ANALOGUES OF HODDENTIN.
In the citation from the Spanish poet Villagrá, already given, the suggestion occurs that some relationship existed between the powder scattered so freely during the Spanish "carnestolendas" and the "kunque" thrown by the people of Tusayan upon the Spaniards and their horses when the Spaniards first entered that country. This analogy is a very striking one, even though the Spaniards have long since lost all idea of the meaning of the practice which they still follow. It is to be noted, however, that one of the occasions when this flour is most freely used is the Eve of All Saints (Hallowe'en), when the ghosts or ancestors of the community were to be the recipients of every attention.[397]
In the East, the use of the reddish or purple powder called the "gulál" is widely prevalent, but it is used at the feast of Huli, which occurs at the time of the vernal equinox.
There seems to have been used in Japan in very ancient days a powder identical with the hoddentin, and, like it, credited with the power to cure and rejuvenate.
In the mythical period, from the most ancient times to about B. C. 200, being the period of the so-called pure Japanese "medicine," it is related that Ona-muchi-no-mikoko gave these directions to a hare which had been flayed by a crocodile: "Go quickly now to the river mouth, wash thy body with fresh water, then take the pollen of the sedges and spread it about, and roll about upon it; whereupon thy body will certainly be restored to its original state."[398]
There is no indication that in the above case the "pollen of the sedges" had ever occupied a place in the list of foods. It would appear that its magical effects were strictly dependent upon the fact that it was recognized as the reproductive agent in the life of the plant.
No allusion has yet been made to the hoddentin of the Navajo, who are the brothers of the Apache. Surgeon Matthews[399] has referred to it under the name of tqa-di-tinᐟ, or ta-di-tinᐟ, "the pollen, especially the pollen of corn."
This appears to me to be a very interesting case of a compromise between the religious ideas of two entirely different systems or sects. The Navajo, as now known to us, are the offspring of the original Apache or Tinneh invaders and the refugees from the Rio Grande and Zuñi Pueblos, who fled to the fierce and cruel Apache to seek safety from the fiercer and more cruel Spanish.
The Apache, we have shown, offer up in sacrifice their traditional food, the pollen of the tule. The Zuñi, as we have also shown, offer up their traditional food, the meal of corn, to which there have since been added sea shells and other components with a symbolical significance. The Navajo, the progeny of both, naturally seek to effect a combination or compromise of the two systems and make use of the pollen of the corn. Kohl narrates an Ojibwa legend to the effect that their god Menaboju, returning from the warpath, painted his face with "pleasant yellow stripes ... of the yellow foam that covers the water in spring," and he adds that this is "probably the yellow pollen that falls from the pine." He quotes[400] another legend of the magic red powder for curing diseases once given by the snake spirit of the waters to an Ojibwa.
Godfrey Higgins[401] has this to say of the use of pollen by the ancients which he recognizes as connected with the principle of fertility:
Αρωμα, the sweet smell, means also a flower, that is Pushpa or Pushto. This was the language of the followers of the Phasah or the Lamb—it was the language of the Flower, of the Natzir, of the Flos-floris of Flora, of the Arouma, and of the flour of Ceres, or the Eucharistia. It was the language of the pollen, the pollen of plants, the principle of generation, of the Pole or Phallus.
Again he says:
Buddha was a flower, because as flour or pollen he was the principle of fructification or generation. He was flour because flour was the fine or valuable part of the plant of Ceres, or wheat, the pollen which, I am told, in this plant, and in this plant alone, renews itself when destroyed. When the flour, pollen, is killed, it grows again several times. This is a very beautiful type or symbol of the resurrection. On this account the flour of wheat was the sacrifice offered to the Χρης or Ceres in the Εὐχαριστία. In this pollen we have the name of pall or pallium and of Pallas, in the first language meaning wisdom.... When the devotee ate the bread he ate the pollen, and thus ate the body of the God of generation; hence might come transubstantiation.
Lupton,[402] in 1660, describes a "powder of the flowers [pollen?] of elder, gathered on a midsummer day," which was taken to restore lost youth. Brand, it may be as well to say, traces back the custom of throwing flour into the faces of women and others on the streets at Shrovetide, in Minorca and elsewhere, to the time of the Romans.[403]
In writing the description of the Snake Dance of the Moquis of Arizona, I ventured to advance the surmise that the corn flour with which the sacred snakes were covered, and with which the air was whitened, would be found upon investigation to be closely related to the crithomancy or divination by grains of the cereals, as practiced among the ancient Greeks. Crithomancy, strictly speaking, meant a divination by grains of corn. The expression which I should have employed was alphitomancy, a divination "by meal, flower, or branne."[404] But both methods of divination have been noticed among the aborigines of America.
In Peru the medicine-men were divided into classes, as were those of ancient Egypt. These medicine-men "made the various means of divination specialities." Some of them predicted by "the shapes of grains of maize taken at random."[405] In Guatemala grains of corn or of chile were used indiscriminately, and in Guazacualco the medicine-women used grains of frijoles or black beans. In Guatemala they had what they called "ahquij." "Este modo de adivinar se llama ahquij, malol-tzitè, malol-ixim, esto es: el que adivina por el sol, ó por granos de maiz ó chile."[406]
In Guazacualco the medicine-women "hechaban suertes con granos de Frisoles, a manera de Dados, i hacian sus invocaciones, porque eran Hechiceros: i si el Dado decia bien, proseguian en la cura, diciendo que sanaria: i si mal, no bolvian al enfermo."[407]
Herrera in the preceding paragraph recognizes the close similarity between this sacred ceremony of casting lots or divining, and the more orthodox method of gambling, pure and simple, which has in every case been derived from a sacred origin.
"Les Hachus [one class of Peruvian priests] consultaient l'avenir au moyen de grains de maïs ou des excréments des animaux."[408]
The Mexicans "para saber si los enfermos habian de morir, ó sanar de la enfermedad que tenian, echaban un puñado de maiz lo mas grueso que podian haber, y lanzábanlo siete ó ocho veces, como lanzan los dados los que los juegan, y si algun grano quedaba enhiesto, decian que era señal de muerte."[409]
Father Brebœuf relates that at the Huron feast of the dead, which occurred every 8 or 10 years and which he saw at Ossossane, "a few grains of Indian corn were thrown by the women upon the sacred relics."[410]