Introduction to the History of Religions Handbooks on the...

114. Love of ornament is found among all savage peoples; the value they attach to beads and all colored things is well known to travelers and traders. It has been plausibly argued that the origin of clothing is to be found in the desire of each sex to make itself beautiful in the eyes of the other.234 However that may be, the employment of leaves for headdresses and waistbands is general among lower tribes.235

115. Equally popular is the adornment of the body by colored marks made with red ocher, pipe-clay, turmeric, charcoal, and such like things as are furnished by nature. Elaborate designs, of straight and curved lines, are traced on the skin, and these are gradually differentiated and become marks of rank and function. The war paint of the American Indians is governed by fixed rules, the object being to make the warrior terrible to enemies.236 Rings, quills, sticks, and stones, worn in holes made in ears, nose, lips, and cheeks, are all originally decorative; and so also prickings and gashes in the body, often in regular outlines.237

116. These latter, made according to tribal custom and law, become tribal marks (tattoo), and are then essential to one's standing in the community. This custom is general in Polynesia and in parts of North America.238 The use of oil and other unguents early established itself as a custom of savage society. They were probably useful in a variety of ways. For the hair they made up for the absence of comb and brush; in combat they enabled the warrior to slip from the grasp of his enemy; they defended the naked body from rain, and from soiling and injury produced by contact with the earth and hard bodies; and in sickness they were regarded as curative.239 Oil was abundantly used as an article of food.

117. All these materials of decoration are transferred to the service of religion. The headdress becomes a mask to represent an animal in a sacred ceremony,240 or a priestly tiara. In such ceremonies (especially in those of initiation) the painting of the body plays an important part, the traceries varying according to the thing represented and the symbolism of the action.241 It is often difficult to see the precise significance of the paintings, but in certain cases they are totemic marks, and represent whatever is sacred in totemic belief.242

118. It is possible to construe the development in two ways: the paintings may be regarded as originally totemic or other clan marks, and as afterwards employed as ornaments, or the order of movement may be taken to be in the reverse direction; but when we consider the primitive character of decoration, the second suggestion seems the more probable. The same remark applies to the practice of pricking, scarring, and tattooing.243 For the body-markings blood is sometimes employed, perhaps in part on account of its decorative color, but also probably with a religious significance.244

119. Decoration has been and is largely employed in structures and dress connected with religious life. Posts and beams of houses, totem posts and masts of vessels are covered with figures in which artistic feeling is discernible;245 and in late periods all the resources of art are devoted to the form and adornments of temples, altars, and images. The designs are taken from familiar objects, mostly from plants and animals. The ultimate motive is love of ornament, which, while it finds abundant expression in ordinary social life, has its greatest development in religion—a natural result of the fact that in a large part of human history religion has been the chief organizing factor of society.

121. Symbolism has entered largely into religious decoration. In very early times figures of animals, plants, and human beings were used as records of current events, and were sometimes supposed to have magical power, the picture being identified with the thing represented. In a more advanced stage of culture the transition was easy to the conception of the figures as representing ideas, but the older conception is often found alongside of the later—a symbolical signification is attached to pictures of historical things. These then have a spiritual meaning for higher minds, while for the masses they may be of the nature of fetishes.248 In both cases they may serve a good purpose in worship by fixing the mind on sacred things.