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Belopolsky_v7.qxd 7/27/04 9:21 AM Page i

Seismic Expressions and Interpretation

of Carbonate Sequences:
The Maldives Platform, Equatorial Indian Ocean

Andrei V. Belopolsky
and

André W. Droxler

AAPG Studies in Geology No. 49

Published by
The American Association of Petroleum Geologists
Tulsa, Oklahoma, U.S.A.
Printed in the U.S.A.
Belopolsky_v7.qxd 7/27/04 9:21 AM Page ii

Copyright © 2004 AAPG grants permission for a single photocopy of an item from this publication
The American Association of Petroleum Geologists for personal use. Authorization for additional copies of items from this publica-
All Rights Reserved tion for personal or internal use is granted by AAPG provided that the base fee
Printed in the U.S.A. of $3.50 per copy and $.50 per page is paid directly to the Copyright Clearance
Published August 2004 Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, Massachusetts 01923 (phone: 978/750-
ISBN: 0-89181-056-0 8400). Fees are subject to change. Any form of electronic or digital scanning or
other digital transformation of portions of this publication into computer-read-
able and/or computer-transmittable form for personal or corporate use requires
special permission from, and is subject to fee charges by, the AAPG.

AAPG Editor: John C. Lorenz, 2001–2004; Ernest A. Mancini, 2004–2007

Geoscience Director: J. B. “Jack” Thomas On the cover:
Special Publications Editor: Hazel Rowena Mills Schematic west-east cross section through the Maldives carbonate platform.
Cover Design: Rusty Johnson Substantially modified from van Gils and Rubbens (1992).
Production: ProType Inc., Tulsa, Oklahoma
Printing: The Covington Group, Kansas City, Missouri

This and other AAPG publications

are available from:
Canadian Society of Petroleum Geologists Affiliated East-West Press Private Ltd. Geological Society Publishing House
The AAPG Bookstore No. 160, 540 Fifth Avenue S.W. G-1/16 Ansari Road, Darya Ganj Unit 7, Brassmill Enterprise Centre
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The American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG) does not endorse or recommend products or services that may be cited, used, or discussed in
AAPG publications or in presentations at events associated with the AAPG.

ii
Belopolsky_v7.qxd 7/27/04 9:21 AM Page iii

AAPG wishes to thank the following

for their generous contributions

to

Seismic Expressions and Interpretation

of Carbonate Sequences:
The Maldives Platform, Equatorial Indian Ocean

BP Exploration
ExxonMobil Upstream Research Company
National Science Foundation, Ocean Sciences
Royal Dutch/Shell
Total

Contributions are applied toward the production costs of publication,

thus directly reducing the book’s purchase price and making
the volume available to a larger readership.

iii
Belopolsky_v7.qxd 8/11/04 9:44 AM Page iv

Table of Contents
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Factors Controlling Platform Evolution .......................................... 2

Geologic Setting of the Maldives ............................................... 3

Previous Studies of the Maldives Carbonate Platform . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Data and Methods .......................................................... 5

The Volcanic Basement of the Maldives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

Stratigraphy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

References Cited . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

Contents of the CD-ROM

Introduction

Seismic Grid

Seismic Lines

Well Logs

Maps

iv
Belopolsky_v7.qxd 7/30/04 10:00 AM Page v

About the Authors

Andrei V. Belopolsky is a geoscientist André W. Droxler has been a faculty
with BP America Inc. in Houston, Texas. He works member at Rice University in Houston, Texas,
in the Exploration and Production Technology since January 1987. His research for the past 20
Group and was a part of the “No Reservoir Sur- years has focused mainly on carbonate and
prises” multidisciplinary team for two years, dur- mixed siliciclastic/carbonate deposits on slopes
ing which he was involved in several projects in and basin floors surrounding modern carbonate
the deep-water Gulf of Mexico, Trinidad, and off- platforms, barrier reefs, isolated banks, and
shore Brazil. Recently, he joined BP’s frontier atolls, in terms of processes, evolution, and pale-
basin exploration team. Earlier, he worked on a oceanographic and climatic records. He has led
Holstein field in the Gulf of Mexico and in the research programs spanning different timescales
Arkoma Basin of the continental United States. in periplatform and mixed siliciclastic/carbonate
Belopolsky’s areas of interest include carbonate margin environments. His research merges the
and deep-water depositional systems and reser- expanding knowledge and understanding of two
voirs, and geophysical applications. He is also in- scientific communities, carbonate sedimentolo-
volved in BP’s in-house training program. gists and open-marine paleoceanographers and paleoclimatologists.
Belopolsky received a B.Sc. in geology from Moscow State University in Russia and Droxler was born and raised in Switzerland. He received a diploma (equivalent to
an M.A. in geology from Binghamton University in upstate New York. His master’s thesis a master’s degree) from the University of Neuchâtel in Switzerland in 1978 and pursued
was the study of Devonian carbonates in the Timan-Pechora Basin of Russia. He received graduate studies at the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences (RSMAS) at
a Ph.D. in geology and geophysics from Rice University in Houston, where he worked the University of Miami (Florida), where he was awarded a Ph.D. in marine geology in
with data from the Maldives, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Caspian Sea. 1984. He conducted postdoctoral research at RSMAS and then at the University of South
Carolina, Columbia.

v
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
moralise men they must be made afraid. Let them invent gods who could
see and hear all things, cognisant not only of all human actions but also of
men's inmost thoughts and purposes. They were accordingly connected with
the source of the most terrifying and the most beneficent phenomena, the
sky, home alike of thunder and lightning, of the shining sun and fertilising
rain, seat of divine powers helpful and hurtful to mankind. In the discussion
on "the Nature of the Gods" (by Cicero), Cotta, of the Academic school,
inquires of his Epicurean opponent Velleius, "What think you of those who
have asserted that the whole doctrine concerning the immortal gods was the
invention of politicians, whose notion was to govern that part of the
community which reason could not influence, by religion?"

From another point of view, however, the practical universality of

religion was again and again cited in proof of its truth. Antiquity was not
scientific in its method of treatment, and though it did not accept all
religions as altogether equal, it had no difficulty in regarding them as
substantially homogeneous. The Egyptian worship of animals might be
lashed with satiric scorn, but the mysteries of its religion, venerable from an
immemorial past, deserved the highest respect. The process of identification
of the gods of different religions was always going on as they were carried
from land to land. The Apologist, therefore, like the Cretan Cleinias in
Plato's Laws when the Athenian stranger asked him to prove the existence
of the gods, could always appeal to two main arguments—first, the fair
order of the universe and the regularity of the seasons, and secondly, the
common belief of all men, both Hellenes and barbarians. This common
belief, however, itself required explanation. Its value really depended on its
origin. If that ranked no higher than the crouching impulses of fear, it had
little worth. Even if it was sought in the sense of dependence, in quiet trust
in a sheltering order, or in intelligent inference based on the demand for a
cause, the question still pressed for an answer, "What made this possible?"
The answer was given by the doctrine of the Logos.

The term logos has played a famous part in philosophical theology. It

appears in our New Testament at the opening of the fourth Gospel, "In the
beginning was the Logos." Our translators render the Greek term by the
English "Word." It is derived from the verb legein, to "speak" or "say."
Logos is primarily "what is said," utterance, or speech. Speech, however,
must mean something. When we look out upon the objects of the world
around us—rock, river, tree, horse, star—we learn to separate them into
groups, because while some say quite different things to us, others speak to
us, as it were, with nearly the same meaning. We recognise a common
meaning in various sorts of dogs, or in still larger classes such as the whole
family of birds. But in human intercourse what is said has first been
thought. Logos thus takes on another meaning; it is what thinking says to
itself, or what we call "reason." The processes of science consist in finding
out these meanings or reasons, and getting them into intelligible relations
with each other. And when the early Greek thinkers had reached the
conception of the unity of the world, here was a term which could be called
in to express it. The world must have a meaning; it must express some
thought. And did not thought imply thinking?

The philosophy of Heracleitus "the Obscure" (at Ephesus, 500 B.C.) has
received in modern times widely different interpretations; but whether or
not the Stoics were right in understanding his doctrine of the Logos to
imply the existence of a cosmic reason universally diffused, present both in
nature and man, it is certain that such ideas appear soon afterwards in Greek
literature. Pindar affirms the derivation of the soul from the gods. Plato and
Euripides declare the intelligence of man both in nature and origin to be
divine; and Pseudo-Epicharmus lays it down (in the second half of the fifth
century) that "there is in man understanding, and there is also a divine
Logos; but the understanding of man is born from the divine Logos." On
this basis the Stoics worked out the conception of a fellowship between
man and God which explained the universality of religion. Its seat was in
human nature. Every one shared in the Generative Reason, the Seminal
Word (the Logos spermatikos). In the long course of ages, says Cicero,
when the time arrived for the sowing of the human race, God quickened it
with the gift of souls. So we possess a certain kinship with the heavenly
Powers; and while among all the kinds of animals Man alone retains any
idea of Deity, among men themselves there is no nation so savage as not to
admit the necessity of believing in a God, however ignorant they may be
what sort of God they ought to believe in.

