Close by Nowroji Wadia’s house was another habitat of spirits. The owner of the house, a Parsi lady, was asked to cover it. In view of the sad experience of the fate of the owner of the neighbouring house she was reluctant to do anything that might offend the spirits, but the Malaria Department was insistent. She therefore first implored the presiding deities of the well to forgive her as she had no option in the matter, and then consented to cover the well provided a wire-gauze trap-door was allowed so as not to interfere with the work of worship. I understand that on every full moon eve she opens the trap-door, garlands the well and offers her puja there.
Further down the same street, once renowned for the abodes of Parsi Shethias, is a house belonging to a well-known Parsi family. A well in this house was and still is most devoutly worshipped by the inmates of the house. I hear from a very reliable source that whenever any member of the family got married, it was the practice to sacrifice a goat to the well-spirit, to dip a finger in the blood of the victim and to anoint the bride or bridegroom on the forehead with a mark of the blood. Once however this ceremony was overlooked and, as fate would have it, the bridegroom died within forty days.
This practice of besmearing the forehead with the blood of the sacrifice is a survival of primitive ideas concerning blood-shedding and blood-sprinkling, the taking of the blood from the place where the sacrifice was given being regarded as equivalent to taking the blessing of the place and putting it on the person anointed with the blood. Thus when an Arab matron slaughters a goat or a sheep vowed in her son’s behalf, she takes some of the blood and puts it on his skin. Similarly, when a barren couple that has promised a sacrifice to a saint in return for a child is blest with the joys of parenthood, the sacrifice is given and the blood of the animal is put on the forehead of the child.
Remarkable as is the survival of this primitive ritual in Bombay and its prevalence amongst people such as the Parsis, there is nothing very extraordinary about it. A little patch of savagery as it appears to be in the midst of fair fields and pastures new of western culture, it merely affords an illustration of the fact that localities preserve relics of a people much older than those who now inhabit them. It also shows that various systems of local fetichism found in Aryan Countries merely represent the undying beliefs and customs of a primitive race which the Aryans eventually incorporated into their own beliefs and rituals, for it will be seen as we proceed that in India as in Great Britain the entire cult of well-worship was imbibed rather than engendered by Aryan culture.
What, however, is most extraordinary is that of all the communities in Bombay the Parsis show the greatest susceptibility to these beliefs. Amongst the Hindus worship of water is, no doubt, universal. Belief in spirits is also general amongst them. Amongst these spirits there are water-goblins also, Jalachar, as contrasted with Bhuchar, spirits hovering on earth, mostly inimical, mâtâs and sankhinis, bhuts, and prets who hover round wells and tanks, particularly the wayside ones, and drown or enter the persons of those who go near their haunts. Many of these goblins are the spirits of those who have met with an accidental death or the souls that have not received the funeral pindas with the proper obsequies. The Hindus believe that these fallen souls reside in their avagati, or degraded condition, near the scene of their death and molest those who approach it. Almost all the old wells in the Maidan were in this way believed to be the haunts of such spirits who claimed their annual toll without fail. Thus it was believed that the well that stood in the rear of the Bombay Gymkhana must needs have at least three victims, and sure enough there were at least three cases of suicide in that well during a year! However, so far as domestic well-spirits are concerned, while almost all the wells of a Parsi house were until recently and many of them still are under the protection of a Bâwâ, or Sayyid, or Pir, or Jinn, or Pari, or other spirits, one rarely comes across such wells in Hindu household. Wells are worshipped by the Hindus no doubt, without exception, but it is the sacred character of the water that accounts for the worship, not the belief in the existence of well-spirits. Again, as a result of my investigations, I find that the worship of wells amongst the Parsi community is in some cases much ruder and more primitive than amongst the Hindus. What can be the explanation for it? Is it simply a continuation of their own old beliefs in the land of their adoption? Is it merely old wine in new bottles?
Water-worship was, no doubt, a general cult with the Parsis in their ancestral home. Of the antiquity of this worship amongst them we have ample evidence in their scriptures. In the Aban Yesht the spring is addressed as a mighty goddess, Ardevi Sura Anahita, strong, sublime, spotless, erroneously equated by some authors with the Mylitta of the Babylonians and the Aphrodite of the Greeks. Ahurarmazda calls upon Zarathushtra to worship Ardevi Sura Anahita:—
The chariot of Banu Ardevi Sura is drawn by four white horses who baffle all the devils. Ahuramazda is said to have worshipped her in order to secure her assistance in inducing Zarathushtra to become his prophet, and the example set by Him was followed by the great kings and heroes of ancient Iran. It is conceivable that this tribal cult accompanied the devout descendants of the ancient Persians wherever they went and that with their mind attuned to the worship of water they readily came under the influence of the genii locorum in the different parts of this country and adopted some of the local rituals of the people who resided there before them. But the question then arises, who were the people from whom they borrowed these beliefs and rituals? Most of the guardian angels of their wells point to a Mahomedan origin, and yet amongst the followers of Islam well-worship is conspicuous by its absence. They have, no doubt, their Sayyids and Pirs in abundance, almost every shrine of theirs has its presiding saint, but they scarcely believe in any spirit residing in wells. In fact, one may safely say that well-worship amongst these people has died out, if ever it did exist before. During my investigation I have not come across a single case of such worship amongst them and all the Mahomedans whom I have consulted testify to the absence of these beliefs among them. How then, do we account for the Mahomedan patron saints of the wells of Parsi houses? It clearly cannot be a case of preservation of old wine in new jars. The intensely local colouring does not warrant any such assumption. There are distinctly non-Parsi ingredients in it. From whom and how did they get these? Well-spirits, like tree-spirits, form no part of any tribal cult. They are essentially local in nature and the subject needs careful research in the localisation of beliefs and the genealogy of folklore. We shall advert to this subject again,[9] meanwhile let us record a few more instances of sanctified wells in Bombay.
