CHAPTER XVI FATHER JOVE AND MOTHER VESTA
|Similarity between the fire-customs of the Herero and the ancient Latins.| The reader may remember that the preceding account of the fire-customs of the Herero was introduced for the sake of comparison with the Latin worship of Vesta. The points of similarity between the two will now be indicated. In the first place we have seen reason to hold that the ever-burning Vestal fire at Rome was merely a survival of the fire on the king’s hearth. So among the Herero the sacred fire of the village is the chief’s fire, which is kept burning or smouldering in his house by day and by night. In Rome, as in Hereroland, the extinction of the fire was regarded as an evil omen, which had to be expiated by sacrifices, [737] and new fire was procured in primitive fashion by twirling the point of one stick in the hole of another. The Roman fire was fed with the wood of the sacred oak tree, just as the African fire is kindled with the wood of the sacred omumborombonga tree. Beside both were kept the images of the ancestors, the Lares at Rome, the ozondume in Hereroland. The king’s house which sheltered the fire and the images was originally in Italy what the chief’s hut still is in Hereroland, a circular hut of osiers, not as ancient dreamers thought, because the earth is round, [738] nor yet because a circle is the symbol of rest, but simply because it is both easier and cheaper to build a round hut than a square. [739]
|The Roman Vestals, or some of them, appear to have been originally the king’s daughters.| Further, in Rome the sacred fire was tended, as it still is in Hereroland, by unmarried women, and as the Herero priestesses are the chiefs daughters, so, we may conjecture, it was with some at least of the Vestals among the ancient Latins. The Roman Vestals appear to have been under the patria potestas of the king, and, in republican times, of the Pontifex Maximus, who succeeded to some of the king’s functions. [740] But if they were under the patria potestas of the king, they must have been either his wives or daughters; as virgins they cannot have been his wives; it remains, therefore, that they were his daughters. Various circumstances confirm this view. Their house at Rome, as we saw, always adjoined the Regia, the old palace of the kings; they were treated with marks of respect usually accorded to royalty; [741] and the most famous of all the Vestals, the mother of Romulus, was said to be a daughter of the King of Alba. [742] The custom of putting an unfaithful Vestal to death by immuring her in a subterranean chamber [743] may have been adopted in order to avoid the necessity of taking the life of a princess by violence; [744] for, as we shall learn later on, there is a very widespread reluctance to spill royal blood.
|Rites performed by the Vestals for the fertility of the earth and the fecundity of cattle.| Amongst the Herero the chief’s daughter who tends the holy fire has also to perform certain priestly rites, which have for their object the prosperity and multiplication of the cattle. [745] So, too, it was with the Roman Vestals. On the fifteenth of April every year pregnant cows were sacrificed to the Earth goddess; the unborn calves were torn from their mothers’ wombs, the chief Vestal burned them and kept their ashes for use at the shepherds’ festival of the Parilia. This sacrifice of pregnant cows was a fertility charm designed, by a curious application of homoeopathic magic, to quicken both the seed in the ground and the wombs of the cows and the ewes. [746] At the Parilia, held on the twenty-first of April, the Vestals mixed the ashes of the unborn calves with the blood of a horse which had been sacrificed in October, and this mixture they distributed to shepherds, who fumigated their flocks with it as a means of ensuring their fecundity and a plentiful supply of milk. [747]
|The Vestals were probably regarded as embodiments of Vesta, who was a mother-goddess, the bestower of offspring on cattle and women.| Strange as at first it may seem to find holy virgins assisting in operations intended to promote the fertility of the earth and of cattle, this reproductive function accords perfectly with the view that they were of old the wives of the fire-god and the mothers of kings. On that view, also, we can understand why down to imperial times the Vestals adored the male emblem of generation, [748] and why Vesta herself, the goddess of whom they were the priestesses and probably the embodiments, was worshipped by the Romans not as a virgin but as a mother. [749] She was sometimes identified with Venus. [750] Like Diana, with whom she was identified at Nemi, she appears to have been a goddess of fecundity, who bestowed offspring both on cattle and on women. That she was supposed to multiply cattle is indicated by the ceremonies which the Vestals performed in April; that she made women to be mothers is hinted at not obscurely by the legends of the birth of the old Latin kings. [751] The ancient Aryan practice of leading a bride thrice round the hearth of her new home [752] may have been intended not merely to introduce her to the ancestral spirits who had their seats there, but also to promote conception, perhaps by allowing one of these very spirits to enter into her and be born again. When the ancient Hindoo bridegroom led his bride round the fire, he addressed the fire-god |Custom of leading a bride round the fire perhaps a fertility charm.