GHOST WORSHIP AND TREE WORSHIP. 651 



This striking passage, remarkable enough in itself, becomes all 

 the more important when we remember who are the gods to whom 

 such prayers are offered and such thanksgivings due. They are, 

 as Mr. Macdonald himself informs us, the deified relatives of the 

 chief. " The chief of a village," says this acute observer, " has 

 another title to the priesthood. It is his relatives that are the 

 village gods. Every one that lives in the village recognizes these 

 gods ; but if any one remove to a new village, he changes his gods. 

 He recognizes now the gods of his new chief. One wishing to 

 pray to the god (or gods) of any village, naturally desires to have 

 his prayers presented through the village chief, because the latter 

 is nearly related to the village god, and may be expected to be 

 better listened to than a stranger." * 



Almost equally explicit as to the true nature of primitive 

 ghosts and primitive tree worship is Sir William Hunter. " A 

 Bengal village," he says, " has usually its local god, which it 

 adores either in the form of a rude unhewn stone or a stump, or 

 a tree marked with red lead." [Probably a substitute for the 

 blood of human victims with which it was once watered.] " Some- 

 times a lump of clay placed under a tree does duty for a deity j 

 and the attendant priest, when there is one, generally belongs to 

 one of the half-Hinduized low castes. The rude stone represents 

 the non- Aryan fetich ; and the tree seems to owe its sanctity to 

 the non- Aryan belief that it forms the abode of the ghosts or gods 

 of the village." \ 



Omitting the mere guess-work about the fetich (whatever that 

 may mean), and the gratuitous supposition, hazarded out of defer- 

 ence to the dying or defunct creed of Max-Miillerism, that ances- 

 tor worship must necessarily be a "non-Aryan" feature, this lucid 

 account shows us the cult of the sacred tree in a very simple and 

 early form as mere ordinary worship of the ancestral ghosts in the 

 place where they are believed to make their home, without com- 

 plications of any sort. 



From these naive and primitive types of sacred tree to the 

 dark groves of cedar or cypress that surrounded the fetich-stone 

 shrines of civilized Hellas is not surely a very far cry. We are 

 already well on the track of the groves of Artemis, well within 

 sight of the "opaca silvis redimita loca deee," where Phrygian 

 votaries worshiped with awful rites the mysterious goddess who 

 rules over Dindima's height. Existing savages or low-caste Ori- 

 entals thus give us the keynote that enables us to understand these 

 dark places of antique usage and antique superstition. 



Even in the midst of our own struggling civilization we shall 

 not look in vain for obvious traces of this earliest and crudest 



* Africana, vol. i, p. 64. f Imperial Gazetteer of India, article " India," s. v. " Religion." 



