The Evolution of the Dragon Part 6

When an infant is born it is accompanied by the after-birth or placenta to which it is linked by the umbilical cord. The full comprehension of the significance of these structures is an achievement of modern science. To primitive man they were an incomprehensible marvel. But once he began to play with the idea that he had a double, a vital essence in his own shape which could leave the sleeping body and lead a separate existence, the placenta obviously provided tangible evidence of its reality. The considerations set forth by Blackman,[80] supplementing those of Moret, Murray and Seligman and others, have been claimed as linking the placenta with the _ka_.

Much controversy has waged around the interpretation of the Egyptian word _ka_, especially during recent years. An excellent summary of the arguments brought forward by the various disputants up to 1912 will be found in Morel's "Mysteres egyptiens". Since then more or less contradictory views have been put forward by Alan Gardiner, Breasted, and Blackman. It is not my intention to intervene in a dispute as to the meaning of certain phrases in ancient literature; but there are certain aspects of the problems at issue which are so intimately related to my main theme as to make some reference to them unavoidable.

The development of the custom of making statues of the dead necessarily raised for solution the problem of explaining the deceased's two bodies, his actual mummy and his portrait statue. During life on earth his vital principle dwelt in the former, except on those occasions when the man was asleep. His actual body also gave expression to all the varied attributes of his personality. But after death the statue became the dwelling place of these manifestations of the spirit of vitality.

Whether or not the conception arose out of the necessities unavoidably created by the making of statues, it seems clear that this custom must have given more concrete shape to the belief that all of those elements of the dead man's individuality which left his body at the time of death could shift as a shadowy double into his statue.

At the birth of a king he is accompanied by a comrade or twin exactly reproducing all his features. This double or _ka_ is intimately a.s.sociated throughout life and in the life to come with the king's welfare. In fact Breasted claims that the _ka_ "was a kind of superior genius intended to guide the fortunes of the individual _in the hereafter_" ... there "he had his abode and awaited the coming of his earthly companion".[81] At death the deceased "goes to his _ka_, to the sky". The _ka_ controls and protects the deceased: he brings him food which they eat together.

It is important clearly to keep in mind the different factors involved in the conception of the _ka_:--

(a) The statue of the deceased is animated by restoring to it the breath of life and all the other vital attributes of which the early Egyptian physiologist took cognisance.

(b) At the time of birth there came into being along with the child a "twin" whose destinies were closely linked with the child's.

(c) As the result of animating the statue the deceased also has restored to him his character, "the sum of his attributes," his individuality, later raised to the position of a protecting genius or G.o.d, a Providence who watches over his well-being.[82]

The _ka_ is not simply identical with the breath of life or _animus_, as Burnet supposes (_op. cit. supra_), but has a wider significance. The adoption of the conception of the _ka_ as a sort of guardian angel which finds its appropriate habitation in a statue that has been animated does not necessarily conflict with the view so concretely and unmistakably represented in the tomb-pictures that the _ka_ is also a double who is born along with the individual.

This material conception of the _ka_ as a double who is born with and closely linked to the individual is, as Blackman has emphasized,[83]

very suggestive of Baganda beliefs and rites connected with the placenta. At death the circ.u.mstances of the act of birth are reconst.i.tuted, and for this rebirth the placenta which played an essential part in the original process is restored to the deceased. May not the original meaning of the expression "he goes to his _ka_" be a literal description of this reunion with his placenta? The identification of the _ka_ with the moon, the guardian of the dead man's welfare, may have enriched the symbolism.

Blackman makes the suggestion that "on the a.n.a.logy of the beliefs entertained by the Hamitic ruling caste in Uganda," according to Roscoe, "the placenta,[84] or rather its ghost, would have been supposed by the Ancient Egyptians to be closely connected with the individual's personality, as" he maintains was also the case with the G.o.d or protecting genius of the Babylonians.[85] "Unless united with his twin's [i.e. his placenta's] ghost the dead king was an imperfect deity, i.e.

his directing intelligence was impaired or lacking," presumably because the placenta was composed of blood, which was regarded as the material of consciousness and intelligence.

In China, as the quotations from de Groot (see footnote) show, the placenta when placed under felicitous circ.u.mstances is able to ensure the child a long life and to control his mental and physical welfare.

