcatint; good moral ideals (cxce])t in the case of the fjross farces occasionally seen in the larrre towns), and by thus providing a whole- some amusement for otherwise monotonous and dreary lives. The fact that ' the usual ])lace for holding a performance is under a spreading tree ' makes us wonder if a similar ])raetiee may not have P'lG. 67. Low Comedy Man. led to the conventional tree which now forms the invariable centre of the Burmese extemporized theatre. Let us now sum up the evidence afforded by the liistory of the Chinese drama : (1) There were already in the time of Confucius certain solemn dances of a dramatic character held in the ancestral temples, many centuries before there is any e\-idcncc for the inven- tion of puppet-plays in India, from which Dr. Pischel thinks that form of entertainment has spread ; (2) historical ])lays, the diction of which is more lofty and concise than the common vernacular. CHINA 279 continue to be the Jiiarked feature of the Cliincse drama ; (3) in the temples of local deities, who admittedh? were once heroes or heroines of the immediate neighbourhood, dramatic performances, in which these personages are supposed to take an interest, are to this hour regularly given ; (4) these temples of local heroes and heroines seem Fig. 68. The Buffoon (Tchou). the direct descendants of the ancestral temjDles in which solemn dramatic dances were already part of the cult five hundred j^cars before Christ. All now wanting is evidence that such plays in some cases — as, for instance, in that of Kuan Ti, the God of War — refer to the life, exploits, or sufferings of the god in whose presence and for whose honour they are performed. This evidence is supplied by the following letter from the Rev. G. Owen, London Missionary Society, long resident at Pekin, for it will be seen that there are actually plays in honour of the War-god Kuan Ti, who, as we saw (p. 268), was a famous general in a.d. 220. He 280 THE ORIGIN OF TRAGEDY writes 1 : ' I am not aware that there arc Chinese plays which can be properly designated "sacred historical". There are, however, plays which may be called " temple " plays from the fact that they are more frequently played at the temples than anywhere else, such as plaj's in which the City God, the God of War, and the God of J'ire, or one of the Buddhas specially figures. But such plays are frequently performed elsewhere, and the ordinary theatrical plays, on the other hand, are constantly performed at the temples. The " local gods " are generally of small importance, and their temples are mere shrines, and it is rare that theatricals are performed in connexion with them. In each country district there usually is a temple having a theatre attached in front or alongside of it where theatricals are performed at least every autumn after the ingathering of the harvest ; often the plays performed on these occasions may be " temple " or ordinary plays, and are continued for several days.' As we have seen above that in all the early Chinese rituals it is the ancestral spirits, i.e. local gods, who are invoked to grant good harvests, this puts it beyond doubt that the dramatic performances in the temples of local gods after the ingathering of the crops (as at Elcusis) are really harvest thanksgivings to them. But as these local gods are deified human beings, we may conclude with certainty that it was in honour of the dead and not of mere Vegetation abstractions that the Chinese drama had its origin. We shall soon find that in Japan similar theatres are attached to Shinto temj^les (Fig. 70), in which the 'gods' worshipped are invariably ancient local personages. But what is still more important is the fact that it is to these local heroes and heroines, once li^•ing men and women, and not to abstract Corn or Vegetation spirits, or the 'Daemon of the Year ' that the Chinese offer thanks for a good harvest. In this respect they accord fully with the Chins and the Burmese, and, as we shall soon see, with the Japanese and numerous other races. I have also been informed by a Chinese gentleman. Dr. Chwang. that the play performed in a temple occasionally has reference to the life of the ' god ' in whose honour it is given. We may thus conclude that as in Western Asia, ancient Egypt, Hindustan, and Burma, the serious drama arose out of the worship of dead chiefs or ancestors, so, too, was it with that of China. For the temple plays seem the lineal descendants of the solemn panto- mimic dances held in the ancestral temples in the days of Confucius, and we know not how long before, whilst, as in Greece, Western Asia, ' From a letter to me dated Oct. 10, 1013. For tliis, as for much more, I am indebted to my old triend. Professor .James Mayor, of Toronto University. CHINA 281 Egypt, Hindustan, and Burma, the serious dramas are all fomided on historical personafrcs, their exploits, crimes, or sufferings. Thus the Chinese drama furnishes strong confirmatory evidence of the view that Greek Tragedj' sprang out of the worship of famous chieftains, such as Adrastus of Sicyon. X. JAPAN All authorities are agreed that the Japanese drama is independent in origin, though, like everything else in Japan, undoubtedly in- fluenced and modified at a later stage by China. But as it is closely interwoven with the political and religious history of the nation, a brief outline of that historj^ is necessary if we are to understand clearly the origin and development of the drama. ^ Political History. As in most other countries, the early history of Japan begins in a misty period where fact and myth merge into each other. Although the mythic element not only predominates in the earliest period, but the miraculous even persists, as in the case of Charlemagne, in the lives of emperors who reigned several centuries after Christ, it by no means follows that the earlier annals do not contain a solid nucleus of facts respecting the first beginnings of the nation and its rulers. For, as the present writer has argued else- where,- it by no means follows that because the traditional account of a certain individual contains miraculous and incredible adjimcts, such a person never existed, for in that case the names of Alexander and King Arthur would have to be erased from the roll of history. On the contrary, the attachment of such extravagant legends to the name of a personage is a strong proof that he not only did exist, but had such a great personality that he impressed both his own and succeeding generations with the belief that his powers transcended those of ordinary men. Let us, then, start with a very brief summary of the salient points in the mythical period of JajDanese history, which are contained in the Kojiki and the Nihongi, both dating from the eighth centurj^ of our era.^ Before men appeared there had been numerous generations of gods or heroes, the last of whom were a brother and a sister, Izanagi ' I have to thank my friend. Professor James Mavor, of Toronto University, and Mr. A. E. Brice, Assistant Secretary of the Japanese Society, wlio have icindly helped me in various ways in the compilation of this section. " W. Ridgeway, The Early Age of Greece, vol. i, p. l.'JO. ^ B. H. Chamberlain, Things Japanese, pp. 224 sqq. 282 THE ORIGIN OF TRAGEDY and Izanami. From their union spranff tlie Japanese islands and many other gods, but at the birth of the Fire-god, Izanami died. Her husband sought her in the Underworld, but found her only as a reeking mass of eorruption. He fled baek in horror and purified himself in a stream in South-west Japan, and as he did so fresh deities sprung from his clothes and from his person ; Amaterasu, the Sun-goddess (of whom we shall have to speak frequently), from his left eye, the Moon-god from his right, and Susa-no-o, the Impetuous Male, from his nose. To these three their father portioned out the imiverse. The Moon-god now drops out of the story, but his sister and the Impetuous Male engage in a violent quarrel, whieh ends by the Impetuous Male breaking a hole in the roof of the celestial bower wlierein the Sun-goddess sat with her wearing maidens, and by his letting down a piebald horse whieh he had flayed backwards. The Sun-goddess, shocked bj^ this crowning outrage, withdrew into a cave, which she closed with a rock, and from which she was allured with difficulty by the rest of the eight lumdred myriad deities by means of a solemn dance, regarded as the prototype of the kagura, which from the remotest period formed part of tlie Shinto ceremonial (pp. 301-2, 308-0). The Impetuous ^lale is banished and the Sun-goddess reigns supreme. But she in her turn fades into the background, and the greater part of the mythology is now taken up with the Impetuous Male and his posterity, who become the monarchs of Izumo, a pro- vince in whieh we shall find the seat of the oldest and most important cult, but whieh belongs, not to the Mikado, but to chieftains and their families who preceded the present Imperial djaiasty. The Impetuous Male ncAXT assumed the lordship of the sea, the portion assigned to him by his sire, but he reapjicars in Izumo, and later still as the deity of the abode of the dead. Nevertheless, he seems to ha\e kept some control over the land of the living, since he invested his descendant of the sixth generation with the lordship of Japan. Roimd this latter cycles a whole series of events, centring ^1 the province of Izumo. He has a long roll of exploits, amours, and , descendants. Now comes a strange reversal. The Sim-goddess appears suddenly on the stage and rcsoh'cs to bestow the sovereignty on another, but whether this other is her own son or her brother's is not clear. After no less than four embassies have been sent down to Izumo, the chief at last surrenders his throne on condition that a palace or temple be built for him, and he be duly worshipped. As the great shrine of Izimio is one of the five earliest in .Japan, and as these are all dedicated to chieftains and their families who preceded the line of the Mikados, it would seem that this legend mirrors. JAPAN 283 albeit darkly, the supersession of an indijj;enous dynasty by that which lias held rule ever since. But to this point we shall revert later on. The son of the deity whom the Sun-goddess had selected descends not to Izunio. but to Kjaishu, the south-west island, and this grandson of the Sun-goddess is the reputed ancestor of the Imperial house. His son, Firefade, had four sons, one of whom was the first human ^likado, and to him was gi^•en later the name of Jimmu Tenno. The scene again shifts. The province of Yamato. hitherto obscure, becomes henceforth the seat of power. This legend may perhaps mean that the Japanese first crossed from the mainland into Kyushu, the nearest of all the islands to the mainland of Asia, and that from thence thej^ pushed forward their conquests into the other islands. Then comes a period in which the annals supply only genealogies and no myths. Next follows the reign of the Mikado, Sujin Tenno, which, according to the orthodox chronology, immediately preceded the Christian era. In his time the former monarch or deity of Izumo, or God of Miwa (i.e. the old aboriginal chieftain, who had been dispossessed on condition of having a shrine), reappears and sends a pestilence, which, from a suggestion revealed in a dream, Sujin was enabled to stay, but later on the god of Izumo has a fresh outburst. Sujin's successor, Suinin Teuno, whose date is set by the annals at 2 B.C., deserves ever to be had in memory, as it was he who put an end to the horrible practice of burying alive the slaves of the royal and noble families to form a Li\'ing Hedge rotmd the graves oi' their deceased masters and mistresses. For a long period royal gallantries and family cpiarrels form the chief part of the story until we reach the cycle of which Yamatotake is the hero. His exploits are many and varied, and when he dies he passes into a white bird, just as, according to Cornish legend. King Arthur's Spirit lodged in the ' russet-patted chough '. A blank now ensues and the next reign brings us back to Kyushu in the south-west. As this island lies right opposite Corea, the annals are probably quite correct in representing the Japanese as getting into communication with that country, and even conquer- ing a part of it under the Empress Jingo. After this success she sails for Yami#o, which henceforth down to modern days remained the seat of the Em])ire, as is attested by the vast number of royal and other sepulchres in tliat district, especially in the neighbourhood of Nara. As yet there was no continuous seat of government, for each new Mikado cliose his own residence, and accordingly some sixty capitals are recorded in the annals. Nara was the first capital in our sense of that term. Founded in a.d. 709 it was the residence. 284 THE ORIGIN OF TRAGEDY until 784, of seven suecessivc Mikados. But in about 790 the seat of rjovernment was fixed at Kyoto in the same province, which remained the Imperial capital down to 1808. With Yamato as the seat of power China now comes into the Japanese ken. It is only at the bcffinning of the fifth century that the miraculous finally disappears out of the annals, for at that date historiographers were appointed for the several provinces — that is, within three centuries of the compilation of the Kojiki and Nihongi. Fabulous as is the greater part of the earlier annals, and uncertain as is the chronology until a.d. 461, we may at least infer that the first centre of anything like a monarchy was in Izumo, but that this belonged to the aborigines, from whom are descended the Ainus ; that with the coming of the Japanese the centre of power was in Kyushu, that it oscillated back to Izumo, swimg once more to Kyushu, and then settled down permanently in Yamato. Further, it seems probable that the clan or family in which the chieftainship was vested at the dawn of true history, had already held the headshijj continuously for many generations before the Christian era ; more- over, that the Japanese had got into communication with Corea some time not far from the Christian era and with China a little later. The statements of the annals on these points are supported by other considerations, partly from Chinese sources, and still more so by modern archaeological research. Our earliest knowledge of Japan is derived from Chinese literature and goes back as far as the first century of our era. The Japanese are then described as using arrowheads of bone, but two centuries later those of iron. Japan can hardly be said to have had a Copper or a Bronze Age, but seems to have passed direct from Stone to Iron, deriving her knowledge of copper and iron from Corea and China. This reference to the first use of iron in Japan agrees well with what we now know of the first use of that metal in China. It was formerly supposed that iron had been used as a metal by the Chinese from a very remote period and long before it was so known or used in Europe. But the present writer has shown, ^ by the aid of Pro- fessor H. A. Giles, that the first mention of iron in Chinese literature occurs no earlier than the Odes of Confucius ; that a bronze sword, then Ix-longing to Canon Greenwell, but now with the rest of his splendid bronze collections in the British Museum, has an inscription in the ancient script which dates it between 247 B.C. and 220 B.C. ; that bronze swords were being used as late as a.d. 100. and that it ' \V. Ridgeway, ' Tlie Beginnings of Iron' (Report of the British Assoeiation, Leicester Meeting, 1907, p. G44). JAPAN 285 was only in the first century after Christ that iron swords (as we know from inscribed specimens) were coming into use. This literary evidence he has now been able to corroborate ^ by a group of bronze and iron weapons and implements (in his own possession), including a fine bronze axe, a bronze halbert of curious form, and an iron Iioe. These were found in graves of the Han dynasty {circa 200 b.c- A.D. 190), as is rendered absolutelj' certain by the well-known pottery of the Han period with which they were associated. This ' find ' proves that the Han period was that of transition and overlap of the two metals, and that iron was only coming into use at the time indicated by the documentary evidence respecting inscribed iron swords. The Japanese monuments, of which the most remarkable are the great sepulchres of their kings and nobles, go back to several centuries before Christ. ^ They are very numerous everywhere, except in the more northern part of the main island, being particularly numerous, as might have been expected, in the Gokinai — the five provinces near the ancient capitals of Nara and Kyoto. Indeed the plain of Kawachi, to which we shall have to refer more than once, is practi- cally one vast cemetery. The largest tombs are those called Misasagi, the term applied to the tombs of emperors, empresses, and princes of the blood. The oldest of these were simple mounds, but at some uncertain period the primitive barrow was modified for the Mikados' monuments, and this type continued v,'\th little change for some centuries. In addition to the conical moiuid it had one of triangular form merging into the other. The interment took place in the conical part, the other perhaps serving as a platform on which were performed the rites in honour of the dead. The whole was sur- rounded by a moat, sometimes by two concentric moats, with a narrow strip of ground between them. This material rampart was fortified by a ghostly circle known as the Living Hedge, formed b}' burying alive, with their heads above ground, the slaves of the great personage at the conclusion of the funeral obsequies.