CEREMONIAL INSTITUTIONS. 



paranta and Tampadipa, and other great empires and countries, ar.d 

 of all the umbrella- wearing chiefs, the supporter of religion, the Sun- 

 descended Monarch, arbiter of life, and great, righteous King, King 

 of Kings, and possessor of boundless dominions and supreme wis 

 dom, the following presents. The reading was intoned in a comical 

 high recitative, strongly resembling that used when our Church serv 

 ice is intoned ; and the long-drawn Phya-a-a-a-a (my lord) which 

 concluded it, added to the resemblance, as it came in exactly like 

 the Amen of the Liturgy.&quot; [Showing the kinship in religious 

 worship. ] 



(liven, then, the metaphorically-descriptive name, and 

 we have the germ from which grow np these primitive titles 

 of honour; which, at first individual titles, become in some 

 cases titles attaching to the offices filled. 



402. To say that the words which in various lan 

 guages answer to our word &quot; God,&quot; were originally descrip 

 tive words, will he startling to those who, unfamiliar with 

 the facts, credit the savage with thoughts like our own; and 

 will be repugnant to those who, knowing something of the 

 facts, yet persist in asserting that the conception of a uni 

 versal creative power was possessed by man from the be 

 ginning. But whoever studies the evidence without bias, 

 will find proof that the general word for deity was at first 

 simply a word expressive of superiority. Among the Fiji- 

 ans the name is applied to anything great or marvellous; 

 among the Malagasy to whatever is new, useful, or extra 

 ordinary; among the Todas to everything mysterious, so 

 that, as Marshall says, &quot; it is truly an adjective noun of 

 eminence.&quot; Applied alike to animate and inanimate 

 things, as indicating some quality above the common, the 

 word is in this sense applied to human beings, both living 

 and dead ; but as the dead are supposed to have mysterious 

 powers of doing good and evil to the living, the word comes 

 to be especially applicable to them. Though ghost and god 

 have with us widely-distinguished meanings, yet they are 

 originally equivalent words; or rather, originally, there is 



