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Updated: May 25, 2025
The nature of the Mongol domination is well illustrated by the policy which the conquerors adopted towards the Russian Church. For more than half a century after the conquest the religion of the Tartars was a mixture of Buddhism and Paganism, with traces of Sabaeism or fire-worship. During this period Christianity was more than simply tolerated.
De Brosses was well aware that heathen religions were a complex mass, a concretion of many materials. He admits the existence of regard for the spirits of the dead as one factor, he gives Sabaeism a place as another. But what chiefly puzzles him, and what he chiefly tries to explain, is the worship of odds and ends of rubbish, and the adoration of animals, mountains, trees, the sun, and so forth.
But De Brosses is distinctly scientific when he attempts to explain the animal- worship of Egypt, and the respect paid by Greeks and Romans to shapeless stones, as survivals of older savage practices. The position of De Brosses is this: Old mythology and religion are a tissue of many threads. Sabaeism, adoration of the dead, mythopoeic fancy, have their part in the fabric.
He would, perhaps, have kept the supernatural element in magical stones, feathers, shells, and so on, apart from the triple thread of Sabaeism, ghost-worship, and totemism, with its later development into the regular worship of plants and animals. It must be recognised, however, that De Brosses was perfectly well aware of the confused and manifold character of early religion.
The ancient religion of the Afar coast was Sabaeism, probably derived from the Berbers or shepherds, according to Bruce the first faith of the East, and the only religion of Eastern Africa. The Somal still retain a tradition that the "Furs," or ancient Guebres, once ruled the land.
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