512
NOTES AND QUERIES.
v. JUNE so, im
Talmud (Yoma, cap. 5) Azazel was a mountai
peak some ten stages outside Jerusalem, sur
rounded by a barren district far from th
busy haunts of men, a kind of Tarpeian roc
down whose precipitous sides the condemnec
goat was hurled. This is not quite satisfac
tory. Modern scholars, and notably Heng
stenberg, contend that Azazel = Satan, wh
was only to be propitiated by the annua
sacrifice of a goat. Indubitably much of th
argument to which Hengstenberg resorts in
his 'Die Biicher Mosis und Aegypten ' is sup
ported by hypothesis only ; nevertheless, it i
the only presentation of the case which cover
all the facts, and which any dispassionate
study of this remarkable chapter will readily
sanction. In short, this eminent writer has
developed a theory whereby he shows the
deep inroads which Egyptian modes o:
thought had made upon 'the doctrinal cere-
monies of the early Hebrews, so that Moses
was forced to engraft them temporarily upon
the religious reforms he introduced 'in his
scheme of Atonement service. One has only
to turn to Numbers xi. 1-16 for a picture of
what the State was like owing to the asafsuf
or "rabble" that attached itself by marriage,
&c., to the community, and to what extent
the party of monotheism was hampered by
the party which hankered after the flesh'-
pots of Egypt, and which Moses laboured so
strenuously to assimilate with the larger
mass^ by tacking on many degraded rites to
his ritual arid to his priestly ordinations.
But if any one should see fit to obiect that demonoloecy finds scarcely any confirmation in Holy Writ, the answer is that, albeit the date of the, book of Job (where Satan is ex- plicitly mentioned) is unsettled, there exists a Talmudic tradition assigning its authorship to Moses, while it is evident from many pas- sages in the Pentateuch and the Prophets that the early Hebrews were acquainted with nebulous beings called sheidim and scheerim (lit. goats), supposed to dwell in dark and barren places, and to exercise baleful in- fluences over their lives. This warrants the assumption of the survival in the early Hebrew consciousness of a belief similar to
that of the later Iranean mythologv, which
it was ^the object of the Jewish Solon to
neutralize or to destroy by the order cited in
Lev. xvii. 7. Thus, if Azazel may reasonably
typify Ahriman, or the principle of evil,
Hengstenberg's argument in respect of the
Egyptian origin of this curious rite is diffi-
cult to whittle away. In that country the
powers of darkness, he tells us, are classified
under the name of Typhon. Representations
of him are extant on numerous monuments.
Herodotus and Plutarch refer to him. The
barren districts were assigned to him, whence
he was said to make incursions into conse-
crated land. To appease the anger of this
invisible monster, the Egyptians were wont
to offer up sacred animals, notably the ass,
which they threw down a precipice. The
striking similarity between the Egyptian
practice and the Biblical narration is obvious,
and the unbiassed student will therefore
not fail to pay a tribute of admiration to
the genius and brilliant statecraft of the
Jewish lawgiver for successfully grafting
upon the stock of contemporary heathenism
his great scheme of Atonement, and in-
geniously adapting a degraded rite to spiritual
ends. M. L. R. BKESLAR.
Percy House, South Hackney.
THE " BOXERS." The full title of this originally obscure secret society of Shantung appears to be I-Ho-Chuen, or I-Ho-Chuan ; some natives of Peking prefer e, others a. Our newspapers translate it Righteous Har- mony Fists ; to be consistent it should be Righteous Harmony Boxers, as the short form of the name, Boxers, is simply the third ele- ment of the full title, /means "righteous," ho means "uniting," while of chuen, or chuan,
- he definition given b.y Wells Williams, in
lis ' Syllabic Dictionary of the Chinese Language,' 1874, p. 452, is as follows : " The ist, to double up the hand, to grasp in the land, boxing, fisticuffs, athletic, vigorous." 't is a striking testimony to the position of
- he English language in the Far East that
'oreign journals use our term without trans- ation. It occurs in German as " die Boxers," n Italian as "i Boxers," and in Spanish as 'los Boxers." JAS. PLATT, Jun.
LAFONTAINE'S 'Oiss DE FRERE PHILLIPPE.
In that interesting book 'An Australian in Uhina' (London, 1895, p. 154) the author,
Mr. G. E. Morrison, quotes a "charming tory." This is to the effect that
Chinese who had suffered bitter disenchant-
ments in marriage retired with his infant son to the olitude of a mountain inaccessible for little-footed hinese women. He trained up the youth to
worship the gods and stand in awe and abhorrence f devils, but he never mentioned even the name of
woman to him. He always descended to market Lone, but when he grew old and feeble he was at ength compelled to take the young man with him to arry the heavy bag of rice. He very reasonably rgued, ' I shall always accompany mv son, and take are that if he does see a woman by chance, he shall
lever speak to one ; he is very obedient ; he has never
leard of a woman ; he does not know what they 'e ; and as he has lived that way for twenty years ready he is. of course, now pretty safe.' As they ere on the first occasion leaving the market town
