In Tonga, the tradition is connected with this history of Cain:—
“The god Tangaloa,[67] who first inhabited this earth, is this Adam. He had two sons, who went to live at Boloton.... The younger was very clever. Tonbo (the eldest) was very different; he did nothing but walk about, sleep, and covet the works of his brother. One day he met his brother out walking, and knocked him down. Then their father arrived at Boloton, and in great anger said, ‘Why has thou killed thy brother. Fly, wretched man; fly. Your race shall be black, and your soul depraved; you shall labour without success. Begone; you shall not go to the land of your brother, but your brother shall come sometimes to trade with you.’ And he said to the family of the victim, ‘Go towards the great land; your skin shall be white; you shall excel in all good things.’”—Gainet, i. 93.[68]
Cardinal Wiseman (in his “Science and Revealed Religion,” lect. iii.), says, with reference to Aristotle’s distribution of mankind into races by colour:—
“There is a passage in Julius Firmicus, overlooked by the commentators of Aristotle, which gives us the same ternary division, with the colours of each race. ‘In the first place,’ he writes, ‘speaking of the characters and colours of men, they agree in saying,—if by the mixed influence of the stars, the characters and complexions of men are distributed; and if the course of the heavenly bodies, by a certain kind of artful painting, form the lineaments of mortal bodies; that is, if the moon makes men white, Mars red, and Saturn black, how comes it that in Ethiopia all are born black, in Germany white, and in Thrace red?’”—Astronomicon, lib. i., c. i., ed. Basil. 1551, p. 3.
Now this passage seems to me to have a still further significance in the words I have italicised, with reference to the argument I have in hand. It transpires, therefore, that the ancients had the notion that Saturn made men black, which provoked the natural query, why then are only the Ethiopians black? That it should ever have been supposed that the distant Saturn, astronomically regarded, should have had such an influence is preposterous, but if the mythological personage, Saturn, ch. x., has been sufficiently identified with Noah, and the deification of the hero in the planet (comp. pp. 159, 161) probable, the notion that he made men black, must be the tradition of the event we are considering.
I have elsewhere traced the fulfilment of the text which says that Canaan shall be the “servant of servants to his brethren;” but as the following extract from Klaproth, in evidence of the same, has also its significance with reference to the point I am now considering—viz. the curse of blackness—I prefer to give it a place here:—“Sakhalian oudehounga est expliqué en Chinois par ‘Khian chéon,’ et par ‘li chu,’ ce qui signifie les ‘têtes noires’ et le ‘peuple noir,’ expression par laquelle on designe la ‘bas peuple’ ou les ‘paysans.’ Cette une expression usitée dans plusieures pays Asiatiques ainsi qu’en Russie.”—Klaproth, “Mem. Relatif a l’Asie;” vide strictures on Pere Amyot’s “Mandchou Dict.”
In the oldest books of the Zendavasta, virtue and vice are personified as white and black. “The contrast between good and evil is strongly and sharply marked in the Gâthâs.... They go a step further and personify the two parties to the struggle. One is a ‘white,’ or holy spirit (spentô mainyus), and the other, a ‘dark’ spirit (angrô mainyus). But this personification is merely poetical or metaphysical, not real.”—Rawlinson’s “Ancient Monarchies,” iii. p. 106. The contrast, however, between good and evil, as white and black was the genuine expression of their idea or tradition. (Hung. ap. Bunsen, iii. p. 476, admits, at least in one instance in the Gâthâs, “an angra (‘black’) is put in opposition to the white, or more holy spirit.”)
Mr Hunter (“Rural Bengal,” p. 114) says of the primitive Aryans in India—“The ancient singer praises the god who ‘destroyed the Dasyans and protected the Aryan colour” (Rig. Veda., iii. pp. 34–39), and “the thunderer, who bestowed on his white friends the fields,” &c. Whatever obscurity may attach to the latter passage, there can be no doubt of the abhorrence with which the singers speak, again and again, of “the black skin,” ... e.g. “the sacrificer poured out thanks to his god for ‘scattering the slave bands of black descent.’”
Although I believe the idea was traditional and had reference to the curse, I will concede that it might have arisen primarily in the contrast of night and day, light and darkness. But does this settle the question? On the contrary, fortified with this explanation, I return to my argument with those, who say that blackness is a mere prejudice of race, and that it is not demonstrable that it is the sign of a curse, or the mark of inferiority. Does not Nature herself proclaim it, in her contrast of light and darkness? Day and night, I imagine, would be recognised as apt symbols of error and evil as opposed to truth and goodness, even among the black races, irrespective of any consciousness or reminiscence of their degradation. Accordingly, the deeds of evil in Scripture are spoken of as the “works of darkness.” It may be, therefore, that the idea of blackness as a curse is derived primitively from its association with the darkness of night; but the fact remains that blackness is connected in our minds with a curse,[69] and there is the further fact that a black race exists, and has existed during four thousand years, with this mark of inferiority upon it (compare sup. ch. [iii]. [ix].) But a point of some difficulty remains to be determined—viz. what precisely was the race which came under this ban. Was it the whole descent of Ham, or only the posterity of Chanaan ?
Hales, in his learned work on chronology (i. p. 344), discusses this question. He says that, whereas—