VOLUME XIII SLICE V Hinduism to Home, Earls of (continued 2)

The principal seat of Sakta worship is the north-eastern part of India—Bengal, Assam and Behar. The great majority of its adherents profess to follow the right-hand practice; and apart from the implied purport and the emblems of the cult, their mode of adoration does not seem to offer any very objectionable features. And even amongst the adherents of the left-hand mode of worship, many of these are said to follow it as a matter of family tradition rather than of religious conviction, and to practise it in a sober and temperate manner; whilst only an extreme section—the so-called Kaulas or Kulinas, who appeal to a spurious Upanishad, the Kaulopanishad, as the divine authority of their tenets—persist in carrying on the mystic and licentious rites taught in many of the Tantras. But strict secrecy being enjoined in the performance of these rites, it is not easy to check any statements made on this point. The Sakta cult is, however, known to be especially prevalent—though apparently not in a very extreme form—amongst members of the very respectable Kayastha or writer caste of Bengal, and as these are largely employed as clerks and accountants in Upper India, there is reason to fear that their vicious practices are gradually being disseminated through them.

The divine object of the adoration of the Saktas, then, is Siva’s wife—the Devi (goddess), Mahadevi (great goddess), or Jagan-mata (mother of the world)—in one or other of her numerous forms, benign or terrible. The forms in which she is worshipped in Bengal are of the latter category, viz. Durga, “the unapproachable,” and Kali, “the black one,” or, as some take it, the wife of Kala, “time,” or death the great dissolver, viz. Siva. In honour of the former, the Durga-puja is celebrated during ten days at the time of the autumnal equinox, in commemoration of her victory over the buffalo-headed demon Mahishasura; when the image of the ten-armed goddess, holding a weapon in each hand, is worshipped for nine days, and cast into the water on the tenth day, called the Dasahara, whence the festival itself is commonly called Dasara in western India. Kali, on the other hand, the most terrible of the goddess’s forms, has a special service performed to her, at the Kali-puja, during the darkest night of the succeeding month; when she is represented as a naked black woman, four-armed, wearing a garland of heads of giants slain by her, and a string of skulls round her neck, dancing on the breast of her husband (Mahakala), with gaping mouth and protruding tongue; and when she has to be propitiated by the slaughter of goats, sheep and buffaloes. On other occasions also Vamacharis commonly offer animal sacrifices, usually one or more kids; the head of the victim, which has to be severed by a single stroke, being always placed in front of the image of the goddess as a blood-offering (bali), with an earthen lamp fed with ghee burning above it, whilst the flesh is cooked and served to the guests attending the ceremony, except that of buffaloes, which is given to the low-caste musicians who perform during the service. Even some adherents of this class have, however, discontinued animal sacrifices, and use certain kinds of fruit, such as coco-nuts or pumpkins, instead. The use of wine, which at one time was very common on these occasions, seems also to have become much more restricted; and only members of the extreme section would still seem to adhere to the practice of the so-called five m’s prescribed by some of the Tantras, viz. mamsa (flesh), matsya (fish), madya (wine), maithuna (sexual union), and mudra (mystical finger signs)—probably the most degrading cult ever practised under the pretext of religious worship.

In connexion with the principal object of this cult, Tantric theory has devised an elaborate system of female figures representing either special forms and personifications or attendants of the “Great Goddess.” They are generally arranged in groups, the most important of which are the Mahavidyas (great sciences), the 8 (or 9) Mataras (mothers) or Mahamataras (great mothers), consisting of the wives of the principal gods; the 8 Nayikas or mistresses; and different classes of sorceresses and ogresses, called Yoginis, Dakinis and Sakinis. A special feature of the Sakti cult is the use of obscure Vedic mantras, often changed so as to be quite meaningless and on that very account deemed the more efficacious for the acquisition of superhuman powers; as well as of mystic letters and syllables called bija (germ), of magic circles (chakra) and diagrams (yantra), and of amulets of various materials inscribed with formulae of fancied mysterious import.