^ These tombs vary much in size ; that of the Emperor Ojin, near Xara (the capital from a.d. 709-8-1.), measures 2,312 yards round the outer foss and is some 60 feet in height. There is a larger one near Sakai, and there is one in Kawaehi, on the side of which a good-sized village has been built. 1 W. Ridgeway, Proc. Tlellcnic Soc, May o, 1914. - The best account of these is that given by Professor W. Gowland, F.R.S., in his Dolmens and Burial Mounds of Japan. 3 B. H. Chamberlain, Things Japanese (ed. 5, 1905), pp. 29-31. 286 THE ORIGIN OF TRAGEDY These nrcat inouiids arc usually covered with trees, the nesting- [ilaees of minicrons birds, such as the white egret. Of late the Government lias cared well for these relics, especially for the Im])erial tombs, which have been fenced round and proxided with honorary gateways, and embassies arc sent once or twice a year to worship at them. The intercourse with China, which had kept steadily increasing, suddenly blossomed and brought forth marvellous and abundant fruit in the middle of the sixth century, when there ensued a mighty change in Japan, both spiritual and material. Between a.d. 552 and 561 zealous bands of Buddhist missionaries sjiread the new Gospel over all the islands. Tlie lofty tenets of Gautama, with their inculca- tion of self-abnegation and humanity, caught hold of all the best minds in the island kingdom, and it became the established religion, though, as in India, Burma, China, and elsewhere, the underlying Animism ncA'cr really lost its power as the most potent factor in the workaday life of the people. This religious revolution was not long after followed by another, itself largely due to the eliange of faith. The arts of China had been adopted with an alacrity only equalled by that with which the .Japanese in our own time ha^'e borrowed and assimilated the ideas n[ tile ^Vest. ^Mathematical instruments and calendars had been intrf)dueed, as \\ell as tlii' Chinese pietographs (some forty-six of which were made into phonetic signs), in which books were soon written, including the Knjiki itself (a.d. 713). But not only the arts, but also the ])olitieal methods of China were copied. The Mikados under the emasculating inlluence of the worst side of Buddhism adopted the custom of abdicating the throne in order to wipe out the sins of their youth by laying u]i 'merit' in an old age devoted to religious exercises and meditation. The empire was now organized after the Chinese centralizing system, with ministers responsible to the Mikado, who was theoretically absolute. The Mikado, no longer keeping an active control of all de])artments, became merely the instrument of priests and women, and the slackening reins were soon grasped by stronger hands. According to the myth, the Sun-goddess's grandchild, when he descended on earth, had as one of his principal advisers Amenokoyane. From the earliest period the heaven-descended Mikados had as their closest followers the priestly family of Nakatomi, who traced their tlescent from this Amenokoyane. The nominal minister of each IMikado, after he became of age, and the regent, if he were a minor, always Ijclonged to this clan, from which later sprung the Five JAPAN 287 Setsukc or Governing Families,^ Fujiwava, Taira, Minamoto, Aslii- kaga, and Tokugawa. The priestly families of Nakatomi and Inibc, as well as the Sarunic (female dancers) and the four tribes of Urabe or diviners, certainly date from the prehistoric period, and that the sanctit}^ which antiquity confers attached to the functions with which thej^ were clothed, is clear from their being taken up into the new religious hierarchy, while still preserving their hereditary character.- According to the famous myth of the Sun-goddess, Amenokoyane had played, as we shall see, a conspicuous part in enticing the goddess out of her rock cavern, by reciting a great liturgy. Since that time he and his descendants, the Nakatomi, are said to have filled the hereditary office of reciters of the Ohoharahi no Kotoba and other rituals, of which wc shall treat presently. At the great Purification ritual ceremony the Urabe had only the subordinate function of throwing the iDurificatory offerings into the river, but in the [Middle Ages it became the practice for them to recite the ritual itself instead of the Nakatomi. At the present time the office of the Nakatomi as readers of the Norito or liturg}' no longer exists, it being now read by a priest of the temple concerned.^ In the seventh century part of the Nakatomi clan took the name of Fujiwara, and b}^ the end of the eightli centurjr they had become the Mayors of the Palace. Not only did their sons hold all the great offices of state, but they married their daughters to faineant Mikados, a fact which we shall find of importance further on in this incjuiry. This powerful family controlled the whole empire from 670 to 1050. But by the middle of the eleventh century, two other great clans, the Taira and the Minamoto, also sprung from the Nakatomi, now made their strength felt. The Taira were descended from an illegitimate son of the Mikado Kuwan-mu Tenno, the Minamoto from his successor Saga Tenno, facts of no small importance when we come to examine the shrines of the Imperial family and their cults at Kyoto. The Taira had their head-quarters in that city and their clans were paramount in the provinces near the capital, whilst the Minamoto sphere of influence was in the north and east. The history of Japan during the latter part of the eleventh and all the twelfth century is made up of the continual struggles of these rival families, as a conse- quence of which the feudalization of the country was completed. As we shall see later, the Japanese Epic and Tragedy drew their themes 1 Sir E. Satow, Trans. Asiatic Soc. of Japan, vol. vii, p. 100. 2 Ibid., p. 107. ^ Florenz, ibid., vol. xxvii, pp. 1.5-10. 288 THE ORIGIN OF TRAGEDY in no small degree frDni incidents in the strife of these two great houses. In 1185 the Taira family was finally overthrown at the sea-fight of Dannoura, and thereby Yoritomo, the Minamoto chieftain, gained the supreme power. He now obtained from the Court at Kyoto the title of Shogun, i.e. Generalissimo, which had hitherto, since its first employment in 813, been the ordinary term for a general employed against the Ainus or rebels, but which, like the Latin Imperator, had henceforward a new connotation. It must, however, be borne in mind that no Shogun ever aspired to the title of Mikado, and that each was instituted to the olfiee by the Mikado. The Slioguns never dwelt at Kyoto, which continued to be the residence of the Mikado until 1868. They set up their court at Kamakura, not far from the modern Yokohama, in 1189. Kamakura was taken by storm in 1455 and again in 1520, after M'hich it gradualh' sunk, until it was replaced by Yedo in 1590. The latter continued to he the seat of the Shogunate until the abolition of that office in 1868, when, under its new name of Tokyo (East Capital), it became the seat of the Mikado. The Mikado then removed thence from Kyoto, now termed Saikyo (AVest Capital). But just as the Minamoto had become the executive officers of the Mikado, so they in turn became mere shadows of a shade, the real power being wielded from 1206 to 1333 by the so-called regents of the IIojo family. These powerful rulers, thcmseh'es vassals of the Minamoto. dialt as they pleased with the Mikado and the whole country, ^\■hilst the Shogmis kept a nominal court at Kamakura. Indeed the repidse by the IIojo regent of the Armada, sent by Kublai Khan to add .Japan to lais vast dominions, amply justified their seizure of power. A fourth great family now comes upon the stage. The death-in- life atmosphere of the Court at Kyoto was quickened by a family dispute for the throne, which lasted for sixty years. The powerful Ashikaga clan obtained the Shogunate in 1338, and by their aid the northern claimant finally triumphed in 1392. The Ashikaga Court at Kamakura became a great centre of literary culture, and under one of that family, as we shall sec, the drama reached its perfection. Then the same story of mastery, luxury, and decadence is repeated. Their poAver was wielded by ministers until they lost it for ever in 1597.'- The advent of the Roman Catholic friars and the use \vhich the Roman Church invariably makes of its con\'crts for political purposes ' Chamberlain, op. ciL, pp. 2:j'2-7. JAPAN 2S0 added a new element of diseord t(i tlie already distracted land. Each Ijarou became a law unto himself, and there arose a state of thincjs not milike that of France in the (■le^'enth century prior to the Truce of God (1035) and the Peace of God (1040). This chaos was at last reduced to order by three n-rcat men of the Tokugawa family : Oda Xobunaga, the Taiko Hideyoshi, and Tokugawa leyasu. The latter obtained investiture as Shogun for himself and his heirs from the ^likado in 1603, and henceforth the Tokugawa enjoyed this office until its abolition in 1808. Under this new dynasty grew up that Old .Japan which remained closed to other lands until the last century. ToAvards the close of the seventeenth century, under the grandson of the great leyasu, arose a school of learned men whose historical studies were destined to have a great effect not only upon the religious but also upon the political life of .Japan. Their thoughts turned more and more to the ancient history as well as the ancient Shinto religion of their race. In 1837-9 the Shoguns ojK'ued Yokohama, Hakodate, and certain other ]wrts to foreigners. With the revolution in ISCS, the emergence of the Mikado, and the splendid self-denying ordinance by which the nobles voluntarily gave up all their feudal rights, that curious system of the Shogunate which had lasted in some form or otlicr for nearly seven centuries set for e^'cr, to be succeeded by the glorious dawn of a new Japan. JAPANESE RELIGION Shinto. There is no doubt that from remote ages the religion of the .Japanese, like that of all primitive peoples, was Animistic, its essence being the belief in the existence of disembodied spirits, some good, some CA'il, whom it was essential to honour or proj^itiate. This primitive religion, which continued without interruption until the ad^'ent of Buddhism in the sixth century of our era, was thus practi- cally identical with the early religion of the Chinese known as Tao, as indeed is shown by the fact that the .Japanese term Shinto is simply the Chinese phrase meaning ' The Way of the Gods ' or ' The divine Way ". This term, however, onl}^ came into use after the intro- duction of Buddhism in a.d. 5.52 to distinguish the old religion from the Buppo, ' The Law of the Buddha.' The Buddhist missionaries at once exercised a vast influence on the .Japanese mind, as we Ivaxc already seen, not the least of which Mas political. For in no long time, opiated by the baneful side of u 290 THE ORIGIN OF TRAGEDY Budclhisni, tlic line ol' Jinumi Tt'uno sunk into an agelong sleep, from which it was only awakened after ele\-en centuries bj^ the revival of Shiiilo with its virile doctrine of the existence of personal souls after death, instead of a mere karma or bundle of merits. Ryobo-Shinto. But although Buddhism, })y its lofty ethical doetrini'S and its gorgeous shrines and paraphernalia, exercised a great and enduring influence on Japan, yet it was in reality only a \'eneer. for the practical religion of the court, the nobles, and the people always continued to be the worship of ancestors. From this blend of the primitive religion with that of Gautama arose an eclectic form kno-wn as Rijoho-Shinto, which remained unchallenged as the public religion of the nation until the end of the seventeenth century. At this time there was a great historical and national revival en- couraged by the then Shogun, the grandson of the renowned leyasu. Several of the leading Japanese scholars, who were deeply versed in the ancient literature, turned their thoughts more and more back- wards to the religion of their race. This feeling grew steadily though quietl)- until, at the great revolution of 1868, Buddhism was dis- established and disendowed, thousands of temples being purged of Buddhist ornaments and appurtenances, and Shinto was made the State religion, as it is at this hour. We can study the i)rimitive Japanese religion in several ways : by the myths, contained in the early amials, briefly rehearsed abo\-e, and b}- analysing the names of the gods and other supernatural beings who figure in those legends ; but much the best is the investigation of tile practical side of Shinto by considering the attitude which the worshippers assumed towards the objects of veneration, the means adopted for conciliating their favour or for averting their anger, and the language in which they addressed them as revealed to us in the ancient rituals. How strong is its grasp on the Japanese mind is familiar to all who remember the striking account of Admiral Togo's visit to the Shinto tempk' to announce to the spirits of those who had fallen in their country's cause at Port Arthur and in the other struggles against the Russians the news of final ^"ietory. The Bushido, or the ' Wa}' of the \\arrior", the worship of the Mikado, is but a particular phase of Shinto in vogue amongst the military class. It will be remembered that xVdmiral Togo ascribed his first victory o\-er tlie Russian fleet ' to the glorious virtue of the Mikado ', whilst no less striking was the suicide, on the occasion of the late Mikado's funeral, ol General Nogi (the conqueror of Port Artluu-) and his wife. JAPAN 291 In c\'ery Japanese house there is \vhat is called a Kaiiii-daiia, or ' shelf for gods ', which consists of a miniature Shinto temple in wood, containing paper tickets with the names of \'arious gods, one of whom is invariably Ten-shoko-daijin, the principal deity of Isc.' This ticket, or rather paper-box, is called o-harai, and is siqjposcd to contain between two thin boards some pieces of the wand used by the priests at Ise at the two annual festivals in the sixth and twelfth months of the year. These festi\'als are O-harai no Matsuri, and are supposed to effect the purification of the whole nation from sin during the preceding half-year. Every believer who has one of these o-harai in his Kami-dana is protected thereby from misfortune for the next six months, at the exjjiration of which time he ought to exchange the o-harai for a new one, which he must fetch from Ise in person, but in jDractice the o-harai is only changed once a year, perhaps less often. The old ones ought to be cast into a river or into the sea, or may be destroyed by burning. They are usually employed to light the fire which boils the water for the bath prepared for the miko (p. 303), or virgin priestesses, after their dance in honour of the uji-gami, or patron-god of the locality, at his festival. 'The God or Spirit', writes Sir Ernest Satow, 'who "vivifies" or " completes ", " fulfils " the country [i.e. gives good crops], is the principal god of the locality, and is represented in later times by the lehi-no-miya, or chief Shinto temple, in each of the provinces into which the country came to be formally divided for administrative convenience.' The Japanese language generally makes no distinction between god and goddess. Temples. The ordinary Japanese name for a temple, ya-shiro, is a compound of ya, 'house,' and shiro, 'area' or 'enclosure,' and thus signifies the land on which the temple is built rather than the building itself.