from Agbome a man carried in a hammock, with the dress, the stool, and the umbrella of a caboceer; a canoe takes him out to sea, where he is thrown to the sharks.'[1] While in these descriptions the individual divine personality of the sea is so well marked, an account of the closely related Slave Coast religion states that a great god dwells in the sea, and it is to him, not to the sea itself, that offerings are cast in.[2] In South America the idea of the divine Sea is clearly marked in the Peruvian worship of Mamacocha, Mother Sea, giver of food to men.[3] Eastern Asia, both in its stages of lower and higher civilization, contributes members to the divine group. In Kamchatka, Mitgk the Great Spirit of the Sea, fish-like himself, sends the fish up the rivers.[4] Japan deifies separately on land and at sea the lords of the waters; Midsuno Kami, the Water-god, is worshipped during the rainy season; Jebisu, the Sea-god, is younger brother of the Sun.[5]
Among barbaric races we thus find two conceptions current, the personal divine Sea and the anthropomorphic Sea-god. These represent two stages of development of one idea — the view of the natural object as itself an animated being, and the separation of its animating fetish-soul as a distinct spiritual deity. To follow the enquiry into classic times shows the same distinction as strongly marked. When Kleomenes marched down to Thyrea, having slaughtered a bull to the Sea ((
Greek characters)) he embarked his army in ships for the Tirynthian land and Nauplia.[6] Cicero makes Cotta remark to Balbus that 'our generals, embarking on the sea, have been accustomed to immolate a victim to the waves,' and he goes on to argue,
- ↑ Bosman, 'Guinea,' letter xix.; in Pinkerton, vol. xvi. p. 494. Burton, 'Dahome,' vol. ii. p. 141. See also below, chap. xviii. (sacrifice).
- ↑ Schlegel, 'Ewe Sprache,' p. xiv.
- ↑ Garcilaso de la Vega, 'Commentaries Reales,' i. 10, vi. 17; Rivero & Tschudi, 'Peru,' p. 161.
- ↑ Steller, 'Kamtschatka,' p. 265.
- ↑ Siebold, 'Nippon,' part v. p. 9.
- ↑ Herod. vi. 76.