This survey of the Indian sects will have shown how little the character of their divine objects of worship is calculated to exert that elevating and spiritualizing influence, so characteristic of true religious devotion. In all General conclusions. but a few of the minor groups religious fervour is only too apt to degenerate into that very state of sexual excitation which devotional exercises should surely tend to repress. If the worship of Siva, despite the purport of his chief symbol, seems on the whole less liable to produce these undesirable effects than that of the rival deity, it is doubtless due partly to the real nature of that emblem being little realized by the common people, and partly to the somewhat repellent character of the “great god,” more favourable to evoking feelings of awe and terror than a spirit of fervid devotion. All the more are, however, the gross stimulants, connected with the adoration of his consort, calculated to work up the carnal instincts of the devotees to an extreme degree of sensual frenzy. In the Vaishnava camp, on the other hand, the cult of Krishna, and more especially that of the youthful Krishna, can scarcely fail to exert an influence which, if of a subtler and more insinuating, is not on that account of a less demoralizing kind. Indeed, it would be hard to find anything less consonant with godliness and divine perfection than the pranks of this juvenile god; and if poets and thinkers try to explain them away by dint of allegorical interpretation, the plain man will not for all their refinements take these amusing adventures any the less au pied de la lettre. No fault, in this respect, can assuredly be found with the legendary Rama, a very paragon of knightly honour and virtue, even as his consort Sita is the very model of a noble and faithful wife; and yet this cult has perhaps retained even more of the character of mere hero-worship than that of Krishna. Since by the universally accepted doctrine of karman (deed) or karmavipaka (“the maturing of deeds”) man himself—either in his present, or some future, existence—enjoys the fruit of, or has to atone for, his former good and bad actions, there could hardly be room in Hindu pantheism for a belief in the remission of sin by divine grace or vicarious substitution. And accordingly the “descents” or incarnations of the deity have for their object, not so much the spiritual regeneration of man as the deliverance of the world from some material calamity threatening to overwhelm it. The generally recognized principal Avatars do not, however, by any means constitute the only occasions of a direct intercession of the deity in worldly affairs, but—in the same way as to this day the eclipses of the sun and moon are ascribed by the ordinary Hindu to these luminaries being temporarily swallowed by the dragon Rahu (or Graha, “the seizer”)—so any uncommon occurrence would be apt to be set down as a special manifestation of divine power; and any man credited with exceptional merit or achievement, or even remarkable for some strange incident connected with his life or death, might ultimately come to be looked upon as a veritable incarnation of the deity, capable of influencing the destinies of man, and might become an object of local adoration or superstitious awe and propitiatory rites to multitudes of people. That the transmigration theory, which makes the spirit of the departed hover about for a time in quest of a new corporeal abode, would naturally lend itself to superstitious notions of this kind can scarcely be doubted. Of peculiar importance in this respect is the worship of the Pitris (“fathers”) or deceased ancestors, as entering largely into the everyday life and family relations of the Hindus. At stated intervals to offer reverential homage and oblations of food to the forefathers up to the third degree is one of the most sacred duties the devout Hindu has to discharge. The periodical