James Frazer - The Golden Bough - A Study in Magic and Religion (Third Edition, Vol. 08 of 12)

See The Dying God , pp. 240 sq. , 250.

J. L. Dutreuil de Rhins, Mission Scientifique dans la Haute Asie, 1890-1895 , i. (Paris, 1897) pp. 95 sq. After describing the ceremony as he witnessed it at Kashgar, the writer adds: “Probably the ox was at first a living animal which they sacrificed and distributed the flesh to the bystanders. At the present day the official who acts as pontiff has a number of small pasteboard oxen made, which he sends to the notables in order that they may participate intimately in the sacrifice, which is more than symbolical. The reason for carrying the ox a long distance is that as much as possible of the territory may be sanctified by the passage of the sacred animal, and that as many people as possible may share in the sacrifice, at least with their eyes and good wishes. The procession, which begins very early in the morning, moves eastward, that is, toward the quarter where, the winter being now over, the first sun of spring may be expected to appear, whose divinity the ceremony is intended to render propitious. It is needless to insist on the analogy between this Chinese festival and our Carnival, at which, about the same season, a fat ox is led about. Both festivals have their origin in the same conceptions of ancient natural religion.”

Colonel E. Diguet, Les Annamites, Société, Coutumes, Religions (Paris, 1906), pp. 250-253.

See above, vol. i. pp. 41 sq. , and below, pp. 21 sq.

Du Halde, The General History of China , Third Edition (London, 1741), ii. 120-122; Huc, L'Empire Chinois 5(Paris, 1879), ii. 338-343; Rev. J. H. Gray, China (London, 1878), ii. 116-118. Compare The Sacred Books of China , translated by James Legge, Part iii., The Lî Kî ( Sacred Books of the East , vol. xxvii., Oxford, 1885), pp. 254 sq. : “In this month [the first month of spring] the son of Heaven on the first day prays to God for a good year; and afterwards, the day of the first conjunction of the sun and moon having been chosen, with the handle and share of the plough in the carriage, placed between the man-at-arms who is its third occupant and the driver, he conducts his three ducal ministers, his nine high ministers, the feudal princes and his Great officers, all with their own hands to plough the field of God. The son of Heaven turns up three furrows, each of the ducal ministers five, and the other ministers and feudal princes nine. When they return, he takes in his hand a cup in the great chamber, all the others being in attendance on him and the Great officers, and says, ‘Drink this cup of comfort after your toil.’ In this month the vapours of heaven descend and those of the earth ascend. Heaven and earth are in harmonious co-operation. All plants bud and grow.” Here the selection of a day in spring when sun and moon are in conjunction is significant. Such conjunctions are regarded as marriages of the great luminaries and therefore as the proper seasons for the celebration of rites designed to promote fertility. See The Dying God , p. 73.

See above, pp. 74, 108.

See above, p. 93.

See above, pp. 94, 109; The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings , ii. 105 sqq.

As to the European customs, see above, p. 12.

See above, vol. i. pp. 298 sqq.

Scholiast on Aristophanes, Acharn. 747.

J. Overbeck, Griechische Kunstmythologie , Besonderer Theil, ii. (Leipsic, 1873-1878), p. 493; Müller-Wieseler, Denkmäler der alten Kunst , ii. pl. viii. 94.

Hyginus, Fab. 277; Cornutus, Theologiae Graecae Compendium , 28; Macrobius, Saturn. i. 12. 23; Scholiast on Aristophanes, Acharn. 747; id. , on Frogs , 338; id. , on Peace , 374; Servius on Virgil, Georg. ii. 380; Aelian, Nat. Anim. x. 16.

See above, vol. i. pp. 22 sq.

As to the Thesmophoria see my article “Thesmophoria” in the Encyclopaedia Britannica , Ninth Edition, vol. xxiii, 295 sqq. ; August Mommsen, Feste der Stadt Athen im Altertum (Leipsic, 1898), pp. 308 sqq. ; Miss J. E. Harisson, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion 2(Cambridge, 1908), pp. 120 sqq. ; M. P. Nilsson, Griechische Feste (Leipsic, 1906), pp. 313 sqq. ; L. R. Farnell, The Cults of the Greek States , iii. (Oxford, 1907) pp. 75 sqq. At Thebes and in Delos the Thesmophoria was held in summer, in the month of Metageitnion (August). See Xenophon, Hellenica , v. 2. 29; M. P. Nilsson Griechische Feste , pp. 316 sq.

Photius, Lexicon , s. v. στήνια, speaks of the ascent of Demeter from the lower world; and Clement of Alexandria speaks of both Demeter and Persephone as having been engulfed in the chasm ( Protrept. ii. 17). The original equivalence of Demeter and Persephone must be borne steadily in mind.

Plutarch, Isis et Osiris , 69; Photius, Lexicon , s. v. στήνια.

E. Rohde, “Unedirte Lucians-scholien, die attischen Thesmophorien und Haloen betreffend,” Rheinisches Museum , N.F., xxv. (1870) p. 548; Scholia in Lucianum , ed. H. Rabe (Leipsic, 1906), pp. 275 sq. Two passages of classical writers (Clement of Alexandria, Protrept. ii. 17, and Pausanias, ix. 8. 1) refer to the rites described by the scholiast on Lucian, and had been rightly interpreted by Chr. A. Lobeck ( Aglaophamus , pp. 827 sqq. ) before the discovery of the scholia.

The scholiast speaks of them as megara and adyta . The name megara is thought to be derived from a Phoenician word meaning “cavern,” “subterranean chasm,” the Hebrew מעךה. See F. C. Moyers, Die Phoenizier (Bonn, 1841), i. 220. In Greek usage the megara were properly subterranean vaults or chasms sacred to the gods. See Hesychius, quoted by Movers, l. c. (the passage does not appear in M. Schmidt's minor edition of Hesychius); Porphyry, De antro nympharum , 6; and my note on Pausanias, ii. 2. 1.

We infer this from Pausanias, ix. 8. 1, though the passage is incomplete and apparently corrupt. For ἐν Δωδώνῃ Lobeck ( Aglaophamus , pp. 829 sq. ) proposed to read ἀναδῦναι or ἀναδοθῆαι. At the spring and autumn festivals of Isis at Tithorea geese and goats were thrown into the adyton and left there till the following festival, when the remains were removed and buried at a certain spot a little way from the temple. See Pausanias, x. 32. 14. This analogy supports the view that the pigs thrown into the caverns at the Thesmophoria were left there till the next festival.

Aelian, De natura animalium , xi. 16; Propertius, v. 8. 3-14. The feeding of the serpent is represented on a Roman coin of about 64 b. c.; on the obverse of the coin appears the head of Juno Caprotina. See E. Babelon, Monnaies de la République Romaine (Paris, 1886), ii. 402. A common type of Greek art represents a woman feeding a serpent out of a saucer. See Adonis, Attis, Osiris , Second Edition, p. 75.