It was not in Rome alone that this type of dancing was performed;
similar colleges of dancing priests are known to have existed in many towns of ancient Italy, and everywhere, we may conjecture, they were supposed to contribute to the fertility of the earth by their leaps and dances[276].
This magical purpose of the sacred dance will come before us again.
VI
A few examples of this type of the sacred dance among uncultured peoples may now be given[277].
The sowing festival among the Kayans of Central Borneo, who are essentially an agricultural people and of a primitive type, is very elaborate; but we are only concerned with that part of it at which the sacred dancing takes place. The following is taken from an eye-witness’ account:
The first to appear on the scene were some men wearing wooden masks and helmets and so thickly wrapt in banana leaves that they looked like moving masses of green foliage. They danced silently, keeping time to the beat of the gongs. They were followed by other figures, some of whom executed war-dances; but the weight of their leafy envelope was such that they soon grew tired, and though they leaped high, they uttered none of the wild war-whoops which usually accompany these martial exercises. When darkness fell the dances ceased and were replaced by a little drama representing a boar brought to bay by a pack of hounds.... Later in the evening eight disguised girls danced, one behind the other, with slow steps and waving arms, to the glimmering light of torches and the strains of a sort of jew’s harp[278].
Nieuwenhuis, who witnessed this, insists strongly on the religious character of all the festivals observed by these people. There can be little doubt that the dancing masked men represent the spirits of fertility; the high leaps are a magical rite to make the crops grow high; and the row of dancing girls waving their arms is probably in imitation of the field of healthy stalks swaying in the wind, and thus also an act of imitative magic. It is another form of the rite which is practised by the Kai of New Guinea who swing to and fro on reeds suspended from the branches of trees in order to promote the growth of the crops[279].
Among the Malays most of the dances seem to be for the purpose of amusement; but that some of them, at any rate, were originally of a religious character is evident from what Skeat says on the subject:
... All these dances, I was told, were symbolical; one of agriculture, with the tilling of the soil, the sowing of the seed, the reaping and winnowing of the grain, might easily have been guessed by the dancers’ movements[280].