| Agni with the words, “Mayst thou give back, Agni, to the husband the wife together with offspring.” [753] When a Slavonian bride enters her husband’s house after marriage she is led thrice round the hearth; then she must stir the fire with the poker, saying, “As many sparks spring up, so many cattle, so many male children shall enliven the new home.” [754] At Mostar, in Herzegovina, the bride seats herself on a bag of fruit beside the hearth in her new home and pokes the fire thrice. While she does so, they bring her a small boy and set him on her lap. She turns the child thrice round in order that she may give birth to male children. [755] Still more clearly does belief in the impregnation of a woman by fire come out in another South Slavonian custom. When a wife wishes to have a child, she will hold a vessel full of water beside the fire on the hearth, while her husband knocks two burning brands together so that the sparks fly out. When some of them have fallen into the vessel, the woman drinks the water which has thus been fertilised by the fire. [756] The same belief seems still to linger in England; for there is a Lincolnshire saying that if a woman’s apron is burned above the knee by a spark or red-hot cinder flying out of a fire, she will become a mother. [757] Thus the superstition which gave rise to the stories of the birth of the old Roman kings holds its ground to this day in Europe, even in our own country. So indestructible are the crude fancies of our savage forefathers. Thus we may safely infer that the old practice of leading a bride formally to or round the hearth was designed to make her fruitful through the generative virtue ascribed to the fire. The custom is not confined to peoples of the Aryan stock, for it is observed also by the Esthonians and the Wotyaks of Russia [758] and, as we have seen, by the Herero of South Africa. [759] It expresses in daily life the same idea which is embodied in the myths of the birth of Servius Tullius and the other Latin kings, whose virgin mothers conceived through contact with a spark or tongue of fire. [760]
|New-born children brought to the hearth as a mode of introducing them to the ancestral spirits.| Accordingly, where beliefs and customs of this sort have prevailed, it is easy to understand why new-born children should be brought to the hearth, and why their birth should there be solemnly announced to the ancestors. This is done by the Herero, [761] and in like manner on the fifth or seventh day after a birth the ancient Greeks used to run naked round the hearth with the new-born babe in their arms. [762] This Greek ceremony may perhaps be regarded as merely a purification, in other words as a means of keeping at bay the demons who lie in wait for infants. Certainly in other parts of the world a custom has prevailed of passing a newly born child backwards and forwards through the smoke of the fire for the express purpose of warding off evil spirits or other baleful influences. [763] Yet on the analogy of the preceding customs we may conjecture that a practice of solemnly bringing infants to the domestic hearth has also been resorted to as a mode of introducing them to the spirits of their fathers. [764] In Russia the old belief that the souls of the ancestors were somehow in the fire on the hearth has left traces of itself down to the present time. Thus in the Nijegorod Government it is still forbidden to break up the smouldering faggots in a stove, because to do so might cause the ancestors to fall through into hell. And when a Russian family moves from one house to another, the fire is raked out of the old stove into a jar and solemnly conveyed to the new one, where it is received with the words, “Welcome, grandfather, to the new home!” [765]
|Reasons why a procreative virtue was ascribed to fire.| But why, it may be asked, should a procreative virtue be attributed to the fire, which at first sight appears to be a purely destructive agent? and why in particular should the ancestral spirits be conceived as present in it? Two different reasons perhaps led savage philosophers to these conclusions. In the first place the common mode of making fire by means of the fire-drill has suggested, as we have seen, to many savages the notion that fire is the child of the fire-sticks, in other words that the rubbing of the fire-sticks together is a sexual union which begets offspring in the shape of a flame. This of itself suffices to impress on the mind of a savage the idea that a capacity of reproduction is innate in the fire, and consequently that a woman may conceive by contact with it. Strictly speaking, he ought perhaps to refer this power of reproduction not to the fire but to the fire-sticks; but savage thought is in general too vague to distinguish clearly between cause and effect. If he thinks the matter out, as he may do if he is more than usually reflective, the savage will probably conclude that fire |The process of making fire by friction seems to the savage an act of generation.| exists unseen in all wood, and is only elicited from it by friction, [766] so that the spark or flame is the child, not so much of the fire-sticks, as of the parent fires in them. But this refinement of thought may well be above the reach even of a savage philosopher. The second reason which seems to have led early man to associate the fire with the souls of his ancestors was a superstitious veneration for the ancestral tree which furnished either the fuel for the sacred fire or the material out of which he carved one or both of the fire-sticks. Among the Herero, as we |Again, the fire was associated with the ancestors through the sacred ancestral tree which furnished either the fuel or the fire-sticks.| saw, the male fire-stick commonly is, or used to be, made out of the holy omumborombonga tree, from which they believe that they and their cattle sprang in days of old. Hence nothing could be more natural than that they should regard the fire produced by the friction of a piece of the ancestral tree, as akin to themselves, the offspring of the same mighty forefather, to wit, the sacred tree. Similarly, the Vestal fire at Rome was fed with the wood of the oak, the sacred tree of Jupiter, and the first Romans are described as “born of the tree trunks and the heart of oak.” [767] No wonder, then, that the Latin kings, who claimed to represent Jupiter, and in that capacity masqueraded in his costume and made mock thunder, should have prided themselves on being sprung from a fire which was fed with the wood of the god’s holy tree; such an origin was only another form of descent from the oak and from the god of the oak, Jupiter himself.
