SECT. III.] RELIGIOUS NOTIONS. 373 



gei, the highest god of Fiji islanders, was, it is said, ori- 

 ginally a man, and wandered about in the islands. The 

 worship of deceased chiefs is very general in other islands 

 of the South Sea, and constitutes an important element in 

 religion. 



The adoption of eminent men among the gods becomes, for 

 the transformation of religious ideas, important in many re- 

 spects. If man can only imagine higher beings in his own 

 image, idol worship is easily established, especially if deceased 

 persons are worshipped as gods. Nearly all idols resemble the 

 human form, and even the three feet long, irregular-shaped 

 coral piece which, on the King's-Mill Islands, is every month 

 covered with cocoa leaves, and worshipped as the image of the 

 highest god, 1 has some resemblance to the human shape. The 

 reception of human individuals among the gods becomes par- 

 ticularly important in relation to their teachings, which we find 

 in every mythology. They are either considered as incarnations 

 of a god, or as the sons of the highest god, born of a human 

 mother, or a virgin, and miraculously conceived. 2 They be- 



1 Hale. 



2 This point recurs under various forms, of which we shall cite a few 

 examples. The legend of the birth of Fohi, in China, runs thus : Three 

 nymphs descended from heaven to bathe in a river. They had scarcely 

 entered it when the lotus plant appealed upon the garments of one, with its 

 coral fruit. The consequence was that she became pregnaijt, and gave birth 

 to a son, who became a founder of religion, a warrior, and lawgiver. Father 

 Tachard relates the legend of the birth of Codom, as follows : Many, many 

 years ago, a virgin in a state of ecstasy, left the society of men, and haunted 

 the most solitary places of the forest, expecting the advent of a god long 

 predicted. One day, when she knelt down to pray, she became pregnant by 

 the sunbeams. On the shores of a lake, between Siam and Camboya, she 

 was delivered of a boy, whom she placed in the leaves of a lotus. She was 

 then translated to heaven ; but the boy was found by a hermit, and became 

 a great sage and performer of miracles. Archer, in Corea, is also said to be 

 the son of a virgin impregnated by the sun. Huitzilipochtli, in Mexico, 

 was born by a woman who caught in her bosom a featherbaU which descended 

 from the heavens (Clavigero, "History of Mexico," vi, p. 6). In a legend of 

 the Apaches, rain caused a supernatural conception : in Tahiti, it was the 

 shadow of a leaf of a bread-tree which Taaroa passed above Hina (Ellis, 

 " Polynes. Resear.," i, p. 326, 1832) ; the mother of the first Mandan chief 

 conceived by eating the fat of a bison cow (Prinz Max, loc. cit). Other similar 

 instances are related in Ausland, 1856, T. G. MuUer, etc. The Chibchar 

 equally attribute a supernatural birth to their heroes (P. Simon, " Noticias 

 de las Conq. de Tierra Firme," ii, p. 13; in Kingsborough, viii). Hence it 

 clearly results that E. Schomburgk (" K. in Guiana," ii, p. 320) wrongly sup- 

 poses Christian admixtures in the Indian traditions, which, like those of the 

 Maipures and Warraus, speak of the supernatural conception and birth of 

 one of their heroes. 



