Magic and Religion. Lang Andrew
there. Mr. Tylor's argument seems to be that Mr. Ridley in 1866, and again in 1877, printed extracts, in which occurs Baiame=God, from the 'Missionary Primers prepared for the Kamilaroi.' We might have expected Mr. Tylor at least to give the dates of the 'Missionary Primers' that, ex hypothesi, introduced Baiame before 1840. He gives no dates, and the primers are of 1856 and are written by Mr. Ridley, who cites them.27 Thus they must be posterior to the Baiame of 1840, and Baiame was prior to missionaries at Wellington, at the time when Mr. Tylor first notes his appearance. Thus, by Mr. Tylor's own evidence, Baiame is not shown to be a missionary importation; the reverse.
As to Australia, it is not denied by Mr. Tylor that practically all over the continent the blacks possess religious mysteries of confessed antiquity. It is not denied that the institution of these mysteries is now, in many cases, attributed by the blacks to a moral creative being, whose home is in or above the heavens. It is not denied that his name now usually means, in different dialects, Maker (Baiame), Master (Biamban), and Father (Papang, and many other words). It is not denied that the doctrine of this being is now concealed from children and women, and revealed to lads at the Bora, or initiatory mystery.28 But, on the other hand (as I understand Mr. Tylor), while initiatory rites are old (they certainly existed when Dampier touched at the Australian coast in 1688-1689), the names of their institutor (Father, Maker), his moral excellencies (?), and his creative attributes, are all due to missionary influence. The original founder of the Bora, in pre-missionary days, would only be a dead 'head-man' or leader, now religiously regarded.
To this we first demur. It is not shown – it is denied by Waitz, and it is not even alleged by Mr. Herbert Spencer – that the Australians 'steadily propitiate' or sacrifice at all to any ghosts of dead men. How can they? The name of the dead is tabooed, and even where there is in one instance an eponymous human patronymic of a tribe, that patronymic alters in every generation. Now, among such a ghost-worshipping people as the Zulus, the most recently dead father gets most worship. In Australia, where even the recent ghosts are unadored, is it likely that some remote ghost is remembered as founder of the ancient mysteries? This is beyond our belief, though the opinion is, or at least was, that of Mr. Howitt. The mere institution of female kin among some of these tribes (though paternity is recognised) makes against an ancient worship of a male ancestor where even now ancestors are unworshipped.
As to the aspect of this god, Baiame, Mr. Tylor presently cites a story told to Mr. Howitt by a native, of how with his father he once penetrated in the spirit to Baiame's home, and found him to be 'a very great old man with a long beard,' and with crystal pillars growing out of his shoulders which support a supernal sky. His 'people,' birds and beasts, were around him. Mr. Tylor says: 'These details are, it will have been noticed, in some respects of very native character, while in others recalling conventional Christian ideas of the Almighty.'
The 'Christian' idea is, naturally, that of the old man of Blake and Michael Angelo – Hartley Coleridge's 'old man with the beard.' Is it likely that the savages had seen any such representations? Again, is the idea of Baiame as an old man not natural to a race where respect of age is regularly inculcated in the mysteries and prevails in practice? 'Among the Kamilaroi about Bundurra, Turramulan [another name for this or a lower god] is represented [at the mysteries] by an old man learned in all the laws.'29…
As early as 1798 Collins found that the native word for 'father' in New South Wales was applied by the blacks as a title of reverence to the Governor of the nascent colony.30 It is used now in many native tribes as the name of their Supreme Being, and Mr. Tylor thinks it of missionary origin. Manifestly, this idea of age and paternity in a worshipped being is congenial to the natives, is illustrated in their laws and customs, need not be borrowed, and is rather inevitable. The vision of Baiame, we may add, was narrated to Mr. Howitt by a native fellow-initiate. To lie, in such cases, is 'an unheard-of thing,' says Mr. Howitt. The vision was a result of the world-wide practice of crystal gazing. The seer's father handed to him a crystal. 'When I looked at it,' says the narrator, all manner of visions appeared, including that of Baiame.31
It is manifest, we think, that when the natives attach the attributes of fatherhood and antiquity to Baiame, they need not be borrowing from Christian art notions so natural, nay, so inevitable, in their own stage of society. Though in many cases reckoning kinship through women, they quite undeniably recognise paternity in fact. Thus the paternal title had no need to be borrowed as a word of reverence. It was so used before missionaries came.
