The
oxen are afterwards killed, and their flesh is eaten by the chiefs.
Here the tears of the oxen, like those of the human victims amongst
the Khonds and the Aztecs, are probably a rain-charm. We have
already seen that the virtue of the corn-spirit, embodied in animal
form, is sometimes supposed to reside in the tail, and that the last
handful of corn is sometimes conceived as the tail of the
corn-spirit. In the Mithraic religion this conception is graphically
set forth in some of the numerous sculptures which represent Mithras
kneeling on the back of a bull and plunging a knife into its flank;
for on certain of these monuments the tail of the bull ends in three
stalks of corn, and in one of them corn-stalks instead of blood are
seen issuing from the wound inflicted by the knife. Such
representations certainly suggest that the bull, whose sacrifice
appears to have formed a leading feature in the Mithraic ritual, was
conceived, in one at least of its aspects, as an incarnation of the
corn-spirit.
Still more clearly does the ox appear as a personification of the
corn-spirit in a ceremony which is observed in all the provinces and
districts of China to welcome the approach of spring.
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