The part played by this doctrine in the early Church is well known.
When the new faith began to attract the attention of the educated, it was
impossible that the resemblances between Christian and Hellenic
monotheism should be ignored. Philosophy had reached many of the same
truths, and poets and sages bore the same witness to the unity and
spirituality of God as the prophets and psalmists of Israel. It was easy to
suggest that the Hebrew seers had been the teachers of the Greek; might not
Plato, for instance, have learned of Jeremiah in Egypt? On the other hand,
the pleas of chronological and literary dependence might be insufficient;
there were radical differences as well as resemblances; the Apologist might
deride the diversities of opinion and make merry over the contradictions of
the schools. Nevertheless Christianity was often presented by its defenders
as "our philosophy." The Latin writer Minucius Felix (in the second
century) is so much struck by the parallels in the higher thought that he
boldly declares, "One might think either that Christians are now
philosophers, or that philosophers were then already Christian." The martyr
Justin (about A.D. 150) incorporates such teachings into the scheme of
Providence by the aid of the Logos. For Justin, as for his co-believers, the
popular religion was the work of demons. But philosophy had combated
them in the past like the new faith. If Socrates had striven to deliver men
from them, and they had compassed his death through evil men, it was
because the Logos condemned their doings among the Greeks through him,
just as among the barbarians they were condemned by the Logos in the
person of Christ. The great truths of God and Providence, of the unity of the
moral government of the world, of the nature and destiny of man, of
freedom, virtue, and retribution, which were to be found in the writings of
the wisest of the past, were the product of "the seed of the Logos implanted
in every race of men." Those who had lived with the Logos were Christians
before Christ, though men might have called them atheists, like Heracleitus
and Socrates. All noble utterances in theology or legislation arose through
partial discovery or contemplation of the Logos, and consequently Justin
could boldly claim "whatever things have been rightly said among all men"
as "the property of us Christians."

The cultivated and mystical Clement, who became head of the

catechetical school of Alexandria towards the close of the second century,
enforced the same theme. An enormous reader, he loved to compare the
truths enunciated by Greek poets and philosophers with the wisdom of the
barbarians. Philosophy, indeed, was a special historical manifestation of
thought along a peculiar line of development. It affected a particular race, it
spread over a distinct area, and appeared in a definite time. In these respects
it resembled the preparatory work of Israel itself. It was a discipline of
Providence, so that beside the generalisation of St. Paul that the Law had
been a tutor to bring the Jews to Christ, Clement could set another, that
philosophy had played the same part for the Greeks. On the field of
common speech Clement's contemporary, the fiery Tertullian of Carthage,
appealed to the worshipper who bore the garland of Ceres on his brow, or
walked in the purple cloak of Saturn, or wore the white robe of Egyptian
Isis—what did he mean by exclaiming "May God repay!" or "God shall
judge between us?" Here was a recognition of a supreme authority and
power, the "testimony of a soul naturally Christian."

Such comparisons, however, had a very different side. Greece had long
had its secret mysteries, with their sacred initiations, their rites of purity and
enlightenment, their promises of welfare beyond the grave. When the new
deities from Asia Minor, from Egypt, Syria, and the further East, were
brought to Italy, the resemblances of their practice to that of the Christian
Church excited the believer's alarm, and roused at once the charge of
plagiarism. There was a congregation of Mithra at Rome as early as 67
B.C., and towards the end of the first century of our era his mysteries began
to be widely spread. Here was a baptism; here was a "sacrament" as the
neophyte took the oath on entering the warfare with evil; here were grades
of soldiership and service; here were oblations of bread and water mingled
with wine which were naturally compared with the Lord's supper; here were
doctrines of deliverance from sin, of judgment after death and ascent to
heaven, which brought the theology and practice of Mithraism very close to
that of the Church. So Mithra bore the august titles of the holy and
righteous God; or he was the Mediator, author of order in nature and of
victory in life between the ultimate powers of good and evil.

For a time the rivalry was acute, as his worship was carried through the
West as far as York and Chester and the Tyne. But with the triumph of
Christianity in the fourth century the sounds of conflict die away. The men
of learning, Eusebius of Cæsarea (about A.D. 260-340), Augustine (A.D.
354-430) bishop of Hippo, surveyed the religions and philosophies of
antiquity as conquerors. The faiths of Egypt, Phœnicia, Greece, and Rome,
are passed in review. With a broad sweep of learning Eusebius comments
on the ancient mythologies, the oracles, the theory of demons, the practice
of human sacrifice, the history of Mosaism. His treatise on the "Preparation
for the Gospel" is the first great work on comparative religion which issued
out of Christian theology. With generous recognition of what lay beyond the
Church he taught (in the Theophania) that all higher culture was due to
participation in the Logos. Idolatry might be the work of demons; the world
might be filled with the babblings of philosophers and the follies of poets;
but the Logos had been continuously present, sowing in the hearts of men
the rudiments of the divine laws, of various orders of teaching, of doctrines
of every kind. Thus ethics, art, science, and the fairest products of human
thought, were genially brought within the scope of Revelation.

II

The panorama of religions unrolled before the student of the present day
is far vaster than that which offered itself to the thinkers of Greece and
Rome, and its meaning is far better understood. When Pausanias describes
the daily sacrifice to a hero at Tronis in Phocis, where the blood of the
victim was poured down through a hole in the grave to the dead man within,
while the flesh was eaten on the spot, he notes, like the careful author of a
guide-book, a curious local usage, but he does not know that it belongs to a
group of savage practices that may be traced all round the globe. On Mount
Lycæus in Arcadia, he tells us, was a spring which flowed with equal
quantity in summer as in winter. In time of drought the priest of Lycæan
Zeus, after due prayer and sacrifice, would dip an oak-branch into the
surface of the spring, and a mist-like vapour would rise and become a
cloud. In the midst of Hellenic culture it was still possible, as among the
negroes of West Africa or the Indians of North America, to make rain.

From continent to continent a multitude of observers have gathered an

immense range of facts, which show that amid numerous differences in
detail the religions of the lower culture may all be ranked together on the
basis of a common interpretation of the surrounding world. Philosophy
suggests that man can only explain nature in terms of his own experience.
He is encompassed by powers that are continually acting on him, as he to a
much smaller extent can in his turn act on them. By various processes of
observation and reflection (p. 85), he comes to the conclusion that within
his body lives something which enables it to move and feel and think and
will, until at death it goes away. To this mysterious something many names
are given, and for purposes of modern study they are all ranked under the
term "spirits." This explanation is then applied to the behaviour of all kinds
of objects within his view; though it does not at all follow that this was
actually the first explanation. The animals that are stronger and more
cunning than himself, the trees that move in the wind, the corn that grows
so mysteriously, the bubbling spring, even the things that he himself has
made, his weapons, tools, and jars, all have their "spirits," so that the entire
scene of his existence is pervaded by them. To this doctrine, with its many
branches of belief and practice, Sir E. B. Tylor, in his classical work on
Primitive Culture (1871), gave the name of "Animism," and the religions
founded upon it are called "animistic," or sometimes, from the multitude of
unorganised spirits which they recognise, "polydæmonistic" religions.

Such religions belong to no specific ethnic group. They appear either in

existing practice or in the shape of occasional survivals in all of the three
great racial divisions of mankind—the white or Caucasic, the yellow or
Mongolian, and the black or Negroid. They are to be found under the
Equator and among the Arctic snows. They are sometimes associated with a
peculiar form of social structure regulating inter-tribal relations known as
totemism. It was at one time supposed that this designated a stage of
evolution through which all peoples had passed. The totem or clan-sign,
whether animal or plant, or more rarely an inanimate object like wind, sun,
or star, was supposed to have become an object of worship, and various
theories were invented to explain the divisions and subdivisions of the
clans, and the selection of their special signs. Hence, it was argued, came
the cultus of beast and bird and tree; hence the altar and the idol; hence the
animal sacrifice and the sacramental meal. In clever hands it supplied a
universal key. The extraordinary intricacy of the subject, and the widely
scattered character of the evidence, prevent any discussion here. But the
most recent researches have not sustained these attempts. Among the
Central Australian tribes the totems are not worshipped, they are in no sense
deities, no prayers or sacrifices are offered to them. They may be brought
into the sphere of religion in some tribes as part of a social order to which a
superhuman origin is ascribed (p. 171). But totemism cannot be established
as the typical form of "primitive religion" any more than any other
complicated system. Its general diffusion is questionable. At the present day
there are large areas over which no signs of totemic organisation are found;
and many phenomena which were formerly assumed to be proofs of
totemism in the higher religions of antiquity, in Egypt, Greece, and Italy,
now receive other explanations.

