Forlong - Rivers of Life

542
Rivers of Life, or Faiths of Man in all Lands.
and such like, formed out of the finger and toe-nails of their ancestors. These seemed
to me the most elaborate and valued articles of their scanty toilet.
Throughout India and all its islands and adjoining countries, besides prayers and
often sacrifices at the actual tombs of ancestors, there are also fixed “High” or “Shrouddays”
at divers temples, where ancestors are specially invoked and prayers offered; vows
—not always very pious but often of a political, social, and sometimes vengeful character
—are there also made, and food and clothing distributed to the poor or votaries of the
shriue. In Benares, at a great temple on the banks of Holy Ganga, I have seen the
whole stream polluted by vast quantities of food, ghee (butter); rice, and other boiled
matter and aromatic shrubs and flowers all thrown about, in affectionate memory of
the dead, but not, I tbink, as an act of worship. The day or days for ancestral
offerings are fixed by the priests on conjunction of certain stars, and with no reference
to the particular time of any one’s death. It.is only amongst wild, superstitious, and
devout tribes, and by women and children, that ancestors are still worshipped as
gods. Among the wild mountain fastnesses of Koorg in southern high India, 1
ancestor-worship holds a divided sway with Sivaism and Demonlatry. Ancestors
are there thought to be constantly present as “Ghosts or Spirits.” All Koorgs believe
these “hover inside and outside of their dwellings, and give endless trouble if not
properly respected.” For their use a Kay-mada—small building with one apartment,
or in some cases with a mere niche—is generally built near the house, Kota or place of
assemblage; a sort of bank is made for them under a tree, in the fields where the
family’s first house has stood. A number of figures roughly coated with silver plates,
or images in bronze, and “sometimes also figures on a slab of pot-stone, are put in the
Kaymadas to represent the ancestors;” it was thus, I believe, that the Lares and
Penates, or Phalli of the hearths, came to be mixed up with ancestor-worship.
In most pious Indian families a niche in the house is dedicated to the great progenitors,
and offerings of fruits and flowers, &c., placed for their use; and by none is this
more strictly observed than by all aborigines. Though liberal in their sacrifices, and
most particular as to the rites, days and hours of each, yet they always denied to me
having any fear of the spirits of their ancestors or those of other dead persons, asserting
that all was done from mere love and reverence for their progenitors, and to teach the
young around them to revere their seniors. This is bringing religion to the aid of
morals; and on the same principle most ancient peoples taught that all laws, political
and social, are revelations from Heaven—an excess of pious zeal which cost the
ancient Greek and Latin Empires ages of turmoil and deluged their lands with blood,
for truth must in the end prevail, and bad laws be abolished. This Inspiration-idea was
an inheritance from patriarchal worship, for patriarchs of course taught that their commands
were the laws of God. What Jew or Arabian would to this hour refuse to bow
before any law which he believed to be a mandate direct from Abraham? The result
of such worship was that the father of the family or tribe became the keeper of the
1 Ind. Ant. Art, by the Rev. F. Kettel.