* The whole subject is admirably worked out in The
Principles of Sociology, § 159.
Hence I incline to believe Mr. Turner is right, and that these stones may really have been picked out and worshipped, merely for their oddity, but always, as he correctly infers, from the belief in their connexion with some god or spirit.
Here is another case, also from Polynesia, where no immediate connexion with any particular grave seems definitely implied:
“Two unchiselled ‘smooth stones of the stream’ were kept in a temple at one of the villages, and guarded with great care. No stranger or over-curious person was allowed to go near the place, under penalty of a beating from the custodians of these gods. They represented good and not malicious death-causing gods. The one made the yams, breadfruit, and cocoanuts, and the other sent fish to the nets.
“Another stone was carefully housed in another village as the representative of a rain-making god. When there was overmuch rain, the stone was laid by the fire and kept heated till fine weather set in.”
Further instances (if fairly reported) occur elsewhere. “Among the lower races of America,” says Dr. Tylor, summarising Schoolcraft, “the Dakotahs would pick up a round boulder, paint it, and then, addressing it as grandfather, make offerings to it, and pray it to deliver them from danger.” But here the very fact that the stone is worshipped and treated as an ancestor shows how derivative is the deification—how dependent upon the prior association of such stones with the tomb of a forefather and its indwelling spirit. Just in the same way we know there are countries where a grave is more generally marked, not by a stone, but by a wooden stake; and in these countries, as for instance among the Samoyedes of Siberia, sticks, not stones, are the most common objects of reverence. (Thus, again, stick-worship is found “among the Damaras of South Africa, whose ancestors are represented at the sacrificial feasts by stakes cut from trees or bushes consecrated to them, to which stakes the meat is first offered.”) But here, too, we see the clear affiliation upon ancestor-worship; and indeed, wherever we find the common worship of “stocks and stones,” all the analogies lead us to believe the stocks and stones either actually mark the graves of ancestors or else are accepted as their representatives and embodiments.
The vast majority, however, of sacred stones with whose history we are well acquainted are indubitably connected with interments, ancient or modern. All the European sacred stones are cromlechs, dolmens, trilithons, or menhirs, of which Mr. Angus Smith, a most cautious authority, observes categorically, “We know for a certainty that memorials of burials are the chief object of the first one, and of nearly all, the only object apparently.” So many other examples will come out incidentally in the course of the sequel that I will not labour the point any further at present. Among the most remarkable instances, however, I cannot refrain from mentioning the great Sardinian sacred stones, which so often occur in the neighbourhood of the nuraghi, or ancient forts. These consist of tall conical monoliths, rough and unhewn in the oldest examples, rudely hewn in the later ones, and occasionally presenting some distant resemblance to a human face—the first rough draft of the future idol. “Behind the monolith lies the burial-place, ten to fourteen yards long by one or two in width.” These burial-places have been examined by the Abbate Spano.
“He was satisfied that several bodies had been buried together in the same tomb, and that these were therefore family burial-places. When the death of one of the members of the tribe occurred, one of the great transverse stones which covered the long alley built behind the monolith was removed, and then replaced until the time came for another body to claim its place in the tomb. The monolith, called by the Sardinian peasants pietra dell’ altare, or altar-stone, because they believe it to have been used for human sacrifice, always faces the south or east.”
Such a surviving tradition as to the human sacrifices, in an island so little sophisticated as Sardinia, has almost certainly come down to us unbroken from a very early age.
I have already stated that the idol is probably in many cases derived from the gravestone or other sacred stone. I believe that in an immense number of cases it is simply the original pillar, more or less rudely carved into the semblance of a human figure.