APPENDIX, 



The Significance of the Oculus in Boat Decoration.^ 



By James Hornei,!.. 



Amongst some of the coast people of India to-day, ships and boats are endowed 

 with more than inanimate attributes — in a vague way their crews look upon them as 

 sentient ; the remnants of ancient animistic beliefs make their craft or some portion 

 of it the habitation of a protecting spirit requiring periodical propitiation ; among 

 communities containing men capable of higher thought, this vague feeling is sometimes 

 refined and crystallized, a definite shrine is set up and a definite God there wor- 



FiG. 30. — Prow of an Egyptian funeral barge, circa 1400 B.C. (after Maspero). 



shipped with ritual approaching in its main features that practised in orthodox 

 Hindu temples. 



To this belief, in my opinion, is to be traced the origin of the custom, still 

 erratically and discontinuously distributed throughout Europe and Asia, of providing 

 sailing craft with eyes. The custom was universally followed by the Greeks and 

 Romans ; no feature of these old vessels is more striking when one examines represer • 



I A paper read before the Zoological and Ethnological Section of the Indian Science Congress, held at Bombay. 

 January, 1919. 



