The Evolution of the Dragon. Grafton Elliot Smith

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СКАЧАТЬ in Chinese literature (p. 274) [as also in Southern Arabia]; also of trees that lodge or can change into maidens of transcendent beauty (p. 276).

      It is further significant that amongst the stories of souls of men taking up their residence in and animating trees and plants, the human being is usually a woman, accompanied by "a fox, a dog, an old raven or the like" (p. 276).

Thus in China are found all the elements out of which Dr. Rendel Harris believes the Aphrodite cult was compounded in Cyprus,[65] the animation of the anthropoid plant, its human cry, its association with a beautiful maiden and a dog.[66]

      The immemorial custom of planting trees on graves in China is supposed by De Groot (p. 277) to be due to "the desire to strengthen the soul of the buried person, thus to save his body from corruption, for which reason trees such as pines and cypresses, deemed to be bearers of great vitality for being possessed of more shen than other trees, were used preferably for such purposes". But may not such beliefs also be an expression of the idea that a tree growing upon a grave is developed from and becomes the personification of the deceased? The significance of the selection of pines and cypresses may be compared to that associated with the so-called "cedars" in Babylonia, Egypt, and Phœnicia, and the myrrh- and frankincense-producing trees in Arabia and East Africa. They have come to be accredited with "soul-substance," since their use in mummification and as incense and for making coffins, has made them the means for attaining a future existence. Hence in course of time they came to be regarded as charged with the spirit of vitality, the shen or "soul-substance".

In China also it was because the woods of the pine or fir and the cyprus were used for making coffins and grave-vaults and that pine-resin was regarded as a means of attaining immortality (De Groot, op. cit. pp. 296 and 297) that such veneration was bestowed upon these trees. "At an early date, Taoist seekers after immortality transplanted that animation [of the hardy long-lived fir and cypress[67]] into themselves by consuming the resin of those trees, which, apparently, they looked upon as coagulated soul-substance, the counterpart of the blood in men and animals" (p. 296).

      In India the amrita, the god's food of immortality, was sometimes regarded as the sap exuded from the sacred trees of paradise.

      Elsewhere in these pages it is explained how the vaguely defined Mother "Goddess" and the more distinctly anthropoid Water "God," which originally developed quite independently the one of the other, ultimately came to exert a profound and mutual influence, so that many of the attributes which originally belonged to one of them came to be shared with the other. Many factors played a part in this process of blending and confusion of sex. As I shall explain later, when the moon came to be regarded as the dwelling or the impersonation of Hathor, the supposed influence of the moon over water led to a further assimilation of her attributes with those of Osiris as the controller of water, which received definite expression in a lunar form of Osiris.

      But the link that is most intimately related to the subject of this address is provided by the personification of the Mother-Goddess in incense-trees. For incense thus became the sweat or the tears of the Great Mother just as the water of libation was regarded as the fluid of Osiris.

[59] As I shall explain later (see page 38), the idea of the divinity of the incense-tree was a result of, and not the reason for, the practice of incense-burning. As one of the means by which the resurrection was attained incense became a giver of divinity; and by a simple process of rationalization the tree which produced this divine substance became a god.

      The reference to the "eye of the body" (see p. 55) means the life-giving god or goddess who is the "eye" of the sky, i.e. the god with whom the dead king is identified.

[60] It would lead me too far afield to enter into a discussion of the use of scents and unguents, which is closely related to this question.

[61] "The Religion of the Semites," p. 133.

[62] Breasted, p. 28.

[63] For reasons explained on a subsequent page (56).

[64] It is also worth considering whether the extension of this idea may not have been responsible for originating the practice of cremation—as a device for transferring, not merely the animating incense and the supplications of the living, but also the body of the deceased to the sky-world. This, of course, did not happen in Egypt, but in some other country which adopted the Egyptian practice of incense-burning, but was not hampered by the religious conservatism that guarded the sacredness of the corpse.

[65] "The Ascent of Olympus," 1917.

[66] For a collection of stories relating to human beings, generally women, dwelling in trees, see Hartland's "Legend of Perseus".

[67] The fact that the fir and cypress are "hardy and long-lived" is not the reason for their being accredited with these life-prolonging qualities. But once the latter virtues had become attributed to them the fact that the trees were "hardy and long-lived" may have been used to bolster up the belief by a process of rationalization.

The Breath of Life.

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      Although the pouring of libations and the burning of incense played so prominent a part in the ritual of animating the statue or the mummy, the most important incident in the ceremony was the "opening of the mouth," which was regarded as giving it the breath of life.

      Elsewhere[68] I have suggested that the conception of the heart and blood as the vehicles of life, feeling, volition, and knowledge may have been extremely ancient. It is not known when or under what circumstances the idea of the breath being the "life" was first entertained. The fact that in certain primitive systems of philosophy the breath was supposed to have something to do with the heart suggests that these beliefs may be a constituent element of the ancient heart-theory. In some of the rock-pictures in America, Australia, and elsewhere the air-passages are represented leading to the heart. But there can be little doubt that the practice of mummification gave greater definiteness to the ideas regarding the "heart" and "breath," which eventually led to a differentiation between their supposed functions.[69] As the heart and the blood were obviously present in the dead body they could no longer be regarded as the "life". The breath was clearly the "element" the lack of which rendered the body inanimate. It was therefore regarded as necessary to set the heart working. The heart then came to be looked upon as the seat of knowledge, the organ that feels and wills during waking life. All the pulsating motions of the body seem to have been regarded, like the act of respiration, as expressions of the vital principle or "life," which Dutch ethnological writers refer to as "soul substance". The neighbourhood of certain joints where the pulse can be felt most readily, and the top of the head, where pulsation can be felt in the infant's fontanelle, were therefore regarded by some Asiatic peoples as the places where the substance СКАЧАТЬ