The Life-Giving Myth, and Other Essays
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LIBRARY OF WELLESLEY COLLEGE PURCHASED FROM Sophie Jewett Memorial Fund THE LIFE-GIVING MYTH By the Same Author KINGSHIP {Oxford 1927) THE LAU ISLANDS OF FIJI (HonoZwZw 1929) THE TEMPLE OF THE TOOTH IN KANDY (Lonrfow 1931) THE PROGRESS OF MAN {London 1933) KINGS AND COUNCILLORS (Cmro 1936) CASTE, A COMPARATIVE STUDY (London 1950) THE NORTHERN STATES OF FIJI (London 1952) A. M. HOCART THE LIFE-GIVING MYTH and other essays Edited, with an Introduction, by LORD RAGLAN GROVE PRESS • NEW YORK J- 8 H57 PRINTED EN GREAT BRITAIN CONTENTS CHAPTEB PAGB Introduction 6 I. The Life-giving Myth 9 II. Flying Through the Air 28 III, Turning Into Stone 33 IV. The Common Sense of Myth 39 V. The Purpose of Ritual 46 VI. Ritual and Emotion 53 VII. The Origin of Monotheism 66 VIII. The Divinity of the Guest 78 IX. Yakshas and Vaddas 87 X. Money 97 XI. Modern Critique 105 XII. In the Grip of Tradition 117 XIII. Snobbery 129 XIV. Chastity 139 XV. Saviours 143 XVI. The Age-Limit 149 XVII. Childhood Ceremonies 153 XVIII. Baptism by Fire 156 XIX. Initiation and Manhood 160 XX. Initiation and Healing 164 XXI. Tattooing and Healing 169 XXII. Kinship Systems 173 XXIII. Blood-Brotherhood 185 XXIV. Covenants 190 XXV. The Uterine Nephew 195 XXVI. Why Study Savages? 199 XXVII. Are Savages Custom-bound? 205 XXVIII. From Ancient to Modern Egypt 208 XXIX. India and the Pacific 234 XXX. Decadence in India 240 Acknowledgments 249 Index 251 5 INTRODUCTION A GLANCE at the chapter-headings might suggest that the subjects of these essays are largely unconnected, but this is not so; there are themes which run through nearly all of them. Of these the most important is that myth, ritual and social organisation are inseparably connected and cannot profitably be studied apart. Myth, owing chiefly to the use made by the Latin poets of the Greek myths, most of which had become function- less survivals, has persuaded scholars that myths are merely a strange kind of fiction, but for all illiterate peoples, and many that are not illiterate, myths form the most important part of their traditions, not merely justifying and sanctifying all their rites and customs, but being regarded as in themselves a source of life. Whether myth is older than ritual we cannot say, but ritual as we know it everywhere depends on myth. The myth purports to tell how the ritual originated, and a knowledge of it is necessary to enable the officiant to perform the ritual correctly and thereby obtain the life which the ritual, if correctly performed, confers. Social organisation is, in its origins, organisation for the performance of ritual, and it too depends on the myth, which purports to tell how the kingship, classes, castes, clans and so on came to be instituted, and thereby explains and justifies the part which they play in the life of the community. The two most important institutions are, or were, the divine kingship and the dual organisation. The worship of the divine king is the earliest religion of which we have any certain knowledge. It is still wide- spread to-day, and beliefs and customs derived from it 6 Introduction 7 are almost universal. In the dual organisation a com- munity is divided into two groups ; members of one group initiate, marry and bury members of the other group, and are, as the Fijians say "gods to one another". This idea will seem strange to those who regard gods only as remote and awe-inspiring beings, but to savages, as to the ancients, a god is any person or thing with power to confer life. The dual organisation has left in Europe but a few traces, such as team games, and is found in full operation only among savages. This might suggest that it is older than the divine kingship, but this need not be so. Unlike the divine kingship, it can hardly flourish except in com- munities so small that everyone can stand in some sort of relationship to everyone else. The second thesis which runs through these essays, or many of them, is that all ritual consists in investing some person or thing with power, in order that he or it may be able to confer life, and by life is meant health, wealth and fertility. This is done by performing certain acts and at the same time reciting the myth, which tells what the originator of the rite is supposed to have done. No person or thing has any power to confer life until they have been invested with it in this way. There is no such thing as "nature-worship". Nobody ever worshipped the sun simply as the sun; it is worshipped