Ritual and belief : studies in the history of religion / by Edwin Sidney Hartland.

  • Edwin Sidney Hartland
Date:
1914
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Ritual and belief : studies in the history of religion / by Edwin Sidney Hartland. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    22/376 page 2
    regardless whether it has any relation to the facts or not. This courtier-like etiquette of agreement applies to every subject, and is emphasized when the enquirer is an official or social superior from whom favour may be looked for or displeasure apprehended. The Malayans, a jungle tribe of southern India, invariably say “Yes ” in reply to a question by a government officer or a member of a higher caste, “ believing that a negative answer might displease him.”1 In such cases it is difficult to extract the truth on the most indifferent and trivial, to say nothing of weightier, matters. Passing over these commonplaces, let us pause for a moment on another cause mentioned by Tylor, namely, the natural reluctance of savages to reveal “ to the prying and contemptuous foreigner their worship of gods who seem to shrink, like their worshippers, before the white man and his mightier Deity.”2 Very instructive is the account given by Kolben of the Hottentots. Writing in the early years of the eighteenth century, he says it is “ a difficult thing to get out of the Hottentots what are really their notions concerning God and religion, or whether they have any at all. They keep all their religious opinions and ceremonies, as they do every other matter established among them, as secret as they can from Europeans, and when they are questioned concerning such matters are very shy in their answers and hide the truth as much as they can.” They take refuge from questions in “ a thousand fictions,” which they excuse, when taxed with them, by alleging that “ the Europeans are a crafty, designing people. They never ask a question for the sake of the answer only, but have other ends to serve, perhaps against the peace and security of the Hottentots.” From this source, we are told, have sprung 1 Anantha Krishna, i. 29. 2 Tylor, Ptitn. Cul., i. 382.
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3