Online Encyclopedia
Search over 40,000 articles from the original, classic Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th Edition.
ANCELOT, JACQUES ARSENE FRANCOIS POLY...
Online EncyclopediaEncyclopedia Home :: ALM-ANC
del.icio.us it!
|
See also:ANCELOT, JACQUES ARSENE See also:FRANCOIS POLYCARPE (1794-18J4) , See also:French dramatist and litterateur, was See also:born at See also:Havre, on the 9th of See also:February 1794. He became a clerk in the See also:admiralty, and retained his position until the revolution of 183o. In 1816 his See also:play See also:Warwick was accepted by the See also:Theatre See also:Francais, but never produced, and three years later a five-See also:act tragedy, See also: See also:Aristotle in his See also:Ethics stigmatizes as " extremely unloving " (Xiav a¢t)ov) the denial that ancestors are interested in or affected by the fortunes of their descendants; and in effect ancestor-worship is the See also:staple of most religions, See also:ancient or See also:modern, civilized or See also:savage. The ancient See also:Jews were a striking exception; for though the frequent mention of ancestral See also:graves on hilltops or in caves, and in connexion with sacred trees and pillars, and the resemblance of the " elohim " in Exod. xxi. 4-6 to See also:household gods, may suggest that cults of the dead preceded that of Yahweh, nevertheless in the classical See also:age of their See also:religion (see See also:HEBREW RELIGION) as reflected in the Old Testament, ancestor-worship has already vanished. " The Semitic nomads," remarks See also:Renan in his See also:History of See also:Israel (tome 1, p. 50), " were the religious See also:race See also:par excellence, because in fact they were the least superstitious of the families of mankind, the least duped by the See also:dream of a beyond, by the phantasmagory of a See also:double or a See also:shadow surviving in the nether regions. . . . They suppressed the chimeras which went with belief in a See also:complete survival after See also:death, chimeras which were homicidal at the See also:time, in so far as they robbed See also:man of the true notion of death and led him to multiply murders."
Renan here refers to the See also:burial rite of an ancient Scythian See also: See also:Confucius, it is recorded, sacrificed to the dead, as if they were present, and to the spirits, as if they were there. In view of such See also:Chinese sacrifices the names of the dead are in-scribed on wooden plaques called spirit-tablets, into which the spirits are during the ceremony supposed to enter, having quitted the very See also:heaven and presence of See also:God in See also:order to See also:commune with posterity. Twice a See also:year, in See also:spring and autumn,' a Chinese ruler goes in See also:state to the imperial See also:college in See also:Pekin, and presents the appointed offerings before the spirit-tablets of Confucius and of the worthies who have been associated with him in his temples. He greets the See also:sage's spirit with this See also:prayer:—" This year, in this See also:month, on this day, I, the See also:emperor, offer See also:sacrifice to the philosopher K'ung, the ancient teacher, the perfect sage, and say, 0 teacher, in virtue equal to heaven and See also:earth. . . Now in this second month of spring, in reverent observance of the old statutes, with victims, silks, spirits, and fruits, I offer sacrifice to thee." In ancient See also:Rome painted See also:wax images of ancestors who had ' Prof. J. See also:Legge, in Religious Systems of the See also:World, See also:London, 1892, p. 72. served the state in its highest offices were preserved in the atria or halls of their descendants, inscribed, like the Chinese tablets, with titles recording their dignity and exploits. Whether the departed spirits tenanted them according to the Chinese belief is not recorded; though it probably was so, for at funerals they might be carried, like the images of the gods in Lectisternia (see See also:IMAGE WORSFIIP), on couches before the See also:corpse. Oftener, however, they were See also:mere masques worn at funerals by men who personated the ancestors and wore they See also:robes of office. Perhaps the vulgar regarded these men as temporary reincarnations of those whom they thus represented.
