Hence a study of their beliefs
and usages concerning the rice may throw some light on the true
meaning of the ritual of the corn in ancient Greece and modern
Europe.
Now the whole of the ritual which the Malays and Dyaks observe in
connexion with the rice is founded on the simple conception of the
rice as animated by a soul like that which these people attribute to
mankind. They explain the phenomena of reproduction, growth, decay,
and death in the rice on the same principles on which they explain
the corresponding phenomena in human beings. They imagine that in
the fibres of the plant, as in the body of a man, there is a certain
vital element, which is so far independent of the plant that it may
for a time be completely separated from it without fatal effects,
though if its absence be prolonged beyond certain limits the plant
will wither and die. This vital yet separable element is what, for
the want of a better word, we must call the soul of a plant, just as
a similar vital and separable element is commonly supposed to
constitute the soul of man; and on this theory or myth of the
plant-soul is built the whole worship of the cereals, just as on the
theory or myth of the human soul is built the whole worship of the
dead,--a towering superstructure reared on a slender and precarious
foundation.
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