Satan walks in one shoe. Satan flees if man repeats El-Sajada. Yawning, sleeping and sneezing are from Satan. A donkey brays when he sees a demon. Satan exposes himself to the people of the mosques. Satan's pride not to have knelt down to Adam and to have seduced him to eat from the tree. Is Eden in heaven or on earth? Satan showed himself to Noah in the ark. Satan showed himself to Abraham when he was about to offer up Isaac. Satan showed himself to Moses. Satan showed himself to Zul Kifl. Satan showed himself to Job. Now all this and nearly every chapter is a door to a world of groveling superstition and demonolatry - finds its parallel in the beliefs of the animist. Among them the earth, air and water are supposed to be peopled with spirits. They are most numerous in the forest and in the waste fields, where they lie in wait for the living, and afflict them with disease and madness, or drag them away to an awful death. "They prowl round the houses at night, they spy through the crevices of the partitions or come into the house in the form of some man or beast. Sometimes in epidemics they can even be seen. There are men who have the spiritual gift of being able to see spirits and souls. Sometimes these men see the spirit of the dead stepping behind the coffin and perching the soul of a living man upon it - the inevitable result of which is, that the man must die. The number of dangerous spirits to which human misery is traced back is legion. Names are given and attributes ascribed to spirits of particularly bad repute, such as the spirit who causes cholera: he is of a terrific size, and carries a mighty club with which he smites his victim to the earth." 5 The spirits are mostly mischievous and ill-disposed. They lurk in tree-tops and all sorts of places and cause disease, misfortune and death. It is much more important to keep the hurtful ones in good humor than to honor the kindly disposed, who are, therefore, practically ignored. There are all sorts of legends current among animists of India as to the origin of these ghosts or spirits, but most of them have some admixture proving their comparatively late date. A clear distinction must be made between gods and spirits. There are no gods in Animism proper. The word god implies a higher degree of personality, and where that is attributed to these spirits the influence of some more advanced creed can generally be traced. The impersonal element in Animism must strike any one who tries to investigate it. Undefined shadowy powers with no settled habitation sigh in the wind, whisper in the rustling leaf and lurk in silence in the tree-tops. They may attach themselves for longer or shorter periods to a particular object. Any striking natural feature such as a blasted or lonely tree, a waterfall, a mountain peak, is sure to be thus inhabited. But the primeval forest is their special domain, and as this is cleared little sacred groves must everywhere be left standing. Constantly one is told of some tree or grove, "a very strong spirit lives there," but if you ask its name or origin none can be assigned. Its existence and power are undoubted, and many tales of the mischief it has caused will be quoted in proof. In every particular the popular Moslem doctrine of jinn is Animistic, except their belief in Allah as Lord of jinn, as well as the Lord of men. He is over all, God blessed forever and yet for fear of the jinn the Moslem masses are all their lifetime subject to fear and dread and bondage. "The Living Christ and Dying Heathenism," Warneck, p. 68. What Warneck writes of the pagan tribes in Malaysia is not less true of their Moslem neighbors and of Moslem women and children in Arabia and the villages of the Delta. "Except in case of necessity," he says, "no one leaves the house after sunset or in moonlight, when the spirits swarm in great numbers. Houses and villages are shifted here and there to escape the influence of evil spirits. Sick people are carried secretly by night into another house to get away from the tormenting spirit. They prefer to deceive the spirits. During harvest loud singing and whistling are avoided, lest the spirits should suppose that men were rejoicing at an abundant harvest, and out of envy take their share.” 6 When I traveled in Yemen nothing so distressed my Arab companions as the awful habit of whistling. There are traditions to prove that Mohammed forbade any one to blow a pipe or whistle especially at night-time. In regard to devil-worship and the fear of evil spirits, Wilkinson says that in Malay "the upper stratum is, of course, Moslem; the Malays accept the whole demonology of the Persians and Arabs and have even added to it by assuming mere demon-epithets such as "accursed" (mala'un) or misbegotten" (haramzadah, jadah) to be the names of new varieties of devils. The next stratum is Hindu because Hanuman is still vaguely remembered as a dog-faced or horsefaced demon, meteors are described as the ghostly arrows of Arjuna, and the legends of the Indian Ramayana have become folk-lore in the Northern States. The ancient literature of the Malays is also full of references to Hindu mythology." His concluding words are significant: "It is comparatively easy to identify those portions of Malay demonology which owe their existence to the historic Moslem or Hindu influenecs, but below these upper strata of beliefs we find further strata belonging to primeval religions "The Living Christ and Dying Heathenism," p. 79. of whose character we know very little. We are here dealing with a very mixed race of people who have probably preserved traditions handed down to them from several distinct sources. A few facts stand out fairly distinctly. The fishermen along the coast of the Peninsula sacrifice to four great spirits of the sea who go by many names but whose scope of authority is always the same; one is the Spirit of Bays, another that of Banks or Beaches, another that of Headlands, and the last and fiercest is the Spirit of Tideways or Midcurrents. Most of the designations given to these ancient divinities are merely descriptive of their functions. So long as things go well, the names of the four Moslem Archangels are considered sufficient; if things go badly Sanscrit words are used; if matters become desperate, the fisherman throws prudence to the winds and appeals to the spirits in pure Indonesian terms which they cannot fail to understand." 7 CHAPTER VIII PAGAN PRACTICES IN CONNECTION WITH THE PILGRIMAGE WHEN We consider Mecca, Mohammed's words of prophecy in the second chapter of his book seem to have been literally fulfilled: "So we have made you the center of the nations that you should bear witness to men." The old pagan pantheon has become the religious sanctuary and the goal of universal pilgrimage for one-seventh of the human race. From Sierra Leone to Canton, and from Tobolsk to Cape Town, the faithful spread their prayer carpets, build their houses (in fulfillment of an important tradition, even their outhouses!) and bury their dead toward the meridian of Mecca. If the Moslem world could be viewed from an aëroplane, the observer would see concentric circles of living worshipers covering an ever-widening area, and one would also see vast areas of Moslem cemeteries with every grave dug toward the sacred city. The earliest settlements at Mecca were undoubtedly due to the fact that the caravan trade from South Arabia northward found here a stopping place near the spring of Zem Zem, long before the time of Mohammed, just as the early Roman settlements at Wiesbaden and other places in Germany were so located because of the medicinal waters. The sacred Mosque, Masjid al Haram, with the Ka'aba as its center, is located in the middle of the city. Mecca lies in a hot, sandy valley, absolutely without verdure and surrounded by rocky, barren hills, destitute of trees or even shrubs. The valley is about 300 feet wide and 4,000 feet long, and slopes towards the south. The Ka'aba or House of God (Beit Allah) is located in the bed of the valley. All 146 |