^ But there is another term for temple, mi-ya, which is simply ya, ' house,' with the honorific prefix mi, and ' which is used indiscriminately for the house of a chieftain, the tombs of the dead, and the temples of the gods '? It thus closely parallels the Greek dvuKTopov and ai'dKnov which similarly mean the house of a king (dVa^), the shrine of a hero, and ultimately the temple of a god. The Shinto temple was and is nothing more than the primaeval house, the palace even of the early Japanese sovereign being simply a wooden 1 Satow, Trans. Asiatic Soc. of Japan, vol. ii, p. 114. - Satow, Trans. Asiatic Soc. of Japan, vol. vii, p. 115 (* Ancient Japanese Rituals, No. 1 '). ^ Ibid., p. 12a. U 2 292 THE OllIGIN OF TRAGEDY liiit witli its ])osts ])lanted in tlie ground and all tied together by cords of fibre. ^ In a very aneic^nt liturgy, called the ' Luckwishing of the Great Palace ",- wjiich dates from the earliest ages, from the establishment of the capital at Kashihara in Yamato by Jimmu Tenno, and in similar language in the Kogo jifuivi, we have an admirable description of how on that occasion the timber was cut in the forest with the sacred axe, which was made of stone and specimens of which are found along with arrowheads and clubs of like material, and how the foundations of the great hall of the palace were dug M'ith the sacred spade. The pillars of the house were firmly planted on the rocks beneath the surface, and the ends of the rafters crossed over the ridge-iJole were raised high towards the sk}'. Offerings, ' divine treasures,' nameh' a mirror, beads, a spear, a mantle, paper, niulberrjr bark, and hemp were prepared by the Imbe (p. 287), who then, under the guidance of the head of their tribe, deposited the sword and mirror, the sacred sj'mbols of sovereignty, hung the building with strings of red beads, laid out the offerings, and read the ritual. The object was to pro- jjitiate two deities, who are described as the spirits of timber and rice, to obtain their protection for the sovereign's abode so that it should not decay, and to save its occupier from snake-bites, from pollution through birds flying in at the smoke-hole in the roof, and from night alarms. Many of the Shinto temples ha\'e been modified 1jy Buddhist influence and have roofs of shingles, tiles, or even copper, but the few of the purest tj^pc still retain the ancient thatched roof, while the upper ends of the rafters which in the primitive house projected above the ridge-pole may still be seen conventionally represented by two pieces of wood in the form of an X, which rest on the ridge of the roof like a pack-saddle on the back of a horse' As the ' Luck-wishing of the Great Palace ' is addressed to ' the woman of the great house ' it looks as if it may have been addressed to the ancestress of the family. Tire sides were constructed of mats, whieli are replaced by planking, and the entrance is closed by a pair of folding doors turning on lieel-pivots. The primaeval hut Irad no floor, but the house of the dead lias a wooden floor raised some feet above the ground, a fact which occasions a sort of balcony all round (Fig. 70) and a flight of steps leading up to it."* The Shinto temple is differentiated from 1 B. II. Chamberlain, Things Japanese (ed. .3), pp. 38-9. - Satow, Trans. Asiatic Soe. of Japan, vol. ix, p. 190. ■' Ibid., vol. ii, p. 120. * Sir E. Satow, ' The Shinto Temples of Ise ' {Trans. .Isiatic Soc. of Japan, vol. ii, pp. 121-2). JAPAN 293 the Buddhist pagoda, which came with tlie religion of Gautama from China, and ultimately from India, the birthplace of that religion. The former has al«'ays (1) a gohei or wand, from which depend strips of white paper cut into little angular bunches, intended to reiDresent the offerings of cloth which were anciently tied to the branches of the cleyera tree at festival time (p. 298) ; (2) a peculiar gateway called torii; (3) the Shinto temple is usually thatched, whilst the Buddhist is tiled ; and (4) the Shinto temple is plain and empty, whilst its rival is ornate and replete with religious properties. In other ^vords, then, the house of the living man became his shrine on his death. This is proved by many facts. The one peculiarity which more than all others distinguishes the pure Shinto temple from that of the Buddhists, is the absence of images exposed for the veneration of the worshippers. A mirror is often found in mixed Shinto temples, but is absent from all pure Shinto temples. Yet the latter nearly always contain some object (like the Greek dyaXfia) in which the sjMrit of the deity therein enshrined is supposed to reside (p. 305). A common name for this is mi-tamajiro, or ' august-spirit substitute '. Another name for it is kan-zane, or ' god's seat '. It is usually concealed behind tlie closed doors of the actual shrine within a casing, which alone is exposed to view when the doors arc opened on the occasion of the annual festival. We possess ^-ery full information respecting the Shinto temples and their ceremonials, as they Avere in the tenth century of our era and we know not how long before. This is contained in the Yeugisliiki the Ceremonial Laws pronudgated in a.d. 927. ^ There were 573 temples containing 737 shrines, which were maintained at the cost of the Mikado's treasury, while the governors of the provinces super- intended in their administrati^'c districts the performance of rites at 2,395 other shrines. ' Many gods ', writes Sir E. Satow, ' were undoubtedly worshipped in more than half a dozen localities at the same time, but exact calculation is impossible.' Besides these 3,132 shrines described as Shikidai, i.e. contained in the catalogue of the Yengishiki, there were a large number of unenumerated shrines scattered all over the country in cA'cry village or hamlet, of which it was impossible to take any account, just as at the present day there are temples of Hachiman, Konpira, Tenjin sama, Sanno sama, and Sengen sama, as they arc popularly called, wherever twenty or thirty houses are collected together. The shrines are classed as great and small in the catalogue, the respective numbers being 492 1 Sir E. Satow, Trans. Asiatic Soc. of Japan, vol. vii, p. lOij (' Ancient Japanese Rituals, No. 1 '). 294 THE ORIGIN OF TRAGEDY and 2,640. The distinction is twofold, firstly in the proportionately larger quantity of offerings made at the great shrines, and secondly in the fact that the offerings in the one case were arranged upon tables or altars, while in the other they were placed on mats spread upon the earth. In the Yengishiki the amounts and nature of the offerings are stated with great minuteness, but it will be sufficient to mention here only the kinds of articles. As might have been expected, they arc just those objects which were especially prized by the living and were therefore thought particularly acceptable to their spirits after death. The offerings to a greater shrine consisted of coarse woven silk, thin silk of five different colours, a kind of stuff called shidori, suj^posed by some to have been a striped silk, cloth of broussonetia bark or hemp, and a small quantity of the raw materials of ^\hich the cloth ^vas made, models of swords, a pair of tables or altars, a shield or mantlet, a spear-head, a bow, a qui^■er, a pair of stag's horns, a hoe, a few measures of sake or rice-beer, some haliotis and bonito, two measures of kitahi, various kinds of edible seaweed, a measure of salt, a .Srtfo-beer jar, and a few feet of matting for packing. To each of the temples of Watarahi in Ise was presented, in addition, a horse ; to the temple of the Harvest god, Mitoshi no kami, a white horse, cock and pig ; and a horse to each of nineteen others. Although the temple of Kashima is said to go back to ' the age of the gods '. that is before the reign of .Jimmu Tenno, the first Mikado, yet in reality only five Shinto temples seem to have existed before the days of Sujin Tenno, who according to the orthodox chronology lived in the century before the Christian era. These are the Oho- yashiro in the province of Izumo, which, as we saw above, is the first political centre mentioned in the mythic history, and the four temples of Asuka, Kazuraki, Unada, and Ohomiwa, all in the province of Yamato, in which are situated the two great capitals of historic times, Nara (a.d. 709-84) and Kyoto (a.d. 794-1868). All five are mentioned in the Ritual of Miyazuko of Izumo, and all are dedicated to Ohonamuji and his children, who ruled Japan before it was taken possession of by the present dynasty.^ Thus the oldest shrines of .lapan were erected, not to Nature gods or abstract Vegetation or other entities, Init in honour of a great chieftain and his family. The great age of Izumo is further attested by the fact that in the month of October all the 800,000 local and other deities, almost all of whom arc mereljr deified human beings, are sujjposcd to desert their proper 1 Sir E. Satow, Trans. Asiatic Soc. of Japan, vol. vii, p. 398 (' Ancient .Japanese Rituals, No. 2 '). JAPAN 295 shrines and go off to the great temple of Izunio, the one exception being Ebisu-ko, one of the gods of Luck, who does not accompany the rest because, being deaf, he does not hear their summons.^ Ancient and venerable as were these five shrines of the prc-Mikado dynastj^ yet, like innumerable other Shinto shrines, they had been invaded by Buddhism, and not one of them remained a true Shinto temple, for only those that are roofed with thatch are entitled to be considered as being in strict conformity with the principles of genuine Shinto-shrine architecture. The only temples which fall within this limited category are the t'i\'o great fanes at Isc, of which mention has been already made, the shrine to the gods of Ise on the Nogi hill, and that of Oto no Miya at Kamakura." Ise. As one of the great temples at Ise is the oldest shrine of the ancestors of the Imperial house, and at the same time they are both the most typical examples of true Shinto sanctuaries, both in outward form and ceremonial, we shall at once proceed to describe them. The temples of Ise,^ called by the Japanese Fiodai-jin-gu, or, literally, the ' two great divine palaces ', are situated in the department of Watarahi at a short distance from each other. They rank first among all the Shinto temples in .Japan in point of sanctity, though not the most ancient, and ha^'c in the eyes of the Japanese the same impor- tance as the holy places of Palestine in the eyes of the Greeks and Armenians, or Mecca in those of the Muhammadans. Thousands of pilgrims resort thither annually, chiefly during the sjiring months, when the weather is most suited for tra^'elling. In Yedo (Tokyo), no artisan considers it possible to gain a livelihood unless he has invoked the j^roteetion of the Daijingu sama, as the common people are accustomed to call the gods of Ise, by performing the journey thither once at least, and the peasants are e^'en more de\'out believers. In former years it was a common thing for the little shopboys of Yedo to abscond for a while from their masters' houses and wander along the Tokaido as far as Ise, subsisting on the alms which they l^egged from travellers ; and having obtained the bundle of charms, con- sisting of pieces of the wood of Avhich the temples arc built, they made their way back home in the same manner. The Ise pilgrims are distinguished on their return by large bundles of charms wrapped in oil paper ^vhieh they carry suspended from their necks by a string. Stories are even told of dogs making the pilgrimage, no doubt in the company of these boys, and until a short time ago one of these holy 1 B. H. Chamberlain, Things Japanese (ed. .5), p. 102. ^ Sir E. Satow, Trans. Asiatic Soc. of Jajjan, vol. ii, p. 121. ^ Ihid., pp. 113 sqq. 296 THE OHI(;iX OF TRAGEDY aiiimuls a\;is still Ihiii;;' in Shiiia. 117). JAPAN 297 About a lumdrcd yards up the road through the grove stands a seeoud torii. exactly similar to the lirst, and on passing through this the pilgrim eomes in view ol' an oblong enclosure situated close to the road by the right-hand side. The sides are formed of upright posts about feet high planted at intervals of 6 feet, which are completely built up with planks placed horizontally. The enclosed sides are respecti\'cly, front 247, right side 339, left 335, rear 235 feet. It is an irregular oblong, the formation of the ground having deter- mined the proportion. This enclosure is called the Itagaki. There arc five entrances to the enclosure formed by torii. Almost the whole of this enclosure has been erected since 1868. Then eomes a third iorii, which leads into a similar coiu-t. This leads in turn to a gateway protected by a thatched roof and closed ordinarily by a curtain, the two sides being shut in by low fei^ccs. On the left hand is the gatekeeper's lodge. None but privileged pilgrims can pass the curtain, but all can get a fidl view from a bank on the -west side of the enclosure. This inner enclosure has four torii closed with gates, an arrangement seldom seen in Shinto temples. A third gateway admits into a third enclosure, Uclii-tamagaki. A thatched gateway leads into the fourth and last enclosm-c. which is almost a perfect scjuare. Inside stands the SJiodeii, ' Shrine of the gods,' at the Imck, and two hoden, or treasuries, on each side of the main entrance. All the buildings comprised in the two great temples of Isc are constructed in the primiti\-e .Japanese hut style, so disappointing in its simplicity and perishable nature. The Shoden of the Geku, i.e. the shrine of the gods in the outer palace, is 34 feet long by 19 feet wide. Its floor, raised about 6 feet, is supported on wooden posts planted in the earth. A balcony, 3 feet in width, runs right round the building and carries a low balustrade, the tops of whose posts are carved into the shape called Hoshi no taina. A flight of nine steps, 15 feet wide, leads up to the balcony in front, with a balustrade on each side. The steps, balustrade, and doors are profusely overlaid with brass plates, but there is none on the altars. The two hoden, or treasuries, arc much simpler, and have no balcony and very little brass ornament except on the timbers of the roof. They have floors raised above the ground. Their contents are precious silken stuffs, silk fibre presented by the province of Mckawa, and sets of saddlery for the sacred horses. At Ise the goliei have retained their original meaning as \\-ands, with pieces of notched paper representing the cloths offered. As these attracted the gods, they came to be regarded as the scat of the gods, and even the gods themselves, a belief similar to that of the Veddas (p. 211), that at 298 THE ORIGIN OF TRAGEDY a sacrifice to Kaiidc Yaka his spirit always enters an aude before passing into the sliaman. There is but one gohei to each god wor- shipped in any particular shrine, and where three or five are seen in a row the fact indicates that the building is dedicated to the same number of deities. Gohei is a Chinese word meaning ' imperial presents '. The other name for them, Mitegura, is Japanese, and means ' lordl}'-cloth-seat '. The wand was originally a branch of the sacred tree (p. 293) called sakaki {Cleyera jcqjonica). We saw above (pp. 241 sqq.) that the medium into which each Burmese Nat is sup- posed to enter regularly carries a twig of the sacred thahye tree. May not the reason for this be that the Nat is supposed to be attracted to it and first enter it as the spirit is thought to do in the case of the Japanese gohei ? Again, the j^ieces of paper representing the cloths once offered recall the pieces of paper money with small patches of gold or silver leaf affixed which the Chinese offer to the spirits of their ancestors. There is another building where the water and food offered to the gods every morning and evening are set out. These gods are seven in number, viz. the principal deity and three secondary deities of the Geku, and the iwincij^al deity and two secondary deities of the Naiku. Up to 729 the food-offerings for the Xaiku, after being prepared at the Geku, were conveyed to the former temple, there to be set out. In that year, as the offerings were being carried, they were unwittingly borne past some i^olluting object on the road. Consequently, the Mikado fell ill, and the diviners attributed his illness to the anger of the goddess of the Naiku. The offerings for the two j^rineipal deities consist of four cups of water, sixteen saucers of rice, four saucers of salt, and food, such as fish, birds, and vt'getablcs, offered up by surrounding villages. The secondary deities get onlj' half the quantity. The principal deity worshipped at the Geku is Toyouke-hime no kami, called Ukemochi no kami in the Nihongi, and Ogetsuhime no kami in the Kojiki. The whole means ' abundant food-goddess '. Her other name means ' the food-possessing god ', and the name in the Kojiki means ' the goddess of food '. This principal Food-goddess seems undoubtedly to ha^'e been a human being, as she is represented as having been killed. But to her we shall presently revert. The secondary deities are Amatsu-hiko-ho-no-nini-gi no mikoto, Ameno- koj'ane no mikoto, and Amenofutodama no mikoto. The first of these is the grandson by adoption of the Sun-goddess Amaterasu and the great-grandfather of Jinnnu Tenno, the first human Mikado. According to the legend, ^ when she sent him down ^ Satow, Trans. Asidtic Soc, of Japan, vol. ii, p. 120. JAPAN 290 to subdue the earth she presented him with various treasures, amongst which the most important were the mirror, sword, and stone (after- wards the regaha of the Japanese monarchs), and attached to his person the other two seeondarj' deities worshipped also in this shrine. With reference to the mirror she said : ' Look upon this mirror as my spirit, keep it in the same house and on the same floor with yourself, and worship it as if you were Avorshipping my actual presence.' To this mirror we shall soon revert (p. 30-1). The second of the secondary gods, Amenokoyane, the chief councillor of the Sun-goddess's grand- son, is the ancestor of the j^riestly tribe of the Nakatomi, and thereby of the five Setsuke or ruling families, whilst the third, Amenofuto- dama, was the ancestor of the other great priestly family of the Imbe. Both these heroes played foremost parts in the enticement of the Sun-goddess from the rock cavern (pp. 300-1). We shall find that Amenokoyane was a real chieftain, and that his cult was of great importance in connexion with the origin of the drama at Kasuga. ' The Naiku is about three miles distant from the Geku, through a continuous succession of houses. The Naiku stands close to a river. It has a torii near which are steps leading down to the stream, where pilgrims wash their hands before going to the temple. The whole arrangement of the Naiku is similar to that of the Geku. There are the same number of torii in the avenue, and it has also a fourfold enclosure, though they differ in shape and size, being narrower and deeper than those of the Geku. The inner enclosure is larger than that of the Geku. The Sun-goddess (Amaterasu) is the august deity of Ise. The secondary gods in the Naiku are Tajikarao no kami, and Yorozuhatatoyoakitsuhime no kami. The latter was one of tlie subordinate personages attached to Ninigi no mikoto, the Sun- goddess's grandson and the ancestor of the Mikados when he descended upon the earth.' We have seen abo^'c the story of the quarrel between the Sun- goddess and the Impetuous Male, and how after his final outrage she retired into a rock cavern. The world was jDlunged in darkness for a long timc.