The higher forms of animistic religion pass out into polytheisms of more
or less dignity. They do not succeed in embodying themselves in permanent
literary product, they create no scriptures or sacred books. They have their
rude chants, their songs for weddings and funerals, their genealogies and
tales of ancient heroes. Strange cosmogonies float from island to island in
Polynesia. The Finnic peoples enshrined their faith in the ballads collected
under the name of the Kalevala. Among the Indians of North America
speculation is sometimes highly elaborated in mythologic tradition; and out
of the fusion of nationalities in Mexico rose a developed polytheism in
which lofty religious sentiment seems strangely blended with a hideous and
sanguinary ritual. Peru, no less, presented to the Spanish conquerors
bewildering and incongruous aspects. In these two cultures native American
civilisation reached its highest forms. In Mexico the apparatus of religion
was very minutely organised. There were immense temples, which required
large numbers of priests and servitors. The capital alone is said to have
contained 2000 sacred buildings, and the great temple had a staff of 5000
priests. There were religious orders and temple-schools; rites of baptism
and circumcision; feasts and sacrifices and sacraments, in which the
monkish chroniclers found strange parallels to their own practice. The
issues of victory were disastrous. With the death of the last Aztec emperor
(1520) the doom of the old gods was assured, and the Inquisition (1571)
completed what the sword of Cortes had begun.

In the old world Asia has been the mother of religions, but various fates
have befallen her offspring. The ancient cults of Babylonia, after an
existence longer than the period from Moses to the present day, vanished
from the scene. The teachings of Zoroaster were planted in China in A.D.
621, and a temple was erected at the capital, Changan; but the Persian faith
could not maintain itself in such a different culture. After the Mohammedan
conquest in the eighth century it was finally carried by a little band of exiles
into India, and is still cherished by their descendants who bear the name of
Parsees. The Jew and the Christian have only a precarious toleration in the
land which was once their home. In India and in China alone is the religion
of to-day linked in unbroken continuity with the distant past. Islam may set
itself in lineal succession to the teachers of old, and claim a place for
Mohammed in the sequence of Abraham, Moses, and Christ. But it is the
youngest, and in some respects the least original, of the world's great faiths.

India has its own panorama of religions, from the animistic practice of
the tribes of the jungle and the hills, up to the refined pantheism of the
philosophical school. Diversities of race have been strangely intermingled,
and fifty languages make it impossible to secure any uniformity of culture.
There are the descendants of the ancient inhabitants who occupied the
country before the Aryan ancestors of the Hindus settled themselves upon
the fertile lands. They are represented to-day by the wild tribes of Central
India such as the Bhils and Gonds. Some ten million probably profess a
religion of a well-marked animistic type. But this also lies at the base of
wide-spread popular belief and custom, where the propitiation of spirits, the
cultus of Mother Earth, and the veneration of village deities, engage much
more attention than the higher gods of Hinduism.

The literary foundation of the religions of India lies in the ancient hymns
of the Rig Veda, sung by the immigrant Aryans as they entered from the
North-west and gradually established themselves in the Ganges valley.
These hymns were addressed to gods of earth and air and sky; they
celebrated the glories of dawn and day; they told of the conflict between
sunshine and storm; they praised Agni, the god of fire, messenger between
heaven and earth, himself as agent of the sacrifice a kind of priest among
the gods; they commemorated the dead who passed into the upper world
and adorned the sky with stars. Already in some of the later hymns the
poet's thought endeavoured to find some principle or power that should
unite these different agencies as manifestations of one ultimate reality; and
philosophic imagination at length fixed on the conception of Brahman, a
term whose original meaning seems to hover between that of sacred spell
and prayer. Viewed in a personal aspect (Brahma) as a god of popular
worship, he could be described as "Lord of all, the Maker, the Creator,
Father of all that are and are to be."[1] But behind this sovereign ruler
metaphysical abstraction placed a neuter Brahma, all-embracing, the ground
of all existence, summed up in three terms—Being, Thought, and Bliss.
Here was the ultimate Self of the whole universe; and to know the identity
of the human self with the Absolute, to be able to repeat the mysterious
words tat tvam asi, "that art thou," was the aim of the forest-sages and the
highest attainment of holy insight.

[1] So in the early Buddhist texts describing the popular religion. Many
new forms appear in these documents.

Meantime the social order was acquiring the first forms of caste. The
priests and the fighting men, the people who settled on the lands for pasture
and tillage, and the tribes of aborigines whom they dispossessed and
subdued, formed the basis of divisions which were gradually multiplied
with extraordinary complexity. A religious authority was found for the
whole system in the teachings of the Veda, and to contest its claims was to
defy the power which slowly spread with subtle hold through the whole
peninsula. By its side arose the doctrine of the Deed (karma, p. 217), which
explained the varied conditions of human life by the principle that "a man is
born into the world that he has made." The lot of each individual had a
moral meaning: it was the result of previous conduct, good or ill. This is the
conception embodied in the word "transmigration." It pictures man as
involved in a continuous series of births and deaths, and religion and
philosophy undertook in their several ways to secure him a favourable
destiny hereafter, or by various means of divine grace, or strenuous self-
discipline, or pious contemplation, to extricate him altogether from the
weary round of ignorance and pain.

Out of these elements, a crude and ever-varying animism at the bottom, a

highly refined metaphysical pantheism at the top, figures of incarnation and
deliverance, the cultus of the dead, caste, and transmigration, the complex
strands of modern Hinduism have been woven. Many have been the
growths upon the way. The early Buddhist texts, representing the society of
the "Middle Country," show already in the fifth century B.C. a surprising
activity of speculation, busily engaged in questioning every received
doctrine of religion and morals. Some forms held their ground for a few
centuries and then disappeared. One religious community of that date alone
survives, viz. the Jains, who still number about a million and a third.
Buddhism, after sending out its missionaries into Ceylon in the south and
China in the north, was driven from its ancient seats, and only some
300,000 hold its creed in India itself. In Burma, however, it numbers
between ten and eleven million lay adherents, and in the adjacent kingdom
of Siam it has 13,000 temples, and more than 93,000 mendicants have taken
its vows.

But Hinduism still lives on with a marvellous and self-renewing power.

Two great divine figures have been set beside the original creative Brahma,
representatives of the forces that preserve and destroy, Vishnu and Çiva (p.
128). Vishnu succeeded to the place of the Buddha; and Hindu religion gave
prominence in him to the conception of a Divine Person who out of love for
man assumed human shape to conquer evil and establish truth. The worship
of Çiva has been carried everywhere by the Brahmans; if he destroys, he
also reproduces; he, too, appears to bless and help, and the Tamil poets of
South India in the early Middle Ages sang his praises in hymns that still
feed the piety of the people. Again and again reforming teachers have
initiated movements on behalf of spiritual religion. Their followers have
multiplied and broken up into sects, but still remain within the general area
of the ancestral faith, which now embraces considerably more than 200
million souls. The disciples of Nānak (1469-1538), however, known as
Sīkhs, formed into a semi-military organisation by the Guru Gobind "the
Lion" (1675-1708), retain their religious independence, touching Hinduism
on one side and Mohammedanism on the other. They number at the present
day more than two millions, and are found almost exclusively in the Punjab.

China, like India, illustrates the principle of religious continuity. Its

earliest historic date is fixed by an eclipse in 776 B.C.; and the traditions of
its dynasties stretch more than a thousand years beyond. The ancient
religion depicted in the books known as the Shu and the Shî Kings, which
Confucius (550-478 B.C.) was supposed to have edited out of much older
documents, rested upon the solemn order of the living Heaven and Earth,
with multitudinous ranks of associated spirits, and the generations of the
dead. This has remained the formal basis of the national religion (p. 97).
Meanwhile the ethical sayings of Confucius acquired extraordinary
ascendency. They formed the chief element in the national education, and
supplied the ideals of popular culture. Carried into Japan in the sixth
century of our era, they filled a gap in the old Japanese teaching, which we
know by the name of Shin-To or "Spirits' way." Confucius himself became
the object of general commemorative homage; and annual ceremonies are
still celebrated in his honour with great splendour in the Confucian temples
which adorn every city within the empire above a certain rank.[2]

[2] These are at present in danger, like other public forms of Chinese
State Religion, of being rudely abolished.