|Esthonian marriage custom.| The theory that impregnation by fire is really impregnation by the wood of the tree with which the fire is kindled, derives some confirmation from a custom which is observed at marriage by some of the Esthonians in the neighbourhood of Oberpahlen. The bride is escorted to a tree, which is thereupon cut down and burned. When the fire blazes up, she is led thrice round it and placed between three armed men, who clash their swords over her head, while the women sing a song. Then some coins are thrown into the fire, and when it has died out they are recovered and knocked into the stump of the tree, which was cut down to serve as fuel. [768] This is clearly a mode of rewarding, first the fire, and next the tree, for some benefit they have conferred on the bride. But in early society husband and wife desire nothing so much as offspring; this therefore may very well be the benefit for which the Esthonian bride repays the tree.
|The conception of the Fire-mother intimately bound up with that of the female fire-stick in the fire-drill.| Thus far we have regarded mainly the paternal aspect of the fire, which the Latins mythically embodied in Jupiter, that is literally Father Jove, the god of the oak. The maternal aspect of the fire was for them represented by Mother Vesta, as they called her; and as the Roman king stood for Father Jove, so his wife or daughter—the practice on this point appears to have varied—stood for Mother Vesta. Sometimes, as we have seen, the Vestal virgins, the priestesses or rather incarnations of Vesta, appear to have been the daughters, not the wives, of the king. But, on the other hand, there are grounds for thinking that the wife of King Latinus, the legendary ancestor of the Latins, was traditionally regarded as a Vestal, [769] and the analogy of the Flamen Dialis with his wife the Flaminica, as I shall shew presently, points also to a married pair of priestly functionaries concerned with the kindling and maintenance of the sacred fire. However that may have been, we may take it as probable that the notion of the fire-mother was intimately associated with, if it did not spring directly from, the female fire-stick of the fire-drill, just as the conception of the fire-father was similarly bound up with the male fire-stick.
|The Fire-father and the Fire-mother represented by a priest and priestess who together made the sacred fire by means of the fire-drill.| Further, it seems that these mythical beings, the fire-father and the fire-mother, were represented in real life by a priest and a priestess, who together made the sacred fire, the priest appropriately twirling the pointed male stick, while the priestess held fast on the ground the holed female stick, ready to blow up into a flame the spark which fell on the tinder. In the composite religion of Rome, formed like the Roman state by the fusion of several tribes, each with its own gods and priests, such pairs of fire-priests may at first have been duplicated. In one or more of the tribes which afterwards made up the Roman commonwealth the function of kindling the holy fire of oak was perhaps assigned to the Flamen Dialis and his wife the Flaminica, the living representatives of Jupiter and Juno; and if, as some scholars think, the name flamen comes from flare, “to blow up,” [770] the derivation would fit well with this theory. But in historical Rome the duty of making the sacred fire lay with the Vestal virgins and the chief pontiff. [771] The mode in which they shared the work between them is not described by ancient writers, but we may suppose that one of the virgins held the board of lucky wood on the ground while the pontiff inserted the point of a peg into the hole of the board and made the peg revolve rapidly between the palms of his hands. When the likeness of this mode of producing fire to the intercourse of the sexes had once struck people, they would deem it unnatural, and even indecent, for a woman to usurp the man’s function of twirling the pointed male stick. But the Vestals certainly helped to make fire by friction; it would seem, therefore, that the part they took in the process can only have been the one I have conjecturally assigned to them. At all events, the conjecture is supported by the following analogies.