A well of which I heard during my childhood several thrilling stories of a somewhat singular type was situated in a house in Nanabhoy Lane, Fort, opposite the Banaji Fire-Temple, which belonged to my great grand-mother. It was believed to be the abode of a kind-hearted Sayyid (Mahomedan saint) who used to watch the health and fortunes of the inmates of the house. Women in labour preferred for confinement no other place to this auspicious house always mercifully protected by that guardian angel. It is said that he used to come out of the well regularly and that his presence was known by the ecstatic possession of a Parsi woman who used to live on the ground floor. A big basin of maleeda (confection of wheat flour) was offered to him by the ladies. It was emptied in a few moments. The inmates of the house related to the saint all their difficulties and each one got a soothing reply and friendly hints through the lips of the medium. A young lady used to suffer from constant headache. Her grand-mother one day asked the Sayyid what to do to cure the ailment. He gave her a betel-nut and told her that it should always be kept by the girl with her. This was done and she never suffered from headache again. An old inmate of the house was once seriously ill. All hopes of recovery were abandoned, but the saint came to his rescue and advised the relatives as to what they should do to propitiate the sea furies who wanted to devour the man. After the furies were propitiated as advised, the man recovered.
One or two more stories of Bombay wells known after the names of the saintly spirits residing in them may be noted. The Gunbow Lane is known after the famous well in the locality. It is generally believed that the well was sacred to the Saint (bâwâ) Gun who resorted to it. The Bombay City Gazetteer, however, informs us that “the curious name Gunbow is probably a corruption of Gunba, the name of an ancestor of Mr. Jagannath Shankersett.” Old records show that Gunba Seti or Gunba Shet settled in Bombay during the first quarter of the 18th century and founded a mercantile firm within the Fort walls. This Gunbow well was so big that it was believed that a man could swim from its bottom to another in the compound of the Manockji Seth Wadi about 500 feet away. Report has it that swimmers even used to find their way as far as the wells on the Maidan beyond Hornby Road. When it was proposed to fill in the well, strong representations were made to the effect that an opening for the well spirit should be kept, and a portion was left open for years. This too has been now covered over, but people still take their offerings to the site. In the same way, a well in the lane by the side of the Manockji Seth’s Agiary leading to Mint Road, which has been covered over, is seen strewn with flowers and other offerings.
Another well in Ghoga Street was believed to be the dwelling place of a Mahomedan saint, Murgha Bâwâ. “Murgha” is believed to be a corruption of Yusuf Murgay, who owned houses in the street which was also known after his name as Murgha Sheri. An esteemed friend, who used to reside in the house containing this well, tells me that the well was held in great reverence by the Parsi families residing in the locality. Various offerings were made, the principal of which was a black murgha or fowl, the common victim of such sacrifices. It was believed that in the still hours of the night the saint used to come out of the well and move about in the house. His steps were heard distinctly on the staircase and his presence was announced by the creaking sound that was heard round about. But my friend, who used to burn midnight oil in that house during his college days and who has since been wedded to science, is inclined to think that the footsteps were those of the rats infesting the house and that the creaking sound was made by the wooden book-cases!
A Parsi lady who lived in the same house says that people from various parts of the town used to take offerings to the spirit of the well, amongst which were big thalis (trays) of sweetmeat. Children were asked not to touch these, but this young lady freely helped herself to those sweets. Another friend, who took similar liberties with the offerings, was Mr. Jamsetji Nadirshaw. He used to live in Mapla’s house in old Modikhana. The well of this house was adored by people and young Jamsetji pilfered a lot of sweets offered to the gods. Sir Dinsha Edulji Wacha, who lived in the house during his childhood, informs me that his mother and grand-mother used to tell him many a thrilling story of the queer ways in which the guardian spirit of the well used to divert them.
A friend living in Karwar Street (Modi Khana) says that the well of his house is sacred to a Mahomedan pir and that to this day vows are offered to the saint and his blessings sought whenever the tenants are in difficulty. On the full moon day the well is decorated with flowers and the saint is implored to cure cases of illness which defy the doctor’s skill. Needless to say, these offerings and prayers are speedily followed by the recovery of the patients.
Another well in Parsi Bazar Street is also believed to harbour a beneficent pir. Only four years ago, a friend was informed that when doctors despaired of curing a patient, a Parsi carpenter suggested that the well spirit should be implored to save the patient. He brought certain people versed in the art of propitiating spirits and asked them to try their skill. They gratified the well-spirit by placing grain and other offerings on the surface of the water and by remaining in the water for days together, muttering incantations. The patient was thoroughly cured and, no wonder, he attributes the cure to the grace of the water saint.