In the popular religion demonology and magic play a constant part, and
numerous growths out of the worship of ancestors provide ever fresh
additions to the higher ranks of spirits. These are regulated by decrees of the
Board of Rites, one of the most ancient religious institutions in China. The
spirit of a departed governor, perhaps two centuries ago, is believed to have
appeared in time of flood, and by his beneficent influence dangers have
been averted. Memorials are sent up to Peking by the local authorities, and
after repeated manifestations divine honours are awarded. Beneath these
august personages are the spirits which preside over the trades and
professions, over the parts of a house—the door, the bed, or the kitchen
range—over the breeding of domestic animals, and a large variety of
occupations, to say nothing of medicine and disease, the limbs of the body,
and the stars. They are analogous to the Kami, the equivalent powers in
Japan (p. 91); and they are not without parallel in religions further west.

Half a century before Confucius, in 604, was born another sage, known
in history as Lao Tsze. Fragments of his teaching are embodied in a small
book of aphorisms, concerned with the doctrine of the Tao, the way, the
path, or course. In nature this corresponded to the ordered round of the
seasons, and the regularities which we call laws. In man it might be seen in
the line of right conduct, and the inner principles which pointed to it. On
this conception, which was much older than Lao Tsze himself, a kind of
metaphysical mysticism was reared by later disciples, not without affinities
with some aspects of the Brahmanical philosophy. They have been
explained by suggestions of travel and contact which more careful study
cannot justify. The religion of the Tao (whence the name Taoism) could
never have been popular had it not become strangely entangled with
alchemy and transformed under the influence of its later rival, Buddhism,
from which it derived much both in ritual, in ethics, and in doctrine.

The statements about the appearance of Buddhist teachers and Buddhist

books in China before our era have been much disputed: the first
trustworthy record relates that in the year A.D. 65, a deputation of eighteen
persons was sent to Khotan to make inquiries, and they returned two years
later with books and images and a teacher. A second teacher arrived shortly
after, a temple was built at the imperial capital, Lo-Yang, and the laborious
work of translation was begun. A stream of missionaries, Hindus, Parthians,
Huns, slowly flowed into the Flowery Land, "moved," says the chronicler,
"by the desire to convert the world." After a while the Chinese students
sought the holy places in India, and learned Sanskrit at the great Buddhist
university at Nalanda, near Buddha Gaya. Vast collections of sacred
literature were gathered. The first Chinese catalogue, dated A.D. 520,
enumerates 2,213 distinct works. Twelve successive revisions were made
under imperial order, and to the last, in 1737, the Emperor himself,
following the example of some of his predecessors, contributed a preface.

Opposed again and again by the Confucian literati, its temples

destroyed, its religious houses suppressed, its monks and nuns driven back
into the world, Buddhism has still lived on. It has created impressive
devotions, and generated numerous sects. It has spread through Corea,
Mongolia, and Japan; on the west it is planted in Tibet. It has exercised
immense influence on Chinese culture; architecture, art and letters being all
deeply indebted to it. In numerical estimates of different religions common
in the last century Buddhism always headed the list, for the whole
population of China—vaguely reckoned at 400,000,000—was included in
its fold. Such estimates are no longer trustworthy.[3] The ancestral cultus of
the dead under the shelter of Confucianism, the rites of Taoist and of
Buddhist priests, are strangely blended. The incidents of life from birth to
death are never completed without help from one or other of the two faiths
once rivals, and now so curiously intertwined. As early as the sixth century
a famous Buddhist scholar Fu Hhi was asked by the Emperor Wu-ti if he
was a Buddhist, and he pointed to his Taoist cap. "Are you a Taoist?" he
showed his Confucian shoes. "Are you a Confucian?" he wore a Buddhist
scarf. When the Abbé Hue made his famous journey two generations ago,
he observed that when strangers met, politeness required that each should
ask his neighbour, "To what sublime religion do you belong?" The first
might be a Confucian, the second a Taoist, the third a disciple of the
Buddha. Each would then begin to commend the religion not his own, and
they would conclude by saying, "Religions are many, reason is one, we are
all brothers." It was the maxim of Lu Shun Yang (a distinguished Buddhist)
centuries ago that "the teaching of the sects is not different. The large-
hearted man regards them as embodying the same truths. The narrow-
minded man observes only their differences."

[3] The latest official estimate, February 1911, based on a reckoning of

families, gives 312,400,590 for the total Chinese people.

Yet another great religion, the latest born among the higher faiths of the
world, has established itself in both India and China. The first
Mohammedan invasion of India took place in A.D. 664. The followers of
the prophet are now reckoned at more than 66 millions. In 628 Mohammed
himself sent his uncle to China with presents to the Emperor. He travelled
by sea to Canton, where the first mosque was afterwards built. Good
observers number the Mohammedans in China to-day at 30 millions, mostly
in the north and west; and it is supposed that there are about as many more
in the Malay Archipelago. In Africa, especially among the negroes of the
west, their numbers have increased enormously in the last century, and
some two-fifths of the multitudinous peoples of the Dark Continent, 80
millions out of 200, are believed to live in the obedience of Islam.
 Islam, resignation or submission to the will of God, was the name given
to his religion by the prophet himself, who died in A.D. 632. But in the
hands of his first followers submission was no passive virtue. Tradition
ascribed to him the idea of addressing all known sovereigns, and promising
them safety if they accepted the faith. His successors, therefore, conceived
that the fulfilment of Allah's will demanded a resolute effort to make known
the new revelation. A fierce burst of missionary effort carried the Moslem
armies far and wide. In the year of Mohammed's death they attacked Persia
and Syria; a few years later they invaded Egypt. Within the first century
they had entered India, and had swept through north Africa into Spain. But
they had twice been obliged to retreat from Constantinople, and in 732 they
were defeated on the Loire by Charles Martel near Tours, and forced to
retire behind the Pyrenees.

With the same astonishing energy they created centres of culture from
Baghdad to Cordova. Through Syriac versions of Aristotle's works Arabian
teachers carried Greek philosophy into Western Europe when the light of
ancient learning had grown dim. The contact with new thought stimulated
theological discussion, and the Moslem had to justify himself against the
Christian, the Zoroastrian, the Manichæan and the Buddhist. Above the
simple ritual demands of the prophet, the recital of the creed—"There is no
god but God (Allah), Mohammed is the apostle of God"—the observance of
prayer five times daily, the annual fast in the month of Ramadhān, the
bestowal of alms, and the pilgrimage to Mecca, arose the debates of the
schools and the divisions of sects. The nature of the divine attributes, and
their relation to the being or essence of the Deity, the problems of
predestination and free will, of reason and revelation, excited eager interest.
Beside the Koran vast numbers of traditions concerning religious life and
practice were gradually put in circulation, and in the third century after
Mohammed's death they were reduced to writing in six great collections. To
these sources of truth and rules of conduct the jurists and theologians added
two others: agreement or universal consent, where beliefs and practices are
generally received though not specially sanctioned by the Koran or
tradition; and analogy, by which a doctrine or usage may be accepted as
valid because of its resemblance to something legitimated by revelation.
 Like the higher religions of India, like Judaism in its long and chequered
career whether in Palestine or in the Dispersion, like the "universal
religions" of Buddhism and Christianity, Mohammedanism has known how
to accommodate itself to very different levels of culture. In the Arabian
deserts much of the earlier animism still remains. It is not rudely expelled
either at the present day as Islam advances through Africa. Other impulses
have worked in different directions. There are religious orders and
mendicant ascetics. There are mystical schools of refined spirituality, to
which the influences of Neo-platonism, of Christianity, and Buddhism, have
all contributed. Sūfiism (as this type of thought is called) was fed from
various sources, and has assumed different forms in different countries, but
its best-known literary products came from the great poets of Persia.