performance of the commemorative rite of obsequies called Sraddha—i.e. an oblation “made in faith” (sraddha, Lat. credo)—is the duty and privilege of the eldest son of the deceased, or, failing him, of the nearest relative who thereby establishes his right as next of kin in respect of inheritance; and those other relatives who have the right to take part in the ceremony are called sapinda, i.e. sharing in the pindas (or balls of cooked rice, constituting along with libations of water the usual offering to the Manes)—such relationship being held a bar to intermarriage. The first Sraddha takes place as soon as possible after the antyeshti (“final offering”) or funeral ceremony proper, usually spread over ten days; being afterwards repeated once a month for a year, and subsequently at every anniversary and otherwise voluntarily on special occasions. Moreover, a simple libation of water should be offered to the Fathers twice daily at the morning and evening devotion called sandhya (“twilight”). It is doubtless a sense of filial obligation coupled with sentiments of piety and reverence that gave rise to this practice of offering gifts of food and drink to the deceased ancestors. Hence also frequent allusion is made by poets to the anxious care caused to the Fathers by the possibility of the living head of the family being afflicted with failure of offspring; this dire prospect compelling them to use but sparingly their little store of provisions, in case the supply should shortly cease altogether. At the same time one also meets with frank avowals of a superstitious fear lest any irregularity in the performance of the obsequial rites should cause the Fathers to haunt their old home and trouble the peace of their undutiful descendant, or even prematurely draw him after them to the Pitri-loka or world of the Fathers, supposed to be located in the southern region. Terminating as it usually does with the feeding and feeing of a greater or less number of Brahmans and the feasting of members of the performers’ own caste, the Sraddha, especially its first performance, is often a matter of very considerable expense; and more than ordinary benefit to the deceased is supposed to accrue from it when it takes place at a spot of recognized sanctity, such as one of the great places of pilgrimage like Prayaga (Allahabad, where the three sacred rivers, Ganga, Yamuna and Sarasvati, meet), Mathura, and especially Gaya and Kasi (Benares). But indeed the tirtha-yatra, or pilgrimage to holy bathing-places, is in itself considered an act of piety conferring religious merit in proportion to the time and trouble expended upon it. The number of such places is legion and is constantly increasing. The banks of the great rivers such as the Ganga (Ganges), the Yamuna (Jumna), the Narbada, the Krishna (Kistna), are studded with them, and the water of these rivers is supposed to be imbued with the essence of sanctity capable of cleansing the pious bather of all sin and moral taint. To follow the entire course of one of the sacred rivers from the mouth to the source on one side and back again on the other in the sun-wise (pradakshina) direction—that is, always keeping the stream on one’s right-hand side—is held to be a highly meritorious undertaking which it requires years to carry through. No wonder that water from these rivers, especially the Ganges, is sent and taken in bottles to all parts of India to be used on occasion as healing medicine or for sacramental purposes. In Vedic times, at the Rajasuya, or inauguration of a king, some water from the holy river Sarasvati was mixed with the sprinkling water used for consecrating the king. Hence also sick persons are frequently conveyed long distances to a sacred river to heal them of their maladies; and for a dying man to breathe his last at the side of the Ganges is devoutly believed to be the surest way of securing for him salvation and eternal bliss.