only when it is deified, that is to say when a god has been put into it. The same applies to idols of all kinds, including stones and trees, and to human beings. Those who speak of nature- worship are ignorant of the theory and practice of ritual, which are everywhere the same. In his Kingship Hocart showed that the ritual of the divine kingship, in whatever part of the world it is per- formed, is not merely similar, but is the same ritual. He reverts to this fact here and also shows that the ritual of initiation is the same in North America and Central Australia, that the sister's son has the same strange ritual 8 The Life-giving Myth functions in South Africa as in Fiji, and that there are many curious resemblances between the customs of the Hindus and those of the Melanesians. Since none of these rites and customs can reasonably be supposed to arise naturally in the human mind, their distribution must be due to historical causes. The last essay is on a different subject. It is a con- tribution to the study of the causes of decadence. We do not know why civilisations decline, but we do know that it cannot be because nations grow old. Nations are not organisms, and civilisations are sometimes rejuvenated, as individuals never are. Hocart studies the problem in so far as it is concerned with India and Ceylon. In conclusion I should add that Hocart contemplated a book of this kind and there is a draft list of essays among his papers. Some of these, however, I have been unable to identify and this book contains many which he did not mention. These have been obtained through refer- ences in his writings, and searches in likely periodicals. I should like to acknowledge the help which I have received in the latter task from Miss B. J. Kirkpatrick, Librarian to the Royal Anthropological Institute. I have omitted many papers which seemed to me too long or too technical, and have made cuts in some of the papers which I have included. RAGLAN CHAPTER I The Life-giving Myth The Renaissance was an age of discovery: it discovered not only America, not only the course of the earth round the sun; it discovered Greek art and literature, and with them the Greek myth. It first discovered the myth, however, in the pages of Ovid, Virgil, Horace, and other late authors who had long since ceased to believe in their myths; who looked upon them merely as stories which it is good form not to question, or still more as good themes for literature, mines of plots and poetic ornaments. Far from bearing any relation to real life, those myths were rather a welcome escape from reality. The poet, jaded by the bustle and drabness of the city, found an idyllic retreat in the company of nymphs and dryads, ranging the sylvan wildness of his fantasy. In the course of their explorations, the scholars of the Renaissance came upon Sophocles and ^schylus, but they interpreted the drama of those times as they in- terpreted their own stage—that is, as literature enacted. They failed to realise that the early Greek drama, literary as it might be, was still something more than mere theatricals, that it was still part of the national ritual, and that the myths were enacted not merely to amuse, but because the religion demanded it. This connection of drama with religion is now generally known, but it is doubtful if it is generally realised—to most scholars the Greek drama remains literature pure and simple. The Renaissance scholars learned from Homer, the greatest of all mythologists. He was still earlier than ^schylus, nearer to the supposed age of myth. Homer's legends, however, are not Greek but Achaean. They 9 10 The Life-giving Myth were traditions passed on to the Greeks by their pre- decessors, just as the Arthurian Cycle was inherited by the EngHsh from a pre-Roman civihsation. The Iliad and the Odyssey are as Greek as the Morte d'Arthur is EngUsh. It is as vain to look to Homer for the primitive significance of the myth as it would be to seek it in Malory. Thus everything conspired to persuade classical scholars that the myth is nothing but the creation of fancy, a kind of Midsummer Night's Dream. Several centuries of purely literary studies have allowed this conception of the myth to drive in its roots so deeply that it cannot be uprooted in a day. These roots have now spread beyond the Grseco-Roman world into the East. When the nineteenth century extended the sphere of discovery to Biblical lands and beyond, scholars naturally approached the mjrths of Egypt, Babylonia, and India in the spirit they had imbibed from their classical studies.