RAIN=MAKING RITES

Taranaki Daily News, 5 February 1930, Page 13

RAIN=MAKING RITES

SACRIFICE OF CHILDREN GRIM NATIVE CUSTOMS. SURVIVAL OF ANCIENT BELIEFS. / Superstitions about rainfall still exist in remote parts of the world. A recent story from South Africa relates that na Lives, following tribal law, put to death two pairs of twins in order to bung rain during a prolonged drought. The dramatic tale which comes from the province of Bulawayo places the guilt not on the parents, but specifically on the mother-in-law of one of them, and generally on the other grandparents of the children. The accused, so runs the record, pleaded that they were unaware that they had committed a criminal act. They “were merely acting according to their law.” • Since the beginning of time prayers for rain have been chanted by primitive peoples. The North American Indian used to paint himself in vivid colours and stamp out his religious dances in a ceremony believed to be effecth e in times of drought. Not only in the South of Africa and among the Red Indians of the West are rain prayers and mystic rites still in vogue, but in most parts of India and among the Pacific Islands as well. All through the history of tribes appear long and detailed accounts of sacrifices offered to rain gods. _ From the testimony of-native chronicles certain ceremonies handed down through generations have been found most effective in bringing rain. These chroniclers point to copious rainfalls of past years to substantiate beliefs in • native customs. While drought to-day turns the eyes of modern man toward dynamite and balloons, it turned the eyes of primitive man toward the buffalo and the cow. These animals in olden days were roasted and offered with great pomp to deities and to their earthly agents, the priests. Hindu records set forth that an “appeal to the clouds” was always accompanied by singing and dancing. In India caste distinction also plays its part in the rain ceremony once practised with regularity. In one district, when drought descends on the land, Brahman women are sent to plough the fields. That is looked on as a great hardship. For the beauties -of a high caste in India are very proud, and look with scornful eyes on people who work with their hands. So various subterfuges are resorted to by the lazy beauties. Refusing to be seen in daylight performing labour usually done by their servants, they arise early in the morning before men are astir in the streets and merely touch the handles of the plough that is to be used in ploughing the parched fields. Thus they comply with the requirements of their country’s custom without being seen in undignified surroundings. The actual ploughing is done by servant ploughmen. In one of the islands ; of the Pacific, where men still paint their faces and wear bangles in their ears anil noses, the mysteries of rain-making are taught the young each November. In three localities on this island the young men assemble shepherded by their elders. There ik a traditional syc~more tree in each of the three districts, under which the young men sleep three consecutive nights, the old men staying in nearby villages. The novices give up their spears and cat no salt on their food. Rain dances and rain songs are danced and sung throughout the day. The novices arc instructed by their seniors in the duties of citizenship, the lore of hunting and the art of fighting. On the fourth morning the young students are conducted to a nearby village, where a ram is killed and a feast is spread, the young serving the old. Not until sundown are they given drink and received into the ranks of their elders. A rain spear is presented to each young man.

Greek and Roman legends, too, feature the rain god and his power. Translators long ago gave the world the prayer to Zeus for rain; prayers for rain were offered in Athens in olden days, and on the road to Corinth there is an altar believed • to have been erected to one of the rain gods. It is claimed by ethnologists who have studied rain charms and rain gods in many countries that the ceiv..:onies attendant on the rain festival are both beautiful and sacred; that there is little evidence to substantiate happenings similar to the one reported recently from South Africa. Rainfall ceremonies, assert these scientists, still survive among such enlightened nationals as modern Europeans, Hindus, Mohammedans and the Chinese.