^ Then all the gods assembled on the dry bed of the river and held council as to the best means of appeasing her anger. They entrusted the charge of devising a plan to Amenokoyane, the wisest. He suggested that an image of the goddess should be made and an artifice employed to entice her forth. A large rock was taken as an anvil, and Isliikori- dome no mikoto and the blacksmith Amatsumarc no mikoto made ' Ibid., pp. 128-9. 300 THE 01il(;ii\ OF TRAGEDY ail cight-liaml iniiTor ([)robHljl}- cictagDUul) ^ in the shape of the sun \\ith iron I'roni the mines in heaNcn, a story whieh indicates the worship of meteorites. The lirst two mirrors were failures ; the tliird, says the legend, is the august deity in Isc. Two gods were ordered to ])lant the broussonetia and lienip, to prepare the bark of one and the fibre of the other, while three other gods were to weave the materials of these into coarse striped cloth and into fine cloth for tJie goddess's clothing. Trees were cut down, sjoades made, posts erected, and a palace built. Next he ordered another god to make a string of magatuma (' curved jewels of Yasaka gem ").- Two other gods made Tamagushi from the branches of the sakaki (Cleyera japouica) and the siisu (a kind of small bamboo). The iamaguslii was originally. a wand to which were attached valuable stones, but afterwards pieces of elotli and in modern times paper took the place of the stones. It is a smaller go/^ei, carried in the hand. When all was ready, Amenokoyane and Amcnofutodama divined, by jilacing a bone from a buck in the fire, if the goddess was likely to be a]>peased. Tlie direction of the crack in the blade of the bone was a good omen. Thereupon Amenokoyane pulled up a sakahi by its roots. On its upper Ijranchcs he hung a string of magutama, to the middle he fastened tlie mirror, and to the lower branches the coarse and the fine cloth. This f(jrmed a large mitegura, or goliei (pp. 293. 298), whieli was held by Amcnofutodama, while he pronounced an address in honour of the goddess. In most of the pictures which represent this scene in tJie mythology the mitegura is represented as stuck in the gromid. Sir Ernest Satow thinks that this is due to the ' Xihoiigi. vol. i, p. 41! (.Ostein's trans. Avitli note ad lot). - Iliiil., p. 4!) (Aston's trans.). ' The curved jewels arc the well-known iiKigdtdnui, numbers ol whicli have lieen preserved. They are made of chaleedony, jasper, nephrite, ehrysoprase, serpentine, .steatite, crystal, &c. In his note 2, p. 84, he .says that the word Yasaka has given much dilHculty to commentators. It is written with characters whieh mean " eight feet "', and this is accepted by some as the true derivation. Perha]is the best interpretation is tliat whieh makes it the name of the place wliere tlie jewels, or rather beads, were made. Yasaka would then mean " eight slopes '' ; a place of this name is mentioned more than rincc in tlic Nihongi.' The magatama are comma-shaped and usually two inches long. The late Professor Tsuboi showed recently that these jewels are simply copies of the teeth or claws of wild beasts, the most widespread of amulets, as I have shown (" Origin of the Turktsh Crescent,' Journ . Hoy. .intltrop. Inst., T908). But Mr. Aston seems to have overlooked the possibility that the name may refer to a crystalline stone with eight facets. Crystals have always been and are still regarded as the most amulctic of precious stones, and cornelians arc frequently cut into faceted shapes by the Arabs and otlicrs. The diamond and spinel are both octahedral. The .lapanese are especially fond of rock crystal, one of their favourite amidets being a double gourd cut out of such a crystal. It nuist be remembered that eight is the sacred number of the .Japanese (cf. p. 317). JAPAN .301 artists' ignorance of tlie true legend, bnt it may be that the :irtists are riglit in representing a sacred tree hung with offerings for tlie dead. Next, he made cocks croAv in concert. A man of great strength was placed in concealment by the door of the cavern, Avhilst Uznme was appointed superintendent of the dance. Sire blew a bamboo with holes j^ierced through it, Avhilst other deities kept time to the music with two pieces of wood, which they struck together. This part of the performance is familiar to every one who has beeji to a modern Japanese theatre, and, as wc have alread}' seen (p. 204), is also a feature of Cambodian dramatic performance. ' Amenokamato no mikoto made a sort of harp by plac^ing six bows close together with the strings upwards. This was the origin of the Japanese musical instrument called koto, and it is said that specimens are still extant which preserve distinct marks of this form. The strings were made of the sar no ogase, a kind of moss found hanging from the branches of the pine-tree high up on the hills. His son, Naga Shiraha no mikoto, produced nnisic from this liarj) by drawing across the strings grass and rushes which he held in his two hands.' It has long been pointed out that almost all stringed instru- ments have arisen from the ordinary shooting-bow.^ the only excep- tions being a series comprising the Enrojiean guitar and liddle, which have grown out of tortoise-shells across which rude strings were stretched.- Uzume no mikoto also made herself a head-dress of a long kind of moss which hangs from the pine-tree, and bound her sleeves close up to her body under the armpits with the masaki (Evonymus radicans, Sieb., a creeping plant). This proceeding is called putting on a tasuki, and is ])ractised to this day by e^'cry Japanese woman, when about to jfcrform household duties, such as drawing water or sweeping. She pro^■ided herself with a bundle of twigs of sasa, a kind of bamboo grass to hold in the hand, no doubt as a sort of baton with which to direct the movements of the others, and a spear wound round with the grass called chi, and with small bells attached to it. Bonfires were lighted in front of the ca^'ern to dispel the darkness which had been created by the sudden retire- ment of the goddess. Then the uke, a sort of circular box, was laid down for Uzume no mikoto to dance upon. Having mounted on to the like Uzume no mikoto began to tread it and cause it to resound, hence the origin of the .Japanese drum. She became jDOSScssed by a spirit which seems to have been the spirit of folly. She then sang 1 Henry Balfour, The Mmical Boio (Oxford, 1899). 2 William Ridgeway, 'The Origin of the Guitar and Fiddle,' ilia;;, vol. viii, Feb. 1908, pp. 17-21. 302 THE ORIGIN OF TRAGEDY u soiifT in \'c-i-.scs ol' six syllables, the \vords of which coincide with the Ja]mnesc chief numerals, thouirh it is otherwise translated as " Men, look at the lid,"" i.e. the d(.)or of the cavern; "Majesty appears; hurrah ! "" "' Our hearts arc ([uite satisfied." " Behold my bosom and thijjjhs." When Uzume no mikoto lets her dress fall down so as to expose the Avhole of her person, her thiffhs are plainh^ seen, and at the same time she bares her breasts. The line is an invitation to the assembled gods to enjoy the sight of her charms. These proceedings, which were caused by the spirit which had descended on the goddess, excited the mirth of the gods, who laughed so loudly that heaven shook. This is said to have been the origin of the pantomimic dance called kagura (Fig. 69), the etymology of which is given as kainu, " divine,"" and eragi, "' to laugh,"" i.e. "' the laughter of the gods ". ' The Sun-goddess thought this all very strange, and having listened to the liberal praises bestowed on herself by Amcnokoyane no mikoto, said : '" Men have frequently besought me of late, but never has anything so beautiful been said before."' Slightly opening the cavern door, she said from the inside : "I fancied that in consequence of my retirement both Heaven and .Japan were dark. Why has Ameno- Uzumc danced, and why do all the gods laugh '! '" Thereupon Uzume replied : " I dance and they laugh because there is an honour- able deity here, who surpasses your Glory (alluding to the mirror).'" As she said this, Amenofutodama no mikoto pushed forward the mirror and showed it to her. and the astonishment of the Sun-goddess was greater even than before. She was coming out of the door to look when Ameno-no-tajikara-o no kami, who stood there concealed, pulled the rock door open, and, taking her august hand, dragged her forth. Then Amcnokoj'ane took a rice-straw rope and passed it behind her, saying. " Do not go back in behind this.'" As they were putting the mirror into the cave, it struck against the door and rccei\"ed a lla\\' which it has to this day. They then renlo^'ed the goddess to her new palace and put a straw rope round it to keep off evil gods, a practice still observed by the Shintoists." ^ Uzume is regarded as the first ancestress of the Sarume, who were primarily women who performed the comic dances (saruiiialii. or ' monkey dances ') in honour of the gods. They are mentioned along with the Xakatomi and Imbe as taking part in the festival of the firstfruits and other Shinto ceremonies. ' These dances ', says Mr. Aston,- ' were tlie origin of the kagura and no performances.' ' S:iti)W, loc. cil. - Truiislution ol' the Nilwngi (Trans. Asiatic Soc. (if Japan, Sappl. I, vol. i, p. 79, note). JAPAN 303 Another function of the Sarunic is the part taken by Uzunie no niikoto on the occasion of the enticement oE the Sun-goddess just descrilied. It is tliere said that a spirit descended upon her. This divine inspiration has always been common in Japan. The inspired person falls into a trance or hypnotic state in A\liich he or she speaks in the character of some god. Such persons are known as Miko. the virgin priestesses, who, as we saw (p. 291), dance at Shinto festi\'als. A Miko is defined by Hepburn as ' a woman who, dancing in a Miya, i.e. temple, pretends to hold communication with the gods and the spirits of the dead ', in short, a medium. ' There are also ", adds Mr. Aston, ' strolling mediums, as in England, women of a lo\v class who pretend to deliver messages from deceased friends and relatives.' The performance ascribed to Uzume is therefore simply that in ordinary use by Shinto priestesses in order to evoke the spirits of the dead. The description of the Sarumc or Miko will at once remind the reader of the mediums in whom the Burmese N'ats are supposed to reside and through whom to speak ; of the Thilakapo of the Tangkuls of Assam, who not only represents the dead man or woman, but is regarded as the temporary abode of his or her spirit ; of the boy who in ancient Chinese ritual represented the ancestor and in whom that spirit was supposed to dwell ; and of the Vedda Shaman, into whom the spirit invoked is supposed to enter. It may not be going too far to suggest that as the actors in sacred Hindu plays are regularly Brahmans, because the actors represent the gods, and are the gods for the time, they are a sort of modified mediums, a character much more emphatic in the case of the dancing dervishes who lolay such an important jDart in the Shiah side of Islam. With these examples we may correlate the boys who still dance in the cathedral of Seville in honour of the Corpus Christi and the Madonna (p. 8), whilst we probably have another case of the same principle in the Sicilian belief that Santa Venera dances in Paradise before Jesus (p. 10). All alike seem to spring from the widespread custom of pleasing living kings and other great personages by dancing before them, and from the natural extension of this custom to heroic personages and divinities. Of such many notable instances might be cited, but it is enough for our purpose to recall how, when David returned from the slaughter of the Philistines, the women came out of all the cities, singing and dancing, to meet King Saul ; ^ how Salome danced before Herod ; " how Miriam and the Hebrew women praised the Lord with tabrets and dances for 1 1 Sam. xviii. C. - Mutt. xiv. C. 304 THE ORIGIN OF Tl^VGEDY the overthrow of Pharaoh, ■*■ and liow King David himself danced before the Lord witli all his might." I have gi\'en at great length this legend of the dramatic dance, not only because it is the chief element in Shinto worship, but because' from it sprung the Japanese serious drama. It is obvious that this legend simply re])rescnts, as used for the enticing of the Sun-goddess, the ordinary process employed in ajipeasing or evoking the s))irits of the dead, who in early days were often buried in natural caves, and later in those artifieially constructed, such as the well-known cromlechs of .lapan, to which we have already referred. The mirror which plays so great a part in this legend w'as gi^'en, as we have seen (p. 299), to Xinigi no mikoto, and by him handed down to his descendants, who kept it in the royal palace. In 02 B.C. there was a rebellion against Sujin Tenno, which he believed due to his having kept the sacred emblem imder his own roof. He therefore placed the real mirror and sword in a shrine built for this purpose at Kasanui in Yamato, and appointed one of his own daugh- ters to be priestess. The copies of the mirror and sword which he had made were placed in a se))arate building called Kashiko-dokoro, or ' Place of reverence ". Later on. in consequence of warnings from the goddess, the princess carried the mirror from jirovinee to province seeking a suitable locality. But having grown old in the search, she was re])laced in the reign ot the next Mikado, Suinin Tenno, by the Princess Yamato-hime no mikoto, who, alter many changes, linally chose the present site, on the banks of the Isuzu river, by the ^'illage of Uji in Ise (f B.C.). All the mirrors in Shinto temples,'^ •whether exposed to view, as in those Avhich ha^'c fallen under Buddhist influence, or concealed within the linnsha, as at the Geku, are imitations of this one. It appears that the Tamajiro of the principal and secondary deities of both Naiku and Geku are merely mirrors, but, strictly speaking. Amaterasu o-mi-kami is the only deity who should be so represented. Each mirror is contained in a box of hinoki furnished vaih. eight handles, four on the box, four on the lid. The box rests on a low stand and is covered with a cloth, said to be white silk. The mirror itself is wrapped in a brocade bag, which is never opened or renewed, but when it begins to fall to pieces from age another bag is jiut on. so that the actual covering consists of numerous layers. 