These folk beliefs in the efficacy of well-water and the influence of the spirits dwelling in it are, as already observed, in no way peculiar to the City of Bombay or to other parts of the country of India and present no new phase of human thought. They are common to the whole world. In the concept of primeval man everything had its spirit. Particularly did it associate life with motion. The spring was ever flowing, ever bountiful, ever refreshing and fertilizing and came to be regarded as a living organism, a benevolent spirit supplying man with the prime necessity of life and endowed with purifying and healing qualities. Everywhere, therefore, the source of this quickening element that had such charms came to be adored so that the water-worship in the East has its striking counterpart in the history of Western thought.
Professor Robertson Smith identifies well-worship with the agricultural life of aborigines who had not yet developed the idea of a heavenly God. This is his description of the worship prevailing in Arabia: “The fountain is treated as a living thing, those properties of its waters which we call natural are regarded as manifestations of a divine life, and the source itself is honoured as a divine being, I had almost said a divine animal.”[10] “This pregnant summary of well-worship in Arabia,” says Sir Laurence Gomme in his Ethnology of Folklore, “may, without the alteration of a single word, be adopted as the summary of well-worship in Britain and its isles.” One might even say that well-worship is probably more widespread in the West than in the East and that some of the rituals there observed are more primitive than those which distinguish it in the East.
We have seen that water-worship was a cult of hoary antiquity. The belief that every locality has its presiding genius gave rise to the deification of fountains and rivers just as it led to the deification of hills and trees and other phases of animism. The emphasis of animism lies in its localisation, in the local spirits which, to quote Tylor’s words, belong to mountain and rock and valley, to well and stream and lake, in brief, to those natural objects which in early ages aroused the savage mind to mythological ideas.[11] Some localities may not have in their midst such weird places as mountains and rivers, groves and forests, but scarcely any district is devoid of a well or a pool of water. Of all nature-worship, therefore, well-worship is the most widespread. Just the same scenes as one witnesses to-day at wells and tanks in India were beheld for ages in other parts of the world. Just the same stories as one hears to-day of the mysterious ways and powers of water-spirits were everywhere heard before. We have already seen that it was a general cult with the ancient Iranians and with the help of Professor Robertson Smith and Professor Curtiss we have also noticed how in Arabia the fountain was treated as a living thing and the source itself honoured as a divine being.
Max Müller, however, puts a different construction on the deification of natural objects. He points out that it is in India more than anywhere else that animism has been made to disclose its secret cause, namely, the necessity of deriving all appellative nouns from roots necessarily expressive, as Noire has shown, of action, so that, whether we like it or not, the sun whether called Svar or Vishnu, bull, swan or any other name, becomes ipso nomine an agent, the shiner or the wanderer, the strong man, the swift bird. By the same process the wind is the blower, the night the calmer, the moon, Soma, the rainer. What is classed as animism in ancient Aryan mythology, he observes, is often no more than a poetical conception of nature which enables the poets to address the sun and moon, and rivers and trees as if they could hear and understand his words. “Sometimes however,” he continues, “what is called animism is a superstition which after having recognised agents in sun and moon, rivers and trees, postulates on the strength of analogy the existence of agents or spirits dwelling in other parts of nature also, haunting our houses, bringing misfortunes upon us, though sometimes conferring blessings also.” It lies beyond the scope of this work to enter into any discussion of this theory, but we shall see as we proceed that the theory of poetic personification does not harmonize with the myriad details of folklore of wells and springs.
One might be inclined to attribute the worship of water to the great economic value which water possesses in the hot and dry regions of the east where wells and springs are veritable assets of the people, the most precious gifts of the gods. But it was not in arid lands only that wells received divine honour. There is ample evidence to show that people inhabiting lands rich in springs and fountains also held them sacred and worshipped the divine beings under whose protection the streams flowed bubbling across their fields. It would seem, therefore, that the spiritual element has been the uppermost in the worship of water. It was in view of the religious awe in which the Greeks held rivers that they raised their prayers to the springs, as may be gathered from the prayers offered by Odysseus to the river after his vicissitudes in the deep and from the description given by Homer in the Iliad of the sacrifice offered at flowing springs.
According to the Old Testament water was an important factor during the first three days of Creation. On the first day “the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters”; on the second day the nether waters were divided from the upper, and the latter were transformed into the “rakia” or “firmament”; and on the third day the nether waters were assigned to their allotted place, which received the name of “sea.” The Gnostics regarded water as the original element and through their influence and the influence of the Greeks similar beliefs gained currency among the Jews, so that Judah ben Pazi transmitted the following saying in the name of R. Ismael: “In the beginning the world consisted of water within water; the water was then changed into ice and again transformed by God into earth. The earth itself, however, rests upon the waters, and the waters on the mountains” (i.e. the clouds).[12]
Nature withheld stone and wood from the Babylonian, but bestowed upon him by way of compensation another invaluable gift—the sea and the rivers. The Babylonian fully realized its value as an incentive to civilization. In his work on the Evolution of the Aryan Rudolph von Ibering points out that in his conception of the God Nun the Babylonian personified the idea that water was the source of all life, that historically the earth came forth from the water as well as that water was the source of all blessing, the quickening element of creation. Indeed, in Mesopotamia more than anywhere else one could vividly realize the fact that the inhabited soil had once formed the bottom of the sea and had become dry land through the retreat of the waters. In Egypt Shu, the air, rises from water which existed before the gods and goddesses some of whom like Vishnu, Vira-Kocha and Aphrodite, have actually sprung from waters. In the Quran Lord Almighty says: “We clave the heavens and earth asunder, and by means of water, we gave life to everything.” This is also one of the Ebionite doctrines. The Akkad triad of gods was formed of Ea, the ocean-god, who was also known as “the lord of the earth” with Na, the Sky, and Mul-ge, the lord of the underworld. They had no local water-deities, but from the earliest times we come across two stages of development of one central idea—the conception of the natural element as an animated being itself and the separation of its animating fetish-soul as a distinct spiritual deity. In the Land of the Hittites Garstang says that the Hittites seem to have absorbed into their pantheon a number of acceptable nature-cults, like the worship of mountains and streams and of the mother-goddess of earth, already practised by an earlier population whom they overlaid. In the history of Polybius is recorded an oath made by Hannibal to Philip of Macedon containing two triads sacred to the Phœnicians: “Sun, Moon and Earth”; “Rivers, Meadows and Waters.”