From that subtle race issues the most remarkable movement which
modern Mohammedanism has produced. In 1844 a young man not twenty-
five years of age, named Ali Mohammed, of Shiraz, appeared under the title
of the "Bab" or Gate. Disciples gathered round him, and the movement was
not checked by his arrest, his imprisonment for nearly six years, and his
final execution in 1850. Thirteen years later one of his disciples named
Bahá-ullah, "Splendour of God," announced himself as "He whom God
shall manifest," whose advent the Bab had foretold. Exiled to Acre, he died
in 1892, and was succeeded in the leadership by his son Abbas Efendi. The
new faith declared that there was no finality in revelation, and while
recognising the Koran as a product of past revelation, claimed to embody a
new manifestation of the divine Unity. Carried to Chicago in 1893 by a
Bâbî merchant, it succeeded in establishing itself in the United States; and
its missionaries are winning new adherents in India. It, too, claims to be a
universal teaching; it has already its noble army of martyrs and its holy
books; has Persia, in the midst of her miseries, given birth to a religion
which will go round the world?

CHAPTER III
 RELIGION IN THE LOWER CULTURE

Religion presents itself in its most obvious form as a mode of activity. It

is seen in some kind of behaviour; it prompts a particular sort of conduct.
Behind the customs and rites which are its visible sign lie certain thoughts
and feelings, often dim, indistinct, obscure. In the totality of its beliefs,
emotions, and institutions, it is as much the product of the human spirit as
poetry, or art, science, morals, and law. It will therefore always bear some
kind of relation to the general circumstances of the social development to
which it belongs. The interpretation of the surrounding scene which is
implied in its intellectual outlook will vary with the elements of the scene
itself. But the limits of variation are much smaller than might be expected.
The questions "why" and "how" may be answered very differently under the
Equator and within the Arctic zone, but they are the same questions, and
spring from common impulses of thought. Moreover, while race, climate,
and economic conditions may all vary, it happens to all men to be born and
to die. The family must be maintained, children must be reared, food must
be procured, the tribal group must preserve its stability and, if possible,
increase. There are universal elements in human life all over the globe; and
the manifestations of religion founded upon them exhibit in consequence
marked resemblances from land to land.

Religion always implies some kind of want. The young husband wants
male children, the hunter game, the warrior victory, the diviner the
knowledge of secrets, the saint holiness. The wants may be crude or refined,
the satisfaction of a physical appetite, protection against some anticipated
danger, the realisation of an exalted spiritual fellowship. But religion
suggests that there is some Power capable of satisfying these wants, and
undertakes to provide the means for setting man in proper relations with it.
All round him are the objects and forces of the visible world. He learns by
degrees that some help him to gratify his desires, and others hinder them.
There are many things that he cannot understand, and some of which he
dimly feels that he must not presume to try: he is only conscious towards
them of a strange wonder and awe; they are uncanny; he cannot bring them
into his experience; he must not meddle with them, he must keep away. But
other things are more kindly, and fulfil his hopes.
 Out of such vague consciousness he gradually frames a working method.
Some sort of theory is at length established after many trials, concerning
what must be done to obtain what he seeks. The line of his action is
determined in part by the ideas and expectations which have slowly
emerged out of his endeavours to get into fruitful connection with the
powers by which he is encompassed. This is the element of belief, which
lies behind religion proper, and supplies the soil in which religious feeling
and action germinate and grow. What, then, is the kind of belief which, in
the sphere of the lower culture, makes religion possible?

It is plain at once that no records remain of what is still sometimes called

"primitive religion." Even tribes that seem to be living in the Stone Age
have as long a past behind them as any European of light and leading.
Whatever the beliefs may be that belong to any given stage of social
culture, they are not new inventions, they depend on immemorial tradition.
And they are not, as now cherished, the results of individual research or
reflection. They are held in common by all the members of the tribe, so that
they have a kind of collective force. No doubt in the long process of their
formation and transmission modifications may have been introduced, as
some elder, shrewder than his fellows, gave new emphasis to some leading
idea, or suggested the adoption of some fresh action. Trace them back into
the dim realm of conjecture, and some mind a little more observant or ready
than his comrades must have started the first explanation, some will a little
more adventurous must have made the first experiments in conduct.
Thoughts do not issue from a "collective consciousness"; they bear the
stamp of personality, they are not begotten by abstractions, and every fresh
development starts from a single brain. But the uniformity of experience
within the group gives enormous weight to the wisdom of the past; and
constitutes a sanction which only some grave shock can change or
overthrow.

With religion is constantly associated, both in historical record and in the

lower forms of present-day practice, another kind of activity known as
Magic. The relation between them has been variously interpreted. The
modern anthropologist, Dr. Frazer, finds himself in unexpected agreement
with the philosopher Hegel in supposing that magic was the first to appear
upon the scene. It is represented as a kind of primitive science, founded on
certain elementary axioms, such as that "like produces like," or that things
once in contact with each other will continue to act upon each other when
the contact is broken. The Central Australian performs elaborate ceremonies
to stimulate the multiplication of the totem which provides the supply of
food for his tribe. Suppose it is the witchetty grub. A kind of pantomime is
performed representing the emergence of the fully-developed insect out of
the chrysalis, typified by a long, narrow structure made of boughs. The
totem men sit inside and chant rude songs, and then crawl out singing of the
insect coming forth.

One of the commonest illustrations is the attempt to compass the death

of an enemy by injuring or destroying an image or figure supposed to
correspond to him. Such images were made in ancient Babylonia, Egypt,
Greece, and Rome. One North American Indian will draw a figure of his
adversary in the sand, or in ashes, and prick it with a sharp stick. Another
will make a wooden image, and insert a needle into the head or the heart.
Clay is used for the purpose by the African Matabele, wax in Arabia, the
guelder rose in Japan, materials of all kinds in India. In Scotland the corp
chre, as it was called, was a clay body, which was stuck full of pins, nails,
and broken bits of glass, and set in a running stream with its head to the
current; a modern specimen from Inverness-shire may be seen in the Pitt
Rivers Museum in Oxford. Is all this really as Dr. Frazer supposes, prior to
the birth of religion, and does man only turn to the propitiation of superior
powers when he cannot get what he wants through magic? Of that process
no evidence can be offered.

The essence of magic lies in some kind of compulsion or constraint.

Through the proper spell, or through the will of the magician, a control is
exerted which produces the desired result. The power which is thus claimed
implies an attitude wholly unlike that of religion. Into that attitude there
enter elements of wonder and submission in the presence of energies which
man cannot master, though he desires to get them on his side. But no
observer was at hand to watch the first processes of feeling and thought
which the interaction of man and his environment produced. The crudest
forms of religion which we actually know, meet us in tribes which have
possessed them from an unknown past. Here religion has a social character
binding the members of a group together, and tending to maintain certain
uniformities of conduct and character. Over against it stands the antisocial
character of magic, at any rate when directed against individuals. Along this
line it is urged that magic and religion have both issued out of common
conditions. In the world around all sorts of events are continually
happening. Man, in the midst of them, moves to and fro impulsively among
various objects and agencies. Out of these arise various reactions for self-
maintenance, for protection and defence. Certain acts tend to establish
themselves as successful; they make for security and welfare. At first man's
efforts have no definite direction; but some are found effective, others are
futile, and attention is concentrated on those that produce satisfactory
results. After many trials certain beliefs, certain processes, certain persons,
gradually stand out above the rest, and through them relations of advantage
are established with the environing powers.

In such experiences lie the roots of both religion and magic. In their
earliest forms they may be as difficult to discriminate as the simplest types
of animal and vegetable life. If it be asked what distinguishes them
outwardly, when both are transmitted by tradition, both rest upon custom, it
may be answered that religion is concerned with what tends to the stability
of the community. Its interests are those of the group. It supplies the bond
of united action for clan or tribe or people. It is pre-eminently social; it
expresses itself in ceremonies, feasts, and rites in which all can join, or in
commands which all can obey. Even the Australians, so poor in elements of
worship, have tribal laws which have been imparted to them from on high
(Chap. VII).

Over against the community stands the individual, object of all kinds of
jealousies and enmities. All sorts of antisocial arts may be practised for his
destruction. The pointing-stick of Australia provides a common magical
weapon. It is carried away into a lonely spot in the bush, and the intending
user plants it in the ground, crouches down over it, and mutters a curse
against the object of his hatred: "May your heart be rent asunder, may your
backbone be split open!" Then one evening, as the men sit round the
campfire in the dark, he creeps up stealthily behind his enemy, stoops down
with his back to the camp, points the stick over his shoulder, and mutters
the curse again. A little while after, unless saved by a more powerful magic,
the victim sickens and dies.
 Of course magic may also be used for the benefit of the individual, and
the practice of exorcism for the cure of diseases caused through possession
by evil spirits long found shelter in some branches of the Christian Church.
The kinship between Magic and Religion is clearly marked when the priest
takes the place of the devil-dancer or the medicine man. Yet they are on
different planes; religion is prescribed and official, and demands specific
services; magic falls into the background, it becomes a secret, perhaps a
forbidden, art. Nevertheless, between religion and antisocial magic lies a
large group of rites, essentially magical in character, like the North
American Indian rain-dances or the totem-ceremonies of the Arunta in
Central Australia, designed for the general welfare. Even in much higher
cultures the spell frequently mingles with the prayer, and ceremonies of
sacrifice carry with them elements of compulsion or constraint.

