Forlong - Rivers of Life

Fire Worship.
and crowned with garlands; then a victim was slaughtered in such a way that the blood
ran into the hole; embers from the sacred fire were thrown in, perhaps with cakes and
fruits, honey and wine; after which the block of wood, or stone, was fixed in the hole.”
Now, mark that this, like all true Solar rites, had to be annually performed, and at
fixed solar phases. All fires had to be lighted once a year, from Ireland and the Nile
to the cradle lands of our race, and people had to perform “Rogation rounds” as the
Lord Mayor of London, or his deputy, does to this hour, on the day when the “Lord
of Hosts” ascended up on high. 1 So this “sacred act (the Termini rite) had to be
renewed every year with libations and prayers,” 2 for the Terminus is the Tet, Set, or
Hermaic god, and one, too, of a most enduring and immovable character, as I have
often experienced in India when trying to remove a Maha-deva, in order to improve the
communications of a town or d.strict, or even construct an irrigation work. Openly
and publicly it is scarcely possible to move a Lingam shrine, and hence the Roman
legend, that much as Jupiter required and ought to have the first place in the Capitol,
he could not displace the Hermes or Terminus, showing that he was second in age,
and here in position, to this Lingam deity. In the native capitals of India, Odeypore,
Jeypore, &c., I have seen all the efforts of British officers, political or other, entirely
fail to induce a Hindoo Maharaja to allow even the most miserable little Lingam shrine
to be removed; and so we may see in the very midst of the fine streets which the en
lightened ruler of Jeypore has constructed, the most shocking little Lingam impediments
to traffic. To move a Lingam was thought equivalent to effacing whole families, nay,
to destroying the fertility of a people; for it is held to anger the god of procreation,
which these little cones, or eggs stuck up in a platter of mud (the Argha) represented;
and none—be they kings or peasants—dare here presume; there they must stay “to
all etemity,” as the Rev. Mr. Barker and De Coulanges correctly inform us in regard
to similar objects of Greek and Roman cult.
The Etruscan law thus cursed the person who touched a Terminus:—“His house
shall disappear, his race be extinguished, his land produce no fruit,” &c.; and hence
this immoveable god became the safest possible landmark. I have often availed
myself of a similar religious feeling, by marking lines of survey over rocks, or stones,
or on trees, with red coloured lines or dots, red being Parvati’s sacred hue—fertility,
and much as the cultivator feared to see a theodolite laid across his family soil, still
he would never try to efface its red track, unless he was an “educated sceptic,” which
our schoo1s and chief cities have not been slow to produce, and which we thankfully
welcome. Although the gens, or family aggregated into Curiæ or Phratriæ, and hence
Patria, as persons of one country, still the religion of each gens and its patriarch
remained the same. No one tribe could be mixed up with any other; even when the
nation was formed by the massing of tribes, it was found conducive to good conduct
1
“The Lord of Hosts” is of course the Sun, and his great Ascension day—the 14th May, nearly the
2
period of “Rogation,” for all ancient fetes were moveable.
Aryan Civil: p. 32.
395