Such probably was the belief of the ordinary Hindu two thousand years ago, and such it remains to this day. In the light of facts such as these, who could venture to say what the future of Hinduism is likely to be? Is the regeneration of India to be brought about by the modern theistic movements, such as the Brahma-samaj and Arya-samaj, as so close and sympathetic an observer of Hindu life and thought as Sir A. Lyall seems to think? “The Hindu mind,” he remarks, “is essentially speculative and transcendental; it will never consent to be shut up in the prison of sensual experience, for it has grasped and holds firmly the central idea that all things are manifestations of some power outside phenomena. And the tendency of contemporary religious discussion in India, so far as it can be followed from a distance, is towards an ethical reform on the old foundations, towards searching for some method of reconciling their Vedic theology with the practices of religion taken as a rule of conduct and a system of moral government. One can already discern a movement in various quarters towards a recognition of impersonal theism, and towards fixing the teaching of the philosophical schools upon some definitely authorized system of faith and morals, which may satisfy a rising ethical standard, and may thus permanently embody that tendency to substitute spiritual devotion for external forms and caste rules which is the characteristic of the sects that have from time to time dissented from orthodox Brahminism.”

Authorities.—Census of India (1901), vol. i. part i.; India, by H. H. Risley and E. A. Gait; vol. i. Ethnographical Appendices, by H. H. Risley; The Indian Empire, vol. i. (new ed., Oxford, 1907); J. Muir, Original Sanskrit Texts (2nd ed., 5 vols., London, 1873); Monier Williams, Religious Thought and Life in India (London, 1883); Modern India and the Indians (London, 1878, 3rd ed. 1879); Hinduism (London, 1877); Sir Alfred C. Lyall, Asiatic Studies (2 series, London, 1899); “Hinduism” in Religious Systems of the World (London, 1904); “Brahminism” in Great Religions of the World (New York and London, 1902); W. J. Wilkins, Modern Hinduism (London, 1887); J. C. Oman, Indian Life, Religious and Social (London, 1879); The Mystics, Ascetics and Saints of India (London, 1903); The Brahmans, Theists and Muslims of India (London, 1907); S. C. Bose, The Hindus as they are (2nd ed., Calcutta, 1883); J. Robson, Hinduism and Christianity (Edinburgh and London, 3rd ed., 1905); J. Murray Mitchell, Hinduism Past and Present (2nd ed., London, 1897); Jogendra Nath Bhattacharya, Hindu Castes and Sects (Calcutta, 1896); A. Barth, The Religions of India (London, 1882); E. W. Hopkins, The Religions of India (London, 1896).

(J. E.)

1 “It is, perhaps, by surveying India that we at this day can best represent to ourselves and appreciate the vast external reform worked upon the heathen world by Christianity, as it was organized and executed throughout Europe by the combined authority of the Holy Roman Empire and the Church Apostolic.” Sir Alfred C. Lyall, Asiatic Studies, i. 2.

2 Henry Whitehead, D. D., bishop of Madras, The Village Deities of Southern India (Madras, 1907).

3 “The effect of caste is to give all Hindu society a religious basis.” Sir A. C. Lyall, Brahmanism.

4 Thus, in Berar, “there is a strong non-Aryan leaven in the dregs of the agricultural class, derived from the primitive races which have gradually melted down into settled life, and thus become fused with the general community, while these same races are still distinct tribes in the wild tracts of hill and jungle.” Sir Alfred C. Lyall, As. St., i. 6.

5 Siva is said to have first appeared in the beginning of the present age as Sveta, the White, for the purpose of benefiting the Brahmans, and he is invariably painted white; whilst Vishnu, when pictured, is always of a dark-blue colour.

6 As in the case of Siva’s traditional white complexion, it may not be without significance, from a racial point of view, that Vishnu, Rama and Krishna have various darker shades of colour attributed to them, viz. blue, hyacinthine, and dark azure or dark brown respectively. The names of the two heroes meaning simply “black” or “dark,” the blue tint may originally have belonged to Vishnu, who is also called pītavasas, dressed in yellow garment, i.e. the colours of sky and sun combined.

7 This notion not improbably took its origin in the mystic cosmogonic hymn, Rigv. x. 129, where it is said that—“that one (existent, neutr.) breathed breathless by (or with) its svadha (? inherent power, or nature), beyond that there was nothing whatever ... that one live (germ) which was enclosed in the void was generated by the power of heat (or fervour); desire then first came upon it, which was the first seed of the mind ... fertilizing forces there were, svadha below, prayati (? will) above.”

HINDU KUSH, a range of mountains in Central Asia. Throughout 500 m. of its length, from its roots in the Pamir regions till it fades into the Koh-i-Baba to the west of Kabul, this great range forms the water-divide between the Kabul and the Oxus basins, and, for the first 200 m. reckoning westwards, the southern boundary of Afghanistan. It may be said to spring from the head of the Taghdumbash Pamir, where it unites with the great meridional system of Sarikol stretching northwards, and the yet more impressive mountain barrier of Muztagh, the northern base of which separates China from the semi-independent territory of Kanjut. The Wakhjir pass, crossing the head of the Taghdumbash Pamir into the sources of the river Hunza, almost marks the tri-junction of the three great chains of mountains. As the Hindu Kush strikes westwards, after first rounding the head of an Oxus tributary (the Ab-i-Panja, which Curzon considers to be the true source of the Oxus), it closely overlooks the trough of that glacier-fed stream under its northern spurs, its crest at the nearest point being separated from the river by a distance which cannot much exceed 10 m. As the river is here the northern boundary of Afghanistan, and the crest of the Hindu Kush the southern boundary, this distance represents the width of the Afghan kingdom at that point.