What traces, then, do the phases of religion in the lower culture exhibit
of a view of the world and its powers out of which these diverging lines of
practice might emerge? In widely different regions of the globe the forces
that operate in unexpected ways, or play through things beyond man's
reach, or appear in natural objects of striking character—an animal, a tree—
are summed up in some general term of mystery and awe. Such is the
Melanesian term mana, first noted by Bishop Codrington, common to a
large group of languages. It implies some supersensual power or influence;
it is not itself personal, though it may dwell in persons as in things. It is
known by the results which reveal its working. You find a stone of an
unusual shape; it may resemble some familiar object like a fruit; you lay it
at the root of the corresponding tree, or you bury it in a yam-patch; an
abundant crop follows; clearly, the stone has mana. It lives in the song-
words of a spell; it secures success in fighting, perhaps through the tooth of
some fierce and powerful animal; it imparts speed to the canoe, brings fish
into the net, enables the arrow to inflict a mortal wound. But the word has a
yet wider range, in the sense of power, might, influence. By it a parent can
bring a curse on a disobedient child, a man who possesses it can work
miracles; it even denotes the divinity of the gods. And so mysterious is the
whole range of the inner life, that mana covers thought, desire, feeling, and
affection; and in Hawaian it reaches out to spirit, energy of character,
majesty. Here is an immense reserve of potency pervading the world, on
which man may draw for good or ill.
 Among the North American Indians similar conceptions may be traced.
The Algonquin manitou represents a subtle property believed to exist
everywhere in nature, though some persons and objects possess more of it
than others. Among the Sioux the sun, the moon, the stars, thunder, wind,
are all wakanda. So are certain trees and animals, the cedar, the snake, the
grey elephant; and mystery-places like a particular lake in North Dakota, or
some peculiar rocks on the Yellowstone River. The term carries with it
power and sacredness; it belongs to what is ancient, grand, and animate.
The Iroquoian tribes designate this mysterious force orenda. It expresses an
incalculable energy, manifested in rocks and streams and tides; in plants and
trees, in animals and man; it belongs to the earth and its mountains; it
breathes in the winds and is heard in the thunder; the clouds move by it, day
and night follow each other through it; it dwells in sun, moon, and stars.
The shy bird or quadruped which it is difficult to snare or kill, possesses it;
so does the skilful hunter; it gives victory in intertribal games of skill, and is
the secret force of endurance or speed of foot. The prophet or the soothsayer
discloses the future by its aid; and whatever is believed to have been
instrumental in accomplishing some purpose or obtaining some good, finds
in orenda the source of its effectiveness.

Not dissimilar is the conception of mulungu among the Yaos, east of

Lake Nyassa. The term is wide-spread through the eastern group of Bantu
tongues, and is said to have the meaning of "Old One" or "Great One"; and
in this sense it has been employed as equivalent to God. But we are
expressly told that in its native use and form it does not imply personality.
Etymologically it ranks with the leg, arm, heart, head, of the human frame.
Yet it denotes rather a state or property inhering in something, like life or
health in the body, than any single object. It indicates a kind of supernormal
energy, displayed in actual experience, but not to be detected by any
physical sense. It is the agent of wonder and mystery; the rainbow is
mulungu; and it sums up at once the creative energy which made the earth
and animals and man, and the powers which operate in human life. At the
foot of a tree in the village courtyard, where men sit and talk, a small
offering of flour or beer is placed on any distinctive occasion in the
communal life; at a meal, or on a journey at cross roads, a little flour is set
aside. It is "for Mulungu"; sometimes dimly conceived as a spirit within;
sometimes regarded as a universal agency in nature and affairs, impalpable,
impersonal; sometimes rising into distinctness as God.

Such terms are, of course, generalisations from many separate

experiences. Out of this sense of mystery grow more definite ideas. The
dark and solemn forest, the rushing river, the precipitous rock, the lofty
cloud-crowned mountain, the winds and storms, all manifest a common
power;[1] it lives in the snake or the bull, in the tiger or the bear. This may
be conceived in a highly complex and abstract form. Thus the Zuñis of
Mexico, we are told, suppose the sun and moon, the stars, the sky, the earth
and sea, with all their various changes, and all inanimate objects, as well as
plants, animals, and men, to belong to one great system of all-conscious and
interrelated life. One term includes them all: hâi, "being" or "life." With the
prefix â, "all," the whole field of nature is summed up as âhâi, "life" or "the
Beings." This comprehensive term includes the objects of sensible
experience regarded as personal existences, and supersensual beings who
are known as "Finishers or Makers of the paths of life," the most exalted of
all being designated "the Holder of the paths of our lives." So in Annam life
is regarded as a universal phenomenon. It belongs not only to men and
animals and plants, but to stones and stars, to earth, fire, and wind. But it is
seen in groups and kinds rather than individuals, and the limits of its forms
are not sharply drawn; it can pass through many transformations, and
possesses indefinite possibilities of change. Such conceptions have a long
history behind them.

[1] M. Durkheim has recently applied conceptions of the mana order to

the explanation of totemism.

The poets of the ancient Vedic hymns beheld everything around them
full of energy. The names by which they designated what they saw all
denoted action or agency. The swift flow of the stream gained it the title of
the "runner"; as it cut away the banks or furrowed its course deep between
the rocks, it was the "plougher"; when it nourished the fields it was the
"mother"; when it marked off one territory from another it was the
"defender" or "protector." So the seers addressed their invocations to the
dawn or the sun, to the winds and the fire, to the river or the mountain, to
the earth-mother or the sky-father, as living powers, capable of responding
to the prayers of their worshippers. Similar energy dwelt in the horse or the
cow, the bird of omen and the guardian dog. It was even shared by ritual
implements such as the stones by which the sacred soma-juice was
squeezed out, or by the products of human handiwork, the war-car, the
weapon, the drum, and the peaceful plough.

At the present day the Batak in the north-west of Sumatra interpret the
world about them in terms of a soul-stuff or life-power called tondi. A vast
reservoir of this exists in the world above, and flows down upon men and
animals and plants. The biggest animal, like the tiger, the most important of
plants, like rice (chief source of food), have most tondi, but it is not
confined to living things; the smith attributes it to his iron, the fisherman to
his boat, the tiller of the ground to his hoe, the householder to his hearth and
home. But a further analysis is beginning. What is the relation of a man's
tondi to himself? When he dies, it passes into some fresh organism. But the
rest of him, his shadow, his double, or his self, becomes a begu. In life, it is
the body that thinks and feels, that fears and hopes and wills, though the
presence of the tondi supplies the needful energy. But the tondi also has the
functions of consciousness, for it can go away in dreams and meet the
begus of parents and ancestors. And the apprehension that it may depart
begets reverence and even offerings to the tondi, rather than to distant gods
for whom man can feel neither fear nor love.

We touch here another root of religious belief, which produces growths

so wide-spreading that some interpreters bring the whole range of objects of
worship within their shade. How, after all, does man explain himself to
himself? At first he does not think about thinking. Such words as he uses
are vague and elastic, like the Polynesian mana, which covers a multitude
of facts without and within. Only through long dim processes does any idea
corresponding to our conception of personality come into his
consciousness. He is as confused about the objects round him as he is about
himself. Yet he has some sort of initiative. Whence comes it? Little by little
a variety of experiences force on him the belief that beside the body and its
limbs he possesses something which he cannot ordinarily see, but which is
essential to his activity. He falls asleep, and lies still upon the ground; he
wakes, full of remembrance of adventure, the localities which he has
visited, the animals that he has hunted, the dead kinsmen whom he has met.
The Australians explain their dreams by the supposition that the yambo, the
mūrup, or the boolabong, can quit the body and return. "I asked one of the
Kurnai" (of Gippsland), relates Mr. Howitt, "whether he really thought his
yambo could go out during sleep." "It must be so," was the answer, "for
when I sleep, I go to distant places, I see distant people, I even see and
speak with those that are dead." The great apostle of the East in the
sixteenth century, the devoted Francis Xavier, wrote home from India to the
Society of Jesus in Europe—

"I find that the arguments which are to convince these ignorant people
must be by no means subtle, such as those which are found in the books of
learned schoolmen, but such as their minds can understand. They asked me
again and again how the soul of a dying person goes out of the body, how it
was, whether it was as happens to us in dreams, when we seem to be
conversing with our friends and acquaintances. Ah, how often this happens
to me, dearest brethren, when I dream of you! Was this because the soul
then leaves the body?"

