|Resemblance between the Flamen Dialis of the Romans and the Agnihotri or fire-priest of the Brahmans.| We have seen that some people commit the task of making fire by friction to married men; and following the opinion of other scholars I have conjectured that in some of the Latin tribes the duty of kindling and feeding the sacred fire may have been assigned to the Flamen Dialis, who had always to be married; if his wife died, he vacated his office.[[796]] The sanctity of his fire is proved by the rule that no brand might be taken from his house except for the purpose of a sacrifice.[[797]] Further, the importance ascribed to the discharge of his duties is attested by another old rule which forbade him to be absent from his house in Rome for a single night.[[798]] The prohibition would be intelligible if one of his duties had formerly been to superintend the maintenance of a perpetual fire. However that may have been, the life of the priest was regulated by a whole code of curious restrictions or taboos, which rendered the office so burdensome and vexatious that, in spite of the high honours attached to the post, for a period of more than seventy years together no man was found willing to undertake it.[[799]] Some of these restrictions will be examined later on.[[800]] Their similarity to the rules of life still observed in India by the Brahmans who are fire-priests (Agnihotris) seems to confirm the view that the Flamen also was originally a fire-priest. The parallel between the two priesthoods would be all the more remarkable if, as some scholars hold, the very names Brahman and Flamen are philologically identical.[[801]] As to these Brahmanical fire-priests or Agnihotris we are told that the number of them nowadays is very limited, because the ceremonies involve heavy expenditure, and the rules which regulate them are very elaborate and difficult. The offering of food to the fire at meals is, indeed, one of the five daily duties of every Brahman; but the regular fire-service is the special duty of the Agnihotri. In order that he may be ceremonially pure he is bound by certain obligations not to travel or remain away from home for any long time; to sell nothing which is produced by himself or his family; to pay little attention to worldly affairs; to speak the truth; to bathe and worship the deities in the afternoon as well as in the morning; and to sacrifice to his deceased ancestors on the fifteenth of every month. He is not allowed to take food at night. He may not eat alkaline salt, meat, honey, and inferior grain, such as some varieties of pulse, millet, and the egg plant. He never wears shoes nor sleeps on a bed, but always on the ground. He is expected to keep awake most of the night and to study the Shâstras. He may have no connexion with, nor unholy thoughts regarding, any woman but his wife; and he must abstain from every other act that involves personal impurity.[[802]] With these rules we may compare some of the obligations laid on the Flamen Dialis. In the old days, as we saw, he was bound never to be absent from his house for a single night. He might not touch or even name raw meat, beans, ivy, and a she-goat; he might not eat leavened bread, nor touch a dead body; and the feet of his bed had always to be smeared with mud.[[803]] This last rule seems to be a mitigation of an older custom of sleeping on the ground, a custom which is still observed by the fire-priest in India, as it was in antiquity by the priests of Zeus at Dodona.[[804]] Similarly the priest of the old Prussian god Potrimpo was bound to sleep on the bare earth for three nights before he sacrificed to the deity.[[805]]
|Mode in which the Agnihotri procures fresh fire by the friction of fire-sticks.| Every Agnihotri has a separate room in his house where the sacred fire is kept burning in a small pit of a cubit square. Should the fire chance to go out, the priest must get fresh fire from another priest or procure it by the friction of fire-sticks (arani). These comprise, first, a block of sami wood (Prosopis spicigera) in which a small hole is made emblematical of the female principle (sakti yoni), and, second, an upright shaft which is made to revolve in the hole of the block by means of a rope. The point in the drill where the rope is applied to cause it to revolve is called deva yoni. Two priests take part in the operation. Before they begin they sing a hymn in honour of the fire-god Agni. When the fire has been kindled they place it in a copper vessel and sprinkle it with powdered cow-dung. When it is well alight, they cover it with another copper vessel, sprinkle it with drops of water, and sing another hymn in honour of Agni. Finally, the new fire is consigned to the fire-pit.[[806]] According to another description of the modern Indian fire-drill, the lower block is usually made of the hard wood of the khadira or khair tree (Acacia catechu), and it contains two shallow holes. In one of these holes the revolving drill works and produces sparks by friction; the other hole contains tinder which is ignited by means of the sparks. This latter hole is known as the yoni, the female organ of generation. The upper or revolving portion of the drill is called the pramantha. It consists of a round shaft of hard wood, with a spike of softer wood inserted in its lower end. One priest causes the shaft to revolve by pulling a cord, while another priest presses the spike down into the hole in the block by leaning hard upon a flat board placed on the top of the shaft. The spike is generally made of the peepul or sacred fig-tree. When it has become charred by friction, it is replaced by another.[[807]] According to one account, the fire is made in this fashion, not by two priests, but by the Brahman and his wife; she pulls the cord, while he holds the borer in the hole and recites the spells necessary for the production of the fire.[[808]]
