1899.] ^ Annual Address. 29 



It has always appeared to me that there ib a teiidonoy to overlook 

 the extent to which studies of this kind — studies of livint^ Indian 

 usage as opposed to the practices enjoined in books— throw light upon 

 some of the obscure passages in the records of classical antiquity. 

 Without entering on such intricate matters as the origin of the 

 ge7t.s or ycVo? and its possible relation to the various types of ex- 

 og'.imous groups which abound in India at the pi-esent day, or 

 the Ancestor worship which M. de Coulanges has so admirably 

 handled in La Cite Antique, I may venture to give one or two 

 simple illustrations of what I mean. In a delightful essay in his 

 book on Custom and Myth, Mr. Andrew Lang refers to the passage 

 in the De Corona where Demosthenes describes the youths of his 

 adversary aschines and taunts him with the fact tliat his mother was a 

 sort of wise woman or ' white witch' who assisted at tiie celebration of 

 mysteries and that he himself helped her by smearing the worshippers 

 with a mixture of clay and bran. Mr. Lang quotes some savage 

 parallels and comes to the conclusion that as to the meaning of this 

 " very un-Aryan practice one has no idea." But is it so certain, in 

 view of 'vvhat may be seen every day in India, that the practice of 

 smearing or lip-ing the body with mud on certain occasions is really 

 un-Aryan ? May it not have been for the Greeks, as it is I believe for 

 the Hindus, an act of ceremonial purification, hauded down from the 

 common ancestors of both races and based upon some symbolism which 

 may have been known only to the initiates of the mysteries or forgotten 

 even by them ? 



Then there is the curious incident at the beginning of the Odipus 

 Coloneus wliere Odipus and his daughters unwillingly violate a sacred 

 grove on the hill of Colonus and are required to pay their footing by a 

 sacrifice. You will not find many sacred groves in Europe now ; hut 

 in Chota Nagpur thei^e are plenty, and if you propose to violate them 

 for the purpose of sport you must sacrifice to the goddess or not a 

 single beater will enter that jungle. The ritual is simple and, as 1 know 

 by experience, not unduly expensive. There are, I believe, pai'allels in 

 Pausanias, who wrote a sort of Baedeker of Gi'eece a good many years 

 ago, and I fancy a comparative study of the subject would be worth 

 undertaking. 



Lastly I ruay mention the famous scene in the Odyssey of the 

 slaying of the suitors by Ulysses, which has given rise to much learned 

 discussion by reason of tlie supposed difficulty of understanding the 

 construction of the hall and its relation to the women's apaitnients. 

 One thinks of it as arranged like a College Hall, with the dais at one end 

 and the door at the other, and one fails to undei'stand wliy the suitors 