|Among the Djakuns fire is made by the leader and his unmarried daughter.| The Djakuns, a wild tribe of the Malay Peninsula, are in the habit of making fire by friction. A traveller has described the custom as follows: “When a troop was on a journey and intended either to pitch a temporary camp, or to make a longer settlement, the first camp fire was kindled for good luck by an unmarried girl with the help of the fire-drill. Generally this girl was the daughter of the man who served the troop as leader. It was deemed of special importance that on the first night of a settlement the fire of every band should be lit by the unmarried daughter of a leader. But she might only discharge this duty if she had not her monthly sickness on her at the time. This custom is all the more remarkable inasmuch as the Djakuns in their migrations always carried a smouldering rope of bark with them.” “When the fire was to be kindled, the girl took the piece of soft wood and held it on the ground, while her father, or any other married man, twirled the vertical borer upon it. She waited for the spark to spring from the wood, and fanned it into a flame either by blowing on it or by waving the piece of wood quickly about in her hand. For this purpose she caught the spark in a bundle of teased bark and exposed it to a draught of air.” “Fire so produced was employed to kindle the other fires for that night. They ascribed to it good luck in cooking and a greater power of keeping off tigers and so forth, than if the first fire had been kindled by a spark from the smouldering bark rope.” [772] This account suggests a reason why a holy fire should be tended by a number of virgins: one or more of them might at any time be incapacitated by a natural infirmity for the discharge of the sacred duty.
|Among the Slavs of the Balkans fire is made by a young girl and boy.| Again, the Slavs of the Balkan Peninsula ascribe a healing or protective power to “living fire,” and when an epidemic is raging in a village they will sometimes extinguish all the fires on the hearths and procure a “living fire” by the friction of wood. At the present day this is done by various mechanical devices, but the oldest method, now almost obsolete, is said to be as follows:—A girl and a boy between the ages of eleven and fourteen, having been chosen to make the fire, are led into a dark room, where they must strip themselves of all their clothes without speaking a word. Then two perfectly dry cylindrical pieces of lime-wood are given them, which they must rub rapidly against each other, turn about, till they take fire. Tinder is then lit at the flame and used for the purpose of healing. This mode of kindling the “living fire” is still practised in the Schar Mountains of Old Servia. The writer who describes it witnessed some years ago the use of the sacred fire at the village of Setonje, at the foot of the Homolye Mountains, in the heart of the great Servian forest. But on that occasion the fire was made in the manner described, not by a boy and girl, but by an old woman and an old man. Every fire in the village had previously been extinguished, and was afterwards relit with the new fire. [773]
|Among the Kachins fire is made by a man and woman jointly.| Among the Kachins of Burma, when people take solemn possession of a new house, a new fire is made in front of it by a man and woman jointly. A dry piece of bamboo is pegged down on the ground; the two fire-makers sit down facing each other at either end of it, and together rub another piece of bamboo on the horizontal piece, one of them holding the wrists of the other and both pressing down firmly till fire is elicited. [774]
|Thus the conception of the fire-sticks as male and female is carried out by requiring the male stick to be worked by a man and the female stick to be worked by a woman.| In the first at least of these customs, it is plain, the conception of the fire-sticks as male and female has been logically carried out by requiring the male fire-stick to be worked by a man and the female fire-stick to be held by a woman. But opinions seem to differ on the question whether the fire-makers |But opinions differ as to whether the fire-makers should be married or single.| should be wedded or single. The Djakuns prefer that the man should be married and the woman unmarried; on the other hand, the Slavs of the Schar Mountains clearly think it better that both should be single, since they entrust the duty of making the fire to a boy and girl. In so far as the man’s part in the work is concerned, some of our Scottish Highlanders agree with the Djakuns at the other end of the world; for the natives of Lewis “did also make use of a fire called Tin-egin, i.e. a forced fire, or fire of necessity, which they used as an antidote against the plague or murrain in cattle; and it was performed thus: all the fires in the parish were extinguished, and then eighty-one married men, being thought the necessary number for effecting this design, took two great planks of wood, and nine of them were employed by turns, who by their repeated efforts rubbed one of the planks against the other until the heat thereof produced fire; and from this forced fire each family is supplied with new fire, which is no sooner kindled than a pot full of water is quickly set on it, and afterwards sprinkled upon the people infected with the plague, or upon the cattle that have the murrain. And this they all say they find successful by experiment: it was practised in the main land, opposite to the south of Skie, within these thirty years.” [775] On the other hand, the Germans of Halberstadt sided with the South Slavs on this point, for they caused the forced fire, or need fire, as it is commonly called, to be made by two chaste boys, who pulled at a rope which ran round a wooden cylinder. [776] The theory and practice of the Basutos in South Africa were similar. After a birth had taken place they used to kindle the fire of the hut afresh, and “for this purpose it was necessary that a young man of chaste habits should rub two pieces of wood quickly one against another, until a flame sprung up, pure as himself. It was firmly believed that a premature death awaited him who should dare to take upon himself this office, after having lost his innocence. As soon, therefore, as a birth was proclaimed in the village, the fathers took their sons to undergo the ordeal. Those who felt themselves guilty confessed their crime, and submitted to be scourged rather than expose themselves to the consequences of a fatal temerity.” [777]
