Cox, George - Aryan Mythology Vol 2.pdf

112 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS.
BOOK but shows ' that the conception of God had not yet acquired
*.. ,J * that complete universality which alone deserves to be called
monotheism, or belief in the One God.'
Ideas and^ The recognition of beings powerful enough to injure, and
perhaps placable enough to benefit, the children of men,
symbols of
the vivify
ing power involved the necessity of a worship or cultus. They were all
in nit"iiT*p
of them gods of life and death, of reproduction and decay, of
the great mystery which forced itself upon the thoughts of
men from infancy to old age. If the language of poets in
general describes the phenomena of nature under metaphors
sug-gested by the processes of reproduction and multiplication
in the animal and vegetable world, the form which the idea
would take among rude tribes with a merely sensuous speech
is sufficiently obvious. The words in which iEschylos and
Shelley speak of the marriage of the heaven and the earth
do but throw a veil of poetry over an idea which might easily
become coarse and repulsive, while they point unmistakeably
to the crude sensuousness which adored the principle of life
under the signs of the organs of reproduction in the world
of animals and vegetables. The male and female powers of
nature were denoted respectively by an upright and an oval
emblem, and the conjunction of the two furnished at once
the altar and the ashera, or grove, against which the Hebrew
prophets lifted up their voice in earnest protest. It is
clear that such 'a cultus as this would carry with it a con-
stantly increasing danger, until the original character of the
emblem should be as thoroughly disguised as the names of
some of the Yedic deities when transferred to Hellenic soil.
But they have never been so disguised in India as amongst
the ancient Semitic tribes
;
'
2 and in the kingdoms both of
1 Max Miiller, ' Semitic Monotheism,' varies greatly, and the coarser develope-
Ckips. ii. 368. ments of the cultus are confined to a
2 * Wie Wenig das Alterthum don comparatively small number. Professor
Begriffder Unzucht mit diesem Bilde Wilson says that 'it is unattended in
verband, beweist, dass in den Eleusi- Upper Egypt by any indecent or indelinien
nur die Jungfrauen die dir6ppr)Ta cate ceremonies,' ('On Hindu Sects,'
tragen durften (Thucyd. vi. 56; Suid. Asiatic Review, vol. xvii.) ; and Sir
s. v. 'AppriQopla) und des Phallus Ver- William Jones remarks that ' it seems
ehrang selbst von den Yestalisohen never to have entered into the heads of
Junpfrauen (Plin. xxviii. 4, 7).' Nork, the Hindu legislators and people that
Eeal-Worterbuch s. v. Phalluscult, 52. anything natural could be offensively
Even -when the emblems still retain obscene—a singularity which pervades
more or less manifestly their original all their writings, but is no proof of the
character, the moral effect on the people depravity of their morals ; hence the