repute of the hare, I shall now similarly group some instances of an altogether different association of ideas.
The hare is the good genius of the Calmuck.[1] One family of the Moguis believed that they were descended from a hare, and that after death their spirits entered into hares again. They accordingly worshipped the hare, as did other families the deer, the bear, the prairie-wolf, and the rattlesnake for similar reasons.[2] The hare was regarded with superstitious reverence by the Indians of the North; the rabbit was the "sign" of the divine years in the Mexican calendar.[3] In China we remember that the people of Yo-yang would not hunt the hare because it was a telluric genius. "Albino hares," says Dr. Dennys, "are regarded as omens of good, and their appearance is a mark of, heavenly approval."[4] It was into a hare that the highest lord of heaven, according to the Mongolian belief, changed himself to feed a hungry traveller, and does not therefore the hare sit in the moon? The Ceylon tale tells how Buddha was wandering through a wood and met a hare, whom he told, in answer to his question, that he was poor and hungry. "Art thou hungry?" said the hare; "make a fire then; then kill, cook, and eat me." Buddha made a fire, and the hare leapt into it. Then Buddha exercised his skill as a god, rescued the benevolent hare from the flames, and placed it in the moon. In Indian superstition Chandras, the god of the moon, is said to carry a hare. Children in Swabia may not make shadows on the wall to represent the sacred Moon Hare.[5] In a Kaffir tale, the hare, if not playing the part of a god, appears as the very crafty Ulysses of animals. The animals, we learn, had made a kraal and appointed one after another the coney, the muishond, the duiker, the bluebuck, and the porcupine to keep watch over the fat stored therein, and to signal
- ↑ Conway's Demonology, vol. i. pp. 124, 125.
- ↑ Dorman's Origin of Primitive Superstitions, 1881, p. 254.
- ↑ Ibid. p. 256. "Wabasso, who fled to the north as soon as he saw the light and was changed into a white rabbit, under that form became canonised."
- ↑ Folk-Lore of China, 1876, p. 64.
- ↑ Grimm's Deutsche Mythologie, vol. ii. p. 597. The writer of an article on "Some Solar and Lunar Myths," Cornhill Magazine, October, 1882, refers to the above passages in Grimm's work, but gives the pagination of the earlier edition, p. 679.