0\er the whole is placed a sort of cage of unpainted wood, with ornaments said to be of pure gold. 0\-er this again is a curtain of coarse silk. ' Exod. XV. 120. - 2 Sam. vi. 14. ■* Satow, Dp. cil., vol. ii, p. 134. JAPAN 305 The Tamajiro of the secondary deities are eontaincd in similar boxes without the outer easje and of a smaller size. The boxes, or rather their coverings, are all that eau be seen when exposed at festivals. The smaller temples which used to exist at Ise have been demolished within a few years. The Priesthood. There seems no doubt that the priesthood of each shrine was vested in the descendants of the individual hero-god there worshipped. Kannushi is the general term for all Shinto priests, says Sir E. Satow,' but more correctly it means the chief priest in charge of a temple. The priesthood was for the most part hereditary, and in many cases the priests could trace their descent from the chief god to Avhom a temple was dedicated, a fact which is easily understood when we find that a large number of gods are simply deified ancestors. No better example of this can be cited than the priestess of Ise, and the two great priestly families of Xakatomi and Imbe. The temples of Ise were the oldest shrines of the Imperial famih', and it is significant that the priestess was alwa)'s a ^•irgin daughter of tht- Mikado. Of the Nakatomi we have already spoken, and we shall presently find them as the priests of other great shrines of the Imperial family, to which, as we ha\'e seen (p. 287), the}' were closely related. The Imbe, Inbe, Imibe, or Imube, were a class of hereditary priests belonging to several families, whose duties were to prepare the more dm-able articles offered to the gods at the principal services, to cut down the timber required for rebuilding of temples periodically, and to construct them. They were supposed to be descended from Futodama, who (p. 300) held before the door of the rock cavern into which the Sun-goddess had retired the mitegura tree adorned with pendants, the famous mirror, and the offerings of cloth, so im)3ortant, as we have seen, in the ritual of Ise. There were families of Imbe, not only in Ise, but also in Awa, Sanuki, Kii, and Tsukushi. They were allowed to read, as we shall see, the liturgies at the services of the ' Luckwishing of the Great Palace ' and ' Gates '.- From this sense of property in the temple (cf . p. 127) sjjrang the term Kaminushi, ' owner of the Gods,' corrupted into Kannushi. The Hafuri were an inferior class of priests whose functions were to present the offerings and to read the prayers. The Chinese characters with which this is written mean litcrall)' ' felicitating section, or body ', and refer to the recital of the glorious deeds of the dead, which form a part of the ritual or address spoken over his grave. ^ In the great ritual ceremonies at the Court in Kyoto and elsewhere the priesthood was hereditary in the family or tribe of Nakatomi, who traced their 1 Op. cil., vol. vii, p. 112. - Ibid., p. 120. -^ lbiy the jjriests of the tenij)le, explains the goddess to be an eiiiaiiation from the personality of the Sun- goddess, but IMotowori argues Avith reason that she was in reality the wife of Amenokoyane, or, as we should put it, of the ancient chieftain deified under that title, and that her worship, like his, Avas derived from the temple of Hirawoka in Kahachi. The whole legend is, of course, a fiction inAcnted by the priests of the temple, at a date long posterior to its foundation in the ordinary way by the heads of the Fujiwara family, who Avere then all-poAverful (p. 287) in the name of the Mikado, in order to produce an effect upon the imagination of eredidous Avorshippers, for it does not bear traces of being a genuine myth. It, morcoA'cr, appears to contain some anachronisms ; such names as Tokikaze and Flidetsura, formed by combining tAvo separate Avords, had not come into A'ogue in Keiim, to Avhich period the migration of Takemikadzuehi is referred. The real name of the man Avho in 767 founded the temple of these gods at Kasuga Avas IjAvcguri Kuhimaro, a member of the Nakatomi tribe, Avho simply established at this spot the worship of his family gods. Tokikaze and Hidctsura were descendants of his who liA"ed about the middle of the ninth century, Avhcn the FujiAvara. Avho Avere extremely poAverful, chiefly through the marriage ties, Avhich (as avc saAv) bound suceessi\-e Mikados to their family, took ach'antage of their position to intro- duce an innoA'ation by Avhich the Mikado Avas made to Avorship the ancestral gods of his mother as Avell as his oA\n. The god of Kashima, Takemikadzuchi Avas one of the gods Avho, according to the myth, sprang from the blood of Kagutsuchi, the god of Summer-heat, as it dropped from the hilt of Izanagis sAvord on to the stones in the bed of the KiA'cr of HcaA'en (tlie Milky ^Vay). He Avas the ancestor in the lifteenth generation of a family called Yamato no Kahara no Iniiki, Avho belonged to the proA'inec of Kahachi. It might haAc been expected that this family shoidd be his priests. But this is not so. The Daignuji, or Chief Warden of the temple of Kashima, is, hoAVCA'cr, descended from Amenokoyane. Avho here appears in a subordinate position, as one of the Aidono gods or secondary deities of the temple. The Xakatomi tribe and the branch of it called the FujiAA'ara family came to Avorshi]5 this god Takemikadzuchi as one of their ancestral gods. Hence, Avhen a member of the Nakatomi tribe founded in 767 the little temple of Kasuga in honour of his familj' gods, he naturally included among them the god of Kashima. The second of the four gods of Kasuga, Ihahi-nushi of Kadori, in the proA'inee of Shimofusa, is identical Avith Futsushi, as is clear from JAPAN 313 a passage in the Nilioiigi. He was worsliipped in the sliape of a sword. His original slirine at Kadori, hke tliat t>f Kashinia, is very ancient. It is said to date from the ' age of the gods ', and a family of hereditary arrow-makers, who claimed descent from Futsu-nushi, is recorded in tlie Shiyanji roku, as settled in Kahachi, like the descendants of Takemikadznehi. This Futsu-nushi was evidently an old chief who conquered the peoples of the mountains. 'What clearer proof, says Satow, ' can we haxe tlian this legend that he was simply a deified warrior chief '? It is worthy of note that both these gods are worshipped in the form of swords, like the War-god of the Scythians.' ^ It is likely that the third god or hero from whom the Nakatomi were descended took his name from a place called Koya in the jirovinee of Tsa, in the department of Kahonobe, which belonged to the chief branch of the tribe even down to the time of Kamatari in the seventh century. It was this Kamatari who took the surname of Fujiwara, the other members of the tribe retaining that of Nakatomi. His 3'oungest brother was the ancestor of the Kannushi (chief priest) of Kasuga. Oho- Nakatomi was adopted as a surname by Omi-maro, the son of a first cousin of Kamatari. The Fujiwara gave up the serxice of the gods for polities, whilst the Nakatomi still remained in the )iriesthood, which explains the fact that so many of them were ofiicials of the Jingi Kuwan, or Ministry of Shinto religion. The temple of Hirawoka, whence the worship of Amenokoyane was brought to Kashima, is situated in the department of Kahachi in the province of the same name. The building does not appear to be very magnificent. A noteworthy peculiarity of the temple is the absence of a haiden or oratory, and the worshippers appear to prostrate themselves on the bare ground below a raised terrace on which the chapels are ranged in line. The other three deities there worshipped are Oho-hiru-me (the Sun-goddess), Futsu-nushi, and Mika-dzuchi. Hime-gami, or Lady-god, is the official designation of the goddess in the national records, where she is frequently mentioned, together with Amenokoyane, as receiving some accession of rank and dignity in the divine hierarchy, but always two or three grades below him in rank, which is incomprehensible, if we believe her to have been the Sun-goddess ; and the explanation that the Hime-gami is the wife of Amenokoyane is the one which must be accepted.'^ Here there was formerly a curious practice of divination by means of gruel, made of beans boiled in the presence of the gods. A roll of ^ Herod, iv. 64. '■^ Sir E. Satow, Trans. Asiatic Soc. of Japan, vol. vii, p. 401. 314. THE ORIGIN OF TliAGEDY lifty-foiir tiiljcs of iiiic haiiiljdo, caeh inscribed with the name of a kind of seed crop, was lowered into semi-fluid mass, and from the way in whieh tlie lieans entered the tubes, the priest inferred as to tile probaliilities f)f tlie ])artieular ero])s beinf^ sueeessfid or the re\'ersi>. Thv peasants tlien knew wliat was best to sow during the year. It is tlius tlie spirits of the dead that are supposed to preside ovvv the crops. Oharanu.i In 790 the capital \vas fixed at Kyoto, and the Court apparently found it inconvenient to make a long journey of two days and back to the Kasuga shrine near Nara wlienc\'er it was necessary to Avorship the deities there. Accordingly a temple, dedicated to the I'oin- Kasuga deities, was founded in 850 at Oharanu, close to Kyoto. The Ijuildings are on an insigniticant scale, whieh shows that the temple was but a mere makeshift. The service was jierformed twice in each year, on the first da)' of the monkey in the second and eleventh moons. The ^•irgin priestess of Oharanu carried out a long cere- monial purifieatifin before caeh of the festivals at Oharanu. and also went to Kasuga for the same purpose. When all the sacrificial eerenionies were over and the congregation had eaten the food- offerings in the refectory, the general of the bodyguard next directed some of his men to perform the dance called adzitma-mahi, and when the}' liad finished a meal of rice was served t(.i them with much ceremony liy the Mikado's cooks. At the command of the Vice- JMinister of Religion the harjiists and flute-players were summoned to perform a jiiece of ninsie, called mi koto fince abase, ' the concert of Ilarp and Flute." The Mutes played a short nio\'emcnt alone, and were then joined by the harps, whereupon the singers struck in. An officer of the ministry of religion sang the first few bars, and the oifieial singers finished the piece. This was followed by one of the dances called Yamato malii, performed in turn by the principal priests of the temple, by members of the Fujiwara family, and by the Vice- Minister of Religion himself. After the sake-cwp had been passed round three times, the companj' clapped their hands once and separated. The priestess, if at Kasuga, changed her robes for a travelling dress, and returned to her lodging in stately procession as before. A secretary of the Council of State then presented to the Minister of State a list of non-official persons of rank who had attended the service, and the gifts of the Mikado were distributed to them as their names were called out by a clerk, after which everybody adjourned to the race-course and the day was wound up with galloping-matches. Here we once more have a close parallel to the horse-races and other contests at ^ Sir E. Satow, Trans. Asiatic Soc. of Japan, vol. vii, pp. i02-3. JAPAN 315 tlic Olympic and otlicr Greek festivals in honour of Pclops, and other heroes, lioth historical and legendary. Th(_' Yciigixliilii gives lists of the articles to be sn})plied at the two festi\'als of Kasuga, cither as offerings or in their preparation. The cost was defrayed chiefly out of the re\'enues of the temples of Kashima and Kadori, which contributed between them 500 pieces of tribute-cloth, 300 pieces of excise cloth, 000 pieces of commercial cloth, 600 catties of hemp, and 6,000 sheets of paper. These articles were forwarded to the Ministry of Religion and deposited in the Government storehouses. It has to be borne in mind that the cere- monies were in the hands of the Nakatomi and the Fujiwara elans, whose ancestors A\'ere the object of the worship, and that these ancestors were also those of the JMikado l^y the female side. Other offerings were provided at the ex[)ense of the several ollices of the departments of the Government, e.g. the horses from the Mikado's stables. In the ritual, a mirror, sword, bow, and spear are enumerated among the presents, but as no provision is made in the regulations for furnishing these articles it seems proljable that the same sword, bow, and spear were larought out year after year and used, while the mirror "\vas no douljt ])ermanently placed in the temple in front of the gods. It must not be forgotten that in the beginning of the tenth century, when these regulations were drawn up, the practice of the Shinto religion had Ijccomc a matter of form, and it seems likely that the mirror, until a few years back, in c\'ery Shinto tcmj)Ic had then already assumed its place before the shrine. At the service of the Wind-gods at Tatsuta the same saddle was used on the horse-offering year after year mitil it was worn out. The ritual in the Kasuga Matsuri runs thus : ' The soi,-ran who is called according to his great word, says in the great presence of the four pillars of so\'ran gods, namely, dread Mika-dzuehi's augustness, who sits in Kashima; Ihalii-nushi's august- ness, who sits in Kadori ; Amenokoyane's augustness, and the lady-deity who sits in Hirawoka.' There is an offering of a mirror, a sword, a bow, a spear, a horse, and cloths of different sorts. Then they arranged in rows ' the first- fruits of the tribute set up by the religious of the four quarters, the things of the blue-seaplain, things wide of fin and narrow of fin (haliotis and sefia were meant), weeds of the offing and weeds of the shore, things of the mountains and the wilds, even to sweet herbs and bitter herbs, as to hquor, raising high the beer-jars, he fulfils the praises of the great sovran deities ', and so on. The ritual of Ohoharanu and Hirawoka are similar to this. 316 THE OlflGIN OF TRAGEDY Hiranu (nuw Hiruno). No less interesting than the shrines of Ise, Kasuga, and Oharanu, is that at Hirano, situated close to the village of Kogitayania on the north-east of Kyoto. Aeeording to the usually accepted account derixed from the Kiiji Koitgen, the gods worshipped at the four shrines ^vhiell it contains are the following : at tlie Iniaki slirine, Yamato-dake-no mikoto ; at the Kudo shrine, Chiu-ai Kenno ; at the Euruaki shrine, Nin-toku Tenno, and at that of the Ilime-ganii (goddess), Amatcrasu-ohi mi-kanii (the Sun-goddess). These four deities are regarded as the ancestral gods of the Minamoto, Taira, Takashina, and Ohoj'c families respectively. -"^ The Yamato family were also represented amongst the persons who took an official part in the ceremony. Mabuchi sui)poses the first of these four deities (Yamato-dake- no mikoto), to whom the present ritual is addressed, to have been brought from a place called Imaki in Yamato, b)^ Kuwan-mu Tenno, wlien he founded the present city of Kyoto (790). After Kuwan-mu Tenno founded this temple of Hiranu " about the end - iif the eighth century, it became the custom for all the members of the monarchical family to be represented at the two annual eeleljrations. llis own mother belonged to the Yamato family, and his grandmother to the Ilaji family, from whom were descended the Ohoye. The Taira were sjirung fr(_)m an illegitimate son of Kuwan-mu himself, the Minamoto from his successor Saga Tenno, and the latter had a secondary wife who belonged to the Takashina family. In this way all these five families came to share in the worship of the Mikado's household gods, being either connected with him by ties of agnatic rclationshiji, or, what was not recognized in earlier times, through females. In the middle of the ninth century the service was performed twice a year in the fourth and eleventh months on the first day of the ape, and nearly the same Norito, with slight A'ariations, was read before each of the first three shrines. What ritual, if any, was read before the fourth is unknown. The ceremonies are laid down with great minuteness in the Yengishiki, Book I, f. 15. From the fact that the Heir Apjiarent and several princes of the blood, together with ministers and councillors of State were obliged to take part in it, it is evident that the service was one of great importance in ancient times. As already observed, members of the Minamoto, Taira, Takashina, and Ohoye families were expected to be ])rcsent on account of their relationship to the Mikado. In some points the ceremonial resembled ^ Sir E. Satow, Trans. Asiatic Soc. of Japan, vol. ix, pp. 183 sqq. ■ Ibid., pp. 185-7. JAPAN 317 that of the Kasuga service already described. Horses were led in solemn procession round the tcm])les, jiieces of music were executed on wind and stringed instrunu'nts, and a lf>ng succession of grave dances were performed V)y olFieials of high rank, such as lords-in- waiting and Vice-Ministers