The

Tsui Goab

Infinite thus transformed into a lame Hottentot 'bushdoctor' is diablement changé en route. To a dead lame sorcerer from the Infinite is a fall indeed. process of the decline is thus described. is composed of two roots, tsu and goa. Goa means to go on,' 'to come on.' In Khoi Khoi goa-b means 'the coming on one,' the dawn, and goa-b also means. 'the knee.' Dr. Hahn next writes (making a logical leap of extraordinary width), 'It is now obvious that // goab in Tsui Goab cannot be translated with knee,' —why not?' but we have to adopt the other metaphorical meaning, the approaching day, i.e., the dawn.' Where is the necessity? In ordinary philology, we should here demand a number of attested examples of goab, in the sense of dawn, but in Khoi Khoi we cannot expect such evidence, as there are probably no texts. Next, after arbitrarily deciding that all Khoi Khois misunderstand their own tongue (for that is what the rendering here of goab by 'dawn' comes to), Dr. Hahn examines tsu, in Tsui. Tsu means 'sore,' 'wounded,' 'painful,' as in 'wounded knee '—Tsui Goab. This does not help Dr. Hahn, for 'wounded dawn' means nothing. But he reflects that a wound is red, tsu means wounded: therefore tsu means red, therefore Tsui Goab is the Red Dawn. Q.E.D.1

This kind of reasoning is obviously fallacious. Dr. Hahn's point could only be made by bringing forward examples in which tsu is employed to mean red in Khoi Khoi. Of this use of the word tsu he does not give one single instance, and, in fact, does

1 Dr. Hahn (p. 27) gives (ava, or Jana, as Hottentot for 'red,' derived from /au, ‘to bleed.'

give another word for 'red,' or 'bloody.' His etymology is not strengthened by the fact that Tsui Goab has once been said to live in the red sky. A red house is not necessarily tenanted by a red man. Still less is the theory supported by the hymn which says Tsui Goab paints himself with red ochre. Most idols, from those of the Samoyeds to the Greek images of Dionysus, are and have been daubed with red.1 By such reasoning is Tsui Goab proved to be the Red Dawn, while his gifts of prophecy (which he shares with all soothsayers) are accounted for as attributes of dawn, of the Vedic Saranyu.

Turning from Tsui Goab to his old enemy Gaunab, we learn that his name is derived from | | gau, ' to destroy,' and, according to old Hottentot ideas, ‘no one was the destroyer but the night' (p. 126). There is no apparent reason why the destroyer should be the night, and the night alone, any more than why a lame broken knee' should be 'red' (p. 126). Besides (p. 85), Gaunab is elsewhere explained, not as the night, but as the malevolent ghost which is thought to kill people who die what we call a 'natural' death. Unburied men change into this sort of vampire, just as Elpenor, in the Odyssey, threatens, if unburied, to become mischievous. There is another Gaunab, the mantis insect, which is worshipped by Hottentots and Bushmen (p. 92). It appears that the two Gaunabs are differently pronounced. However that may be, a race which worships an insect might well worship a dead medicine-man.

1 Hahn himself (p. 91) mentions a Hottentot god daubed with red earth, and noticed as long ago as 1691.

The conclusion, then, to be drawn from an examination of Hottentot mythology is merely this, that the ideas of a people will be reflected in their myths. A people which worships the dead, believes in sorcerers and in prophets, and in metamorphosis, will have for its god (if he can be called a god) a being who is looked on as a dead prophet and sorcerer. He will be worshipped with such rites as dead men receive; he will be mixed up in such battles as living men wage, and will be credited with the skill which living sorcerers claim. All these things meet in the legend of Tsui Goab, the 'so-called supreme being' of the Hottentots. His connection with the dawn is not supported by convincing argument or evidence. The relation of the dawn to the Infinite again rests on nothing but a theory of Mr. Max Müller's.1 His adversary, though recognised as the night, is elsewhere admitted to have been, originally, a common vampire. Finally, the Hottentots, a people not much removed from savagery, have a mythology full of savage and even disgusting elements. And this is just what we expect from Hottentots. The puzzle is when we find myths as low as the story of the incest of Heitsi Eibib among the Greeks. The reason for this coincidence is that, in Dr. Hahn's words,' the same objects and the same phenomena in nature will give rise to the same ideas, whether social or mythical, among different races of mankind,' especially when these races are in the same well-defined state of savage fancy and savage credulity.

Dr. Hahn's book has been regarded as a kind of

triumph over inquirers who believe that ancestorworship enters into myth, and that the purer element in myth is the later. But where is the triumph? Even on Dr. Hahn's own showing, ancestor-worship among the Hottentots has swamped the adoration of the Infinite. It may be said that Dr. Hahn has at least proved the adoration of the Infinite to be earlier than ancestor-worship. But it has been shown that his attempt to establish a middle stage, to demonstrate that the worshipped ancestor was really the Red Dawn, is not logical nor convincing. Even if that middle stage were established, it is a far cry from the worship of Dawn (supposed by the Australians to be a woman of bad character in a cloak of red 'possum skin) to the adoration of the Infinite. Our own argument has been successful if we have shown that there are not only two possible schools of mythological interpretation-the Euhemeristic, led by Mr. Spencer, and the Philological, led by Mr. Max Müller. We have seen that it is possible to explain the legend of Tsui Goab without either believing him to have been a real historical person (as Mr. Spencer may perhaps believe), or his myth to have been the result of a 'disease of language,' as Mr. Müller supposes. We have explained the legend and worship of a supposed dead conjurer as natural to a race which believes in conjurers and worships dead men. Whether he was merely an ideal ancestor and warrior, or whether an actual man has been invested with what divine qualities Tsui Goab enjoys, it is impossible to say; but, if he ever lived, he has long been adorned with ideal qualities and virtues which

he never possessed. The conception of the powerful ancestral ghost has been heightened and adorned with some novel attributes of power: the conception of the Infinite has not been degraded, by forgetfulness of language, to the estate of an ancestral ghost with a game leg.

If this view be correct, myth is a disease of thought, far more than a disease of language. The comparative importance of language and thought was settled long ago, in our sense, by no less a person than Pragâpati, the Sanskrit Master of Life.

Now a dispute once took place between Mind and Speech, as to which was the better of the two. Both Mind and Speech said: "I am excellent!" Mind said: "Surely I am better than thou, for thou dost not speak anything that is not understood by me; and since thou art only an imitator of what is done by me and a follower in my wake, I am surely better than thou!" Speech said: "Surely I am better than thou, for what thou knowest I make known, I communicate." They went to appeal to Pragâpati for his decision. He (Pragâpati) decided in favour of Mind, saying (to Speech): "Mind is indeed better than thou, for thou art an imitator of its deeds, and a follower in its wake; and inferior, surely, is he who imitates his better's deeds, and follows in his wake."'

So saith the Satapatha Brahmana.'1

1 Sacred Books of the East, xii. 130, 131.