|Reasons for entrusting the making of fire to unmarried boys and girls.| It is not hard to divine why the task of twirling the male fire-stick in the hole of the female fire-stick should by some people be assigned to married men. The analogy of the process to the intercourse of the sexes furnishes an obvious reason. It is less easy to understand why other people should prefer to entrust the duty to unmarried boys. But probably the preference is based on a belief that chastity leaves the boys with a stock of reproductive energy which they may expend on the operation of fire-making, whereas married men dissipate the same energy in other channels. A somewhat similar train of thought may explain a rule of virginity enjoined on women who assist in the production of fire by holding the female fire-stick on the ground. As a virgin’s womb is free to conceive, so, it might be thought, will be the womb of the female fire-stick which she holds; whereas had the female fire-maker been already with child, she could not be reimpregnated, and consequently the female fire-stick could not give birth to a spark. Thus, in the sympathetic connexion between the fire-sticks and the fire-makers we seem to reach the ultimate origin of the order of the Vestal Virgins: they had to be chaste, because otherwise they could not light the fire. Once when the sacred fire had gone out, the Vestal in charge of it was suspected of having brought about the calamity by her unchastity, but she triumphantly repelled the suspicion by eliciting a flame from the cold ashes. [778] Ideas of the same primitive kind still linger among the French peasantry, who think that if a girl can blow up a smouldering candle into a flame she is a virgin, but that if she fails to do so, she is not. [779] In ancient Greece none but persons of pure life were allowed to blow up the holy fire with their mouths; a vile man who had polluted his lips was deemed unworthy to discharge the duty. [780]
|The holy fire and virgins of St. Brigit in Ireland.| The French superstition, which I have just mentioned, may well date from Druidical times, for there are some grounds for thinking that among the old Celts, as among their near kinsmen the Latins, holy fires were tended by virgins. In our own country perpetual fires were maintained in the temple of a goddess whom the Romans identified with Minerva, [781] but whose native Celtic name seems to have been Brigit. Like Minerva, Brigit was a goddess of poetry and wisdom, and she had two sisters also called Brigit, who presided over leechcraft and smithcraft respectively. This appears to be only another way of saying that Brigit was the patroness of bards, physicians, and smiths. [782] Now, at Kildare in Ireland the nuns of St. Brigit tended a perpetual holy fire down to the suppression of the monasteries under Henry VIII.; and we can hardly doubt that in doing so they merely kept up, under a Christian name, an ancient pagan worship of Brigit in her character of a fire-goddess or patroness of smiths. The nuns were nineteen in number. Each of them had the care of the fire for a single night in turn; and on the twentieth evening the last nun, having heaped wood on the fire, used to say, “Brigit, take charge of your own fire; for this night belongs to you.” She then went away, and next morning they always found the fire still burning and the usual quantity of fuel consumed. Like the Vestal fire at Rome in the old days, the fire of St. Brigit burned within a circular enclosure made of stakes and brushwood, and no male might set foot inside the fence. The nuns were allowed to fan the fire or blow it up with bellows, but they might not blow on it with their breath. [783] |Not to breathe on a holy fire.| Similarly it is said that the Balkan Slavs will not blow with their mouths on the holy fire of the domestic hearth; [784] a Brahman is forbidden to blow a fire with his mouth; [785] and among the Parsees the priests have to wear a veil over their mouth lest they should defile the sacred fire by their breath. [786] The custom of maintaining a perpetual fire was not peculiar |Other perpetual fires in Ireland.| to Kildare, but seems to have been common in Ireland, for the native records shew that such fires were kept up in several monasteries, in each of which a small church or oratory was set apart for the purpose. This was done, for example, at the monasteries of Seirkieran, Kilmainham, and Inishmurray. [787] We may conjecture that these holy fires were merely survivals of the perpetual fires which in pagan |St. Brigit’s fire perhaps fed with oak-wood.| times had burned in honour of Brigit. The view that Brigit was a fire-goddess is confirmed by the observation that in the Christian calendar her festival falls the day before Candlemas, and the customs observed at that season by Celtic peasantry seem to prove that she was a goddess of the crops as well as of fire. [788] If that was so, it is another reason for comparing her to Vesta, whose priestesses performed ceremonies to fertilise both the earth and the cattle. [789] Further, there are some grounds for connecting Brigit, like Vesta, with the oak; for at Kildare her Christian namesake, St. Brigit, otherwise known as St. Bride or St. Bridget, built her church under an oak-tree, which existed till the tenth century, and gave its name to the spot, for Kildare is Cilldara, “the church of the oak-tree.” [790] The “church of the oak” may well have displaced a temple or sanctuary of the oak, where in Druidical days the holy fire was fed, like the Vestal fire at Rome, with the wood of the sacred tree.