In the Puranas the Vedic God Varuna is the “lord of the waters.” He rides on the Makara, half crocodile, half fish, rules the soft west winds and controls the salt seas and the “seminal principle.”[13] The noose of Varuna is called the Nâgapâsa, or snake-noose, from which the wicked cannot escape. Every twinkle of man’s eyes and his inward thoughts are known to Varuna. “He sees as if he were always near: none can flee from his presence, nor be rid of Varuna. If we flee beyond the sky, he is there; he knows our uprising and lying down.” Originally Mithra and Varuna were merely the names for day and night and it is interesting to note how the conception of the night served to convey the idea of the ocean. “The night,” says Kunte,[14] “presents the phenomenon of an expanse which resembles that of the ocean in colour, in extent, in depth, and in undulating motion. Hence the idea of the one naturally expressed the idea of the other. The god of night became the god of waters.” The same author thus sums up the different stages of the development of the idea of Varuna:
1. Varuna, darkness or night and one possessed of meshes.
2. Varuna, ocean or firmament.
3. Varuna, lord of waters.
4. One who aided sailors, a beneficent god.
Turning to the classic world, we find that the early Greeks, like the Babylonians, regarded the ocean as a broad river surrounding the earth, the abode whence spirits came, and to which they returned, and so a “river of life and death.” They called Okeanos, the ocean, the son of heaven and earth, and his wife was Tēthis, or Tēthus; together they were the parents of all waters.
“To the great Olympian assembly in the halls of cloud-compelling Zeus came the Rivers, all save Ocean, and thither came the nymphs who dwell in lovely groves and at the springs of streams, and in the grassy meads; and they sate upon the polished seats. Even against Hephaistos, the Fire-god, a River-god dared to stand opposed, deep-eddying Xanthos, called of men Skamandros. He rushed down to overwhelm Achilles and bury him in sand and slime, and though Hephaistos prevailed against him with his flames, and forced him, with the fish skurrying hither and thither in his boiling waves and the willows scorched upon his banks, to rush on no more but stand, yet at the word of white-armed Here, that it was not fit for mortals’ sake to handle so roughly an immortal god, Hephaistos quenched his furious fire, and the returning flood sped again along his channel.”
Neptune was the Latin Sea-god, “the lord of dwelling waves.” When Kleomenes marched down to Thyrea, having slaughtered a bull to the sea, he embarked his army in ships for the Tirynthian land and Nauplia. Cicero makes Cotta remark to Balbus that “our generals, embarking on the sea, have been accustomed to immolate a victim to the waves,” and he goes on to argue that if the Earth herself is a goddess she is no other than Tellus and if the earth, the sea too referred to by Balbus as Neptune. Here, says Tylor[15], is direct nature-worship in its extremest sense of fetish-worship. But in the anthropomorphic stage appear that dim pre-Olympian figure of Nēreus, the Old Man of the Sea, father of the Nereids in their ocean-caves, and the Homeric Poseidon, the Earth-shaker, “who stables his coursers in his cave in the Ægean deeps, who harnesses the gold-maned steeds to his chariot and drives through the dividing waves, while the subject sea-beasts come up at the passing of their lord, a king so little bound to the element he governs, that he can come from the brine to sit in the midst of the gods in the assembly on Olympos, and ask the will of Zeus.”
The third greatest god of the Scandinavians was Niörd, born in Vanaheim (the water home), and living among sailors in Noatun (ship town) ruling the winds, and sea, and quenching the fires of day in his waves. To the Vanir, or sea folk, he was the “rich and beneficent one,” and his children were Frey and Freya. Skadi, “the scathing one”, daughter of Thiassi the giant god of land, took him as her husband, but land and water did not long agree. His consort is also Nerthus, the earth-goddess of Rugen, called by the Germans, the iron lady.
Japan deifies separately on land and at sea the lords of the waters. Midsuno Kami, the water-god, is worshipped during the rainy season and Jebisu, the sea-god, is younger brother of the Sun to whom the Japanese offer cloth, rice and bottles of rum, just as the Greek sacrificed a bull to Poseidon and the Romans to Neptune, before a voyage. The Peruvian sea-god Virakocha, “foam of the lake” or “of the waters,” was often identified with the Creator. Arising from the waters he made the sun and the planets, gave life to stones and created all things.
