New Britain Herald Newspaper, March 14, 1927, Page 10

An idol of the mysteriously vanished Afri- can pygmy race, a people which proba- bly never reached the stage where it ceased to believe in the supernatural powers of these images and made dolls of them for the children OLLS were not always the inno- D cent playthings of childhood that they are to-day. In many parts of the earth they were originally the images of primitive man's gods, objects to be reverently worshiped and to be used in the strange ways the o men and sorcerers taught as charms against all sorts of evil. This is one of many interesting and significant facts established by the trac- ing of the evolution of the doll. Tts pedigree goes back 25,000 years to the crude images sculptured from clay at the end of the old Stone Age and few things e a more intimate connec- tion with man's progress toward civili- zation. Science finds it possible to measure the degree of culture attained by a tribe with great accur: by studying the use to which it put the images whick we call dolls. When men worshiped these images and placed implicit confidence in them as charms against discase, death and the attacks of enemies, th were sunk in the depths of savagery and supersti tion. But when they began to lose their faith in the supernatural powers of these images and turn them over to their children for playthings they were ma ing a long advance toward the under- standing and culture which we call civili- zation. Not only did these often curious images serve as primitive man’s idols - and charms against evil but they were is believed, the first objects of art which he produced. The superstition which held him a slave served at least one good purpose when it impelled him to turn his hand to reproducing in clay. wood or stone the supposed likeness of one of his gods or some object which the medicine men assured him would prove infallibly terrifying to evil spirits, wild beasts and his human enemies. Science is able to measure the growth of man’s artistic ability by the skill he howed in fashioning these images. And it has lately found out that it can also measure his rate of progress toward freedom from the slavery of heathen superstition by the usc to which he put This is not possibie, however, in the them seem never to have had any dolls Others had only such dolls as they bor rowed from other people For example, the carliest known doll American Indians is nd ruffed in all the of the Eliza ioubtedly, it did not Indians but was a visiting sixt th cen lineal « Science Finds That What Now Are Toys Originally Were confront man was that of dea and it is evi- dent that he had very early perceived that death a transfer of some- thing from the chief focus to another place or status. “There arise here a multitude of observances and rites to separate the ghost from its former af- filiations and a host of be- liefs originate concerning the state, powers, influ- ences and existence of the ghost. “Added to in every stage of culture and rami- fying to an astonishing de- gree, these beliefs are in- extricably entangled with the highest thought of civilization. If the ghost is the ancestor of the soul or complex of souls, we may contrast the power of the one with the helpless- ness of the other. “Later, under the influ- ence of particular social and religions organiza- tions and ideas, larger, even colossal, representa- tions are made and given correzpondingly grandiose attributes. For the pur- pose of personal worship miniatures of these, charged with sanctity, are made to deposit in shrines. These miniatures readily become dolls following the decay of religions. A stone image of 20,000 years ago—one of “An examination into primitive man’s earliest known attempts to the distribution of dolls sculpture the goddess who centuries later as will disclose the fact that the Venus of the Greeks and Romans inspired some tribes, even whole some of the world’s most beautiful statues races, are destitute of and paintings the lawful he'r of the wonder-working powers of primitive figures. “For ages signi t images have heen made by man. These images are called dolls, a word derived from the old Saxon dol, whose relation t cidolon, likeness or im o the Greek , iz apparent. “It would seem that from the obese Venuses' of the Aurignacian cpoch, the oldest recovered figurines known sculptures has been a gradual and tre the number and ¢ large and develop 4 which cropped up in 1 period nd first nd, there mendous in igned mean- ving <o Aurig ancient it they quent if the beliefs of the are ancestors to multi of the Pantheo! first great probiem to these familiar objects, and that some tribes have received them through commerce and association with people advanced in civilization. “Dolls are not normally found among peaple in the lower planes of culture. This is a fact of great importance, espe- cially as it might be inferred, perhaps popularly believed, that all races have a community of instinct which would lead them to give dolls to their offspring and that tender infants of all times and races must naturally demand them. “On the contrary, the history of the doll is most complex and leads quickly back and away from childish hands to idols, which are the representations in the sense of personations of spiritual beings or divinized ancestors, back in to the images commanded to do the bid- ding of sorcerers and medicine men, to charms, fetiches, houschold gods, objects of wite aft and so forth, to the rude sticks and stones of undeveloped tribes, with their crude ideas of mysterious life in inanimate obj working weal or woe to man. “Among civilized peoples dolls awake no thoughts of their former import, but before this stage was reached there were Copyright, 1927, by J Curious dolls repre- senting deities worshiped by the In- dians of Peru and relied on especially for use