of the Department of the Worship of the Gods, as well as by the women who prepare the rice-offerings, and the soldiers who took the part of peasants' yamabito. The principal point of difference is that at the beginning of the service these fictitious peasants, twenty in number, entered the courtyard of the temple, carrying branches of the sacred tree, sakaki {Cleyera jajDonica), and recited in turn the praises of the four gods {kami no yogoto). This incident harmonizes completely with the idea that the deities here worshipped were originally such as would be all-important in the eyes of a peasant, namely those who provide him with his food and the means of cooking it. It is very interesting to find that the objects of the peasants' veneration were no mere empty abstractions, but the disembodied spirits of the ancestors of the great ruling families. The actual liturgies, however, furnish far more defmite e^•idcnce in the same direction, even the famous ' Harvest Ritual ' itself, used at a festival celebrated on the fourth da}' of the second month of each j^car (i.e. vernal equinox) at the capital in the Jingi-kuwan or ' Office for the Worship of the Shinto gods,' and in the provinces by the chiefs of the local administration. At the Jingi-kuwan assembled the ministers of the State, the functionaries of the Office of Religion, the priests, and the virgin priestesses of 573 temples, containing 737 shrines, kept up by the Trcasurj', while in the provinces the governors superintended in the districts mider their administration the jDer- formanee of rites in honour of 2,395 other shrines. Many gods were worshipped in more than half a dozen different localities at the same time, but exact calculation is impossible. During the fortnight preceding the harvest festival, two smiths and their men, as well as two carpenters, together with eight Imbe (p. 305), were employed in preparing the apparatus and in getting ready the offcrino-s. The service began at G.40 a.m. in the large court called the Sai-in, on the west side of which were the shrines of the eight Protective Deities in a row. From the occurrence of eight Protective Deities, eight Imbe, from the fact that the sacred mirror of the Sun- goddess was eight-hand, i.e. octagonal, and that there are eight handles to the boxes in which the sacred mirrors are kept in Shinto shrines, it appears, as has been pointed out by others, that eight is the sacred number of the Japanese, as seven is with the indigenous 31S THE ORIGIN OF TRAGEDY population of Southern India. i Everything being ready, the ministers, priests, and priestesses, and the rest, took their places ; the ofl'erings were placed on the table, the horses which formed part of the offerings were brought in from the Mikado's stables, and all drew near, whilst the reader, who was one of the Xakatomi, recited the Norito. The reading over, the Nakatomi retired, and the offerings were distributed to the priests for conveyance and presentation to the gods of their respective temples, but a special messenger was dispatched with the offerings destined for the temples at Watarahi in Ise. At some remote period it was the custom to hold a monthly ser^"iee at every temple or shrine of imjDortance, at which offerings were presented, either in recognition of blessings jjast or as inducements to the beings there worshipped to confer fresh favovirs. ' These monthly services were afterwards cut down to two half-yearly services, but still retained their original name of the Tsukinami no Matsuri, or " Monthly Services '".' There is another ritual termed ^linadzuki no Tsukinami no Matsuri (No. 7 in the list of the Yengishiki)? This service was celebrated in honour of the 304 shrines distinguished as great shrines (p. 293). the offerings to which were arranged on tables or altars and not on mats. These shrines formed only a ])ortion of the much larger number at which, as we liave just seen, the praying for the harvest was celebrated. According to the Yengisltiki they were distributed as follows : Kyoto 34, Yamashiro 53, Yamato 128, Kahaehi 23, Izumo 1, Tsu 26, Ise 14, and several other places 1 each. According to one view the object of this scr^■iee was to render monthl)^ thanks to the gods for the protective care they bestowed on the countrjr in response to the petitions offered up at the praying for harvest. It was, how- ever, ]irobably more ancient than the praying for harvest, for the ritual is identical with that of the praying for harvest, with a few small exceptions. In the ritual of praying for the harvest many gods are addressed who have apparently little to do with the success or failure of the farmer's toil. Hence, Sir E. Satow concludes that the Harvest Ritual is simply the old universal monthlj? ritiial, used at all the Shinto shrines, with a special har^-cst clause added to it, as this is the only respect in which it differs from the Monthly Service Norito. The rest of the ritual, according to Sir E. Satow, dates from a very remote antiquity, whilst the Nihongi is less ancient. Who the gods of the 1 Edgar Thurston, C.I.E., ' Tlie Number Seven in Southern India ' {Essays and Studies presented to Witliam Ridgeioay (191.3), pp. 353-04). ^ Sir E. Satow, Trans. Asiatic Soc. of Japan, vol. ix, pp. 188-9. JAPAN 310 harvest were is unknown. Se\-eral tcni])les declieated to sueli i^rotls appear in the eatalogue of tlie Yoigisl/iki, but the names of the gods are not mentioned. Inari, the harvest-god, of wliom there are many temples, is not tlie name of a god, but only the name of a place. The most famous of these shrines is that in the Outer Palace (Geku) of Ise and the deity Uka no Mitama, or ' Spirit of Food ', to whom is dedicated the temple of Inari, on the road between Kionato and Fushima. All other temples of Inari, of which there are thousands, are erected in honour of this Spirit of Food and those worshipped with it. It seems, then, as if a certain spirit worshipped originally only at Inari became famous for bringing j^rosperity, and that the cult of the spirit of Inari became generalized, as in the case of certain personages in India and Burma, as we have seen (pp. 127, 23-1). Service of the Goddess of Food. Third in the list of Noiito stands this ritual. According to the Riyau no Gigc, or Exposition of Administrative Law, there were two such festivals, the object of Avhieh was to cause the waters of the mountains to change into sweet water and to fertilize the young rice-plants so that a full harvest might be reaped. One of these was held at the shrine of Hirose, dedicated to the goddess Waka-uka-no-me ; the other at Tatsuta, dedicated to the Wind-gods. We learn from the Yengishiki that both ser^•ices were celebrated twice in each year on the fourth day of the fourth and seventh moons, first when the rice-plant was springing up and again when it was ripe. But this can only mean, as Sir E. Satow ^ points out, the earlier variety called ivase. The great native scholar Mabuchi identifies Waka-uka-no-me of Hirose with the Food-goddess of the Outer Temple (Geku) of Ise. This personage is called bj^ a multitiidc of names. The other great scholar Motowori thinks that the Norito as it stands is a late make-up by ignorant priests, the old Noritu having been lost. The chief words of the ritual are as follows : ' He declares the name of the sovereign god whose praises are fulfilled at Kahati in Hirose, declaring her name as the Y'oung-Food- Woman's Augustness (Waka-uka-no-me no mikoto), who rules over the food. He promises firstfruits in autumn to a thousand plants if she gives a good harvest.' Next in the list (No. 4.) comes this service : Service of the Gods of Wind at Tatsuta. In the Yengishiki are two entries of temples at Tatsuta in the Heguri department of the province of Yaniato ; the first containing two shrines to Ameno mi hashira and Kuni no mi hashira, or ' famous gods ', and ranking as greater shrines (p. 293) entitled to take j^art in the Tsukinami no Matsuri. ' Ibid., vol. vii, p. 412. 320 THE ORIGIN OF TRAGEDY or so-called monthly services, and in the Nihi-namo, or Harvest Festival ; the second, a smaller temple, containing two shrines dedicated to Tatsuta hiko and Tatsuta hime, ' Youth and Maiden of Tatsuta.' The first of these is evidently the temple at which this ritual was used, and it exists to this day on the same spot at a village called Tatsuno. Other temples to the gods of Wind are in the Naka department in the province of Idzu, called Kuni no mi-hashira no jha jhinzjiya at Yamada, in Ishikaha in the province of Kahachi, and there is also a temple of the god of Wind in the grounds of the Sun-goddess's temple in Ise. In the Kojiki only one Wind-god is mentioned, but the ritual shows two Wind-deities, male and female, who are called first ' Heaven's Pillar and Country's Pillar ', and are afterwards known as the Youth-deity and the Maiden-deitj^. Their names apparently are Shinatsu hiko, the name of the male, and Shinatobe that of the female, god of Wind. There seems no doubt that the worship of the Wind-gods was not ancient, liut set up b}' a Mikado, Tennu Tcnno, in the seventh century (673-86). In the Nihongi we have the positive statement that in the fourth year of his reign (676) he ' sent two persons from the Court to worship the Wind-gods at Tatsuno in Tatsuta, and two others to worship Ohoimi no jami (the goddess of Food) at the bend of the river in llirose ', the meaning of which is probably that the temples of the Wind-gods and the goddess of Food were then founded at these places. Neither this ritual (Wind-gods) nor the Food-goddess ritual appears to belong to the oldest of these compositions. It is interesting to note that we have in this ritual a legend (for it is nothing more) of the way in which the winds first came to be worshipped. During a succession of years violent storms, such as even now frequently visit Japan in the autumn and do considerable damage to the ripening rice, had destroyed the crops, and after the diviners had in vain endeavoured to discover by their usual methods who were the workers of the calamit}^ the gods revealed theniselves to the so%'ereign in a dream and directed that temples should be raised in their honour and certain offerings made to them. The offerings demanded are of course such as M^ould be acceptable to human beings, it being beyond the power of insight of the first wor- shipjjers of the unseen to suppose that the beings whom they dreaded and desired to propitiate would wish for anything different from the articles usually offered at the graves and shrines of departed ancestors, i.e. whatever was most useful to mankind itself in that primitive age. JAPAN 321 The ritmil gives a full account of the lind storms which injured the crops, the faihu'c of the diviners, and the Mikado's own dream ; the desire of tlie Wind-gods for a temple at Tatsuno, and for their praises to be fulfilled there, in which case they could grant good seasons. The offerings for the Youth-god are things suited for a man, those for the IMaidcn things suited for a woman — golden thread-box, a golden tatari, a golden skein-holder, and the like. From the facts here set out it seems plain that in early days the Japanese did not rely for prosperous harvests and food supplies upon abstract entities, such as the Vegetation spirits, and Corn spirits, or the Daemon of the Year, but upon their own ancestral spirits, those of the local chieftain families or those of the Mikado (amongst whom was reckoned the Sun), worshipped in the ancient temple (Naiku) of Ise ; and that it was at a comparatively late period when, owing to storms and other natural phenomena, the land had been from time to time devastated by disastrous famines, such as that which at this present moment ^ is compelling thousands of Japanese parents to sell their daughters into slavery, they began to offer special prayers for good harvests and abundant supplies of food to particular deities. But these deities were not regarded as mere abstractions, but rather as particular disembodied spirits, as we have seen in the case of Inari, the Food-goddess of Hirose, and of the Geku of Ise, and the Youth-god and Maiden-goddess of the Winds at Tatsuta, as well as other such Wind-personages elsewhere. W^e may therefore safely conclude that with the Japanese, as in other cases, the concrete and the particular came first in their religious develop- ment, and that it was later and then but imperfectly that they arrived at any generalized beings, who presided over the harvest and food. If an examination of the chief festivals in the modern Japanese calendar should show that at this moment, in spite of the influence of Buddhism in past centuries and the Europeanizing of the country in our own day, the Japanese rely for harvest and other blessings not on Buddha or Vegetation spirits, but on ancestral spirits, we should have clinched the arguments drawn from the ancient shrines and rituals. The Japanese have now adopted the Western calendar and start the year on January 1 : - their own calendar was lunar, and their New Year's Day fell in the middle of February. March 21, the vernal equinox, is the spring festival of the Imperial ancestors, supposed by some to be an adaptation of the Buddhist Mgan or 1 The Times, Dec. 28, 1913. 2 B. H. Chamberlain, Things Japanese (cd. 5), i)p. 159-64. Y 322 THE ORIGIN OF TRAGEDY cqiiiiioctial fcsti\'al of tlic dead. But from what we have already seen, festivals in honour of the dead existed in Japan centuries before the liirth of Gautama. June 22, the summer solstiec, is of ecjurse observed as one of the more important festivals. July 13 -IG is the ijreat so-called ]Juddhist festival of Bon, known to Europeans as the ' Feast of Lanterns ', but as Professor Chamber- lain points out, it would be more fitl}^ termed All Souls' Day, as all through Japan there is a general honouring of ancestral spirits. This is the most critical season for the harvest, as the peasants con- sider the third of the Dog-days the tiu-ning-point in the life of tlie (■ro|)s. At this festi\'al is celcbratetl the Bon Odori dance, which takes |)lace all over provincial .Japan. ' It is believed ', writes Professor Chamberlain, ' to ha\e a Buddhist origin, though its meaning is far from clear.' But once more it is plain from what we have learned that the belief in the existence of disembodied spirits is the very essence of Shinto, and accordingly this great festival of All Souls must Vjc regarded as prc-Buddhist, though overlaid with Buddhism after the incoming of that faith. The details of the dance vary from village to village, but its general feature is a large circle (cf. p. 182) or wheel of posturing peasants, who revolve to the notes of the song sung and the flute and drimi played by a few of their number in the middle. Kyoto and Tokyo, being too civilized for such rustic exercises in which all share, do their dancing by proxy. There and in the other large towns the dancing-girls (geisha) form a class apart. While one or more of the girls dance, others play the shcanisen anel sing the story.' ^ September 23 is the autumn festival of the Imperial ancestors. Octolser 17 is the offering of the firstfruits to the Shinto gods, i.e. deified ancestors ; whilst on Xo^'cmber 23 the Mikado tastes the firstfruits offered to his ancestors. From these facts it is clear that neither spring festival nor autumn festival nor midsummer festival, nor the great dance at the critical period of the crops, nor the autvunnal equinox, is in honour of an)^ abstract Vegetation or Year Daemon. No less clear is it that the firstfruits are neither offered to nor are eaten in honour of such personages. The evidence of Japan is therefore in direct opposition to the theories of Sir James Frazer, IMiss Harrison, Mr. Cornford, and Professor Murray. 1 Chamberlain, op. cil., p. IK!; Iiir .lapancsi' dances cf. H. L. .Toly, ' Kandom Xutes on Dances, Masks, and tlic Early I'Ynnis of Theatre in Japan' (Trans. Jiijiiiii Soc. (if hoiiil'iii, lill'J, pp. 29 S(/(/.). JAPAN 323 The Japanese Draiia The Japanese theatre chxims our special interest, not merely because it is the only place left where the life of Old Japan can now be stiidicd. but still more so for the light that it throws on the origin and development of the dramatic art in general. Let us first say a word about its modern conditions. Theatres.