Physiography.—For the first 100 m. of its length the Hindu Kush is a comparatively flat-backed range of considerable width, permitting the formation of small lakes on the crest, and possessing no considerable peaks. It is crossed by many passes, varying in height from 12,500 ft. to 17,500 ft., the lowest and the easiest being the well-known group about Baroghil, which has from time immemorial offered a line of approach from High Asia to Chitral and Jalalabad. As the Hindu Kush gradually recedes from the Ab-i-Panja and turns south-westwards it gains in altitude, and we find prominent peaks on the crest which measure more than 24,000 ft. above sea-level. Even here, however, the main central water-divide, or axis of the chain, is apparently not the line of highest peaks, which must be looked for to the south, where the great square-headed giant called Tirach Mir dominates Chitral from a southern spur. For some 40 or 50 m. of this south-westerly bend, bearing away from the Oxus, where the Hindu Kush overlooks the mountain wilderness of Badakshan to the west, the crest is intersected by many passes, of which the most important is the Dorah group (including the Minjan and the Mandal), which rise to about 15,000 ft., and which are, under favourable conditions, practicable links between the Oxus and Chitral basins.

From the Dorah to the Khawak pass (or group of passes, for it is seldom that one line of approach only is to be found across the Hindu Kush), which is between 11,000 and 12,000 ft. in altitude, the water-divide overlooks Kafiristan and Kafiristan section. Badakshan. Here its exact position is matter of conjecture. It lies amidst a wild, inaccessible region of snowbound crests, and is certainly nowhere less than 15,000 ft. above sea-level. There is a tradition that Timur attempted the passage of the Hindu Kush by one of the unmapped passes hereabouts, and that, having failed, he left a record of his failure engraved on a rock in the pass.

The Khawak, at the head of the Panjshir tributary of the Kabul river, leading straight from Badakshan to Charikar and the city of Kabul, is now an excellent kafila route, the road having been engineered under the amir Abdur Rahman’s direction, Passes. and it is said to be available for traffic throughout the year. From the Khawak to the head of the Ghorband (a river of the Hindu Kush which, rising to the north-west of Kabul, flows north-east to meet the Panjshir near Charikar, whence they run united into the plains of Kohistan) the Hindu Kush is intersected by passes at intervals, all of which were surveyed, and several utilized, during the return of the Russo-Afghan boundary commission from the Oxus to Kabul in 1886. Those utilized were the Kaoshan (the “Hindu Kush” pass par excellence), 14,340 ft.; the Chahardar (13,900 ft.), which is a link in one of the amir of Afghanistan’s high roads to Turkestan; and the Shibar (9800 ft.), which is merely a diversion into the upper Ghorband of that group of passes between Bamian and the Kabul plains which are represented by the Irak, Hajigak, Unai, &c. About this point it is geographically correct to place the southern extremity of the Hindu Kush, for here commences the Koh-i-Baba system into which the Hindu Kush is merged.