|The Indian fire-sticks made from the sacred fig and sami wood.| This practice of the modern Agnihotri or fire-priest of India is in general accord with the precepts laid down in the ancient sacred books of his religion. For these direct that the upper or male stick of the fire-drill should be made of the sacred fig-tree (asvattha), and the lower or female stick of sami wood (Prosopis spicigera); and they draw out the analogy between the process of fire-making and the intercourse of the sexes in minute detail.[[809]] It deserves to be |The male fire-stick made by preference from a sacred fig-tree growing as a parasite on the female sami tree.| noted that the male fire-stick was cut by preference from a sacred fig-tree which grew as a parasite on a sami or female tree. The reason for this preference is obvious to the primitive mind. A parasite clasping a tree with its tendrils is conceived as a man embracing a woman, hence a pair of fire-sticks made from a pair of trees thus interlaced will naturally possess the power of procreating fire by friction in an unusually high degree.[[810]] So completely, in the Hindoo mind, does the process of making fire by friction blend with the union of the human sexes that it is actually employed as part of a charm to procure male offspring.[[811]] Such a confusion of thought helps us to understand the part played by the domestic fire in the ritual of marriage and birth as well as in the legends of the miraculous origin of the Latin kings.[[812]] In ancient India the male and the female fire-stick were identified with King Pururavas and the nymph Urvasi, whose loves and sorrows formed the theme of a beautiful tale.[[813]]
|The Greeks also preferred to make one of the fire-sticks from a parasitic plant.| Like the ancient Indians, the Greeks seem to have preferred that one of the two fire-sticks should be made from a parasitic or creeping plant. They recommended that the borer of the fire-drill should be made of laurel and the board of ivy or another creeper, apparently a kind of wild vine which grew like ivy upon trees; but in practice both the borer and the board were sometimes made of other woods, among which buckthorn, the evergreen oak, and the lime are particularly mentioned.[[814]] When we consider the analogy of the Indian preference for a borer made from a parasite, and remember how deeply rooted in the primitive mind is the comparison of the friction of the fire-sticks to the union |The reason for such a preference is the analogy of the union of the sexes.| of the sexes, we shall hardly doubt that the Greeks originally chose the ivy or wild vine for a fire-stick from motives of the sort which led the Hindoos to select the wood of a parasitic fig-tree for the same purpose. But while the Hindoos regarded the parasite as male and the tree to which it clung as female, the Greeks of Theophrastus’s time seem to have inverted this conception, since they recommended that the board, which plays the part of the female in the fire-drill, should be made of ivy or another creeper, whereas the borer, which necessarily represents the male, was to be fashioned out of laurel. This would imply that the ivy was a female and the laurel a male. Yet in Greek, on the contrary, the word for ivy is masculine, and the plant was identified mythologically with the male god Dionysus;[[815]] whereas the word for laurel is feminine and the tree was identified with a nymph. Hence we may conjecture that at first the Greeks, like the Hindoos, regarded the clinging creeper as the male and the tree which it embraced as the female, and that of old, therefore, they made the borer of the fire-drill out of ivy and the board out of laurel. If this was so, the reasons which led them to reverse the usage can only be guessed at. Perhaps practical convenience had a share in bringing about the change. For the laurel is, as the late Professor H. Marshall Ward kindly informed me, a harder wood than the ivy, and to judge by general, though not universal, practice most people find it easier to make fire by the friction of a hard borer on a soft board than by rubbing a hard board with a soft point. This, therefore, would be a reason for making the borer of laurel and the board of ivy. If such a change took place in the history of the Greek fire-drill, it would be an interesting example of superstition modified, if not vanquished, by utility in the struggle for existence.
