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Updated: June 15, 2025
Even amongst the Aztecs, who had reached a stage of social development, barbarous or semi-civilised, far beyond anything attained by the Australian tribes, the degree of personality and individuality reached by the vegetation deities was not such that those deities had strictly proper names: the deity of the maize was still only 'the maize-mother. Amongst the Australians, who are so far below the level reached in Mexico, the beings worshipped at the first-fruits ceremonies may well have been as nameless as the beings worshipped by the jungle-dwellers of Chota Nagpur.
Of the reality of Him, whom even the jungle-dweller of Chota Nagpur seeks to approach, it is only possible to doubt on grounds which seek to deny the ultimate validity of the common consciousness on any point. With the inferences which men have drawn about that reality, and the ideas those inferences have led to, the case is different.
I wondered very much on my way north why I was not molested, for I did not fail to see that the death of the man in Nagpur was connected with the fact that he had divulged to me some of the secrets of the religion of Fire-Tongue. Indeed, it was from him that I first learned the name of the high priest of the cult of Fire. Why I was not molested I learned later.
And if he be as vague and shadowy as the power or being to whom the jungle-dwellers of Chota Nagpur make their offerings at stated seasons, then he may be looked for and found in the plant or animal species which is his. The harvest is his alone, until the first-fruits are offered. He makes the plants to grow: if they fail, it is to him the community prays.
It is with sacrifice, or by means of sacrifice, that their gods are approached by all men, beginning even with the jungle-dwellers of Chota Nagpur, who sacrifice fowls and offer victims, for the purpose of conciliating the powers that send jungle-fever and murrain.
But it must be remembered that snake-worship is of very ancient origin, not only in Further India, but also in the nearer peninsula, where the serpent race or Nagas, who may have given their name to the town of Nagpur, were long held in superstitious reverence. Mr.
Political activity and agitation had been confined in the past mainly to Nagpur, the capital, and to the western districts, in which a large Mahratta element predominates especially amongst the better-educated classes. Most of Mr.
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