^ The theatres fall into two classes — the no theatres and the Shibai or KabuM. In the former, rej^resentations of no or serious dramas are still given. There is no scenery, but a large ' Sacred " pine- tree, doubtless representing the mitegura (p. 300), is painted on the back wall ; the dresses are magnificent, and the actors (Fig. 72) wear masks." The audiences are conrposed chiefly of noble men and ladies. The Shibai (from ' Shiba ', grass plot) were and are the theatres of the shopkeepers, artisans, and common people, and in these are performed comedies and farces. But it is worth remarking that in Japan, as in Greece, comedy as a form of literature was later than, and dependent upon, the serious drama and tragedy. It has been supposed that this popular drama, like the no, was derived from the mimic rites of the Kagura, which when perfornrcd by Uzume before the cave made all the gods laugh (p. 302). Another conjecture, which derives it from a comic drama, Sarugahu (p. 327), introduced from China, seems more reasonable. ' But, historically speaking,' writes Professor Lloyd, ' it is of much more recent date.' ^ The common people had no part in the performances of the no, and the Shibai were started to meet their needs. The date assigned as the birth-year of these jDlays is 1603. The founder of the Shibai was Okuni, whose husband, an ex-Samurai, helped her to modify the kyogen, comediettas used to lighten up the no to suit the pojndar taste. The new departure met with immediate popularity ; actors of both sexes were freely employed, the women belonging almost entirely to the prostitute class. The moral effect of the Okuni Kabiiki or Okuni theatre, as it was called, was so bad that in 1629 the Shogun forbade the employment of women actors. But it is difficult to belie\-e without very positive evidence that the common people had no sort of dramatic performances during all the precechng centuries. It is more likely that there were rude and ^ B. H. Chamberlain, Tilings Japanese (ed. 5), p. 402. - For a full account of the masks worn in tlie ancient dramatic dances from which sprang tlie tin, ct. H. L. .Toly, op. cil., pp. 4.5 sqq. with figs. "' Arthur Lloyd, 'Notes on Japanese Drama' (Trans. Asiatic Soc. of Japan, vol. XXXV, pp. 106-8) ; this paper is by that classical and Sanskrit scholar, my friend the late Rev. Artluir Lloyd, M.A., Professor in the University of Tokyo, sometime Fellow and Dean of Peterhouse, Cambridge. 11. L. Joly, op.cit., pp. .5.5 sqq. Y 2 324 THE ()]!r;in of tragedy gross coiiR'dirs of a \cry |)riniiti\x' type, in whicli tliere was a chorus and one actor, wliose duty «'as to direct the movements of the rest, as in the ai no kijogeii. The Kahuki arc amplj' pro\ided with scenery and stage pro- perties of e\'ery description, including a revolving centre for the stage, which enables a second scene to be got ready while the first is in course of acting. On the conclusion of the latter the stage pivots round, carrying with it scenery and actors, and something quite fresh appears instantly, a device which recalls the loerialdos or revolving machinery for changing the scene in the ancient Greek theatre. Actors. The actors of the statclj^ no, in which there was never anything gross or unseemly, were at all times treated with honour, and indeed personages of the highest rank not infrequently took part in them. As soon as we trace to its source the origin of the no, the reason for this will be evident. On the other hand, comic actors who played in the kahuki under the old regime were regarded as outcasts, as is still the case with actors gcnerall}^ in China (p. 274), whilst the very theatres in which they appeared were looked upon as unfit for respectable people. Since the revolution of 1868 actors are ostracized no longer. In 1886 there began a movement among some leaders of Japanese thoiight to reform the stage, on the European model, but, like the similar effort in India, without result. Although the founders of the pojiular theatre were two women, Okuni and Otsu, after 1629 males alone were allowed to act. The parts of women were immediately taken by boys, but public morals suffered still more, and the Government had to issue stringent regula- tions for boy actors, until in 1652 a number of theatres in Yedo were closed.-^ In modern times female parts are regularly taken by boys as in our own pre-Restoration drama. Conversely, in some inferior theatres all the jiarts are taken by women. Lately the restriction has been relaxed and mixed companies sometimes appear. - Puppet-Plays {^lyatsuri KroairaisJii). In consequence of the diffi- culties caused by the prohibition of women- and boy-aetors, a new dramatic form, the puppet-play, with its offspring, the shadow-play, •which, as we have seen, has played so important a part in India. .Java, Malaysia, Siam, Cambodia, and China, came to the front in the seventeenth century and retained its popularity for many years.'' In this ningio shihai the speaking took the form of a dialogue which is read with musical intonation to the music ot the ^ Lloyd, op. cil., p. 109. - B. II. Ch:imberlaiii, Things Japanese (cd. J), p. 4G4. ^ Lloyd, op. cil., pp. 100-10; II. L. .Toly (o/<. (-(7., pp. 'iTt Sijq. with li.n's.) describes the )ivi|i])cts, and ;j;ivcs the k'^end fil tlicir invention to honour the spirits ot the dead. JAPAN 325 ca a e" P . 29(;). JAPAN 327 century', according to Professor Lloyd, 'it had become a well- established i)opular ])antominie, with a, Chinese name, dcvgaku, which is but a translation of its original title (tii-iuai). In 1096 Oe Masufusa, in Iiis I)ii Ixtikuijo Dciigakki, speaks of the celebration of these driigaku festi\als in terms which remind us \'ery vividly of the Grecian Bacchus festi^-als.' But it seems likely that, along with tlic Chinese name, there had come in a new element which had given to the old sacred dance this orgiastic element. ' In the middle of the ninth century ', writes Professor Lloyd, ' the sarugaku or Chinese dance {saiigaku). a comic drama, was added to the dcngahu pantomime, which was always more or less solemn and decorous.' Its object was to move the audience to laughter by comic acting and posturing, whence comes the popular but false etymology of sarugaku as the ' monkey- dance ". AVhen dialogues were added after the Chinese pattern to the lyrical dramas of the dengaku, the new genre of stage-writing was popularly styled sarugaku 710 no, 'the high art piece of Chinese art.' As we ha^'c seen above (p. 309), tliere were theatres or dancing- places attached to man}' Shinto temples for the performance of the kagura. According to Brinkley,^ ' the dengaku stages were only a modification of the kagura stage, one (if the differences being the addition of a bridge with a steeply-arched roadway, on which the acrobats commenced their feats as they emerged from the orchestra room ' (Fig. 72). ' The most flourishing epoch of the dengaku pantomine ', writes Lloyd," ' is given as the middle of the thirteenth ccntur}^ They were acted by persons who, from their name of deugaku-bosJii. and their shaven crowns, seem to have belonged to the clergy. That was the Golden Age of the Chinese drama, which, as we saw, reached its full development under the Mongolian domination (a.d. 1206-1368). It is therefore not surprising that the middle of the thirteenth century should have seen a marked step in the evolution of the Japanese lyric drama. The interval between 1206 and 1250 was a period of great and frequent intercourse between Japan and China. ]Many travellers, especially monks, visited the Celestial Empire for purposes of study, and it was in Nara, the favourite residence of monks, that from 1260 to 1300 we get the sarugaku no plays. These dramas retained the essential lyrical character of the earlier dengaku, the lyrical element being increased by additions from the lyrical portions of the Mono- gatari, the working up of the Japanese uta and shi, various dances, such as kuse-mai and sldrahyoshi, and monologues and dialogues from the already mentioned Monogatari, or histories of the heroes.' ^ Op. cit., vol. iii, p. 21. - Op. cit., pp. 99 sijq. 328 THE ORIGIN OF TRAGEDY Hence ' the no may be luoked upon as an opera of primitive character, in which the suuf,' ])ortians of the Hbretto are the principal elements, the spoken portions being looked upon as of secondary importance '. This may be seen in the fact that the written text of these dramas is called in Japanese utai, in Sinico-Chinese Yokyoku, ' piece for singing.' ' The Yokijoku were always of a serious character, and rather epic than dramatic. The personages are generally passi^^e rather than active, the sport of external influence over which they have no control rather than themsehx-s the makers of their own destinies. There are therefore but few dramatic situations, and in places where we should expect action we get instead lyric odes on the situation. The pieces are very short, mostly one act only, without divisions into scenes. In some plays we have a quasi-division into acts, the first act showing the hero in an assumed, the second in his proper and natural character. There are also one or two more lively pieces, such as Funa-Benkei (Fig. 72). which have a very vigorous swing in them.' ^ Whilst Professor Lloyd believes that the JajDanese no was largely an outcome of Chinese influence, Captain Brinklej'," on the other hand, thinks that a comparison between the Japanese and Chinese dramas reveals differences rather than affinities. When it has been said that both arose from a union of dance and song, their points of reseixiblance have been practically exhausted. The singing actor, the principal figure of the Chinese drama, found no counterpart in .Japan ; the religious element in the other country's art is often mere buffoonerj^, whereas in the latter it is always reverent ; there was no chorus in China, neither any open-air stage, and the Chinese never made between tragedy and comedy the sharjD distinction which the Japanese drew. The Japanese drama also stands in sharp contrast to that of India, for, as we have seen, the Hindus, like the Chinese, dislike tragic conclusions, and accordingly their dramas were usually melodramas with a happy ending, whereas the Japanese love the truly tragic end. There can be little doubt that tlie no theatre arose out of the old kagura dancing-stage attached to Shinto temples, for it must be remembered that the no were regularly performed at Shinto shrines. The old kagura chorus, which included the musical instruments, remained, but first one actor seems to have been added, who recited, and later another, when the means of dialogue were thus attained. The similarity between the no and Greek tragedy has often been pointed out — the chorus, with its sacred song and dance, the masked actors, the stage in the open air, and the religious tone pervading it. It will ha^'e been noticed that under the influence of the close ' Op. cit., pp. 100-1. ' Op. cit., vol. iii, ]). 34. JAPAN 329 resemblance of the Japanese drama and its origin to the Greek, Lloyd and all other writers on the subject, as far as I know, assume that the no arose out of the ancient solemn kagura, the analogue of the Dithj-rambus, through the dengaku, ■when it had been given a highly comic character, just as it was generally assumed that the serious Greek tragedy arose out of the grotcscjue and gross Satyric drama. Just as the Greek scholars also assumed that a process of purification of the Satyric drama gave us the lofty and decorous Fig. 72. Scene liom a Japanese no drama : ' ]5enkei on the bridge.' ^ tragic diction, so their Japanese brethren have assumed a like process in the evolution of the noble and moral no. But just as it turns out that the Greek tragedy proper arose out of the sacred dances in honour of dead heroes long before the cult of Dionysus came from Thrace, and that at no time were gross and grotesque compositions performed in their honour, so, too, were there two distinct lines of dramatic evolution in Japan. No one can question the incoming from China of a comic drama which got admission combined with 1 The illustration is from ' The History of the Kmpire of Japan ', compiled and translated for the Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893. For the photograph from which it is reproduced I am indebted to my friend. Professor W. Gowland, F.R.S. 330 THE Or.IGIN OF TRy\GEDY iiati\'c elements in the ia-mai dances. But at no time was there any breach in the continuity of tlie statel_y and solemn dances performed in the great temples at Kasuga, Ise, Oharanxi, and Iliranu. If Japanese history makes it clear that in one ol these temples the full-grown no had its birtli. the truth of my hypothesis will be c^•ielent. On the other hand it may also turn out that the comedy of manners, whose home is the Kahukith.e&trc, is the lineal descendant of the dengaku and the sarugaku, the so-called ' monkey-mime '. Professor Lloyd himself evidently felt this difficulty, for he writes : ' It is not accurately known ^ at what precise date the no drama shook itself free from its original connexion with the kagura dances of the Shinto temples. There is a tradition, which is not, however, universally accepted, that the Emperor Gosaga (a.d. 1243-6) found in the ImjDerial Library a collection of sixteen dramas dating from the reign of the Emperor Murakami (a.d. 94.7-67), and gave them to the family of Emai, who were at that time the guardians of the Kasuga temple at Nara in Yamato. Doubts have been thrown on this tradition, but the fact remains that the no as we now have them were originally based on more ])rimiti^•e forms known as kuse, and that these primitive elements may still be recognized embedded in the no. The development of the kuse into the no seems to have taken place during the reign of Yoshimitsu, the third of the Ashikaga Shogims (a.d. 13G8-94), and to have been due to the simultaneous and apparently independent efforts of several families of playwrights and nmsicians, among whom may be reckoned the Emai mentioned above, the family of the Yusaki, afterwards known as Kwanse, and to three members of it in particular, Kwanami, Seami, and Onami. Throughout the Ashikaga Shogunate the Kwanse family (p. 332) took the lead as the expounders of the no drama. There were also other families, such as the Komparu, Hosho, and Kongo, but it is noticeable that all these descend from the religious musicians of the Kasuga shrine at Nara.' A consideration of the following facts will point to the conclusion which lias been above suggested : (1) the Kasuga temple and its ritual were in honour of the Mikado's ancestors ; (2) the ritual for the slu'ines in ^^'hieh the preceding facts are contained had already a fixed form in the tenth century, since it stands second in the list in the Yengishiki ; (3) it was in this century that INIurakami reigned, to "whose period Japanese tradition assigns sixteen dramas handed over to the guardians of the Kasuga temple in 1243-6 ; (4) in the ' Trails. .Isiaiic Soc. of JajHiii, vol. xxxv, p|). 99-112 (" Notes on the Japanese Drama'). JAPAN 331 ninth century the Chinese comic drama, saniiialiU, had inllucncecl the popuhir dances for the ricc-harvcst lield all o\'er the country ; (5) it is not impossilah^ that from it, if not from M'ithin, the first steps had ah-eady been taken to develop the kagura at Kasuga into some- thing like real drama, by adding perhaps one actor, as we shall find to haA'e been the first step in the kyogen, or comediettas, added later to hghten up the sombre no ; (6) the importance of the lyrical clement down to a late period points to its hneal descent from the old kagura, with its dance and song forming a close parallel to the Dithyramb of the Greek tragedy, whose leader formed the first step towards a regular actor, and in which, down to the time of Aeschylus, who added the second actor, the chorus was still the all-important element ; (7) the purity and freedom from all grossness, not only of the no dramas themselves, in which they are in sharjD contrast with the early Japanese prose writings, but also the hijogen or farces added to them at a later period, point to their not having been evolved from the comic dengaku or sarugaku, with its addition, a comic drama borrowed from China, as the Satyric drama was borrowed by Greece from Thrace, but rather all through, from the primitive kagura to their full development, to have been solemn, moral, and free from grossness. Lloyd well points out that although there are extant more than 200 no, all of which are familiar to the ordinary no audience, in no single case is the original author's name preserved, and this, even though in most cases the musical composer's names have survived. The no dramas may in this respect perhaps be compared with the Miracle Plays and Blysteries of mediaeval Europe. The No Actors (Fig. 71). We liave seen that it is likely that, as in Greece, first one actor was added to the chorus, and later a second. This is confirmed by the designations of the actors in the fully-developed 710. These arc (1) the Shite, or Protagonist, (2) the IVaki, or Deuter- agonist, both of whom have their proper places assigned to them on the stage. But neither the Tritagonist nor the fourth actor has any special name, the former being termed Shite-tstirc, ' Assistant to the Chief Actor,' and the latter Waki-tsure, ' Assistant to the Second Actor.' There is also found in no dramas a Kokata, or child actor, often used to play the part of emperors or noblemen, ' an arrange- ment which ', says Professor Lloyd, '^ ' seems to take us back to the days of puppet-emperors, puppct-shoguns, puppet-regents, and the extremely vigorous military classes of the early Bliddle Ages of .Japanese history.' 