“It appears from Bosman’s account, about 1700,” says Tylor, “that in the religion of Whydah, the sea ranked only as younger brother in the three divine orders, below the serpents and trees. But at present, as appears from Captain Burton’s evidence, the religion of Whydah extends through Dahowe, and the Divine Sea has risen in rank. The youngest brother of the triad is Hu, the ocean or sea. Formerly, it was subject to chastisement, like the Hellespont, if idle or useless. The Huno, or ocean priest, is now considered the highest of all, a fetish king, at Whydah, where he has 500 wives. At stated times he repairs to the beach, begs ‘Agbwe’, the ocean-god, not to be boisterous, and throws in rice and corn, oil and beans, cloth, cowries and other valuables. At times the King sends as an ocean sacrifice from Agbowe a man carried in a hammock, with the dress, the stool, and the umbrella of a caboceer; a canoe takes him out to sea, where he is thrown to the sharks. While in these descriptions the individual divine personality of the sea is so well marked, an account of the closely related slave coast religion states that a great god dwells in the sea, and it is to him, not to the sea itself, that offerings are cast in. In South America the idea of the divine sea is clearly marked in the Peruvian worship of Mamacocha, Mother Sea, giver of food to men.”[16]
The Egyptians gratefully recognize how much they owe to the Nile and in their hymns they thank the Nile-god. Statues of the god are painted green and red, representing the colour of the river in June when it is a bright green before the inundation and the ruddy hue when its wells are charged with the red mud brought down from the Abyssinian mountains. We have already noticed that the spring was and is still adored as Lord Almighty’s daughter by the Zoroastrians. The Zoroastrian scriptures record how she was worshipped by the Heavenly Father Himself when He wanted her assistance in inducing Zarathushtra to become His prophet. Even to this day a festival is held in her honour by the Parsis in Bombay on the tenth day of the eighth month of the Parsi year. This day as well as the month bear the name Aban. The Parsis flock in numbers on this auspicious day to the sea-beach to offer prayers.
Not unlike the Iranians the Greeks also adored their marine goddess Aphrodite, “born in the foam of the sea.” Greek folklore tells us how this goddess rose from the sea opposite the island of Cythera. She was also the goddess of love and was in earlier times regarded as the goddess of domestic life and of the relations between families, being in some places associated with Eileithyia, the goddess of childbirth, or regarded, like Artemis, as a guardian of children and young maidens. Odysseus invoked the river of Scheria, Skamandros had his priest and Spercheios his grove, and sacrifice was given to the river-god Acheloos, eldest of the three thousand river-children, and old Okeanos.
Greek saints were believed to bestow wells of water endowed with miraculous properties, and frequently on their feast days an extra supply made the wells overflow. The monastery of Plemmyri, in the south-east of Rhodes, possesses a well of this nature. The priest walks round it, offering up certain prayers and sometimes the water rises in answer to his invocation and flows over into the Court. Another such interesting well exists in the Church of the Virgin at Balukli, outside the walls of Constantinople.[17]
Similarly, the Romans had their water-nymph Egeria. Women with child used to offer sacrifices to her, because she was believed to be able, like Ardevi Sur Anahita and Diana, to grant them an easy delivery. Every day Roman Vestals fetched water from her spring to wash the temple of Vesta, carrying it in earthenware pitchers on their heads. In his Golden Bough Sir James Frazer observes that the remains of baths which were discovered near that site together with many terra cotta models of various parts of the human body suggest that the waters of Egeria were used to heal the sick who may have signified their hopes or testified their gratitude by dedicating likenesses of the diseased members to the goddess, in accordance with a custom which is still observed in many parts of Europe. Examples of the survival of this custom in modern times are given by Blunt in his Vestiges of Ancient Manners and Customs in Modern Italy and Sicily. It is also widespread among the Catholic population in Southern Germany and the Christian missionaries from those parts have brought the custom to India also. Almost every Sunday the Goans and Native Christians of Bombay, for instance, will be seen dedicating likenesses of diseased limbs made of wax to Virgin Mary at Mount Mary’s chapel at Bandra in gratitude for the cures effected through her grace. The custom has spread amongst other communities and I have heard of several cases in which Parsi ladies have taken such offerings to the Chapel.
This parallelism of beliefs and catholicity of cures remind one of the faith which not only the Greeks and the Roman Catholics, but the Turks and the Jews had in the miracles wrought by the Greek Saints. The best known instance of this, given by Miss Hamilton in her illuminating work on Greek Saints and their Festivals, is the large marble fountain standing in the court of the Panagia’s Church at Tenos. It was the gift of a grateful Turk cured, according to his own conviction, by the Panagia of the Christians. To a certain extent a feeling was prevalent against permitting unbelievers to participate in these boons, but it was futile in effect and the cures of infidels continued. Within the Smyrna Cathedral there is a holy well the water of which is specially renowned for the cure of ophthalmia. Turks, along with Greeks, shared in its benefits to an extent which excited the jealousy of the officials and they resolved to give ordinary water in response to the demands of infidels. This stratagem was, however, ineffectual for the eyes of the Turks were cured nevertheless with the unsanctified medium just as thoroughly as with the holy water. This might have shaken the faith of the believers in the holy well, but fortunately for them no such rude awakening appears to have marred their confidence in the miraculous powers of the well or of the saints.