Mr. Howitt, who is deeply initiated, writes: 'Beyond the vaulted sky lies the mysterious home of that great and powerful being who is Bunjil, Baiame, or Taramulan in different tribal languages, but who in all is known by a name the equivalent of the only one used by the Kurnai, which is Mangun-ngaur, Our Father.'32
Now, not to multiply evidence which is provided by other observers as to Central Australia (not so central as the Arunta country) and the North, Mr. Tylor is confronted with this problem: Have all the tribes who regard a powerful being, Baiame or another, as founder of their ancient mysteries, borrowed his name and attributes, since 1840 or so, from whites with whom they were constantly in hostile relations? Is it probable that, having hypothetically picked up from Christians the notion of a moral Father in heaven, their 'priests' and initiators instantly disseminated that idea over most of the continent, and introduced it into their most secret and most conservative ceremonies? Would they be likely to restrict so novel a piece of European information to the men? Mr. Dawson, in his 'Aborigines of Australia' (p. 51), writes: 'The recent custom of providing food for it (a corpse) is derided by intelligent old aborigines as "white fellows' gammon"!' Thus do they estimate novelties! Yet in Mr. Tylor's theory it is the most conservative class of all, the medicine-men and learned elders – everywhere rivals and opponents of Christian doctrine – who pick up the European idea of a good, powerful father or master, borrow a missionary name for him (we have shown that the name, Baiame, is not of missionary origin), and introduce him in precisely the secret heart of the mysteries. This knowledge is hidden, under terrible penalties, from women and children: to what purpose? Do missionaries teach only the old rams of the flock, and neglect the ewes and lambs? Obviously the women and children must know any secret of divine names and attributes imparted by missionaries. Again, it is not probable that having recently borrowed a new idea from the whites the blacks would elaborately hide it from its authors, the Europeans. So well is it hidden that, till he was formally initiated, Mr. Howitt had no suspicion of its existence.33
Mr. Tylor may rest in his hypothesis of borrowing, but for the reasons assigned we think it impossible in our, and his, selected North American cases, and inconceivable as an explanation of the Australian phenomena.
Finally, Mr. Tylor candidly adduces a case in which Mr. Dawson, taking great and acknowledged trouble to collect evidence, learned from the blacks that they had believed in a benevolent being, Pirnmeheal, 'whose voice is the thunder,' 'before they knew of the existence of Europeans,' who 'have given them a dread of Pirnmeheal.'34 We add Mr. Howitt's testimony to a supreme being ruling 'from Omeo to Shoalhaven River, from the coast to Yass Gundagai,' concerning whom 'old men strenuously maintained that it was so before the white men came,' they themselves, now aged, having only learned the secret when they were initiated 'and made men' at about the age of fourteen.35 In the same essay of 188536 Mr. Howitt tells of a native whose grandfather initiated him as to an all-seeing personality, Bunjil, 'up there,' who would mark his conduct. 'This was said before the white men came to Melbourne' (1835). Bunjil, said William Beiruk, a black, was called 'our father' 'before white men came to Melbourne.'
I might give other evidence in favour of the unborrowed character of Australian belief in some such being as Baiame. Thus Mrs. Langloh Parker, the careful collector of 'Australian Legendary Tales,'37 was herself interested in the question. She approached the subject as a disciple of Mr. Herbert Spencer, who
Howitt,
Greenway,
Collins,
For concealment from women and children, see Howitt,
Dawson,
Two volumes. Nutt.