the dramatic representations to which I have referred, the performance,
for instance, of such a drama as the Rishyacringa, the ceremonial
'marriages,' and other exercises of what we now call sympathetic
magic. To quote a well-known passage from Sir J. G. Frazer:
"They commonly believed that the tie between the animal and vegetable
world was even closer than it really is--to them the principle of life
and fertility, whether animal or vegetable, was one and indivisible.
Hence actions that induced fertility in the animal world were held to
be equally efficacious in stimulating the reproductive energies of the
vegetable."[1] How deeply this idea was rooted in the minds of our
ancestors we, their descendants, may learn from its survival to our
own day.

The ultimate, and what we may in a general sense term the classical,
form in which this sense of the community of the Life principle found
expression was that which endowed the vivifying force of Nature with a
distinct personality, divine, or semi-divine, whose experiences, in
virtue of his close kinship with humanity, might be expressed in terms
of ordinary life.

At this stage the progress of the seasons, the birth of vegetation in
spring, or its revival after the autumn rains, its glorious fruition
in early summer, its decline and death under the maleficent influence
either of the scorching sun, or the bitter winter cold, symbolically
represented the corresponding stages in the life of this
anthropomorphically conceived Being, whose annual progress from birth
to death, from death to a renewed life, was celebrated with a solemn
ritual of corresponding alternations of rejoicing and lamentation.

Recent research has provided us with abundant material for the study