Forlong - Rivers of Life

124
Rivers of Life, or Faiths of Man in all Lands.
not communities or persons not in the East, who have not always so acted. “Honour and
Virtue” have indeed been properly raised into qualities which we have been taught to
aspire to, however powerfully our passions may assert
themselves; and temples have been raised and coins struck
in commemoration of these high qualities: Here is one
which will be found in our ordinary school books, and
which we learn from Smith’s classical Dictionary was struck
by Rome in the days of Galba—1st C.A.C. and of which the
best we can say is, that Egypt had many figures of a similar
character. If this was then the perfection of “Virtue and
Honour,” it staggers our belief of the possibility of refined
Fig. 43.—HONOUR AND VIRTUE.
feeling in an age which could stamp such a coin of the
empire. If schoolmasters were better instructed they would
not give to our youths any representations of the female cornucopia and male baton.
From India and Kambodia we naturallv look acrcm to the immense island of
Soomatra, long thought to be inhabited by cannibals, and of course expect to find in
it a Nakon (-vat) as in the adjoining continent, and as a matter of fact we do find the
same idea, for we find a Serpent God called Naga Padhoa, 1 which supports the world,
and who is therefore another Soter Kosmou and, curiously enough, with homs like Isis,
Apollo and Moses. Horns reveal to us, as a rule, a mixed solar faith, telling us that
the Serpent is here Apollyon, or one touched by solar fires: Naga Padhoa is therefore
not our very early Ob or Aub, but O-Bel, but I cannot say that this idea is confirmed
when we go further into the matter. Oaths generally show us the objects most revered
by a people, and here I can only find phallic objects in use. The most holy oath
with the Balab of Soomatra is taken on the figure of a man made of wood or stone,
which, as the poople are able to carve this into something less indecent than a Lingam,
shows us that they have risen a stage or two higher than a Jaeob or Laban, which is
not saying too much for them, or that their faith has passed beyond the Pytho-phallic.
I would like much to step across to that grand continent still further south, and tell
what its people know of an these matters; but records fail me here, as I fear they fail
most. We have however heard, that it is the belief of the Australian Bushman, that
the Serpent created, and ever continues to excite all the world. The class of Europeans
who have hitherto devoted attention to the Bushman, has apparently never been
able to fathom, and some say has never been able even to see, the awful rites and ceremonies
with which his snaky majesty is there worshipped. I can imagine these rites
from what I have seen of many equally wild aborigines, for we have still some in India
who fly on the approach of the European, and can only be persuaded to accept a gaudy
kerchief or other gewgaw by our laying it down on the rood and retiring. Still travel-
ling East, we find the Fijian owning as his principal deity the great Serpent-Digei. He is
1 In Sansk., Naga-pataya = “The surrounding Serpent.”