ahora no habíamos conocido otro bienhechor tan grande como el sol y la luna, porque el sol nos calienta y alumbra de día y nos cría las plantas, y la luna nos alumbra de noche; y así adorábamos á estos dos como á quien tanto bien nos hacía, y no sabíamos que había otra cosa mejor." 1680. "Indians of the Mississippi had a particular veneration for the Sun which they recognize as him who made and preserves us." 2 1699. "The Hurons believe as well as the Nachez that their hereditary chiefs are descended from the Sun." The Detroit Indians "Priat le soleil. " 4 "Shakuru, the Sun, is the first of the visible powers to be mentioned. It is very potent; it gives man health, vitality, and strength. Because of its power to make things grow, Shakuru is sometimes spoken of as atius, father." 5 That this reverence for the Sun may be shown not to have been confined to the New World or to a recent period we mention the account of Herodotus of the interview of Queen Tomyris of the Massagetæ, nearly five hundred years before Christ, with Cyrus the Great, to whom she said: "But if thou wilt not do so, I swear by the Sun, the Sovereign Lord of the Massagetæ, that thirsty though thou be, I will satiate thee with blood." Again, "of all the Gods, they adore the Sun alone to whom they sacrifice horses." Further information on this point has been gathered by Dr E. B. Tylor in his Researches into the Primitive Culture of Mankind, where he gives the statement of the treaty oath between Philip of Macedon and the general of the Carthagenian Libyan Army, where they invoked the Sun, Moon, and Earth among other Gods, to its sacredness. And the Brahman makes the following prayer to the Sun: "Oh Sun God! you are Brama at your rising Rudra at noon and Vishnu at 1 Benavides, in Villagran, op. cit., pp. 35-36. 2 Father Membré in Hist. Coll. La., part IV, p. 182. 3 Charlevoix, in French's Hist. Coll. La., 1851, p. 162. 4 Margry, Découvertes, V, p. 115. Miss Alice C. Fletcher, The Hako Ceremony, 22d Rep. Bu. Am. Eth., pt. 2, p. 30. 7 Ibid., p. 95. s Vol. 1, p. 301. setting; you are the jewel of the air, the king of day, the witness of everything that takes place on earth; you are the eye of the world, the measurer of time; you order the day and night, the weeks, the months, the years, deign in your mercy to put away all my sins." 1 The idea of the "Earth Mother" is further elaborated by Tylor.2 "In Barbaric theology Earth is the mother of all things. No fancy of nature can be plainer than that the Heaven Father and Earth Mother are the universal parents." And Tylor quotes3 in support of this the Aztec prayer to Tezcatlipoca: "Be pleased oh, our Lord that the nobles who die in war be peacefully and joyously received by the Sun and Earth who are the loving Father and Mother of us all." Lastly he says: "Among the Aryan race there stands wide and firm the double myth of the two great parents, as the Rig Veda calls them; they are Dyaus Pitar, Zeus Pater, Jupiter, the Heaven Father and Prithivi Matar the Earth Mother." The same belief is held in China, Polynesia, Peru, among the Caribs, and Comanche. Many other examples could be cited, but nowhere has the writer seen the whole matter summed up as well as in Sex Worship, by Clifford Howard,8 from which the following extracts are taken: "No subject is of greater importance and significance in the history. of the human race than that of sex worship, the adoration of the generative organs and their functions as symbols of the procreative powers of nature. It was the universal primitive religion of the world and has left its indelible impress upon our ideas, our language and our institutions. . . . . It [phallic cult] was the worship inspired by the phenomena of nature in her great mystery of life, and while its resultant mythologies and attendant ceremonials were carried and adapted from one nation to another, it had numerous independent originations; for the human mind, 1 Hindu Man., Cus. and Cer., Abbé Dubois, trans. Henry K. Beauchamp, Oxford, 1899, p. 245. 2 Anthropology, p. 359. Anthropology, p. 327. 4 Primitive Culture, 1, p. 327. Ibid., p. 325. Ibid., p. 326. 7 Ibid., p. 327. Published by the author, Washington, 1897 AM. ANTH., N. S., 13-25 as a whole, is always affected in the same way under similar conditions, and the wondrous phenomenon of procreation has ever aroused in primitive man a deep and religious reverence for the animating powers of life. "While the highest development of phallicism was reached by the ancient Egyptians, Hindoos, Assyrians, Greeks and Romans, whose records and remains abound in evidence of the phallic basis of their elaborate mythologies and religious celebrations, the existence of this early form of religion is to be found in every part of the globe inhabited by man. Babylon, Persia, Hindustan, Ceylon, China, Japan, Burmah, Java, Arabia, Syria, Asia Minor, Egypt, Ethiopia, Europe, the British Isles, Mexico, Yucatan, Peru and various other parts of America-all yield abundant evidence to the same effect and point to a common origin of religious beliefs. "It must not be imagined, however, that phallic worship is a religion. belonging entirely to the past ages. It is common among primitive races among all parts of the world today; and in India, where this form of religion has existed uninterruptedly since its foundation, thousands of years ago there are upwards of one hundred million true phallicworshippers. Among the Zuñi and other North American tribes phallicism enters into a number of their religious ceremonies, while the natives of the Pacific islands and certain parts of Africa are most ardent devotees in the worship of the procreative functions, and exhibit their religion in the realistic and unequivocal