The general conformation of the Hindu Kush system south of the Khawak, no less than such fragmentary evidence of its rock composition as at present exists to the north, points to its construction under the same conditions of upheaval General conformation. and subsequent denudation as are common to the western Himalaya and the whole of the trans-Indus borderland. Its upheaval above the great sea which submerged all the north-west of the Indian peninsula long after the Himalaya had massed itself as a formidable mountain chain, belongs to a comparatively recent geologic period, and the same thrust upwards of vast masses of cretaceous limestone has disturbed the overlying recent beds of shale and clays with very similar results to those which have left so marked an impress on the Baluch frontier. Successive flexures or ridges are ranged in more or less parallel lines, and from between the bands of hard, unyielding rock of older formation the soft beds of recent shale have been washed out, to be carried through the enclosing ridges by rifts which break across their axes. The Hindu Kush is, in fact, but the face of a great upheaved mass of plateau-land lying beyond it northwards, just as the Himalaya forms the southern face of the great central tableland of Tibet, and its general physiography, exhibiting long, narrow, lateral valleys and transverse lines of “antecedent” drainage, is similar. There are few passes across the southern section of the Hindu Kush (and this section is, from the politico-geographical point of view, more important to India than the whole Himalayan system) which have not to surmount a succession of crests or ridges as they cross from Afghan Turkestan to Afghanistan. The exceptions are, of course, notable, and have played an important part in the military history of Asia from time immemorial. From a little ice-bound lake called Gaz Kul, or Karambar, which lies on the crest of the Hindu Kush near its northern origin at the head of the Taghdumbash Pamir, two very important river systems (those of Chitral and Hunza) are believed to originate. The lake really lies on the watershed between the two, and is probably a glacial relic. Its contribution to either infant stream appears to depend on conditions of overflow determined by the blocking of ice masses towards one end. It marks the commencement of the water-divide which primarily separates the Gilgit basin from that of the Yashkun, or Chitral, river, and subsequently divides the drainage of Swat and Bajour from that of the Chitral (or Kunar). The Yashkun-Chitral-Kunar river (it is called by all three names) is the longest affluent of the Kabul, and it is in many respects a more important river than the Kabul. Throughout its length it is closely flanked on its left bank by this main water-divide, which is called Moshabar or Shandur in its northern sections, and owns a great variety of names where it divides Bajour from the Kunar valley. It is this range, crowned by peaks of 22,000 ft. altitude and maintaining an average elevation of some 10,000 ft. throughout its length of 250 m., that is the real barrier of the north—not the Hindu Kush itself. Across it, at its head, are the glacial passes which lead to the foot of the Baroghil. Of these Darkot, with a glacial staircase on each side, is typical. (See Gilgit.) Those passes (the Kilik and Mintaka) from the Pamir regions, which lead into the rocky gorges and defiles of the upper affluents of the Hunza to the east of the Darkot, belong rather to the Muztagh system than to the Hindu Kush. Other passes across this important water-divide are the Shandur (12,250 ft.), between Gilgit and Mastuj; the Lowarai (10,450 ft.), between the Panjkora and Chitral valleys; and farther south certain lower crossings which once formed part of the great highway between Kabul and India.

Deep down in the trough of the Chitral river, about midway between its source and its junction with the Kabul at Jalalabad, is the village and fort of Chitral (q.v.). Facing Chitral, on the right bank of the river, and extending for some 70 m. Chitral. from the Hindu Kush, is the lofty snow-clad spur of the Hindu Kush known as Shawal, across which one or two difficult passes lead into the Bashgol valley of Kafiristan. This spur carries the boundary of Afghanistan southwards to Arnawai (some 50 m. below Chitral), where it crosses the river to the long Shandur watershed. South of Arnawai the Kunar valley becomes a part of Afghanistan (see Kunar). The value of Chitral as an outpost of British India may be best gauged by its geographical position. It is about 100 m. (direct map measurement) from the outpost of Russia at Langar Kisht on the river Panja, with the Dorah pass across the Hindu Kush intervening. The Dorah may be said to be about half-way between the two outposts, and the mountain tracks leading to it on either side are rough and difficult. The Dorah, however, is not the only pass which leads into the Chitral valley from the Oxus. The Mandal pass, a few miles south of the Dorah, is the connecting link between the Oxus and the Bashgol valley of Kafiristan; and the Bashgol valley leads directly to the Chitral valley at Arnawai, about 50 m. below Chitral. Nor must we overlook the connexion between north and south of the Hindu Kush which is afforded by the long narrow valley of the Chitral (or Yashkun) itself, leading up to the Baroghil pass. This route was once made use of by the Chinese for purposes of pilgrimage, if not for invasion. Access to Chitral from the north is therefore but a matter of practicable tracks, or passes, in two or three directions, and the measure of practicability under any given conditions can best be reckoned from Chitral itself. By most authorities the possibility of an advance in force from the north, even under the most favourable conditions, is considered to be exceedingly small; but the tracks and passes of the Hindu Kush are only impracticable so long as they are left as nature has made them.

