target="_blank" rel="nofollow" href="#ulink_4f73cb36-5760-5f3c-913e-f3bd06a19bae">183 Ibid. p. 375.
184 Barth, Religions of India, p. 264. Laws of Manu, iii. 206; v. 105, 121, 124; xi. 110, 203, 213.
185 Stengel, Die griechischen Kultusaltertümer, p. 138 sqq.
186 Plutarch, De sera numinis vindicta, 14.
187 Leviticus, xvi.
188 Numbers, viii. 7; xix. 4–9, 13 sqq.; xxxi. 23. Leviticus, xvi. 14 sqq.
189 Psalms, li. 2.
190 Harnack, op. cit. ii. 140 sqq.
191 Catechism of the Council of Trent, ii. 2. 10, p. 162.
192 Quoted by Harnack, op. cit. ii. 119.
In this materialistic conception of sin there is an obvious confusion between cause and effect, between the sin and its punishment. Sin is looked upon as a substance charged with injurious energy, which will sooner or later discharge itself to the discomfort or destruction of anybody who is infected with it. The sick Chinese says of his disease, “it is my sin,” instead of saying, “it is the punishment of my sin.”193 Both in Hebrew and in the Vedic language the word for sin is used in a similar way.194 “In the consciousness of the pious Israelite,” Professor Schultz observes, “sin, guilt, and punishment, are ideas so directly connected that the words for them are interchangeable.”195 The prophets frequently and emphatically declare that there is in sin itself a power which must destroy the sinner.196 So, too, as M. Bergaigne points out, there is in the Vedic notion of sin, “la croyance à une sorte de vertu propre du péché, grâce à laquelle il produit de lui-même son effet nécessaire, à savoir le châtiment du pécheur.”197 Sins are thus treated like diseases, or the germs of diseases, of which patients likewise try to rid themselves by washing or burning, or which are described in the very language often applied to sins as fetters which hold them chained.198 All kinds of evil are in this way materialised. The Shamanistic peoples of Siberia, says Georgi, “hold evil to be a self-existing substance which they call by an infinitude of particular names.”199 According to Moorish ideas, l-bas, or “misfortune,” is a kind of infection, which may be contracted by contact and removed by water or fire; hence in all parts of Morocco water- and fire-ceremonies are performed annually, either on the ʿâshur-eve or at midsummer, l-ʿanṣara, for the purpose of purifying men, animals, and fruit-trees.200 And just as the Moors, on these occasions, rid themselves of l-bas, so, in modern Greece, the women make a fire on Midsummer Eve, and jump over it, crying, “I leave my sins.”201
193 Edkins, Religion in China, p. 134.
194 Holzman, ‘Sünde und Sühne in den Rigvedahymnen und den Psalmen,’ in Zeitschr. f. Völkerpsychologie, xv. 9.
195 Schultz, op. cit. ii. 306. Cf. Curtiss, Primitive Semitic Religion To-day, p. 124 sqq.
196 Ibid. ii. 308 sq.
197 Bergaigne, Religion védique, iii. 163. Cf. Rig-Veda, x. 132. 5.
198 Oldenberg, op. cit. p. 288.
199 Georgi, Russia, iii. 257.
200 The various methods of transferring or expelling evil, which abundantly illustrate the materialistic notions held about it, have been treated by Dr. Frazer with unrivalled learning (The Golden Bough), iii. 1 sqq. I have little doubt that the fire- and water-ceremonies, once practised all over Europe on a certain day every year, belong to the same group of rites. “The best general explanation of these European fire-festivals,” says Dr. Frazer (ibid. iii. 300), “seems to be the one given by Mannhardt, namely, that they are sun-charms or magical ceremonies intended to ensure a proper supply of sunshine for men, animals, and plants.” But it should be noticed that in Europe, as in Morocco, a purificatory purpose is expressly ascribed to them by the very persons by whom they are practised (see Frazer, op. cit. iii. 238 sqq.), that they alternate with lustration by water (see Grimm, Teutonic Mythology, ii. 588 sqq.). On the other hand, in Dr. Frazer’s exhaustive description of these ceremonies I fail to discover a single fact which would make Mannhardt’s hypothesis at all probable. Dr. Frazer says (op. cit. iii. 301), “The custom of rolling a burning wheel down a hillside, which is often observed at these times, seems a very natural imitation of the sun’s course in the sky.” To me it appears as a method of distributing the purificatory energy over the fields or vineyards. Notice, for instance, the following statements:—In the Rhon Mountains, Bavaria, “a wheel wrapt in combustibles, was kindled and rolled down the hill; and the young people rushed about the fields with their burning torches and brooms. … In neighbouring villages of Hesse … it is thought that wherever the burning wheels roll, the fields will be safe from hail and storm” (ibid. iii. 243 sq.). At Volkmarsen, in Hesse, “in some places tar-barrels or wheels wrapt in straw used to be set on fire, and then sent rolling down the hillside. In others the boys light torches and whisps of straw at the bonfires and rush about brandishing them in their hands” (ibid. iii. 254). In Münsterland, “boys with blazing bundles of straw run over the fields to make them fruitful” (ibid. iii. 255). Dr. Frazer says (ibid. iii. 301), “The custom of throwing blazing discs, shaped liked suns, into the air is probably also a piece of imitative magic.” But why should it not, in conformity with other practices, be regarded as a means of purifying the air? According to old writers, the object of Midsummer fires was to disperse the aerial dragons (ibid. iii. 267). It would carry me too far from my subject to enter into further details. I have dealt with the matter in my article ‘Midsummer Customs in Morocco.’ in Folk-Lore, xvi. 27–47.
201 Grimm, Teutonic Mythology, ii. 623.
Closely connected with the primitive conception of sin, is that of a curse. In fact, the injurious energy attributed to a sinful act, is in many