Numerous proofs of water-worship in Great Britain exist to-day. English folklore is full of these and we shall notice them presently. There is also archæological evidence establishing the prevalence of the cult. On a pavement at Sydney Park, Gloucestershire, on the western bank of the Severn, has been carved the figure of one of the English river divinities. The principal figure is a youthful deity crowned with rays like Phoebus and standing in a chariot drawn, as in the case of Banu Ardevi Sur Anahita of the Iranians, by four horses. Three inscriptions are preserved: (1) Devo Nodenti; (2) D. M. Nodonti and (3) Deo Nudente M. The form Nodens has been identified by Professor Rhys with the Welsh Lludd and with the Irish Nuada. This monumental relic by no means presents the British embodiment of the water-god, the work being Roman it evidently bears the stamp of the Roman interpretation of the British belief in the local god and has been modelled on the Roman standard of the water-god Neptune. The whole find has been fully described and illustrated in a special volume by the Rev. W. H. Bathurst and C. W. King.
In Tylor’s Primitive Culture we find the following American examples of animistic ideas concerning water. “Who makes this river flow?” asks the Algonquin hunter in a medicine song, and his answer is, “The spirit, he makes this river flow.” In any great river, or lake, or cascade, there dwell such spirits, looked upon as mighty manitus. Thus Carver mentions the habit of the Red Indians, when they reached the shores of Lake Superior or the banks of the Mississippi, or any great body of water, to present to the spirit who resides there some kind of offering; this he saw done by a Winnebago chief who went with him to the Falls of St. Anthony. Franklin saw a similar sacrifice made by an Indian, whose wife had been afflicted with sickness by the water-spirits and who accordingly to appease them tied up in a small bundle a knife and a piece of tobacco and some other trifling articles, and committed them to the rapids. On the river-bank the Peruvians would scoop up a handful of water and drink it, praying the river deity to let them cross or to give them some fish, and they threw maize into the stream as a propitiating offering. Even to this day the Indians of the Cordilleras perform the ceremonial sip before they will pass a river on foot or horseback, just as the Hindus and Parsis throw cocoanuts and flowers and sugar.
Tylor also gives the following African rites of water-worship. In the East, among the Wanika, every spring has its spirit, to which oblations are made. In the West, in the Akra district, lakes, ponds and rivers received worship as local deities. In the South, among the Kafirs, streams are venerated as personal beings, or the abodes of personal deities, as when a man crossing a river will ask leave of its spirit, or having crossed will throw in a stone; or when the dwellers by a stream will sacrifice a beast to it in time of drought, or, warned by illness in the tribe that their river is angry, will cast into it a few handfuls of millet or the entrails of a slaughtered ox. Not less strongly marked, says Tylor, are such ideas among the Tartar races of the north. Thus the Ostyaks venerate the river Ob, and when fish is scanty will hang a stone about a rein-deer’s neck and cast it in for a sacrifice. Among the Buræts, who are professing Buddhists, the old worship may still be seen at the picturesque little mountain lake of Ikeougoun, where they come to the wooden temple on the shore to offer sacrifices of milk and butter and the fat of the animals which they burn on the altars.
It is not necessary to overlay this chapter with countless other European and Indian examples. We shall examine these more fully in the subsequent chapters.
Throughout the West the cult of water was flourishing along with the cult of trees and stones when Christianity found its way to Europe. The holy wells which were then plentiful have since changed their names, but a few have still retained their old names. Thus there is or was a spring called Woden’s well in Gloucestershire, which supplies water to the moat around Wandswell Court, also a Thor’s Well, or Thorskill, in Yorkshire. When the faith and usages of the Celtics and the Anglo-Saxons came in contact with Christianity, together with the still older faiths and customs which the Celt and Teuton had continued or allowed to continue, the new religion did not distinguish between the various shades of beliefs and usages. It merely treated all alike as pagan. Kings, Popes and Church Councils issued edict after edict condemning non-Christian practices. Let us cite some of these. The second Council of Arles, held about the year 452, issued the following canon:
“If in the territory of a bishop infidels light torches or venerate trees, fountains, or stones, and he neglects to abolish this usage, he must know that he is guilty of sacrilege.”
King Canute in England and Charlemagne in Europe also conducted vigorous campaigns against these relics of paganism. Here is an extract from Charlemagne’s edict:
“With respect to trees, stones, and fountains, where certain foolish people light torches or practise other superstitions, we earnestly ordain that the most evil custom detestable to God, wherever it be found, should be removed and destroyed.”
It was too much, however, to hope for the total eradication of those faiths and customs of age-long existence. Pope Gregory was not slow to realize this, as will be seen from the following extract from his famous letter to the Abbot Mellitus in the year 601:—
“When, therefore, Almighty God shall bring you to the most reverend Bishop Augustine our Brother, tell him what I have, upon mature deliberation on the affair of the English, determined upon, namely that the temples of the idols (fana idolorum) in that nation (gente) ought not to be destroyed; but let the idols that are in them be destroyed; let holy water be made and sprinkled upon the said temples, let altars be erected and relics placed. For if these temples be well built, it is requisite that they may be converted from the worship of devils (dæmonum) to the worship of the true God; that the nation seeing that their temples are not destroyed may remove error from their hearts, and knowing and adoring the true God may the more familiarly resort to the places to which they have been accustomed. And because they have been used to slaughter many oxen in the sacrifices to devils some solemnity must be exchanged for them on this account, so that on the day of the dedication, or the nativities of the holy martyrs whose relics are there deposited, they may build themselves huts of the boughs of trees about those churches which have been turned to that use from temples and celebrate the solemnity with religious feasting and no more offer beasts to the devil (diabolo), but kill cattle to the praise of God in their eating, and return thanks to the giver of all things for their sustenance.”