Historical Notices.—Hindu Kush is the Caucasus of Alexander’s historians. It is also included in the Paropamisus, though the latter term embraces more, Caucasus being apparently used only when the alpine barrier is in question. Whether the name was given in mere vanity to the barrier which Alexander passed (as Arrian and others repeatedly allege), or was founded also on some verbal confusion, cannot be stated. It was no doubt regarded (and perhaps not altogether untruly) as a part of a great alpine zone believed to traverse Asia from west to east, whether called Taurus, Caucasus or Imaus. Arrian himself applies Caucasus distinctly to the Himalaya also. The application of the name Tanais to the Syr seems to indicate a real confusion with Colchian Caucasus. Alexander, after building an Alexandria at its foot (probably at Hupian near Charikar), crossed into Bactria, first reaching Drapsaca, or Adrapsa. This has been interpreted as Anderab, in which case he probably crossed the Khawak Pass, but the identity is uncertain. The ancient Zend name is, according to Rawlinson, Paresina, the essential part of Paropamisus; this accounts for the great Asiastic Parnassus of Aristotle, and the Pho-lo-sin-a of Hsüan Tsang.

The name Hindu Kush is used by Ibn Batuta, who crossed (c. 1332) from Anderab, and he gives the explanation of the name which, however doubtful, is still popular, as (Pers.) Hindu-Killer, “because of the number of Indian slaves who perished in passing” its snows. Baber always calls the range Hindu Kush, and the way in which he speaks of it shows clearly that it was a range that was meant, not a solitary pass or peak (according to modern local use, as alleged by Elphinstone and Burnes). Probably, however, the title was confined to the section from Khawak to Koh-i-Baba. The name has by some later Oriental writers been modified into Hindu Koh (mountain), but this is factitious, and throws no more light on the origin of the title. The name seems to have become known to European geographers by the Oriental translations of the two Petis de la Croix, and was taken up by Delisle and D’Anville. Rennell and Elphinstone familiarized it. Burnes first crossed the range (1832). A British force was stationed at Bamian beyond it in 1840, with an outpost at Saighan.

The Hindu Kush, formidable as it seems, and often as it has been the limit between petty states, has hardly ever been the boundary of a considerable power. Greeks, White Huns, Samanidae of Bokhara, Ghaznevides, Mongols, Timur and Timuridae, down to Saddozais and Barakzais, have ruled both sides of this great alpine chain.

Authorities.—Information about the Hindu Kush and Chitral is now comparatively exact. The Russo-Afghan Boundary Commission of 1884 and the Chitral expedition of 1895 opened up a vast area for geographical investigation, and the information collected is to be found in the reports and gazetteers of the Indian government. The following are the chief recent authorities:—Report of the Russo-Afghan Boundary Commission (1886); Report of Lockhart’s Mission (1886); Report of Asmar Boundary Commission (1895); Report of Pamir Boundary Commission (1896); J. Biddulph, Tribes of the Hindu Kush (Calcutta, 1880); W. M’Nair, “Visit to Kafiristan,” vol. vi. R.G.S. Proc., 1884; F. Younghusband, “Journeys on the Pamirs, &c.,” vol. xiv. R.G.S. Proc., 1892; Colonel Durand, Making a Frontier (London, 1899); Sir G. Robertson, Chitral (London, 1899).

(T. H. H.*)

HINDUR, or Nalagarh, one of the Simla hill states, under the government of the Punjab, India. Pop. (1901) 52,551; area, 256 sq. m.; estimated revenue, £8600. The country was overrun by the Gurkhas for some years before 1815, when they were driven out by the British, and the raja was confirmed in possession of the territory. The principal products are grain and opium.

HINGANGHAT, a town of British India in Wardha district, Central Provinces, 21 m. S.W. of Wardha town. Pop (1901) 12,662. It is a main seat of the cotton trade, the cotton here produced in the rich Wardha valley having given its name to one of the best indigenous staples of India. The principal native traders are Marwaris, many of whom have large transactions and export on their own account; but the greater number act as middle-men. There are two cotton-mills and several ginning and pressing factories.