CHAPTER XVII
THE ORIGIN OF PERPETUAL FIRES
|The custom of maintaining a perpetual fire probably originated in the difficulty of making fire by friction.| Whatever superstitions may have gathered about it in the course of ages, the custom of maintaining a perpetual fire probably sprang from a simple consideration of practical convenience. The primitive mode of making fire by the friction of wood is laborious at all times, and it is especially so in wet weather. Hence the savage finds it convenient to keep a fire constantly burning or smouldering in order to spare himself the troubling of kindling it. This convenience becomes a necessity with people who do not know how to make fire. That there have been such tribes down to our own time is affirmed by witnesses whose evidence we have no reason to doubt. Thus Mr. E. H. Man, who resided eleven years in the Andaman Islands and was intimately acquainted with the natives, tells us that, being ignorant of |Some races said to be ignorant of the means of making fire.| the art of making fire, they take the utmost pains to prevent its extinction. When they leave a camp intending to return in a few days, they not only take with them one or more smouldering logs, wrapped in leaves if the weather be wet, but they also place a large burning log or faggot of suitable wood in some sheltered spot, where it smoulders for several days and can be easily rekindled when it is needed. While it is the business of the women to gather the wood, the duty of keeping up the fires both at home and in travelling by land or sea is not confined to them, but is undertaken by persons of either sex who have most leisure or are least burdened.[[816]] The Russian traveller, Baron Miklucho-Maclay, who lived among the natives of the Maclay coast of northern New Guinea at a time when they had hardly come into contact with Europeans, writes: “It is remarkable that here almost all the inhabitants of the coast possess no means whatever of making fire, hence they always and everywhere carry burning or glowing brands about with them. If they go in the morning to the plantation they carry a half-burnt brand from their hearth in order to kindle a fire at the corner of the plantation. If they go on a longer journey into the mountains, they again take fire with them for the purpose of smoking, since their cigars, wrapped in green leaves, continually go out. On sea voyages they usually keep glowing coals in a half-broken pot partly filled with earth. The people who remain behind in the village never forget to keep up the fire.” They repeatedly told him that they had often to go to other villages to fetch fire when the fires in all the huts of their own village had chanced to go out. Yet the same traveller tells us that the mountain tribes of this part of New Guinea, such as the Englam-Mana and Tiengum-Mana, know how to make fire by friction. They partially cleave a log of dry wood with a stone axe and then draw a stout cord, formed of a split creeper, rapidly to and fro in the cleft, till sparks fly out and set fire to a tinder of dry coco-nut fibres.[[817]] It is odd that the people of the coast should not have learned this mode of producing fire from their neighbours in the mountains. The Russian explorer’s observations, however, have been confirmed by German writers. One of them, a Mr. Hoffmann, says of these people: “In every house care is taken that fire burns day and night on the hearth. For this purpose they choose a kind of wood which burns slowly, but glimmers for a long time and retains its glow. When a man sets out on a journey or goes to the field he has always a glimmering brand with him. If he wishes to make fire, he waves the smouldering wood to and fro till it bursts into a glow.” On frequented paths, crossways, and so forth, you may often see trunks of trees lying which have been felled for the purpose of being ignited and furnishing fire to passers-by. Such trees continue to smoulder for weeks.[[818]] Similarly the dwarf tribes of Central Africa “do not know how to kindle a fire quickly, and in order to get one readily at any moment they keep the burning trunks of fallen trees in suitable spots, and watch over their preservation like the Vestals of old.”[[819]] It seems to be at least doubtful whether these dwarfs of the vast and gloomy equatorial forests are acquainted with the art of making fire at all. A German traveller observes that the care which they take to preserve fire is extremely remarkable. “It appears,” he says, “that the pygmies, as other travellers have reported, do not know how to kindle fire by rubbing sticks against each other. Like the Wambuba of the forest, in leaving a camp, they take with them a thick glowing brand, and carry it, often for hours, in order to light a fire at their next halting place.”[[820]]
|Fire kindled by natural causes was probably used by men long before they learned to make it for themselves.| Whether or not tribes ignorant of the means of making fire have survived to modern times, it seems likely that mankind possessed and used fire long before they learned how to kindle it. In the violent thunderstorms which accompany the end of the dry season in Central and Eastern Africa, it is not uncommon for the lightning to strike and ignite a tree, from which the fire soon spreads to the withered herbage, till a great conflagration is started. From a source of this sort a savage tribe may have first obtained fire, and the same thing may have happened independently in many parts of the world.[[821]] Other people, perhaps, procured fire from volcanoes, the lava of which will, under favourable circumstances, remain hot enough to kindle shavings of wood years after an eruption has taken place.[[822]] Others again may have lit their first fire at the jets of inflammable gas which spring from the ground in various parts of the world, notably at Baku on the Caspian, where the flames burn day and night, summer and winter, to a height of fifteen or twenty feet.[[823]] It is harder to conjecture how man first learned the great secret of making fire by friction. The discovery was perhaps made by jungle or forest races, who saw dry bamboos or branches thus ignited by rubbing against each other in a high wind. Fires are sometimes started in this way in the forests of New Zealand.[[824]] It has also been suggested that savages may have accidentally elicited a flame for the first time in the process of chipping flints over dry moss, or boring holes with hard sticks in soft wood.[[825]]