1 Op. cil., p. 103. 332 THE ORIGIX OF TRAGEDY Tlie )io were based on pojjular stories or ballads, which were common property, and each succeeding generation of actors felt himself at liberty within certain limits to expand or modify until, as in the case of the Shadow-plays of India (p. 104), a generally satis- factory result had been finally evolved, and it was no longer possible to say by whom the piece had originally been composed. Captain ]?rinkley ^ gives a translation of a famous ho written by Kwanze Nobumitsu (circ. 1485). Its title is Ataka No. It is based upon the fate of the brilliant and chivalrous General Yoshitsume, brother of the famous Minamoto chieftain Yoritomo, who, as we saw, overthrew the rival Taira clan in 1185, established a military govern- ment at Kamakura, and became the first Shogun (p. 288). One of the guard-houses at Ataka is the scene of the drama and gives it its name. He remarks on the universal tone of pessimism which pervades all the no. ' Born in an Imperial Library, nurtured by musicians connected with the more than aristocratic shrine of Kasuga, the no has always remained the special privilege of the higher and military classes. Taiko llideyoshi and Tokugawa leyasu were not only constant spectators, but frequent actors of no dramas. Many a daimyo had his local no stage for the solemn performance of these quasi-religious plays, and no actors were held in honour. But the no was practically the monopoly of the higher classes and there was only one day in the j'car on which the common people were allowed to view it.' All these singular phenomena here so admirably summarized arc at once explained when we bear iu mind that these no had sprung out of the Kaguni held periodically at the Shinto temples in honour of the dead. The dead thus honoured were frequently the ancestors of the local nol)les, and it is therefore but natural that they should have kept up the performances of no as part of the family rites. This being so, there was no reason why the ordinary populace who had no immediate connexion with the personages worshipped in the shrines should be allo-\ved to take part in ^-^hat was really family worship. Finally, why no actors were respected, and why great princes took part in such ]5erformances is now clear. They natiu-ally participate in what was one of the chief methods of honouring and propitiating the spirits of their ancestors. Kyogen. As interludes between the no-yoJcijoku, which are at times wearisomely pompous, we get the kyogen, or comic pieces, which serve the same purpose as that of the Satyric ch-ama, which came at the end of a complete Greek trilogy. No and kyogen are acted on the same stage, but never by the same actors. TJic no actors wear masks (Fig. 71), ^ .Japrin : lis Jlistory, .irt, and Lileraturc, vol. iii, pp. 34 snq. JAPAN 833 the kyflgcn are never masked, neitlu-r is tliere any nmsical aeeompani- ment to the dances there gi'^'en. Thongli these dances themselves are the same, the style of execution is dilferent. In the no the dances are solemn and ceremoniously performed ; in the kijogcn the gods, as it were, ha^"e unbent, and are refreshing themselves by having a good time. The no relates the misfortunes of heroes, the early deaths of heroines ; the hyogen represents the contrasts between the gay and grave which we so often find in human life. It is very seldom that a Jxijogcn piece is acted by itself. In the Ai no ki/ogen there is no special drama at all ; the actor, who has a special seat assigned to him, merely explains the general meaning of the dance or pantomime. The hyogen actors can always be distinguished by their yellow tahi, whilst the no actors wear tabi of white. ' It is in the hyogen that we get the true pictures of the social and national life of the Ashikaga period (1338-1597). It was a period of high ideals, with a few great men towering aljove the rest and bearing witness to the priestly holiness and knightly bra^'ery of an age gone by. These are brought before us in the no. But it was also a period of mediocre performances ; the country' swarmed "\\-ith contemptible and ignoble lords and knights who disgraced their swords, and priests who disgraced their religion. Mingled with these were dreamy scholars, who were incapaljlc of managing their money matters, and innocent country-people who were the sport of every designing rascal. In the 250 hyogen pieces which remain to us, all these persons are held up to kindly ridicule and to derision, from which all the sting seems to have been taken.' They jest at the nobles, the clergy, the blind and the maimed, whilst the themes of others are conjugal troubles and thief stories. The plots of the hyogen were never complicated. Brinkley ^ gives examjiles of these plots, one of which may here be cited : Three men set out on a pilgrimage, agreeing that under no circumstances will they quarrel during their tra\-els. Two of them shave the head of the third when he is asleep. When he awakes and finds what has hap- pened, he forgets his iH-omise, loses his temper, and turns homeward. But en route he conceives a plan of vengeance. He goes to the wives of his comrades, tells them that their husbands have been drowned in crossing a ford, and that he has shaved his head and become a monk in order to pray for the repose of their souls. He induces the women also to shave their heads and become nuns. He carries away their hair and shows it to his fellow travellers as proof of the death of their wives, and thus persuades them also to shave their heads and abandon 1 Jbid., pp. 49 si/q. 331. THE ORIGIN OF TRAGEDY the world. Brinklcy also gives a translation of a farce of the fifteenth century, entitled 2Vte Three Cripples. Our survey of the religious, social, and jxjlitical history of Japan has led inc\itably to the conclusion that the No or serious drama is the lineal descendant of the ritual which from remote ages had been used in the Shinto temples to propitiate the spirits of the dead in the hope that they would vouchsafe all kinds of blessings to their descendants and worshippers, and especially that of abundant harvests. Thus the drama of Jajian, like those of the other civilized peoples of Asia, affords the strongest corroboration of our view that Greek Tragedy arose out of the worship of the dead. Indeed the development of the true drama out of the Kagura dance at the Kasuga temple in honour of the Mikado's ancestors offers a singularly close parallel to the Greek tradition that their own dramatic art by the genius of Epigenes made its first step towards true tragedy from the cult of King Adrastus at Sicyon. But there is another important point on which not only the Japanese No, but the dramatic performances of other Asiatic peoples descriljed, throw considerable light. In Manipur, not only does the thilakapo, like the Roman mimus, personate the dead man, but he is actually regarded as the residence of the soul for the time being ; in other words, he is a medium, such as are the actors who personate the Burmese Nats, the boy who in the old Chinese ancestral ritual per- sonated the dead parent or forefather, and the Shinto priestess in the Kagura, who is the medium of the hero-god, while the Brahmans who personate the gods in a Hindu drama are considered to be the gods for the time being. These facts point to the conclusion that the actor was originally the medium of the dead man or woman, and this will be amply substantiated by the evidence from the dramatic performances of savage races. In my Origin of Tragedy ^ I pointed out that Thespis used white masks, very unsuitable to Dionysiac subjects, but well adapted ' for the representation of heroes, whose ghosts might be supposed to ajjpear from their tombs like that of Darius in the Persae . . .', and I also suggested that a per- formance which Solon would have regarded as fit and jDroper when enacted at a hero's tomb not unnaturally roused his anger against Thespis when the exhibition was merely for sport, as Thespis himself said (and doubtless also for profit), and not at some hallowed spot, bul in any profane place wliere an audience might be collected. If the earliest Greek actor was really a medium like those just cited, we can well understand Solon's anger and horror. 1 pp. 89 and Gl. INDIAN AND PACIFIC OCEANS 335 XI. THE DRAMATIC DANCES OF THE RACES OF THE INDIAN AND THE PACIFIC OCEANS, AUSTRALIA, AFRICA, AND AMERICA In the foregoing pages we were able to trace the rise of dramatic performances from the worship of the dead. In Assam there is the dramatization of a dead indivicUial at his or her funeral rites by some one who resembles and who is dressed like the deceased (as was also the case in ancient Rome) : though amongst the Chins we did not find an}^ such dramatic performance, yet it was clear that the shaman invokes the spirits of the dead of the village, and that they offer the firstfruits to the ancestors ; amongst the civilized Burmese there is the dramatic personation by a medium or shaman of the spirits of important historical personages, whilst there is the strongest evidence that the dramas of China and Japan originated in like manner in the worship and impersonation of the dead. If it should turn out that amongst numerous living tribes, some even in Asia itself, but more especially in the great islands of the Indian and Pacific Oceans, in Australia, Africa, and America, there are primitive practices closely resembling those of the animistic peoples of India, Burma, China, and Japan, and forming the most essential part of their religious rites, though in some cases now but semi- religious, whilst in others, as in ancient Greece, mediaeval England, in certain cases in modern India, Burma, China, and Japan, they have been detached from sacred shrines and have become mere theatrical performances to amuse the populace ; if on investigation it should also turn out that the objects towards which such dramatic performances are directed are not mere abstract entities, such as the Vegetation Spirit, or the Corn Spirit, or the Daemon of the Year, or the Struggle between Winter and Summer, but rather human ancestors or other disembodied spirits, and if, further, the masks worn on such occasions by the dancers or pantomimists represent the spirits of the dead ancestors, then we shall have proved to the full for the whole world that tragedy and other serious drama arose in the reverence for and a propitiation of the dead. Acain, if in the course of our search we shall find that initiation ceremonies at the time of puberty, so common in many parts of the world, are frequent concomitants of these dramatic performances directed towards the ancestral and other spirits, and that a main feature of the initiation ceremonies is the introduction or presentation of the youths to the ancestral spirits, we shall have proved that these dramatic performances do not primarily spring out of initiation rites. 336 THE ORIGIN OF TRAGEDY but that the latter are mere secondary phenomena whieh have attaehed themselves to the dramatic performances belonging to the dead, even in the very funeral rites, as in the ease of the ancient Romans, Tangkuls, and other tribes, and we shall have thereby demonstrated that the doctrines of Sir James Frazer and Albrecht Dieterieh, and their followers, Miss J. E. Harrison, Professor G. G. Murray, Mr. F. M. Cornford, and their follower, Mr. Pickard-Cambridge, must be summarily rejected, inasmuch as their fundamental assumption — that all such dramatic performances were first directed to some abstraction — is directly controverted by an induction based on a large series of facts carefully ascertained and recorded by observers and writers, not one of whom had in mind any theory of the origin of Greek Tragedy. In his admirable work on Primitive Secret Societies ^ Dr. Hutton Webster has collected a mass of valuable evidence respecting one of the most important phases in the evolution of human society. He has traced the part played in primitive communities by the separation of the sexes, the institution of the Men's House, the great stress laid upon the age of Puberty when Youth passes into Manhood, and the consequent establishment of a novitiate and initiatory ceremonies in which are comprised fasting and various ordeals before boys are admitted to the status of warriors and careful instruction in the traditions of the clan or tribe and its religious and magical beliefs and ritual. This education is frequently conveyed by means of dramatic or jiantomimic performances. The initiatory ceremonies in many eases comprised the supposed death and rebirth of the candidates, a feature uiaon which 3Iiss Harrison and her collaborators, as we have seen, have laid much stress in their theory of the Dithyramb and of the origin of Greek Tragedy, though still more frequently we shall find them bound up with the worship or propitiation of the spirits of the dead ancestors of the community. Obviously it is of great importance to discover ^vhether the belief in the existence of the spirits of dead ancestors and the dramatic personation of such is prior or secondary to the rise of initiation ceremonies. Should it prove that the candidates are, as it were, introduced to or placed under the protection of these spirits, the natural inference must be that the belief in and cult of the spirits of the dead are more primiti's'c, and that the initiation cere- monies and the doctrine of the death and rebirth of the initiated are secondar}' to them. ^ New York, 1908 (JIacmillan & Co.). In a new edition a full index would be a great innprovcmcnt. INDIAN AND PACIFIC OCEANS 337 Finally, Dr. Webstov ^ thinks it possible ' to disclose in the rites of the Eleusinia and Tliesmoplioria the dimly veiled survivals of an earlier and a ruder age ', and he holds that ' the magical practices and dramatic ceremonies, afterwards elaborated into the ritual of a solemn religious cult, which were the chief characteristics of the Greek mysteries, may be traced by the curious student to primitive rites in no wise dissimilar to those which, as we have seen, embody the faith and worship of the modern savage, omnia exeunt in mysterium '.- But our survey of the evidence (pp. 33 sqq.) has proved that it was in the cult of the dead that the worship of Demeter and almost all other Greek deities originated, and that the mystic rites of initiation which figure so largely in the later period are merely secondary phenomena. Among the many puerilities accompanying the course of instruc- tion in these tribal ceremonies we certainly find much that is of practical A'alue to the novices, much that is truly moral, much that evinces a conscientious purpose, to fit them for the serious duties of life. This instruction is imparted during the seclusion of the candi- dates, a period which may last for months and even in some instances for years. Obedience to the ciders or the tribal chiefs, bravery in battle, liberality towards the community, independence of maternal control, steadfast attachment to the traditional customs and the established moral code, are social virtues of the highest importance in rude communities. Savage ingenuity exhausts itself in devising ways and means for exhibiting these virtues in an effective manner to the young men so soon to take their place as members of the tribe. Some of the initiatory performances are even of a pantomimic nature, intended to teach the novices in a most vivid fashion what things they must in future avoid. In this respect the rites are often equivalent to an impressive morality play. But the only examples Dr. Webster cites are not at all convincing. ' At the Kuringal of the Coast Murring, an Australian tribe, such performances have at first sight a very immoral appearance, being presented apparently on the principle of similia siniilibus curantur.' The kabos, or guardians, talk to each other in inverted language, so that the real meaning of their words is just the opposite of what they say. The lads are told that this is to teach them to S2:)eak the straightforward truth. Various offences against morality are exhibited, and the guardians warn the novices of their death or of violence should they attempt to repeat the actions they have just 1 Op. cil., pp. 189-90. * Ibid., p. 48. Z 338 THE ORIGIN OF TRAGEDY witnessed. At the Kamilaroi Bora there would be ' many obscene t,festiires tor the purpose of shoekin