The word See also:Manes signified the friendly ancestral ghosts of a See also:Roman household. To them, under the name of See also:Lares, it was the solemn preoccupation of male descendants to offer See also:food and sacrifice and to keep alight the See also:health See also:fire which cooked the offerings. Small waxen images of the Manes called Lares, clothed in dogskin, and on feast days crowned with garlands, stood See also:round the See also:family See also:hearth of which they were the unseen guardians (but see LARES). To lack such care and tendance was —along with want of See also:regular burial—the most dreadful See also:fate that could overtake an ancient; and a Roman, like a See also:Hindu, in See also:case he was childless, adopted a male See also:child whose duty it would be, as if his own son, to continue after his death the family See also:rites or sacra. On this See also:side the ancestor-worship of the See also:Aryans has been productive of the most important institutions of See also:adoption and will or testament. See also:Sir See also: For a will was to begin with but a mode of indicating (not necessarily in writing) on whom devolved the duty of See also:con-ducting a See also:parent's funeral, and together with that duty the right of inheriting his property. The due performance of funeral rites re-created the blood tie and renewed the kinship of living and dead at the moment when death seemed specially to en-danger it by removal of that representative of the household whose See also:special duty it had been to keep up the family sacra. In Hindostan, as Maine remarks (op. cit. ch. vi.), we have a parallel to the Roman See also:system; for there " the right to inherit a dead man's property is exactly co-extensive with the duty of performing his See also:obsequies. If the rites are not properly performed or not performed by the proper See also:person, no relation is considered as established between the deceased and anybody surviving ' See also:Livy iv. 2:—" Quam enim aliam vim connubia promiscua habere, nisi ut ferarum prope ritu vulgentur concubitus plebis Patrumque? ut qui natus sit, ignoret, cujus sanguinis, See also:quorum sacrorum sit."him; the law of succession does not apply, and nobody can inherit the property. Every great event in the See also:life of a Hindu seems to be regarded as leading up to and bearing on these solemnities. If he marries, it is to have See also:children who may celebrate them after his death; if he has no children, he lies under the strongest See also:obligation to adopt them from another family, ` with a view,' writes the Hindu See also:doctor, ` to the funeral cake, the See also:water and the solemn sacrifice.' " " May there be born in our lineage," so the See also:Indian Manes are supposed to say, " a man to offer to us, on the thirteenth day of the See also:moon, See also:rice boiled in See also:milk, See also:honey and See also:ghee." 2 It is then in connexion with the history of See also:inheritance and adoption, and of the See also:gradual See also:evolution from societies held together only by blood-kinship to societies consolidated on other bases, especially on that of See also:local contiguity, that ancestor-worship chiefly calls for investigation. We must now pass on to other aspects of it less important for the student of ancient law, but interesting to the folklorist. In ancient Rome the Di manes, or as we should say the blessed dead, who reposed in their See also:necropolis outside the walls, were specially commemorated on the See also:dies parentales or days of placating them (placandis Manibus). These began on the 13th of February and ended on the 22nd with the Caristia or feast of Cara Cognatio. The family have on the preceding days solemnly visited the See also:grave, and offered to the shades gifts of water, See also:wine, milk, honey, oil, and the blood of See also:black victims; they have decked the tomb with See also:flowers, have renewed the feast and fare-well of the funeral, and have prayed to the ancestors to See also:watch over their welfare. Now the survivors return See also:home and hold a love-feast, in which all quarrels are healed, all trespasses forgiven. The Lares are brought out to preside over this solemn feast, and for the occasion are incincti or clothed in tunics girt at the loins. It is doubtful whether we should dignify by the name of ancestor-worship the older Roman festival of the Lemuria, which was held on the 9th, nth and 13th of May. For the lemures were, like our unlaid ghosts, unburied, mischievous or inimical spirits, and these three days were nefasti or unlucky, because their malign See also:influence was abroad. The ghosts had to be driven out of the house, and See also:Ovid (See also:Fasti, v. 432) relates how the head of the family arose at midnight, and with feet unfettered by shoon or sandals, and with washen hands traversed his house beckoning against the ghosts with fingers joined to thumb. Nine times with averted glance he spat a black See also:bean out of his mouth and cried: " With these I redeem me and mine." The ghosts followed and picked up, or perhaps entered into the beans. Then he washed afresh, and rattled his See also:brass vessels, and nine times over bade them begone with the polite See also:formula, Manes exite paterni, " Go forth, 0 paternal manes." The gesture described was probably the same as that with which a See also:Christian See also:priest averts demonic influences from the heads of his See also:congregation in the act of blessing them. The many hands of See also:Zeus Sabazios turned up in ancient excavations observe a similar gesture. All over the earth we meet with such periodically recurrent ceremonies of expelling demons and ghosts, who usually are given a See also:meal before being hunted back into their graves. But an See also:account of such ceremonies belongs rather to See also:demonology than to the history of the worship of Manes, which are peaceful, well-conducted and beneficent beings, endowed and, so to speak on the See also:foundation, like the Christian souls for whose masses See also:money has been See also:left. Ancestor-worship has its See also:parallels in Christian cults of the dead and of the See also:saints; it must be remembered, however, that a See also:saint is not as a See also:rule an ancestor, and that his cult is not based upon family feeling and love of kinsmen, nor tends to stimulate and encourage the same. Such cults have never prevented those who participated in them from fighting one another. Ancestor-worship on this side is also in strong contrast with the teaching of the See also:Gospel, for it is an See also:apotheosis of family affections and supplies a real See also:cement where-with to bind society together; whereas the Christian See also:Messiah taught that, " If any cometh to me, and hateth not his See also:father