|Many savages carry fire constantly with them as a matter of convenience.| But even when the art of fire-making has been acquired, the process itself is so laborious that many savages keep fire always burning rather than be at the trouble of extracting it by friction. This, for example, was true of the roving Australian aborigines before they obtained matches from the whites. On their wanderings they carried about with them pieces of smouldering bark or cones of the Banksia tree wherewith to kindle their camp fires.[[826]] The duty of thus transporting fire from one place to another seems commonly to have fallen to the women. “A stick, a piece of decayed wood, or more often the beautiful seed-stem of the Banksia, is lighted at the fire the woman is leaving; and from her bag, which, in damp weather, she would keep filled with dry cones, or from materials collected in the forest, she would easily, during her journey, preserve the fire got at the last encampment.”[[827]] Another writer tells us that the Australian native always had his fire-stick with him, and if his wife let it go out, so much the worse for her. The dark brown velvety-looking core of the Banksia is very retentive of fire and burns slowly, so that one of these little fire-sticks would last a considerable time, and a bag of them would suffice for a whole day.[[828]] The Tasmanians knew how to make fire by twirling the point of a stick in a piece of soft bark; “but as it was difficult at times to obtain fire by this means, especially in wet weather, they generally, in their peregrinations, carried with them a fire-stick lighted at their last encampment.”[[829]] With them, as with the Australians, it was the special task of the women to keep the fire-brand alight and to carry it from place to place.[[830]] When the natives of Materbert, off New Britain, are on a voyage they carry fire with them. For this purpose they press some of the soft fibrous husk of the ripe coco-nut into a coco-nut shell, and then place a red-hot ember in the middle of it. This will smoulder for three or four days, and from it they obtain a light for their fires wherever they may land.[[831]] The Polynesians made fire by the friction of wood, rubbing a score in a board with a sharp-pointed stick till the dust so produced kindled into sparks, which were caught in a tinder of dry leaves or grass. While they rubbed, they chanted a prayer or hymn till the fire appeared. But in wet weather the task of fire-making was laborious, so at such times the natives usually carried fire about with them in order to avoid the trouble of kindling it.[[832]] The Fuegians make fire by striking two lumps of iron pyrites together and letting the sparks fall on birds’ down or on dry moss, which serves as tinder. But rather than be at the pains of doing this they carry fire with them everywhere, both by sea and land, taking great care to prevent its extinction.[[833]] The Caingua Indians of Paraguay make fire in the usual way by the fire-drill, but to save themselves trouble they keep fire constantly burning in their huts by means of great blocks of wood.[[834]] The Indians of Guiana also produce fire by twirling the point of one stick in the hole of another, but they seldom need to resort to this laborious process, for they keep fire burning in every house, and on long journeys they usually carry a large piece of smouldering timber in their canoes. Even in walking across the savannah an Indian will sometimes take a fire-brand with him.[[835]] The Jaggas, a Bantu tribe in the Kilimanjaro district of East Africa, keep up fire day and night in their huts on account of their cattle. If it goes out, the women fetch glowing brands from a neighbour’s house; these they carry wrapped up in banana leaves. Thus they convey fire for great distances, sometimes the whole day long. Hence they seldom need to kindle fire, though the men can make it readily by means of the fire-drill.[[836]] The tribes of British Central Africa also know how to produce fire in this fashion, but they do not often put their knowledge in practice. For there is sure to be a burning brand on one or other of the hearths of the village from which a fire can be lit; and when men go on a journey they take smouldering sticks with them and nurse the glowing wood rather than be at the trouble of making fire by friction.[[837]] In the huts of the Ibos on the lower Niger burning embers are always kept and never allowed to go out.[[838]] And this is the regular practice among all the tribes of West Africa who have not yet obtained matches. If the fire in a house should go out, a woman will run to a neighbour’s hut and fetch a burning stick from the hearth. Hence in most of their villages fire has probably not needed to be made for years and years. Among domesticated tribes, like the Effiks or Agalwa, when the men are going out to the plantation they will enclose a burning stick in a hollow piece of a certain kind of wood, which has a lining of its pith left in it, and they will carry this “fire-box” with them.[[839]]
|The theft of fire by Prometheus.| Before the introduction of matches Greek peasants used to convey fire from place to place in a stalk of giant fennel. The stalks of the plant are about five feet long by three inches thick, and are encased in a hard bark. The core of the stalk consists of a white pith which, when it is dry, burns slowly like a wick without injury to the bark.[[840]] Thus when Prometheus, according to the legend, stole the first fire from heaven and brought it down to earth hidden in a stalk of giant fennel,[[841]] he carried his fire just as every Greek peasant and mariner did on a journey.
