io6 Hutton Webster 



a. The Cult of Seven and the Planetary Week 



It is a familiar fact that various races have attached a special 

 significance to certain numbers as good or evil, lucky or unlucky. 

 To the primitive mind numbers, as well as names, are realities 

 possessing their own proper virtue. To the number seven, in 

 particular, a special importance has been ascribed by many peoples 

 widely separated in space and time.^ Were that number found 

 predominantly among peoples who have a seven-day week we 

 might be justified in always associating the two. The Todas, 

 for example, attach a marked significance to the number seven 

 and they also have a seven-day week.^ On the other hand the 

 west African peoples who employ an hebdomadal cycle do not 

 to my knowledge consider seven a sacred number. Seven, again, 

 is one of the Nandi unlucky numbers ; among the Akikuyu of 

 British East Africa, it is of all numbers the most unlucky in 

 divination : but neither of these peoples has a seven-day week.'^ 

 The same may be said of the Sea Dayaks, whose favorite number, 

 after three, is seven. ^ In the opinion of most Americanists the 

 sanctity of seven amongst many Indian tribes is the outgrowth 

 of cosmical conceptions of the four cardinal points, reinforced 

 by conceptions of a central, an upper, and a lower world." 



^ For a useful collection of evidence see von Adrian, " Die Siebenzahl 

 im Geistesleben der Volker," Mitteilnngen der anthropologischcn Gescll- 

 schaft in IVien, 1901, xxxi. 225-74. 



"Rivers, op. cit., 415. 



'HoUis, op. cit., 89; W. S. and Katherine Routledge, With a Prehistoric 

 People, 264, 274. 



* Brooke Low, in H. L. Roth, Natiz'es of Sarazvak and British North 

 Borneo, London, 1906, i. 231. 



®Li New Mexico the Zuni priests preserve a ceremonial diagram of the 

 7 " Ancient Spaces " or primeval cosmogonic areas, representing north, 

 east, south, west, the zenith, the nadir and the middle. The observer is 

 always supposed to stand in the central space. For illustrations of the 

 cult of 7 among the Indians see J. W. Powell, in Gushing, Zuni Folk Tales, 

 New York, 1901, pp. xii. sq.; Hagar, in Boas Anniversary Volume, New 

 York. 1906, p. 361 (Cherokee) ; Dorsey, in Si.vth Annual Report of the 

 Bureau of Ethnology, 397 (Osage, Kansa, Omaha, Dakota and Ponka 

 tribes). Cf. also Brinton, "The Origin of Sacred Numbers," American 



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