In view of the claims put forward by Blackman to a.s.sociate the placenta with the _ka_, it is of interest to note Moret's suggestion concerning the fourteen forms of the _ka_, to which von Bissing a.s.signs the general significance "nourishment or offerings". He puts the question whether they do not "personify the elements of material and intellectual prosperity, all that is necessary for the health of body and spirit"

(_op. cit._, p. 209).

The placenta is credited with all the varieties of life-giving potency that are attributed to the Mother-G.o.ddess. It therefore controls the welfare of the individual and, like all maternal amulets (_vide supra_), ensures his good fortune. But, probably by virtue of its supposed derivation from and intimate a.s.sociation with blood, it also ministered to his mental welfare.

In my last Rylands Lecture I referred to the probability that the essential elements of Chinese civilization were derived from the West. I had hoped that, before the present statement went to the printer, I would have found time to set forth in detail the evidence in substantiation of the reality of that diffusion of culture.

Briefly the chain of proof is composed of the following links: (a) the intimate cultural contact between Egypt, Southern Arabia, Sumer, and Elam from a period at least as early as the First Egyptian Dynasty; (b) the diffusion of Sumerian and Elamite culture in very early times at least as far north as Russian Turkestan and as far east as Baluchistan; (c) at some later period the quest of gold, copper, turquoise, and jade led the Babylonians (and their neighbours) as far north as the Altai and as far east as Khotan and the Tarim Valley, where their pathways were blazed with the distinctive methods of cultivation and irrigation; (d) at some subsequent period there was an easterly diffusion of culture from Turkestan into the Shensi Province of China proper; and (e) at least as early as the seventh century B.C. there was also a spread of Western culture to China by sea.[86]

I have already referred to some of the distinctively Egyptian traits in Chinese beliefs concerning the dead. Mingled with them are other equally definitely Babylonian ideas concerning the liver.

It must be apparent that in the course of the spread of a complex system of religious beliefs to so great a distance, only certain of their features would survive the journey. Handed on from people to people, each of whom would unavoidably transform them to some extent, the tenets of the Western beliefs would become shorn of many of their details and have many excrescences added to them before the Chinese received them. In the crucible of the local philosophy they would be a.s.similated with Chinese ideas until the resulting compound a.s.sumed a Chinese appearance. When these inevitable circ.u.mstances are recalled the value of any positive evidence of Western influence is of special significance.

According to the ancient Chinese, man has two souls, the _kwei_ and the _shen_. The former, which according to de Groot is definitely the more ancient of the two (p. 8), is the material, substantial soul, which emanates from the terrestrial part of the universe, and is formed of _yin_ substance. In living man it operates under the name of _p'oh_, and on his death it returns to the earth and abides with the deceased in his grave.

The _shen_ or immaterial soul emanates from the ethereal celestial part of the cosmos and consists of _yang_ substance. When operating actively in the living human body, it is called _khi_ or "breath," and _hwun_; when separated from it after death it lives forth as a refulgent spirit, styled _ming_.[87]

But the _shen_ also, in spite of its sky-affinities, hovers about the grave and may dwell in the inscribed grave-stone (p. 6). There may be a mult.i.tude of _shen_ in one body and many "soul-tablets" may be provided for them (p. 74).

Just as in Egypt the _ka_ is said to "symbolize the force of life which resides in nourishment" (Moret, p. 212), so the Chinese refer to the ethereal part of the food as its _khi_, i.e. the "breath" of its _shen_.

The careful study of the ma.s.s of detailed evidence so lucidly set forth by de Groot in his great monograph reveals the fact that, in spite of many superficial differences and apparent contradictions, the early Chinese conceptions of the soul and its functions are essentially identical with the Egyptian, and must have been derived from the same source.

From the quotations which I have already given in the foregoing pages, it appears that the Chinese entertain views regarding the functions of the placenta which are identical with those of the Baganda, and a conception of the souls of man which presents unmistakable a.n.a.logies with Egyptian beliefs. Yet these Chinese references do not shed any clearer light than Egyptian literature does upon the problem of the possible relationship between the _ka_ and the _placenta_.