|When people settled in villages, it would be convenient to keep up a perpetual fire in the house of the head man.| When a tribe ceased to be nomadic and had settled in more or less permanent villages, it would be a convenient custom to keep a fire perpetually burning in every house. Such a custom, as we have seen, has been observed by various peoples, and it appears to have prevailed universally among all branches of the Aryans.[[842]] Arnobius implies that it was formerly practised by the Romans, though in his own time the usage had fallen into abeyance.[[843]] But it would be obviously desirable that there should be some one place in the village where every housewife could be sure of obtaining fire without having to kindle it by friction, if her own should chance to go out. The most natural spot to look for it would be the hearth of the head man of the village, who would come in time to be regarded as responsible for its maintenance. This is what seems to have happened not only among the Herero of South Africa and the Latin peoples of Italy, but also among the ancestors of the Greeks; for in ancient Greece the perpetual fire kept up in the Prytaneum, or town-hall, was at first apparently the fire on the king’s hearth.[[844]] From this simple origin may have sprung the custom which in various parts of the world associates the maintenance of a perpetual fire with chiefly or royal dignity. Thus it was a distinguishing mark of the |Hence the maintenance of a perpetual fire came to be associated with chiefly or royal dignity.| chieftainship of one of the Samoan nobility, that his fire never went out. His attendants had a particular name, from their special business of keeping his fire ablaze all night long while he slept.[[845]] Among the Gallas the maintenance of a perpetual fire, even when it serves no practical purpose, is a favourite mode of asserting high rank, and the chiefs often indulge in it.[[846]] The Chitomé, a grand pontiff in the kingdom of Congo, of whom we shall hear more hereafter, kept up in his hut, day and night, a sacred fire, of which he dispensed brands to such as came to ask for them and could pay for them. He is said to have done a good business in fire, for the infatuated people believed that it preserved them from many accidents.[[847]] In Uganda a perpetual sacred fire, supposed to have come down to earth with the first man Kintu, is maintained by a chief, who is put to death if he suffers it to be extinguished. From this sacred fire the king’s fire (gombolola) is lighted and kept constantly burning at the gate of the royal enclosure during the whole of his reign. By day it burns in a small hut, but at night it is brought out and set in a little hole in the ground, where it blazes brightly till daybreak, whatever the weather may be. When the king journeys the fire goes with him, and when he dies it is extinguished. The death of a king is indeed announced to the people by the words, “The fire has gone out.” A man who bears a special title is charged with the duty of maintaining the fire, and of looking after all the fuel and torches used in the royal enclosure. When the king dies the guardian of his fire is strangled near the hearth.[[848]] Similarly in Dageou, a country to the west of Darfur, it is said that a custom prevailed of kindling a fire on the inauguration of a king and keeping it alight till his death.[[849]] Among the Mucelis of Angola, when the king of Amboin or Sanga dies, all fires in the kingdom are extinguished. Afterwards the new king makes new fire by rubbing two sticks against each other.[[850]] Such a custom is probably nothing more than an extension of the practice of putting out a chief’s own fire at his death. Similarly, when a new Muata Jamwo, a great potentate in the interior of Angola, comes to the throne, one of his first duties is to make a new fire by the friction of wood, for the old fire may not be used.[[851]] Before the palace gate of the king of Siam there burns, or used to burn, a perpetual fire, which was said to have been lit from heaven with a fiery ball.[[852]]