2 E. B. See also:Tylor, See also:Primitive Culture, ii. p. 119.
and his See also:mother, and his wife and his children, and his brethren and his See also:sister, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my See also:disciple." To the See also:ordinary See also:good See also:citizen of antiquity, whose religion was the See also:consecration of family ties, such a See also:precept was no less scandalous than it is to a Chinaman or Hindu of to-day. Was not the duty of following the Messiah to supersede even that of burying one's parents, the most sacred of all ancient obligations? The See also: In doing so they drop a wooden soul-token called a Churinga. This the elders of the tribe pick up or pretend to find, and carefully See also:store up in a cleft of the hills or in a See also:cave which no woman may approach. The souls of members of the tribe who have died survive in these slips of See also:wood, which are treasured up for See also:long generations and repaired if they decay. They are carried into battle to assist the tribe, are regularly anointed, fondled and invoked; for it is believed that the souls present in them are powerful to work weal and woe to friend and enemy respectively. They thus resemble the Chinese spirit tablet. Reference has been made above to the possibility that the Roman imago of an ancestor actually embodied his See also:ghost, at least on solemn occasions. The See also:custom of providing a material See also:abode or nidus for the ghost is found all over the earth; e.g. in New See also:Ireland a carved See also:chalk figure of the deceased, indicating the See also:sex, is procured, and entrusted to the chief of a See also:village, who sets it up in a funeral hut in the See also:middle of a large See also:taboo house adorned with See also:plants. The survivors believe that the ghostly See also:ogre, being so well provided for, will abstain from haunting them. The See also:Romans, as we remarked above, distinguished between the Lemures or wandering mischievous ghosts and the Manes snugly interred and tended in the See also:cemetery which was See also:part of every See also:Italian See also:settlement. The distinction, however, is one for which survivors alone are responsible and not one inherent in the nature of ghosts. No race at all, it would seem, except the Jews, has ever been able to regard a man's death as the end of him; and except in the higher forms of See also:Christianity the dead are everywhere supposed to need the same sort of food, equipment, See also:tenement and See also:gear which they enjoyed in life, and to molest the living unless they obtain it. It may be See also:affection, or it may be fear, which prompts the survivor to feed and tend his dead; in general no doubt it is a mixture of both feelings. In See also:Africa and other savage countries a third See also:motive sometimes operates, namely the See also:desire to consult the dead—as See also:Odysseus, anxious about his return home, was constrained to do—or to use them against the living; for See also:negro magicians are reputed even to See also:murder remarkable individuals in order to possess them-selves of their See also:power and to be able to use them as See also:familiar spirits. The question has often been raised, what is the relation of private cults of ancestors to public religion? Do men after death become gods? See also:Euhemerus of See also:Messenia tried of old to rationalize the See also:Greek myths by supposing that the Olympian gods were deified men. Such a theory, like its modern See also:rival of the See also:sun-myth, may of course be pushed till it becomes absurd; See also:ANCHOR 9i-7 yet in See also:India See also:critical observers, like Sir See also:Alfred C. See also:Lyall, attest innumerable examples of the gradual See also:elevation into gods of human beings, the See also:process even beginning in their lifetime. There a man wins local fame as an ascetic with abnormal See also:powers, or a wife, because See also:Alcestis-like she sacrificed herself for her See also:husband and immolated herself on his pyre. Miracles occur at their shrines, and the surviving relatives who guard them wax See also:rich off the offerings brought. " In the course of a very few years, as the recollection of the man's See also:personality becomes misty, his origin grows mysterious, his career takes a legendary See also:hue, his See also:birth and death were both supernatural; in the next See also:generation the names of the See also:elder gods get introduced into the See also:story, and so the marvellous tradition See also:works itself into a myth, until nothing but a See also:personal incarnation can account for such a See also:series of prodigies. Additional information and CommentsThere are no comments yet for this article.
» Add information or comments to this article.
Please link directly to this article:
Highlight the code below, right click, and select "copy." Then paste it into your website, email, or other HTML. Site content, images, and layout Copyright © 2006 - Net Industries, worldwide. |
|
|
[back] ANCASTER AND KESTEVEN, DUKE OF |
[next] ANCHISES |