GHOST WORSHIP AND TREE WORSHIP. 653 



and shiny trinkets on any very large and conspicuous tree ; they 

 sacrifice horses and oxen under its spreading branches, fixing the 

 heads on the boughs ; and they chant extemporized songs to the 

 Spirit of the Wood, to whom they dedicate offerings of horsehair, 

 an emblematic devotion of their most valued possession.* Yet 

 even here we see from the essentially religious act of sacrifice 

 that a ghost is supposed to reside in the tree ; and it would take a 

 very delicate investigation indeed to show that in any particular 

 case under examination no interment ever took place under the 

 sacred tree. Whenever we see a shaped stone standing at the head 

 of a little mound or diminutive barrow, we naturally infer that a 

 burial has taken place there ; whenever we see a sacred tree, unless 

 grave reason exist to the contrary, we naturally infer a ghost and 

 an interment. For the case stands thus : We know that in many 

 instances savages inter their dead under the shade of great trees. 

 We know that such trees are thereafter often accounted sacred. 

 We know that young shrubs or bushes are frequently planted on 

 graves in all countries. We know that whatever comes up on or 

 out of the grave of a relative is counted as an embodiment or 

 representative of the ghost within it. The presumption is there- 

 fore in favor of any particular sacred tree being of funereal origin 

 and significance ; and the onus of proving the opposite lies with 

 the person who asserts some more occult and less obvious explana- 

 tion. 



Even where newly grown trees acquire a factitious or artificial 

 sanctity, one can still see through the account some abiding relic 

 of the same antique funereal origin. For instance, we learn that 

 when our old friends the Kandhs settle a new village, a sacred 

 cotton tree must be planted with solemn rites, and beneath it is 

 placed the stone which enshrines and embodies the village deity, f 

 Now, what is this stone ? Possibly, to be sure, a mere casual 

 bowlder, picked out at haphazard ; but far more probably, as all 

 analogy would show, the holy monolith or headstone of some 

 ancient chief of the parent village. Nothing is more common 

 than for migrating people to carry with them their sacred stones, 

 their country's gods, their lares and penates, their ark, their tera- 

 phim ; nothing more common than to take up the bones of their 

 Josephs out of Egypt for interment in the new land which their 

 lords and gods give them. In any case, however, be this as it may, 

 the performance under the cotton tree is clearly on the very face 

 of it a mimic interment. Considering what we know in other 

 ways of the Kandhs, it would not surprise one to learn that a 

 guardian deity used once to be provided for the new village by 



* Tylor, Primitive Culture, vol. i, p. 224, quoting Castren. 

 f Ibid., p. 225. 



