In the kingdom of Saka in Africa their greatest solemnity was celebrated on the banks of the rivers; the king himself presides at it (Hist. Gener. des Voy., iii. 639).
The same custom has been already (supra, [p. 252]) noticed on the Indus.
In all these cases human sacrifices were offered, or substitutes.—Boulanger, i. pp. 110–11. Compare supra, [p. 243], lines from Dionysius Periegesis.
BURTON.
At Whydat the youngest brother of their triad is Hu, the ocean or sea. [Compare with Assyrian Hoa, supra, [p. 194], and Chinese Yu, p. 68.] “The Hu-no, or ocean priest, is now considered the highest of all.... At times the king sends as an ocean sacrifice from Agborne a man carried in a hammock, with the dress, the stool, and the umbrella of a Caboceer; a canoe takes him out to sea, where he is thrown to the sharks. The custom for this element is made at Whydat, in a place near the greater market, and called Hu-kpa-man. It is a round hut, with thatch and chalked walls: outside is a heap of bones, whilst skulls, carapaces of the tortoise, and similar materials, cumber the interior. The priest is a fetish woman, who offers water and kola nuts to, and expects rum from, white visitors.—ii. p. 141.
Compare also supra, in [Preface], extract from Davies’ “Celtic Researches” on the Celtic god Hu.
CATLIN.
The water ceremonies in Catlin’s account have already been sufficiently adverted to. He thus describes the medicine or mystery lodge in which they took place. Exteriorly, with the exception of the four images, it differed only in dimensions from the other wigwams, which are thus described? “They were covered with earth. They were all of one form; the frames or shells constructed of timbers, and covered with a thatching of willow boughs, and over and on that with a foot or two in thickness of a concrete of tough clay and gravel, which became so hard as to admit the whole group of inmates to recline on their tops. They varied in size from thirty to sixty feet, and were perfectly round.” For extract describing interior, vide supra, [p. 257], noting (vide Plate iii. in Catlin) the four human and four ox skulls; “the sacks of water in the form of large tortoises lying on their backs.”
N.B.—With reference to the tortoise, vide ante [p. 257].
Compare the “Buddhist Topes” in Major Cunningham’s “Bhilsa Tope,” vide [p. 243].