564 MEDICINE-MEN OF THE APACHE. 
a feast during the month of August.' The Brahman ‘about the age of 
seven ornine . . . is invested with ‘the triple cord, and a badge 
which hangs from his left shoulder.” 2 
The Upayita or sacred cord, wound round the shoulders of the Brah- 
mans, ismentioned in the Hibbert Lectures on the Origin and Growth 
of Religion. ‘‘ Primarily, the sacred cord was the distinguishing mark of 
caste among the Aryan inhabitants. It consisted for the Brahmans of 
three cotton threads; for the Kshatriyas or warriors of three hempen 
threads; and for the Vaisyas or artisans and tradesmen of woollen 
threads.” $ 
“All coiling roots and fantastic shrubs represent the serpent and are 
recognized as such all over India. In Bengal we find at the present 
day the fantastically growing Euphorbia antiquorum regularly wor 
shipped, as the representative of the serpent god. The sacred thread, 
worn alike by Hindoo and Zoroastrian, is the symbol of that old faith; 
the Brahman twines it round his body and occasionally around the neck 
of the sacred bull, the Lingam, and its altar. . . . . With the 
orthodox, the serpent thread should reach down to its closely allied 
faith, although this Ophite thread idea is now no more known to Hin- 
doos than the origin of arks, altars, candles, spires, and our church 
fleur-de-lis to Jews and Christians.” 4 
General Forlong alludes to the thigh as the symbol of phallic worship. ‘‘ The ser- 
pent on head denoted Holiness, Wisdom, and Power, as it does when placed on gods 
and great ones of the East still; but the Hindoo and Zoroastrian very early adopted 
asymbolic thread instead of the ophite deity, and the throwing of this over the 
head is also a very sacred rite, which consecrates the man-child to his God; this I 
should perhaps have earlier described, and will do so now. The adoption of the 
Poita or sacred thread, called also the Zenar, and from the most ancient pre-historic 
times by these two great Bactro-Aryan families, points to a period when both had 
the same faith, and that faith the Serpent. The Investiture is the Confirmation 
or second birth of the Hindoo boy; until which he can not, of course, be married. 
After the worship of the heavenly stone—the Saligrama, the youth or child takes a 
branch of the Vilwa tree in his right hand, and a mystic cloth-bag in the left, when 
a Poita is formed of three fibres of the Sooroo tree (for the first cord must always 
be made of the genuine living fibres of an orthodox tree), and this ishung to the boy’s 
left shoulder; he then raises the Vilwa branch over his right shoulder, and so stands 
for some time, a complete figure ot the old faiths in Tree and Serpent, until the priest 
otters up various prayers and incantations to Soorya, Savitri or Sot, the Eternal God. 
The Sooroo-Poita is then removed as not durable eneugh, and the permanent thread 
is put over the neck. It also is formed of three threads, each 96 cubits or 48 yards 
long, folded and twisted together until only so long that, when thrown over the 
left shoulder, it extends half-way down the right thigh, or a little less; for the ob- 
ject appears to be to unite the Caput, Sol, or Seat of intellect with that of passion, 
and so form a perfect man.° 
All Parsis wear the sacred thread of serpent and phallic extraction, and the in- 
vestiture of this is a solemn and essential rite with both sects [i.e., the Hindus and 
! Picart, Cérémonies et Cofitumes, etc., vol. 6, pt. 2, p. 99. 
* Malte Brun, Univ. Geog., vol. 2, lib. 50, p. 285, Philadelphia, 1832. 
3 Dr. J. L. August Von Eye, The history of culture, in Ieonographie Encye., Philadelphia, 1886, vol. 2, 
p. 169 
4Torlong, Rivers of Life, vol. 1, p. 120. 
STbid., pp. 240-241. 