In the Iranian domain, however, right on the overland route from the Persian Gulf to China, there seems to be a ray of light. According to the late Professor Moulton, "The later Parsi books tell us that the Fravashi is a part of a good man's ident.i.ty, living in heaven and reuniting with the soul at death. It is not exactly a guardian angel, for it shares in the development or deterioration of the rest of the man."[88]

In fact the Fravashi is not unlike the Egyptian _ka_ on the one side and the Chinese _shen_ on the other. "They are the _Manes_, 'the good folk'"

(p. 144): they are connected with the stars in their capacity as spirits of the dead (p. 143), and they "showed their paths to the sun, the moon, the sun, and the endless lights," just as the _kas_ guide the dead in the hereafter.

The Fravashis play a part in the annual All Soul's feast (p. 144), for which Breasted has provided an almost exact parallel in Egypt during the Middle Kingdom.[89] All the circ.u.mstances of the two ceremonies are essentially identical.

Now Professor Moulton suggests that the word Fravashi may be derived from the Avestan root _var_, "to impregnate," and _fravai_ mean "birth-promotion" (p. 142). As he a.s.sociates this with childbirth the possibility suggests itself whether the "birth-promoter" may not be simply the placenta.

Loret (quoted by Moret, p. 202), however, derives the word _ka_ from a root signifying "to beget," so that the Fravashi may be nothing more than the Iranian h.o.m.ologue of the Egyptian _ka_.

The connecting link between the Iranian and Egyptian conceptions may be the Sumerian instances given to Blackman[90] by Dr. Langdon.

The whole idea seems to have originated out of the belief that the sum of the individual attributes or vital expressions of a man's personality could exist apart from the physical body. The contemplation of the phenomena of sleep and death provided the evidence in corroboration of this.

At birth the newcomer came into the world physically connected with the placenta, which was accredited with the attributes of the life-giving and birth-promoting Great Mother and intimately related to the moon and the earliest totem. It was obviously, also, closely concerned in the nutrition of the embryo, for was it not the stalk upon which the latter was growing like some fruit on its stem? It was a not unnatural inference to suppose that, as the elements of the personality were not indissolubly connected with the body, they were brought into existence at the time of birth and that the placenta was their vehicle.

The Egyptians' own terms of reference to the sculptor of a statue show that the ideas of birth were uppermost in their minds when the custom of statue-making was first devised. Moret has brought together (_op. cit.

supra_) a good deal of evidence to suggest the far-reaching significance of the conception of ritual rebirth in early Egyptian religious ceremonial. With these ideas in his mind the Egyptian would naturally attach great importance to the placenta in any attempt to reconstruct the act of rebirth, which would be regarded in a literal sense. The placenta which played an essential part in the original act would have an equally important role in the ritual of rebirth. [For a further comment upon the problem discussed in the preceding ten pages, see Appendix A, p. 73.]

[68: "Primitive Man," _Proceedings of the British Academy_, 1917, p. 41.

It is important to remember that the real meaning of respiration was quite unknown until modern science revealed the part played by oxygen.]

[69: The enormous complexity and intricacy of the interrelation between the functions of the "heart," and the "breath" is revealed in Chinese philosophy (see de Groot, _op. cit._ Chapter VII. _inter alia_).]

[70: Second Annual Philosophical Lecture, Henriette Hertz Trust, _Proceedings of the British Academy_, Vol. VII, 26 Jan., 1916.]

[71: The Egyptian _ka_, however, was a more complex ent.i.ty than this comparison suggests.]

[72: Breasted, _op. cit._ pp. 44 and 45.]

[73: _Op. cit._ pp. 45 and 46.]

[74: _Ibid._ p. 28.]

[75: W. J. Perry has collected the evidence preserved in a remarkable series of Indonesian legends in his recent book, "The Megalithic Culture of Indonesia". But the fullest exposition of the whole subject is provided in the Chinese literature summarized by de Groot (_op. cit._).]

[76: See, however, the reservations in the subsequent pages.]

[77: The thorough a.n.a.lysis of the beliefs of any people makes this abundantly clear. De Groot's monograph is an admirable ill.u.s.tration of this (_op. cit._ Chapter VII.). Both in Egypt and China the conceptions of the significance of the shadow are later and altogether subsidiary.]

[78: Alan H. Gardiner, Davies and Gardiner, _op. cit._ p. 59.]

[79: F. Ll. Griffith, "A Collection of Hieroglyphs," 1898, p. 60.]