which was reported to have fallen from the sky.[1] In Mexico, Quetzalcoatl was represented by a black stone or by several small green stones, most likely aerolites which were said to have fallen from heaven.[2] In India the image of Vasu-deva, father of Krishna, came down from the heaven of Indra, thus connecting Krishna with an aerolite cult; that of Sîtalâ at Jasoli fell from the sky, and the ancestors of the Madaga sept of Kâfirs in the Hindu Kush, and that of the Mech in Assam came down from the sky in a thunderbolt, as the stone which Kronos spewed up was worshipped, and the Syrian Aphrodite sprang from an &gg which fell from heaven into the Euphrates.[3]
As might naturally be expected the worship of aerolites is widespread. Many races call flint weapons "thunderbolts"; healing powers are attributed to them; they are hung over cattle sheds and round the necks of children; they are worshipped by the Khyens of Assam; one was found in South Russia, set in a gold ring, and was no doubt used as an amulet.[4] So, stone knives, following the potent influence of conservatism in religious matters, were largely used in ritual, in slaying swine in Rome, in Egyptian embalmment, in the Hebrew rite of circumcision.[5]
The number of sacred meteorites is legion. Professor Miers mentions one that fell in Ensisheim in Elsass in 1492, which was taken to the village church, where it is still preserved. An aerolite fell in Sugolia on the borders of Hungary
- ↑ Gibbon, Decline and Fall (ed. W. Smith), i., 281.
- ↑ Bancroft, loc. cit., iii., 281.
- ↑ Atkinson, Himalayan Gazetteer, ii., 785, 800; Robertson, Kâfirs of the Hindu Kush, 160 seqq.; Pausanias, x., 24, 6; Frazer, iii., 339; Risley, Tribes and Castes of Bengal, ii., 87.
- ↑ Frazer, Pausanias, v., 355; 8th Series Notes and Queries, ii.,321; Tylor, Early History, 208; Grimm, loc. cit., iv., 1221, 1686; Dalyell, Darker Superstitions of Scotland, 356 seqq.; Journal of the Anthropological Institute, i., App. , lxii.; vi.. 149.
- ↑ Livy, i., 24; Herodotus, ii., 86; Exodus, iv. 25.