Thus did the early Christian missionaries come to regard the old phase of water-worship tenderly. Adopting what they could not abolish, they blessed the waters of holy wells and used them for baptism of converts and erected chapels or oratories near by or placed an image of the Virgin, or some saint, near sacred trees and rivers or over holy wells and fountains. Thus did the new faith which aimed in principle at the purity of Christian doctrine permit in practice a continuance of pagan worship under Christian auspices. Curious was the result. Under the transformation of beliefs thus unconsciously wrought the simple-hearted Christians beheld in brilliant images of the virgin and the saints fresh dwelling-places for the presiding deities of the waters whom they and their forefathers had venerated in the past. The belief in the miraculous power of water became linked with the name of Madonna or some saintly messenger of God and so enduring was this combination that it gave a new lease of life to the old beliefs.
One by one the old ideas and customs which were firmly rooted in the multitude came to be absorbed into Christianity. A dual system of belief thus sprang up and this is very strikingly reflected in the supplication of an old Scottish peasant when he went to worship at a sacred well:
“O Lord, Thou knowest that well would it be for me this day an I had stoopit my knees and my heart before Thee in spirit and in truth as often as I have stoopit them after this well. But we maun keep the customs of our fathers.”[18]
What is true of well-worship is true of other phases of nature-worship. A vivid picture of the result of the Christian tolerance of paganism has been drawn by Grimm in the preface to the second edition of his Teutonic Mythology. For our present purpose it will suffice to quote from it only two or three sentences which have a direct bearing on the question of water-worship: “Sacred wells and fountains,” says he, “were rechristened after saints, to whom their sanctity was transferred. Law usages, particularly the ordeals and oath-takings, but also the beating of bounds, consecrations, image processions, spells and formula, while retaining their heathen character, were simply clothed in Christian forms. In some customs there was little to change: the heathen practice of sprinkling a new-born babe with water closely resembled Christian baptism.”
This reference to adapted pagan rites in connection with the baptismal ceremony recalls the words in which Mr. Edward Clodd in Tom Tit Tot traces the early beginnings of the order of the Christian clergy to a prehistoric past. “The priest who christens the child in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost,” says he, “is the lineal descendant, the true apostolic successor of the medicine-man. He may deny the spiritual father who begot him, and vaunt his descent from St. Peter. But the first Bishop of Rome, granting that title to the apostle, was himself a parvenu compared to the barbaric priest who uttered his incantations on the hill now crowned by the Vatican.”
“We think with sympathy,” continues Mr. Clodd, “of that ‘divine honour’ which Gildas tells us our forefathers paid to wells and streams; of the food-bringing rivers which, in the old Celtic faith, were ‘mothers’; of the eddy in which the water-demon lurked; of the lakes ruled by lovely queens; of the nymphs who were the presiding genii of wells.”
With the learned author of Tom Tit Tot we also think with sympathy of the worship of the saint Khwaja Khizr, who is believed by the Syrians to have caused water to flow in the Sabbati fountain in northern Syria and who is ranked among the prophets by the Mahomedans and recognised by the Hindus as a patron saint of boatmen, his Moslem name being Hinduised into Râjâ Kidar or Kawaj or Pir Badra. He is, however, most widely known as the patron saint of the water of immortality. When the great Sikandar, Alexander of Macedon, went in quest of the blessed waters, Khizr accompanied him, as a guide, to Zulmat, the region of darkness, where the spring of the water of immortality was believed to exist. When they reached Zulmat, Khizr said that only 12 persons should enter that region on 12 mares and that each mare’s colt should be tied outside so that should any one lose his way, the mare on which he rode might lead him back to the starting point, following the direction from which she would hear the neighing of her colt. This course was followed. According to one account, the party succeeded in reaching the coveted spring. Khizr drank from it first and then asked Sikandar to drink as much as he liked. The conqueror of the East, however, stood still. He saw before him some very aged birds in a pitiable condition, longing for death and muttering maut, maut, maut, death, death, death! Death, however, would not come to them as they had tasted the water of immortality. This was enough to unnerve Alexander and he turned back without tasting the water. According to another tradition, Khizr slipped away in the region of darkness, went alone to the spring and drank from it. Alexander and his comrades lost their way and were only able to emerge from the darkness with the help of their mares who instinctively followed the direction whence they heard the neighing of their colts.
In India the fish is believed to be the vehicle of Khwaja Khizr. Its image is therefore painted over the doors of Hindus and Mahomedans in Northern India and it became the family crest of one of the royal families of Oudh. When a Mahomedan lad is shaved for the first time, a prayer is offered to the saint and a little boat is launched in his honour in a tank or river. The Hindus as well as the Mahomedans in Upper India invoke his help when their boats go adrift and they worship him by burning lamps and by setting afloat on a village pond a little raft of grass with a lighted lamp placed upon it. A Mahomedan friend who has often taken part in this ceremony which is known as Khwaja Saheb ka Dalya, has favoured me with the following description of it: “On the evening of the ceremony people congregate by the side of the river and bring with them a quantity of dalya, a confection of wheat, and a tiny boat prepared for the occasion. They then light a diva or ghee lamp, and place it by the side of the dalya, which is then consecrated in the name of Khwaja Khizr by reading Fatiha over it. A portion of the confection is then placed in the boat which is launched in the river with the small lamp in it. The remaining portion is distributed amongst friends and relations and the poor.”
