Forlong - Rivers of Life

354
Rivers of Life, or Faiths of Man in all Lands.
Starjunkare—at the base or summit of a mountain sacred to him, and to the stone his
representative. This stone was reverently worshipped, and then besmeared with reindeer’s
blood; the male organ was tied to the right horn, and the left one, with the
fat, was put on an adjoining stone. 1 Some of the orthodox bloody sacrifices are very
like those prescribed for the fierce god of Sinai, and which he still insisted on at Zion
and Moriah, though then surrounded by a small measure of civilisation.
The continent of India has an abundance of holy mountains, from the templecapped
hill in the plains, which I have so often been forbidden to ascend, to lofty
Badri-Nāt, that softly-rounded Himalayan Omphe, perhaps the Kailas idea, which we
see towering over our high military station of Raniket in the N.W. Provinces, and
lying straight in front of the three-peaked Trisool of eternal whiteness, sacred to the
Mountain-God. As no one can visit Siva, or live in the purity of his atmosphere (though
this Trisool is only half the height 2 at which Noah ana his wonderful companions are
said to have existed for nine months), the throngs of poor soul-sick folk annually
stream up to the accessible Badri-Nāt, and beseech him to accept them in their weakness
and bless them. Badri-Nāt looks very like the craggy terrace from which Pergamos
and its three peaks spring, or to the mass of that lower Mount Parnassus, in which
the Delphic chasm is, if sketched from the Atik side instead of from the south, and
high up, as I show it on page 260. That drawing is only to explain pictorially the idea of
the shrine in the eyes of the first priestly founders, and as it would appear, if seen by
an observer situated some distance over the south sea-coast.
The Persians, Herodotus says, 3 were accustomed to bring sacrifices to Zeus on the
summits of mountains, and called the whole celestial circle Zeus, which was in fact
Siva, Serpent, and the Sun. “They bring sacrifices,” says he, “to the sun, moon,
earth, fire, water, clouds—these elements originally being the only objects of worship;
but they accepted from the Asyrians and Arabs the worship of Aphrodite,” or rather,
as Professor Haug says; Anahita, known to the Arabs and Greeks as Anaitis, or the
beneficient influence of water, by which is probably meant fertility.
Human sacrifices used to be constantly offered not only to mountains and rivers
—that is, to Siva and Parvati—but to great or peculiar stones. The Dart in
Devonshire, like many a German river, still demands its human victim, according to
the popular rhyme:
“ River of Dart, river of Dart,
Every year thou claim’st a heart;”
“a survival, it may be, from times when such victims were actually offered to it.” 4 Of
the same character is the wild superstition attaching to a large flat stone on a common
near Honiton, which makes it descend the hill every night and bathe in the stream
below for the purpose of washing out the stains of human blood. Now Siva is usually
1
Ceremonies and Religious Customs of All Nations. London, 1741. Pp. 427-8.
2
This Tri-Sool or Three-peaked Hill of Siva is about 18,000 feet high.
3 4
[I., 131.] Mr. R. J. King in Frazer, Dec. 1873.