This explanation is found all round the globe.

Many other experiences confirm the impression of some kind of dual

existence. The shadow or shade which follows a man repeats his
movements, and appears as a sort of double. It is even widely believed in
the face of the simplest evidence that a dead body casts no shadow (of
course, as it lies upon the ground the shadow may almost disappear). Your
reflection in river, pool, or lake, actually reproduces your colour as well as
your form: beware lest a crocodile seizes it and drags you in. From ancient
times down to Shelley and Walt Whitman, poetry has designated Sleep and
Death as "brothers"; in death that which was temporarily absent in sleep has
gone away for good. It may have rushed out with the blood from a gaping
wound; it may have quietly departed with the last faint breath. So it may be
summoned back, as in Chinese custom, on the housetop, in the garden or
the field. Ghostly sounds may be heard in the forest, among the rocks,
borne along the wind; the clairvoyant may discern dimly strange faces,
vanished forms; the dead can sometimes make themselves seen in their old
haunts; the world is full of unexpected indications of presences beyond our
sense.

Such presences are grouped, for the modern student, under the general
title "spirits." But the explanations which lead to these beliefs are not
concerned with human beings only. Animals share in the incidents of life
and death; plants, even, grow and blossom and decay; and animals, plants,
and inanimate objects of all sorts may be seen in dreams. Hence the
analysis which is applied to man can be readily extended; and another
world is called into existence, strangely blended with this, a realm of
immaterial counterparts and impalpable forces. A Fiji native, placed before
a mirror, recognising himself and object after object, whispered softly,
"Now I can see into the world of spirits."

With the help of this elementary philosophy a vast machinery of

causation is always at hand for explaining untoward events. The Tshi-
speaking negro on the West Coast of Africa has inside him a kind of life-
power named kra. It existed long before his birth, for it served in the same
capacity a whole series of predecessors; and it will continue its career after
his death, when the man himself becomes a srahman or ghost. The
adjoining Ga-speaking tribes modify the kra into two kla, one male and one
female, the first of a bad disposition, the second good, who give advice and
prompt to actions according to their respective characters. Yet a third inmate
dwells in the neighbouring Yoruba-speaking folk, one in the head, one in
the stomach, and one in the great toe. Offerings are made to the first by
rubbing fowl's blood and palm oil on the forehead. The second needs none,
for it shares whatever the stomach receives. The third is propitiated as an
agent of locomotion before starting on a journey. But the curious theme of
the plurality of souls must not beguile us.

Meantime the original kra is set behind all the activities of nature, and
extended to the whole sphere of material objects. Each town or village or
district has its own local spirits, rulers of river and valley, rock and forest
and hill. Sometimes they take human shape, and colour, white or black, for
transformations of all kinds are always possible. They are not all of equal
rank; the broad lake, the mountain, the sea where the surf breaks heavily
and the frail craft are upset—the lightning, the storm, and the earthquake—
the leopard, the crocodile, the shark, and the devastating smallpox—such
are among the dreaded manifestations of these dangerous and mysterious
powers. But the actual dead must not be forgotten; they must be provided
with ghostly counterparts of food and weapons and utensils, with cloth and
gold-dust, just as a departed chief must be accompanied into the next life by
the wives and slaves who adorned his household state in this.

The ritual of the dead belongs, as we have seen (p. 20), to the earliest-
known activities of European man. It is found in some form or other in
every country under the sun. Sometimes it is prompted by fear, and has for
its object to keep the dead imprisoned in the grave, or to prevent their spirits
from returning to their old haunts (p. 228). Sometimes it is warmed by
affection, as the departed are recalled to the homes where they were loved.
In ancient Egypt it was developed with the utmost elaboration, and created
a literature describing a kind of "pilgrim's progress" through the scenes of
the next world (p. 237); while in Greece and Rome the cultus of the dead
acquired, as in India and China, immense social significance. The question
that arises in the study of religion in the lower culture is concerned with the
probable connection between the two groups of spirits, which may be
broadly distinguished as spirits of nature and spirits of the dead. That the
latter are constantly propitiated in various forms is well known. They are to
be found everywhere, lurking in the trees, flying through the air, sojourning
in caves, haunting the promontories on the rivers or hidden in the forest-
depths. With them lie the causes of disease and madness; they are
malevolent and hurtful, as well as kindly and good. What differences are to
be discerned between them and the powers of nature? Are we to suppose,
with some students, that all the higher forms of religion have been
developed out of the worship of the dead, and that for gods we must
everywhere read originally ghosts?

Consider, for example, the ancient religion of Japan, which we know by

an adaptation of two Chinese words as Shin-To, the "spirits' way," or in its
native form kami-no-michi.[2] Who are the kami, or "spirits"? The title of
"religion" has sometimes been denied to their cultus on the ground that it
contains "no set of dogmas, no sacred book, and no moral code." Greece
and Rome might, on the same plea, be described as having no religion. The
term kami has for its root-idea the significance of "that which is above." It
may be applied in the widest range of relations from the hair which is on the
top of the head to the government which rules the people. The kami are, as
it were, the "highnesses"; the word is used of big things by land and sea,
great rivers, mighty mountains, roaring winds and rolling thunder; then of
rocks and trees, of animals like the tiger and the wolf, of metals, and so of
innumerable objects in earth and sky. It is not always clear whether these
were originally conceived as themselves living, or whether they had been
resolved into material body and controlling spirit. The functions of the
kami, however, are extended and distributed by a kind of fission; the kami
of food split into the produce of trees and the parent of grasses; they preside
over guilds and crafts, the weavers, the potters, the carpenters, the
swordsmen, the boatbuilders; they guide the operations of agriculture; they
superintend the household, and watch over the kitchen range, the saucepan,
the ricepot, the well, the pond, the garden, and the scarecrow.

[2] Chinese culture has probably exerted considerable influence on the

exponents of the Shinto revival in the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries. Very different aspects are reflected in the ancient chronicles.

But in this vast assembly are included also the spirits of the dead. They
likewise become kami of varying rank and power. Some dwell in temples
built in their honour; some hover near their tombs; some are kindly, and
some malevolent. They mingle in the immense multiplicity of agencies
which makes every event in the universe, in the language of the Shinto
writer Motowori (1730-1801), "the act of the Kami." They direct the
changing seasons, the wind and the rain; and the good and bad fortunes of
individuals, families, and States, are due to them. From birth to death the
entire life of man is encompassed and guided by the Kami.
 Hence came the duty of worship on which Hirata (1776-1843) lays great
stress. The heaven-descended Ninigi, progenitor of the imperial line, was
taught by his divine forefathers that "everything in the world depends on the
spirits of the kami of heaven and earth, and therefore the worship of the
kami is a matter of primary importance. The kami who do harm are to be
appeased, so that they may not punish those who have offended them; and
all the kami are to be worshipped so that they may be induced to increase
their favours." Accordingly Hirata's morning prayer before the kami-dana,
the wooden shelf fixed against the wall in a Shinto home about six feet
from the floor, bearing a small model of a temple or "august spirit-house,"
ran thus—

"Reverently adoring the great God of the two palaces of Isé (the Sun-
goddess) in the first place, the 800 myriads of celestial kami, the 800
myriads of ancestral kami, all the 1500 myriads to whom are consecrated
the great and small temples in all provinces, all islands and all places in the
great land of 8 islands, the 1500 myriads of kami whom they cause to serve
them.... I pray with awe that they will deign to correct the unwitting faults
which, heard and seen by them, I have committed, and, blessing and
favouring me according to the powers which they severally wield, cause me
to follow the divine example, and to perform good works in the way."

