1/8 NATIVK IDliAS OF COSMOLOr.V. 



The custom of slaying great numbers of young people at the death 

 of a chief or of one of his near relations — as, for example, at the 

 death of Chaka's mother — may be a relic of cannibal feasts. 



The peoples amongst whom such practices prevailed had in 

 some cases fairly elaborate theories of creation, and the gods 

 themselves who took part in or, indeed, performed the act of 

 creation were little else than glorified demons. They were beings 

 of limited powers, and of like jiassions to the worshippers, and 

 so we find theories of creation everywhere contain a large anthro- 

 pomorphic element. The worshippers conceived of the gods as 

 manufacturing a world as they would have manufactured it them- 

 selves. Often the process is ascribed to magical powers. This 

 was so amongst the Egyptians and Babylonians. One character- 

 istic that ancient theories of cosmogony had in common was that 

 the primordial stuff out of which the universe was made co- 

 existed with the gods from eternity. Where it came from or how 

 it originated they did not profess to explain. Apparently they 

 were unable to conceive of creation out of nothing. It was a 

 formless fluid waste, and out it was formed an orderly universe. 



The natives of South Africa have their accounts of the 

 creation, and they start in much the same manner that others have 

 started. Creation by word alone is, so far as I am aware, 

 unknown. They did not go so far back as the Babylonians or 

 others. They were not so ])hilosophically consistent. Looking 

 at their explanations from the standpoint of their mental attain- 

 ments, they do not seem so crude at all. No doubt they were 

 equally as reasonable and as satisfactory to themselves as any 

 of the other explanations. If less picturesque, they are at any 

 rate simple. They do not relate contests of gods or demons. 

 They do not go back to the origin of the visible universe. They 

 assume that such a thing existed, and begin with the creation of 

 man. Thus they are ncjt interested in searching for ultimate 

 causes, and while imbued with the universality of spirits, they 

 had not advanced before the advent of Euro])eans to the concep- 

 tion of one Supreme Author and Ruler of the Universe, much 

 less of a multitude of such deities. They have spirits in plenty, 

 but they are not gods. They are malevolent enough, but their 

 malevolence is not cosmic, it is tribal or individual, and the imme- 

 diate aim of the worshippers is to avert this from themselves. As 

 one of the legends of creation that I shall give later on seems 

 to contradict the statement regarding one Supreme Being ; all 

 that need be said is that the exception proves the rule. This 

 legend is peculiarly interesting from that point of view, and also 

 raises the question of its derivalion from an outside source. The 

 Creation stories current amongst the natives of South Africa do 

 not seem to me to have any religious or even mythological bearings. 

 They are not the i)roperty of any priestly caste. They do not 

 figure in the religious observances of the people. Some of them 

 have certain magical implications, Ijut they do not seem to have 

 any connection with demonology as such. The natives do not 

 specifically ascribe the creation of the world to demons, though 