As a rule the Mahomedans do not worship water. They, however, hold the well Zumzum in Mecca in great veneration. It is believed that this single well supplies water to the whole city and that its water comes up bubbling on occasions of religious fervour. The water of the well is also credited with miraculous properties and on their return from the pilgrimage to the holy city almost all the Hajis (pilgrims) bring home the water of Zumzum in small tins and distribute it amongst friends who use it as a cure for several diseases and also sprinkle it on the sheet covering the dead.
No other holy well attracts the followers of Islam, but for the Hindus the number of such places of pilgrimage is legion. Particularly do they flock in numbers to the sacred rivers which are regarded as the dwelling places of some of the most benevolent deities. In Northern India the Ganges and the Jumna are known as “Ganga Mâi”, or Mother Ganges, and “Jumnaji” or Lady Jumna. Foremost in the rank of the holy rivers is the Ganges, which, like other rivers, is specially sacred at certain auspicious conjunctions of the planets when crowds of people are seen bathing on her banks. This sanctity is shared by several towns along the shores of the river such as Hardwar, Bithur, Allahabad, Benares and Ganga Sagar. No less sacred is the Godavari, believed to be the site of the hermitage of Gautama. When the planet Brihaspati (Jupiter) enters the Sinha Rashi (the constellation of Leo), a phenomenon which takes place once in twelve years, the holy Ganges goes to the Godavari and remains there for one year and during that year all the gods bathe in this river. Hence the pilgrimage of thousands of Hindus to Nasik to offer prayers to the Godavari. A pilgrimage similar to this is common in Russia. There, an annual ceremony of blessing the waters of the Neva is usually performed in the presence of the Czar.[19] Multitudes flock to the site and struggle for some of the newly blessed water with which they cross themselves and sprinkle their clothes.
In his “Popular Religion and Folklore of Northern India” Crooke observes that many of the holy wells in Northern India are connected with the wanderings of Rama and Sita after their exile from Ayodhya. Sita’s kitchen (Sita ki rasoi) is shown in various places, as at Kanauj and Deoriya in the Allahabad District. Her well is on the Bindhachal hill in Mirzapur, and is a famous resort of pilgrims. There is another near Monghyr and a third in the Sultanpur District in Oudh. The Monghyr well has been invested with a special legend. Sita was suspected of faithlessness during her captivity in the kingdom of Ravana. She threw herself into a pit filled with fire, where the hot spring now flows, and came out purified. When Dr. Buchanan visited the place, he heard a new story in connection with it. Shortly before, it was said, the water became so cool as to allow bathing in it. The Governor prohibited the practice as it made the water so dirty that Europeans could not drink it. “But on the very day when the bricklayers began to build a wall in order to exclude the bathers, the water became so hot that no one could dare to touch it, so that the precaution being unnecessary, the work of the infidels was abandoned.”[20]
A bath in the waters of wells is believed to have the same efficacy for expiating sin as a bath in the holy rivers. This belief rests on the theory that springs and rivers flow under the agency of an indwelling spirit which is generally benignant and that bathing brings the sinner into communion with the spirit and purifies him in the moral more than in the physical sense. It is believed that even the dead are benefited by such ceremonies.
A very typical case of the efficacy of such religious baths is that of King Trisanku, who had committed three deadly sins. According to one story he tried to win his way to heaven by a great sacrifice which his priest, Vashishtha, declined to perform. According to another account he ran away with the wife of a citizen, and killed in a time of famine the wondrous cow of Vashishtha. Another story accused him of having married his step-mother. After he had been sufficiently chastised, the saint Viswamitra took pity on him and having collected water from all the sacred places in the world, washed him clean of all offences.
The Brahmins also wash themselves of sins with the washing of their sacred thread every year, with a ceremony of sprinkling of water and cow’s urine. This ceremony is known as Shrávani amongst the Marathas and Mārjan Vidhi amongst the Gujeratis.
It would be impossible to enumerate the numerous sacred wells of India. A few instances may, however, be cited from the Folklore Notes of Gujarat.
Six miles to the east of Dwarka there is a kund called Pind tarak, where many persons go to perform the Shrâddha and the Nârâyan-bali ceremonies. They first bathe in the kund; then, with its water, they prepare pindas, and place them in a metal dish; red lac is applied to the pindas, and a piece of cotton thread wound round them; the metal dish being then dipped in the kund, when the pindas, instead of sinking, are said to remain floating on the water. The process is believed to earn a good status for the spirits of departed ancestors in heaven. It is further said that physical ailments brought on by the avagati, degradation or fallen condition, of ancestors in the other world, are remedied by the performance of Shrâddha on this kund.
The Damodar kund is situated near Junagadh. It is said that if the bones of a deceased person remaining unburnt after cremation are dipped in this kund, his soul obtains moksha or final emancipation.
There is a vav or reservoir on Mount Girnar, known as Rasakupika-vav. It is believed that the body of a person bathing in it becomes as hard as marble, and that if a piece of stone or iron is dipped in the vav, it is instantly transformed into gold. But the vav is only visible to saints and sages who are gifted with a supernatural vision.
Kashipuri (Benares) contains a vav called Gnyan-vav, in which there is an image of Vishweshwar (the Lord of the Universe, i.e., Shiva). A bath in the water from this vav is believed to confer upon a person the gift of divine knowledge.