[35] After the publication of his original pamphlet, the author became acquainted with the views of Mr. Lang upon this subject. An examination of them, as given in his “Myth, Ritual, and Religion,” vol. ii. p. 137, will show that he perceives the defect in the explanation given by De Gubernatis in much the same manner as here expressed.
“The clouds in the atmosphere being often viewed as a herd of cows.”—(Introduction to vol. iv. of “Zendavesta,” p. 64, James Darmesteter, edition of Oxford, 1880: “Sacred Books of the East,” edited by Max Müller.)
A personal letter received from W. S. Wyndham, Esq., Boyne Island, Queensland, Australia, relates that the tribes of Australia “have the stars laid out the same as we have, only, instead of the Great Bear, etc., they have the Emu, Kangaroo, Dog, and other things and men introduced.”
[36] Disons un mot de la manière dont les Proselytes des Banians sont obligés de vivre les premiers mois de leur conversion. Les Brahmines leur ordonnent de mêler de la fiente de la vache dans tout ce qu’ils mangent pendant ce tems de régéneration.... Que ne diroit pas ici un commentateur subtil qui voudrait comparer la nourriture de ces proselytes avec les ordres que Dieu donna autrefois à Ezechiel de mêler de la fiente de vache dans ses alimens. Ezekiel iv.—(Picart, “Coûtumes et cérémonies religieuses,” etc., Amsterdam, 1729, vol. vii. p. 15.)
[37] “Il doit manger du pain, de froment, d’orge, de fèves, de millet, et de couvrir d’excrémens humains,” etc.—(Voltaire, “Essais sur les Mœurs,” vol. i. p. 195, Paris, 1795).
“And thou shalt eat it as barley cakes, and thou shalt bake it with dung that cometh out of man in their sight.”—(Ezekiel iv. 12.)
[38] Such an economic tendency in the sacrificial practices of the Parsis is shown by Tylor. The Vedic sacrifice, Agnishtoma, required that animals should be slain and their flesh partly committed to the gods by fire, partly eaten by sacrificers and priests. The Parsi ceremony, Izeshne, formal successor of this bloody rite, requires no animal to be killed, but it suffices to place the hair of an ox in a vessel, and show it to the fire.—(“Primitive Culture,” E. B. Tylor, New York, 1874, vol. ii. p. 400.)
[39] Dubois declares that in the Atharvana Veda “bloody sacrifices of victims (human not excepted) are there prescribed.” (“People of India,” London, 1817, p. 341.) And in those parts of India where human sacrifice had been abolished a substitutive ceremony was practised “by forming a human figure of flour paste or clay, which they carry into the temple, and there cut off its head and mutilate it in various ways, in presence of the idols.”—(Idem, p. 490.)
[40] After the Jews had been humbled by the Lord, and made to mingle human ordure with their bread, the punishment was mitigated by substitution. “Then he said unto me, Lo! I have given thee cow’s dung for man’s dung, and thou shalt prepare thy bread therewith.”—(Ezekiel iv. 15.)
[41] Pallas believed “que le lamaisme des Kalmouks Mongols est originaire des Indes.”—(Voy. de Pallas, vol. i. p. 535.)