Here, the spirits of the dead are blended with those of nature, without
any definite attempt to assign them to different ranks or functions. Among
the dead themselves there are such distinctions, which do not, however,
concern us here; there are "spirits of crookedness," and there are spirits of
the clans and of the imperial line. But above the multitudinous groups of
nameless kami, whether once human or attached to the physical scene, rise
certain great powers which it seems very difficult to identify with departed
ghosts. The earliest traditions of the divine evolution in the ancient
chronicles contain no hint pointing in that direction; and the comparison of
the Japanese deities of earth, fire, wind, sea, and similar great elemental
forces elsewhere, is not favourable to their derivation from the hosts of the
dead.
 The student of the hymns to Fire in the Rig-Veda (Agni = Latin ignis)
cannot fail to notice the emphasis laid upon the birth of the god out of the
wood, as the fire-drill kindles the first sparks, and the flame leaps forth.
Here is something quick-moving, vital; the fire is the god; he may rise into
cosmic significance as a pervading energy sustaining the whole world; but
he never loses his physical character, any more than the solid earth or the
encompassing sky. These are again and again the chief co-ordinating
powers of the higher animism. Their separation out of the primeval mass of
obscure and indiscriminate chaos has been the theme of myth from Egypt to
New Zealand; just as their "bridal" has served to express the union and co-
operation of the forces of nature all around the world.

Of this the ancient Chinese religion, still the formal basis of the national
worship as performed by the Emperor, supplies perhaps the best example.
The cultus of the dead is practised in every home, and around the incidents
of life and death have gathered various Buddhist and Taoist rites. Moreover,
a rampant demonology environs the entire field of existence; but this
disordered multitude of noxious spirits has no recognition in the imperial
homage. From immemorial generations the Chinese practice made religion
a department of the State, and the venerable book of the Rites of the great
dynasty of Chow requires the Grand Superior of Sacrifices to superintend
the worship due to three orders of Shin or spirits, celestial, terrestrial, and
human. Under the sovereignty of the sky the first includes the spirits of the
sun, moon, stars, clouds, wind, rain, thunder, and the changes of the
atmosphere. In the sphere of earth are reckoned the spirits of the mountains,
rivers, plains, seas, lakes, woods, fields, and grains.

Taken together Heaven and Earth thus include all the energies of the
universe. The world, as we see it, is, indeed, full of opposing powers, one
group (yang) representing light and warmth and life, the contrary (yin)
manifesting themselves in cold and darkness and death.[3] But these are
both encompassed by the "Path" or Tao, the daily course of the universe, the
abiding guarantee of justice in the distribution of good and evil in the
human lot. Heaven and earth are thus regarded as themselves active or
living; they constantly maintain the order of nature for the welfare of man.
In the ancient Odes (which Confucius was supposed to have edited)
"heaven" is called great and wide and blue. This is plainly the visible
firmament; it is addressed as parent, and sky and earth together are father
and mother of the world. They are not spirits, but are themselves animate.
"Why," laments Dr. Edkins of his Chinese hearers, "they have been often
asked, should you speak of these things which are dead matter, fashioned
from nothing by the hand of God, as living beings?" "And why not?" they
have replied. "The sky pours down rain and sunshine, the earth produces
corn and grass, we see them in perpetual movement, and we therefore say
they are living."

[3] The sky is the home of the yang; the yin are referred to the earth; in
curious contrast to its powers of production and nourishment.

The Chinese genius was ethical rather than metaphysical. It was not
concerned with the Infinite, the Eternal, and the Absolute. But it was deeply
impressed with the moral aspects of the sky, its universality, its
comprehensive embrace of all objects and powers beneath its far-stretching
dome, its all-seeing view, its inflexible impartiality. Its decrees are steadfast,
and proceeded from its sovereign sway; and in this capacity it bore the
august title of Shang Tî, "Supreme Ruler." The scholastic philosophers of a
later day analysed "Heaven" in this capacity into the actual sky and its
controlling personality, and Shang Tî became the Moral Governor of the
Universe, the equivalent of the western God.

Beneath the sky lay the earth, receptive of the energies descending upon
it from on high; "Heaven and Earth, Father and Mother," are conjoined in
common speech. Together they guided the changes of the year, in steadfast
tread along the annual round. Folded in their wide compass were the Shin,
charged with the regulation of the elemental powers. Under Heaven's
control were the Shin of sun and moon, planets, stars, meteors, comets; of
clouds and winds, thunder and rain; of the seasons, months, and days. Those
of the earth were organised in territorial divisions, representing the
dominions of the vassal princes down to the district areas. The higher were
graded according to the political rank of the several provinces; beneath
them were reckoned the spirits of the mountains, forests, seas, rivers, and
grains. The privileges of worship granted to the various officials were part
of the State order, and helped to maintain political and civic stability.

The imperial sacrifices to Heaven and Earth were performed at the

winter and the summer solstices. The great altar to Heaven stands in a large
park in the southern division of Peking, a vast marble structure in three
stages, the lowest being 210 feet across. It is the largest altar in the world.
Its white colour symbolises the light principle of the Yang. The upper stage,
ninety feet in diameter, has for its centre a round blue jade stone, the
symbol of the vault above. Here is placed the tablet to Heaven, inscribed
"Throne of Sovereign Heaven," and associated with it are tablets to
deceased emperors as well as to the Sun and Moon, the seven stars of the
Great Bear, the five Planets, the twenty-eight Constellations, and the Stars.
On the second stage, beneath the richly carved balustrade above, are the
tablets to the Clouds and Rain, to Wind and Thunder. At the corresponding
altar to the Earth on the north side of the city, square in shape, and dark-
yellow in hue, the imperial worship at the summer solstice embraces also
the five lofty Mountains, the three Hills of Perpetual Peace, the four Seas,
the five celebrated Mountains, and the four great Rivers.[4]

[4] It is stated by the North China Herald for July 13, that the present
Chinese Government proposes to convert the Temple of Heaven into a
model farm, and the Temple of Earth into a horse-breeding
establishment.

Splendid processions of princes and dignitaries, musicians and singers,

accompany the Emperor to the great ceremonial. The recent Manchu
sovereigns employed the prayers of the Ming dynasty which preceded
them: here are one or two stanzas of a psalm in which the Emperor Kia-
tsing in the sixteenth century announced to Shang Tî that he would be
addressed as "dwelling in the sovereign heavens":—
 "O Tî, when thou hadst separated the Yin and the Yang (i.e. the earth and
the sky), thy creative work proceeded.

"Thou didst produce the sun and moon and the five planets, and pure and
beautiful was their light.

"The vault of heaven was spread out like a curtain, and the square earth
supported all upon it, and all things were happy.

"I thy servant venture reverently to thank thee, and while I worship,
present the notice to thee, calling thee Sovereign.

* * * * *

"All the numerous tribes of animated beings are indebted to thy favour
for their beginning.

"Men and things are all emparadised in thy love, O Tî.

"All living things are indebted to thy goodness, but who knows from
whom his blessings come to him.

"It is thou alone, O Lord, who art the true parent of all things."

Here the ancient view of the living sky has given place under the
influences of philosophy to a creative monotheism. No image is made of
Shang Tî. As he stands at the head of the manifold ranks of the Shin, he
represents the last word of animism in providing an intellectual form for
religion.

CHAPTER IV
 SPIRITS AND GODS

Religion in the lower culture takes many forms, but, speaking broadly,
they rest upon a common interpretation of the world. Man sees around him
all kinds of motion and change. He finds in everything that happens some
energy or power; and the only kind of power which he knows is that which
he himself exerts. As long as he is alive he can run and fight, he can throw
the spear or guide the canoe; death comes to the comrade by his side, and
all is still. So in wind and stream, in beast and tree, in the stones that fall
upon the mountain side, in the stars that march across the nightly sky, he
sees a like power; they, too, have some sort of life.

Life as an abstract idea, a potency or principle, is but rarely grasped. But

its manifestations early attract notice, and can be roughly explained. They
are due to something inside the living body, which can pass in and out, and
can finally leave it altogether. Here is an immense store of causality
provided, to account for all the incidents of each day's experience. Modern
language calls such agents spirits, and recognises in their multitude two
mingled groups, both active: the spirits of the dead on the one hand, and
those of natural objects, the bubbling well, the gloomy forest, the raging
storm, upon the other.

Sometimes these are merged under a common term, like the Japanese
kami, sometimes they are separately named. They bear different characters
of good and evil, as they are ready to help or hurt; and the same spirit may
be now kindly and now hostile, without fixity of disposition or purpose. To
such spirits the ancient Babylonians gave the name of zi. Literally, we are
told, the word signified "life"; it was indicated in their picture-writing by a
flowering plant; the great gods, and even heaven and earth themselves, all
had their zi. The Egyptians, in like manner, ascribed to every object, to
human beings, and to gods, a double or ka. The word seems to be identical
with that for "food"; it was another way of indicating that all visible things,
the peoples of the earth, the dwellers in the realms above and below, shared
a common life.

The history of religion is concerned with the process by which the great
gods rise into clear view above the host of spirits filling the common scene;
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