File:The history of mankind (1896) (14764043545).jpg

Identifier: historyofmankind01ratz (find matches)
Title: The history of mankind
Year: 1896 (1890s)
Authors: Ratzel, Friedrich, 1844-1904 Butler, Arthur John, 1844-1910
Subjects: Ethnology Anthropology
Publisher: London, Macmillan and co., ltd. New York, The Macmillan co.
Contributing Library: Wellesley College Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Wellesley College Library

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said to have gone to rest, among the Hovas indeed to have become divine. The amalgamation of Indian, Chinese, and Mussulman notions with theinherited religion has had the effect not of clearing, but rather of increasingand confusing the vast body of superstitions. In the mythologies of theIndian Archipelago, which have adopted elements from Buddhism and Brah-manism, there appear reminiscences of ancient Phoenician and Babylonishconceptions as well as affinities to those newly learnt from Polynesia. Just 480 THE HISTORY OF MANKIND as, even in progressive Java, the old cult of souls and a nature-worship withoutlimits have maintained themselves side by side with relics of Brahmanism andhundreds of thousands of Buddha-worshippers, so do the more refined forms ofastrology and necromancy stand with every kind of intervening stage besidecrude superstition. The talent for religion which we extolled in the Polynesiansis also characteristic of the Malays. Just as in the Archipelago hundreds of
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Rainitsontsoraka—a Christian martyr in Madagascar. (After Ellis. thousands have become fanatical Mussulmans, so has Madagascar become,through the Hovas, a very stronghold of Christianity in the East ; for allthe Hovas, to the number of 800,000, have become professed Christians.The fact that the majority are Protestants, and the Catholics numericallyweak in comparison, was a main reason of the inefficiency of the first French protectorate. Since among the lower races the influence of the priestly class is proportionedto the mass of superstitions, we may decidedly anticipate that the priestswill here hold a conspicuous position ; even though the endless subdivisionsof religion, by allowing no central form of worship and no hierarchy, organised THE RELIGION OF THE MALAYS 481 as a unit, to grow up is outwardly detrimental to their status. The Igorroteseers are usually the boldest and most cunning scamps of their tribe, whoutilise their influence for the filling of their own stomachs. Th

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