Abstract
ELSEWHERE in this issue we publish the first of a series of brief notes on the calendar, which will appear from week to week in the coming year. These will deal with pincipal fasts, feasts, and festivals of the Chustan year, referring especially to the traditions, the customs, and the usages which are or have been associated with them. When possible, attention will be directed to similar observances in religions other than the Christian where these present analogies to, or serve to throw light upon, the origin and meaning of religious tradition. It is by the citation of such parallels that much in popular belief and custom, which those who in the past were curious in such matters thought merely quaint or inexplicable, has been shown to be a survival of a primitive mode of thought and a corresponding ritual. In his monumental works on early forms of religion, Sir James Frazer has interpreted the meaning of many of these periodic and seasonal observances, and he has interpreted them in such a way as to throw light on their significance in relation to the lowly as well as more highly organised beliefs. Throughout the Golden Bough, in examples drawn from the beliefs and practices of Christian and pagan alike, there runs the central theme of the doctrine of atonement, of the sacrifice of a deity incarnate in man or animal, of the victim offered up for the salvation of the community, whether it be a community of worshippers or of subjects, andL sometimes of both.
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Festivals and Survivals. Nature 120, 941–943 (1927). https://doi.org/10.1038/120941a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/120941a0