as charms to in- sure an abundance of rain many relapses. The Mosaic command- ment against idolatry was a necessary prohibition against the making and wor- shiping of graven images. The Moham- medan injunction against the representa- tion of living forms implied a similar purpose and had a profound effect on the art of Islam. “It may be asserted that the free use of dolls is evidence of the submergence of superstition and advance to higher culture, with the consequent broaden- ing of religious ideas. It follows, there- fore, that dolls as we know them are not of great antiquity and the rescarches of archaeclogy are illuminating on this point.” What is called homeopathic or imita- tive magic is worked by means of doll- like images of various kinds. This magic is the favorite primitive savage method of putting obnoxious people out of the world and it is also sometimes used for the benevolent purpose of helping others into it. Among the Bataks of Sumatra a woman who is anxious to become a mother will make a wooden image of a child and hold it in her lap, believing that this will lead to the fulfillment of her wish. In the Babar Archipelago when a woman desires to become a mother she invites a man who is himself the father of a large family to pray on her behalf to Upulero, the spirit of the sun. A doll is made of red cotton which the woman clasps in her arms and croons over just as if it were a real infant. Then the father of many children takes a fowl and holds it by the legs over the woman's head, saying, “O Upu- lero, make use of the fowl; let fall, let descend a child—T heseech you, 1 en- treat you—Ilet a child fall and descend into my hands and on my lap.” Then he asks the woman, “Has the child come?” and she, clasping the red cotton doll more tightly answers, “Yes, it is here already.” After that the man nolds the fowl over the husband’s head and mumbles some form of words. Lastly, the bird is killed and laid, together with some betel, on the domestic place of sacrifice. When the ceremony is over the woman’s friends gather at her home and congrat- ulate her just as if she had actually be- come a mother. The use of dolls to represent their gods played an important part in the religion of the ancient Egyptians. At the time of the year when the funeral of Osiris was commemorated small images of the god were molded from sand or veget.ble earth and corn, to which incense som>timc: added. The faces of these images were painted yellow and the check bones green. They were cast in a mold of pure gold, which represented the god in the form of a mummy with the white crown of Egypt on his head. In the course of the rites, which lasted cighteen days, these images of Osiris would be surrounded by images of other n Features, lnc A forerunner of the modern doll from the ruins of ancient Strange looking wooden doll which primitive Africans jabbed with pins and maltreated in various other ways in the belief that by so doing they were bringing suffering to the enemy the figure was supposed to represent deities and set adrift on the Nile in little boats made of papyrus and illuminated with a great number of lights. Another part of the rites included the making of an image of Osiris from vege- table mold moistened with water and mixed with precious spices and incense. The image was a small moon-shaped af- fair but when properly robed and orna- mented was supposed to be a pious rep- resentation of Osiris. Over one of these idols buried in a golden casket the Egyptians would la- ment for days with shorn heads. They would smite their breasts in the most violent manner and slash their shoulders with knives, ripping open the old wounds left from previous years of similar mourning. These strange rites closed with the pretended discovery of the whereabouts of the lost god. His effigy was removed from the grave and supposedly restored to life. Then were heard the shouts of wild joy which are described and alluded to by so many ancient writers. The Egyptians made cxtensive use of exquisitely wrought little dolls to picture incidents in the lives of their dead heroes here on carth and their imagined careers in the world beyond the grave. These were frequently buried with the mum- mies of the Pharaohs and other great ones. Many interesting sets of these dolls have been recovered from tombs in Egypt and a number of them are on ex- hibition in American museums. The very mummies themselves which the Egyptians made of their dead were nothing more or less than an effort to transform the corpses into life-size “dolls” that would endure forever. The use of dolls of various sizes made from wood and other materials furnishes primitive African tribes with a favorite way of punishing their enemies. The natites fughion each doll as well as they can in the image of some par- ticularly obnoxious person.. It is be- lieved that by sticking pins into the image or exposing it to intense heat or cold the person it representes can be made to suffer pain. If the image is buried in the earth or sunk in some river or destroyed by burning, the death of the person represented is confidently believed to occur simultaneously. The only way he can escape such a fate is through the possessior of some charm more powerful than any owned by the person seeking to punish him. Among some African tribes the dolls were also used by the medicine men to cure diseases and heai wounds. It was the savage belief tkat medicines and other treatments did more good when applied to an image of the sufferer than when given to the victim himself. Thus, if a man fell ill of a fever, a little image of him would be constructed and drenched with cooling lotions. hn nd as ars umy four eloj \ Th now BB q rnal mou nd he ¢ Bad sta e 10 e ) und resc ardt ith ich : 010 very ack Ton utsial r H tore, uick nd s (4 ' . (£ e no in 1 ow ace I h in reven) in y | Fa he toi