land.[1] Within our own dominion, when Rajah Sala Byne was building the fort of Sialkot in the Punjab, the foundation of the south-east bastian gave way so repeatedly that he had recourse to a soothsayer, who assured him that it would never stand until the blood of an only son was shed there, wherefore the only son of a widow was sacrificed.[2] It is thus plain that hideous rites, of which Europe has scarcely kept up more than the dim memory, have held fast their ancient practice and meaning in Africa, Polynesia, and Asia, among races who represent in grade, if not in chronology, earlier stages of civilization.
When Sir Walter Scott, in the 'Pirate,' tells of Bryce the pedlar refusing to help Mordaunt to save the shipwrecked sailor from drowning, and even remonstrating with him on the rashness of such a deed, he states an old superstition of the Shetlanders. 'Are you mad?' says the pedlar; 'you that have lived sae lang in Zetland, to risk the saving of a drowning man? Wot ye not, if you bring him to life again, he will be sure to do you some capital injury?' Were this inhuman thought noticed in this one district alone, it might be fancied to have had its rise in some local idea now no longer to be explained. But when mentions of similar superstitions are collected among the St. Kilda islanders and the boatmen of the Danube, among French and English sailors, and even out of Europe and among less civilized races, we cease to think of local fancies, but look for some widely accepted belief of the lower culture to account for such a state of things. The Hindu does not save a man from drowning in the sacred Ganges, and the islanders of the Malay archipelago share the cruel notion.[3] Of all people the rude Kamchadals have the prohibition in the most remarkable form. They hold it a great fault, says Kracheninnikow, to save a drown-
- ↑ F. Mason, 'Burmah,' p. 100; Bastian, 'Oestl. Asien,' vol. i. pp. 193, 214; vol. ii. pp. 91, 270; vol. iii. p. 16; Roberts, 'Oriental Illustrations,' p. 283.
- ↑ Bastian, 'Mensch,' vol. iii. p. 107. A modern Arnaut story is given by Prof. Liebrecht in 'Philologus,' vol. xxiii. (1865), p. 682.
- ↑ Bastian, 'Mensch,' vol. iii. p. 210; Ward, 'Hindoos,' vol. ii. p. 318.