|Early Irish monasteries built in oak groves.| We may suspect that a conversion of this sort was often effected in Ireland by the early Christian missionaries. The monasteries of Derry and Durrow, founded by St. Columba, were both named after the oak groves amidst which they were built; and at Derry the saint spared the beautiful trees and strictly enjoined his successors to do the same. In his old age, when he lived an exile on the shores of the bleak storm-swept isle of Iona, his heart yearned to the home of his youth among the oak groves of Ireland, and he gave expression to the yearning in passionate verse:—
“That spot is the dearest on Erin’s ground,
For the treasures that peace and purity lend,
For the hosts of bright angels that circle it round,
Protecting its borders from end to end.
“The dearest of any on Erin’s ground,
For its peace and its beauty I gave it my love;
Each leaf of the oaks around Derry is found
To be crowded with angels from heaven above.
“My Derry! my Derry! my little oak grove,
My dwelling, my home, and my own little cell,
May God the Eternal in Heaven above
Send death to thy foes, and defend thee well.” [791]
A feeling of the same sort came over a very different exile in a very different scene, when growing old amid the turmoil, the gaieties, the distractions of Paris, he remembered the German oak woods of his youth.
“Ich hatte einst ein schönes Vaterland.
Der Eichenbaum
Wuchs dort so hoch, die Veilchen nickten sanft.
Es war ein Traum.”
|Virgin priestesses of fire among the Incas of Peru.| Far from the oaks of Erin and the saint’s last home among the stormy Hebrides, a sacred fire has been tended by holy virgins, with statelier rites and in more solemn fanes, under the equinoctial line. The Incas of Peru, who deemed themselves the children of the Sun, procured a new fire from their great father at the solstice in June, our Midsummer Day. They kindled it by holding towards the sun a hollow mirror, which reflected his beams on a tinder of cotton wool. But if the sky happened to be overcast at the time, they made the new fire by rubbing two sticks against each other; and they looked upon it as a bad omen when they were obliged to do this, for they said the Sun must be angry with them, since he refused to kindle the flame with his own hand. The sacred fire, however obtained, was deposited at Cuzco, the capital of Peru, in the temple of the Sun, and also in a great convent of holy virgins, who guarded it carefully throughout the year, and it was an evil augury if they suffered it to go out. These |Wives of the Sun in Peru.| virgins were regarded as the wives of the Sun, and they were bound to perpetual chastity. If any of them proved unfaithful to her husband the Sun, she was buried alive, like a Roman Vestal, and her paramour was strangled. The reason for putting her to death in this manner was probably, as at Rome, a reluctance to shed royal blood; for all these virgins were of the royal family, being daughters of the Incas or of his kinsmen. Besides tending the holy fire, they had to weave and make all the clothes worn by the Inca and his legitimate wife, to bake the bread that was offered to the Sun at his great festivals, and to brew the wine which the Inca and his family drank on these occasions. All the furniture of the convent, down to the pots, pans, and jars, were of gold and silver, just as in the temple of the Sun, because the virgins were deemed to be his wives. And they had a golden garden, where the very clods were of fine gold; where golden maize reared its stalks, leaves and cobs, all of the precious metal; and where golden shepherds, with slings and crooks of gold, tended golden sheep and lambs. [792] The analogy of these virgin guardians of the sacred flame furnishes an argument in favour of the view set forth in the preceding pages; for if the Peruvian Vestals were the brides of the Sun, may not the Roman Vestals have been the brides of the Fire?
