THE ABORiaiNAL TRIBES 121 



form; and a Brahman in many cases ofl&ciates at their 

 shrines. Here for the first time we find mythology — ^the 

 science of priests — at work. In their earher stages the 

 tribes had no priests, no hierarchy of gods, and consequently 

 no mythology. Now legends are invented to connect the 

 tribes, and their earher gods, with the great web of Hindii 

 fiction, and bring them within the dominion of caste and 

 priestdom. In the succeeding chapter wiU be foimd a version 

 of one of these fragments. Their art is of the rudest char- 

 acter, often outraging the requirements of Hindu orthodoxy 

 — suited, in fact, to the mental calibre of a people scarcely 

 yet emerging from mere fetishism. 



Many have conjectured that the worship of Siva and 

 his mythic companions, which forms so incongruous an 

 intrusion into the milder faith of the Aryan Hindus, has 

 been, in fact, derived from the aboriginal races of India, 

 As regards Siva himself in his Phallic form there seems to 

 be httle foundation for such an hypothesis. The emblem 

 has nowhere, I beheve, been found as an object of adoration 

 among the indigenous races where Brahminism has not 

 penetrated, whereas it was a very ancient form of worship 

 among the peoples of Western Asia, and was even prevalent 

 in heathen Rome more than sixteen hundred years ago. 

 It was, as in India, so in the countries of Western Asia, 

 connected with human sacrifices. It is true that this form of 

 the Hindu rehgion is chiefly prevalent in the wilder parts 

 of the country, where the aboriginal element prevails, many 

 of its chiefest shrines being in fact situated in secluded 

 wildernesses, and guarded by aboriginal, or semi-aboriginal, 

 custodians. It may be, then, that the personified forms of 

 this deity were adaptations from the cultus of some of the 

 aboriginal races that have been absorbed in Hinduism ; but 

 I think we must go further back in the history of this move- 

 ment to find the originals of Kali and Bhairava than to 

 anything we know of the indigenes as they now exist. May 

 it not have been in the earhest days of Brahminical revival, 

 when competitors for the adherence of the people in the 

 great struggle with Buddhism had to be sought for among 

 the popular deities — when Vishnu was transformed into the 

 popular demigods Rama and Krishna, into the Tortoise, and 



