J 00 S. C. Mitra — Drowning and Drowned Persons. [Nd. 3, 



On Some Superstitions regarding Drowning and Drowned Persons. — By 

 Babu Sarat Chandra Mitra, Pleader, Judge's Court, Ghupra. 



Anthropologists have come to the conclusion that the principle of 

 Animism has its origin in the belief that every locality lias its presiding 

 spirits. This stage of belief is a characteristic of savage races and still 

 survives as a relic of primitive faith among peoples who have now- 

 become civilised. Primitive men believed every mountain, rock and 

 valley every well and stream and lake, to be the abode of some spirits. 

 This belief a^ain originates from the association of the idea of personal 

 life with that of motion, just as the swaying of a tree appears to the 

 mind of primitive man to be a proof of personal life like the flight of 

 birds or the movements of animals. This idea became gradually 

 developed and, in conjunction with dreams during sleep, reminiscences 

 of the dead and accidental associations of motionless objects with motion 

 fas of a rock in the midst of a rapid or eddy) gave rise to Animism or 

 Spiritism. Primitive man was awe-struck at the majesty and grandeur 

 of a mountain and, inwardly reflecting that this must be caused by 

 spirits or beings superior to himself, believed the mountain to be the 

 local habitation of these beings. 



Relics of savage Animism are still to be met with among civilized 

 races : such as the mountain-worsbip of the Japanese, the well-worship 

 prevailing in the different counties of Great Britain and Ireland, and 

 the river-worship of the Hindus. The Ainos, who are the aboriginal 

 inhabitants of Japan, profess "the rudest and most primitive form of 

 nature-worship, attaching a vague sacredness to trees, rivers, rocks, and 

 mountains, and vague notions of power for good or evil to the sea, the 

 forest the fire, and the sun and moon."* This belief still survives 

 araon „ the modern Japanese who worship mountains. Miss Bird says 

 (page 108 of Vol. I of her work) : "Mountains, for a great part of the 

 year clothed or patched with snow, piled in great ranges round JSTantaisan, 

 their monarch, are worshipped as a god." At page 122 of the same 

 volume, she again says : " The mountain-peak of Nantaisan is worshipped, 

 and on its rugged summit there is a small Shinto shrine with a rock 

 beside it on which about one hundred rusty sword-blades lie — offerings 

 made by remorseful men whose deeds of violence haunted them till they 

 went there on pilgrimage and deposited the instruments of their crimes 

 before the shrine of the mountain-god." 



In the same manner, primitive man believes that every river has 



* Miss Bird's Unbeaten Tracks in Japan, Vol. II, page 94. 