|Virgin priestesses of fire in Mexico and Yucatan.| On the summit of the great pyramidal temple at Mexico two fires burned continually on stone hearths in front of two chapels, and dreadful misfortunes were supposed to follow if the fires were allowed to go out. They were kept up by priests and maidens, some of whom had taken a vow of perpetual virginity. But most of these girls seem to have served only for a year or more until their marriage. They offered incense to the idols, wove cloths for the service of the temple, swept the sacred area, and baked the cakes which were presented to the gods but eaten by their priests. They were clad all in white, without any ornament. A broom and a censer were their emblems. Death was the penalty inflicted on the faithless virgin who polluted by her incontinence the temple of the god. [793] In Yucatan there was an order of Vestals instituted by a princess, who acted as lady-superior and was deified after her death under the title of the Virgin of the Fire. The members enrolled themselves voluntarily either for life or for a term of years, after which they might marry. Their duty was to tend the sacred fire, the emblem of the sun. If they broke their vow of chastity or allowed the fire to go out, they were shot to death with arrows. [794]
|Virgin priestesses of fire among the Baganda.| Amongst the Baganda of Central Africa there used to be an order of Vestal Virgins (bakaja) who were attached to the temples of the gods. Their duties were to keep the fire of the god burning all night, to see that there was a good supply of firewood, and to watch that the suppliants did not bring to the deity anything that was tabooed to him. These maidens are also said to have had charge of some of the vessels. All of them were young girls; no man might touch them; and when they reached the age of puberty, the god ordered them to be given in marriage. The place of a girl who thus vacated office had to be supplied by another girl taken from the same clan. [795]
|Resemblance between the Flamen Dialis of the Romans and the Agnihotri or fire-priest of the Brahmans.| We have seen that some people commit the task of making fire by friction to married men; and following the opinion of other scholars I have conjectured that in some of the Latin tribes the duty of kindling and feeding the sacred fire may have been assigned to the Flamen Dialis, who had always to be married; if his wife died, he vacated his office. [796] The sanctity of his fire is proved by the rule that no brand might be taken from his house except for the purpose of a sacrifice. [797] Further, the importance ascribed to the discharge of his duties is attested by another old rule which forbade him to be absent from his house in Rome for a single night. [798] The prohibition would be intelligible if one of his duties had formerly been to superintend the maintenance of a perpetual fire. However that may have been, the life of the priest was regulated by a whole code of curious restrictions or taboos, which rendered the office so burdensome and vexatious that, in spite of the high honours attached to the post, for a period of more than seventy years together no man was found willing to undertake it. [799] Some of these restrictions will be examined later on. [800] Their similarity to the rules of life still observed in India by the Brahmans who are fire-priests (Agnihotris) seems to confirm the view that the Flamen also was originally a fire-priest. The parallel between the two priesthoods would be all the more remarkable if, as some scholars hold, the very names Brahman and Flamen are philologically identical. [801] As to these Brahmanical fire-priests or Agnihotris we are told that the number of them nowadays is very limited, because the ceremonies involve heavy expenditure, and the rules which regulate them are very elaborate and difficult. The offering of food to the fire at meals is, indeed, one of the five daily duties of every Brahman; but the regular fire-service is the special duty of the Agnihotri. In order that he may be ceremonially pure he is bound by certain obligations not to travel or remain away from home for any long time; to sell nothing which is produced by himself or his family; to pay little attention to worldly affairs; to speak the truth; to bathe and worship the deities in the afternoon as well as in the morning; and to sacrifice to his deceased ancestors on the fifteenth of every month. He is not allowed to take food at night. He may not eat alkaline salt, meat, honey, and inferior grain, such as some varieties of pulse, millet, and the egg plant. He never wears shoes nor sleeps on a bed, but always on the ground. He is expected to keep awake most of the night and to study the Shâstras. He may have no connexion with, nor unholy thoughts regarding, any woman but his wife; and he must abstain from every other act that involves personal impurity. [802] With these rules we may compare some of the obligations laid on the Flamen Dialis. In the old days, as we saw, he was bound never to be absent from his house for a single night. He might not touch or even name raw meat, beans, ivy, and a she-goat; he might not eat leavened bread, nor touch a dead body; and the feet of his bed had always to be smeared with mud. [803] This last rule seems to be a mitigation of an older custom of sleeping on the ground, a custom which is still observed by the fire-priest in India, as it was in antiquity by the priests of Zeus at Dodona. [804] Similarly the priest of the old Prussian god Potrimpo was bound to sleep on the bare earth for three nights before he sacrificed to the deity. [805]