manner of primeval naturalness [pp. 7–9]. "But foremost among all natural emblems of the creative deity was the sun; nay, the sun was the Creator himself, the Almighty God. It was he who gave light and life to the world; upon him all existence depended. Osiris dwelt in the Sun as the Omnipotent Creator, and through this all-potent medium manifested his powers to mankind. All of the ancient supreme gods were closely allied with the sun. It was either the Deity himself or his glorious and almighty manifestation. The worship of the sun, therefore, necessarily formed a part,—a very important and significant part,-of phallic worship. In the adoration of the sun as the Creator and Preserver of mankind lies the origin of a universal theological belief [pp. 75-76]. "This divine, actuating force of nature owed its sacredness to the fact that it was the necessary and inciting means to the accomplishment of the supreme life-purpose of man and woman—the union of the two for the reproduction of life and the perpetuation of the race. It was in the gratification of the Divine Passion that man experienced his most exalted pleasure, and beheld the direct and immediate cause of a new being and was regarded the immortality of life. Hence, the act of generation as supremely sacred and divine. It was the sublime means ordained by the Creator for the fulfillment of his infinite purpose, and . . . was regarded as a most holy act and was the object of universal worship and devout, religious rites [pp. 130-131]. "The mysteries of Isis and Osiris, of Egypt, the mysteries of the Babylonians, the Eleusinian mysteries of the Greeks, the mysteries of Bacchus and Venus at Rome, together with many others of lesser importance, were all festivals in celebration of the new-born life and the regenerative union of the creative elements of nature. They all set forth and illustrated by solemn and impressive rites and mystical symbols the grand phenomena of nature in its creation and perpetuation of life. In the Eleusinian and Bacchanalian mysteries "the gravest matrons and proudest princesses apparently laid aside all dignity and modesty, and vied with each other in revelry. . . . And these enthusiastic devotees willingly gave themselves up to the embraces of the no less enthusiastic worshippers of the opposite sex, in the nocturnal ceremonies, that had for their object the glorification of the deity in the divine act of generaation [pp. 158-160]. "The Liberalia, the Floralia, and the festival of Venus were popular vernal festivals celebrated by the Romans in honor of the procreative deities and their vitalizing function. . . . These springtime festivals, in celebration of the resurrected life and the generative powers of nature, were common among all nations from the earliest times, and it is in some of the particular forms of these celebrations that we find the origin of our own joyous festival-Easter [pp. 162–163]. "It matters not to what race nor to what age we turn, we ever find the same reverent regard for the regeneration of life. Through all the myths and ceremonials of the world, however extravagant or inconsistent many of them may appear, we trace the constant aim of mankind to glorify the Creator and to honor him by the celebration of rites and festivals demonstrative of the adoration of mankind for his supreme powers, wisdom and goodness, while beneath them all lies the universal actuating reverence for the great and unsolvable mystery of procreationthe foundation of all religious worship" [p. 166]. WASHINGTON, D. C. PHONETICS OF THE MICRONESIAN LANGUAGE OF A THE MARSHALL ISLANDS By A. L. KROEBER PHONETIC survey of a number of American Indian lan guages recently carried on at the University of California revealed certain features common to a number of these tongues that in other respects are distinct. Particularly the stopped consonants are in many cases characterized by being organically only one at each point of articulation, and differentiated according to position in the word. Those that precede vowels are in many languages neither wholly surd nor wholly sonant but "intermediate." The author's record some years ago of a number of words from the dialects of Mortlock and Ponape in the Caroline Islands showed so great an inconsistency in the writing of surd and sonant stops as to force the suspicion that an analogous situation existed in these languages, in that there might be only one series of intermediate stops. The Polynesian languages possess only one class of stops, indicating the possibility of a further case of the occurrence of intermediates; and this is rendered more probable on account of the occasional employment of sonant stops in the early writing of these tongues, whereas the modern standardized orthography recognizes only surds. Compare taboo and tapu. The arrival at San Francisco in April 1911 of the German trading schooner Triton, with a crew of Marshall Islanders, furnished an opportunity to ascertain whether this phenomenon of intermediates, or any others of a similar nature, extended to other regions than the western part of North America. Through the courtesy of Captain Othmer, the desired work was made possible. The Triton remained in the harbor only a short time, and the crew was generally needed for work about the vessel. The opportunities for study were therefore limited; but the willingness of several of the natives, especially of Hans Taramij, made it possible to obtain information as to some of the principal phonetic features of the language.1 The Triton was lost within twenty-four hours after sailing from San Francisco. Th entire crew returned safely in a lite boat. The author's informants. however. had deserted before the vessel left port. |