Volume 1

Faiths of man : a cyclopædia of religions / by Major-General J. G. R. Forlong.

  • Forlong, James George Roche, -1904.
Date:
1906
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: Faiths of man : a cyclopædia of religions / by Major-General J. G. R. Forlong. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    clipped wings ; and when it falls to the ground it is seized and plucked by the eunuchs.” The author sees in this a remnant of human sacrifice ”—on which Sivaites insist—a destruction of the virile power, exemplified by the mutilated priests thus destroying the white (solar) emblem of virility. The true lunar Venus (Cybele in Asia Minor) required such eunuch priests. In a paper on Art in Benin (Journal Anthrop. Inst., November Hth, 1897) Mr C. H. Read says that, in the centre of all houses stands a cone of clay, or a half-buried pot of water (see the symbols of Vesta’s temple on the Tiber, Rivers of Life, i, p. 270, fig. 240). There were also, in Benin houses, “places for private worship” in quiet alcoves; and near the palace, “ju-ju fields and groves two oi three acres each in extent, each enclosed by walls, with a chapel, and a long clay altar on which was a huge ivory tusk (a very clear tooth- lingam), with two human heads—cast in metal—at the base. Maces are here used for felling victims—usually human. In 1/02 \ an Nyendael wrote, that “the king’s gods were represented by eleven tusks ” ; and in 1820 Lieut. King noticed eight or ten before the palace door. All fetish houses have tusks, with cast metal, or wooden, heads, and wooden birds, and sticks with a carved hand pointing with the index finger (see Hand). In the centre of one side of the palace stood a pyramidal tower 30 to 40 feet high, on the top of which was fixed a cast-metal snake, having a body as thick as a man, its head reaching down to mother earth. Such snakes were affixed also to the roofs of palaver-houses and important buildings, showing that they represent the spirit of the Creator. The king himself was called an Offa (compare Ob). It is usual for Africans of both sexes to be circumcised at puberty (see Abyssinia), nor can they consort together before. After marriage they must be (and are fairly) chaste; but the unmarried live in long barracks for bachelors, near but outside the village. Girls visit them after dark, when considerable liberties are allowed. [This applies to the Masai in N.E. Africa, and to the Bechuana tribes in S. Africa; girls, however, must, till marriage— which is a matter of paying cows to the father—be very cautious in conduct, as appears below.—Ed.] The initiatory rites, on attaining puberty (common in Africa), are strange, elaborate, and little known ; but they seem to resemble those of some Australians, as described by Mr A. W. Howitt, espe- cially those of the Inkumbas or circumcisers. [These rites are known among Bechuana tribes, including the ceremony about to be described. They are accompanied by severe floggings of boys, and iuculcation of