|Mode in which the Agnihotri procures fresh fire by the friction of fire-sticks.| Every Agnihotri has a separate room in his house where the sacred fire is kept burning in a small pit of a cubit square. Should the fire chance to go out, the priest must get fresh fire from another priest or procure it by the friction of fire-sticks (arani). These comprise, first, a block of sami wood (Prosopis spicigera) in which a small hole is made emblematical of the female principle (sakti yoni), and, second, an upright shaft which is made to revolve in the hole of the block by means of a rope. The point in the drill where the rope is applied to cause it to revolve is called deva yoni. Two priests take part in the operation. Before they begin they sing a hymn in honour of the fire-god Agni. When the fire has been kindled they place it in a copper vessel and sprinkle it with powdered cow-dung. When it is well alight, they cover it with another copper vessel, sprinkle it with drops of water, and sing another hymn in honour of Agni. Finally, the new fire is consigned to the fire-pit. [806] According to another description of the modern Indian fire-drill, the lower block is usually made of the hard wood of the khadira or khair tree (Acacia catechu), and it contains two shallow holes. In one of these holes the revolving drill works and produces sparks by friction; the other hole contains tinder which is ignited by means of the sparks. This latter hole is known as the yoni, the female organ of generation. The upper or revolving portion of the drill is called the pramantha. It consists of a round shaft of hard wood, with a spike of softer wood inserted in its lower end. One priest causes the shaft to revolve by pulling a cord, while another priest presses the spike down into the hole in the block by leaning hard upon a flat board placed on the top of the shaft. The spike is generally made of the peepul or sacred fig-tree. When it has become charred by friction, it is replaced by another. [807] According to one account, the fire is made in this fashion, not by two priests, but by the Brahman and his wife; she pulls the cord, while he holds the borer in the hole and recites the spells necessary for the production of the fire. [808]
|The Indian fire-sticks made from the sacred fig and sami wood.| This practice of the modern Agnihotri or fire-priest of India is in general accord with the precepts laid down in the ancient sacred books of his religion. For these direct that the upper or male stick of the fire-drill should be made of the sacred fig-tree (asvattha), and the lower or female stick of sami wood (Prosopis spicigera); and they draw out the analogy between the process of fire-making and the intercourse of the sexes in minute detail. [809] It deserves to be |The male fire-stick made by preference from a sacred fig-tree growing as a parasite on the female sami tree.| noted that the male fire-stick was cut by preference from a sacred fig-tree which grew as a parasite on a sami or female tree. The reason for this preference is obvious to the primitive mind. A parasite clasping a tree with its tendrils is conceived as a man embracing a woman, hence a pair of fire-sticks made from a pair of trees thus interlaced will naturally possess the power of procreating fire by friction in an unusually high degree. [810] So completely, in the Hindoo mind, does the process of making fire by friction blend with the union of the human sexes that it is actually employed as part of a charm to procure male offspring. [811] Such a confusion of thought helps us to understand the part played by the domestic fire in the ritual of marriage and birth as well as in the legends of the miraculous origin of the Latin kings. [812] In ancient India the male and the female fire-stick were identified with King Pururavas and the nymph Urvasi, whose loves and sorrows formed the theme of a beautiful tale. [813]
|The Greeks also preferred to make one of the fire-sticks from a parasitic plant.| Like the ancient Indians, the Greeks seem to have preferred that one of the two fire-sticks should be made from a parasitic or creeping plant. They recommended that the borer of the fire-drill should be made of laurel and the board of ivy or another creeper, apparently a kind of wild vine which grew like ivy upon trees; but in practice both the borer and the board were sometimes made of other woods, among which buckthorn, the evergreen oak, and the lime are particularly mentioned. [814] When we consider the analogy of the Indian preference for a borer made from a parasite, and remember how deeply rooted in the primitive mind is the comparison of the friction of the fire-sticks to the union |The reason for such a preference is the analogy of the union of the sexes.| of the sexes, we shall hardly doubt that the Greeks originally chose the ivy or wild vine for a fire-stick from motives of the sort which led the Hindoos to select the wood of a parasitic fig-tree for the same purpose. But while the Hindoos regarded the parasite as male and the tree to which it clung as female, the Greeks of Theophrastus’s time seem to have inverted this conception, since they recommended that the board, which plays the part of the female in the fire-drill, should be made of ivy or another creeper, whereas the borer, which necessarily represents the male, was to be fashioned out of laurel. This would imply that the ivy was a female and the laurel a male. Yet in Greek, on the contrary, the word for ivy is masculine, and the plant was identified mythologically with the male god Dionysus; [815] whereas the word for laurel is feminine and the tree was identified with a nymph. Hence we may conjecture that at first the Greeks, like the Hindoos, regarded the clinging creeper as the male and the tree which it embraced as the female, and that of old, therefore, they made the borer of the fire-drill out of ivy and the board out of laurel. If this was so, the reasons which led them to reverse the usage can only be guessed at. Perhaps practical convenience had a share in bringing about the change. For the laurel is, as the late Professor H. Marshall Ward kindly informed me, a harder wood than the ivy, and to judge by general, though not universal, practice most people find it easier to make fire by the friction of a hard borer on a soft board than by rubbing a hard board with a soft point. This, therefore, would be a reason for making the borer of laurel and the board of ivy. If such a change took place in the history of the Greek fire-drill, it would be an interesting example of superstition modified, if not vanquished, by utility in the struggle for existence.
