point of view of religion, a being who punishes sin. "He very frequently sent his sons to destroy bad men and bad women … who had killed and eaten blacks."[1] In the North of Victoria, the natives believe that while creation has been the work of "very, very old ones" (Nooralie, elsewhere Nurrumbung uttias, or old spirits, these "old ones" precisely answering to the Ovakuru meyuru, or "old ones in heaven," of the African Ovahereros), "had severally the forms of the crow and the eagle."
Here already we find ourselves confronted by the omnipresent dualism of mythical cosmogonies.[2] "There was continual war between the crow and the eagle;" between these two ornithomorphic creators the strife was as fierce as between wolf and raven, coyote and dog, Ormuzd and Ahriman, or any other numina of Oriental or savage belief. The enmity of the crow and
- ↑ A curious anecdote bearing on the connection of morality and religion among the Australians is given in Taplin's Native Races of South Australia, p. 36. An old native, uninfluenced by European teaching, was on his death-bed. He pointed upwards and said, "Tand an amle kiathangk waiithamb," "My tendi is up there." The tendi is a judicial assembly of the tribe.
- ↑ Another example of Australian dualism is the strife between Baiamé and Dararwigal, the good being in the east, and the being qui ne vaut grand chose in the west, like Gaunab and Tsui Goam with the Hottentots. Cf. Réville, Religions des Peuples Non-Civilisés, ii. 150, quoting Koeler, Notizen, p. 148. There is a deity called Wandong, who slays women, like Artemis Macgillivray, Narrative of Voyage of Rattlesnake, i. 151; Hale, Ethnography and Philology, p. 111]. Réville's citations will chiefly be found, with others, in Waitz, Anthrop. der Naturvölker, vi. 797. The story of the omnipotent, decrepit, and dead being, Motogon, found by the Benedictines in West Nursia, a being checked even when alive, and in spite of his omnipotence, by a powerful opposition, is a highly inconsistent missionary legend (Max Müller, Hib. Lect., p. 17; Journ. Anthrop. Soc., 1877–78).