HINGE (in Mid. Eng. henge or heeng, from hengen, to hang), a movable joint, particularly that by which a door or window “hangs” from its side-post, or by which a lid or cover is attached to that which it closes; also any device which allows two parts to be joined together and move upon each other (see Joinery). Figuratively the word is used of that on which something depends, a cardinal or turning point, a crisis.

HINGHAM, a township of Plymouth county, Massachusetts, U.S.A., on Massachusetts Bay. Pop (1890) 4564; (1900) 5059 (969 being foreign-born); (1905, state census) 4819; (1910) 4965. Area, about 30 sq. m. The township is traversed by the New York, New Haven & Hartford railway, and contains the villages of Hingham, West Hingham, Hingham Center, and South Hingham. Derby Academy, a co-educational school founded and endowed with about £12,000 in 1784 by Sarah Derby (1714-1790), was opened in 1791. Hingham has a public library (1868), with 12,000 volumes in 1908. The Old Meeting House, erected in 1681, is one of the oldest church buildings in the country used continuously. Manufactures were relatively much more important in the 17th and 18th centuries than since. There were settlers here as early as 1633, some of them—notably Edmund Hobart, ancestor of Bishop John Henry Hobart,—being natives of Hingham, Norfolk, England, whence the name; and in 1635 common land called Barecove became the township of Hingham.

See History of the Town of Hingham (4 vols., Hingham, 1893).

HINRICHS, HERMANN FRIEDRICH WILHELM (1794-1861), German philosopher, studied theology at Strassburg, and philosophy at Heidelberg under Hegel (q.v.), who wrote a preface to his Religion im innern Verhältniss zur Wissenschaft (Heidelberg, 1722). He became a Privatdozent in 1819, and held professorships at Breslau (1822) and Halle (1824).

Works.—(1) Philosophical: Grundlinien der Philosophie der Logik (Halle, 1826); Genesis des Wissens (Heidelberg, 1835). (2) On aesthetics: Vorlesungen über Goethes Faust (Halle, 1825); Schillers Dichtungen nach ihrem historischen Zusammenhang (Leipzig, 1837-1839). By these works he became a recognized exponent of orthodox Hegelianism. (3) Historical: Geschichte der Rechts- und Staatsprinzipien seit der Reformation bis auf die Gegenwart (Leipzig, 1848-1852); Die Könige (2nd ed., Leipzig, 1853).

HINSCHIUS, PAUL (1835-1898), German jurist, was the son of Franz Sales August Hinschius (1807-1877), and was born in Berlin on the 25th of December 1835. His father was not only a scientific jurist, but also a lawyer in large practice in Berlin. After working under his father, Hinschius in 1852 began to study jurisprudence at Heidelberg and Berlin, the teacher who had most influence upon him being Aemilius Ludwig Richter (1808-1864), to whom he afterwards ascribed the great revival of the study of ecclesiastical law in Germany. In 1855 Hinschius took the degree of doctor utriusque juris, and in 1859 was admitted to the juridical faculty of Berlin. In 1863 he went as professor extraordinarius to Halle, returning in the same capacity to Berlin in 1865; and in 1868 became professor ordinarius at the university of Kiel, which he represented in the Prussian Upper House (1870-1871). He also assisted his father in editing the Preussische Anwaltszeitung from 1862 to 1866 and the Zeitschrift für Gesetzgebung und Rechtspflege in Preussen from 1867 to 1871. In 1872 he was appointed professor ordinarius of ecclesiastical law at Berlin. In the same year he took part in the conferences of the ministry of ecclesiastical affairs, which issued in the famous “Falk laws.” In connexion with the developments of the Kulturkampf which resulted from the “Falk laws,” he wrote several treatises: e.g. on “The Attitude of the German State Governments towards the Decrees of the Vatican Council” (1871), on “The Prussian Church Laws of 1873” (1873), “The Prussian Church Laws of the years 1874 and 1875” (1875), and “The Prussian Church Law of 14th July 1880” (1881). He sat in the Reichstag as a National Liberal from 1872 to 1878, and again in 1881 and 1882, and from 1889 onwards he represented the university of Berlin in the Prussian Upper House. He died on the 13th of December 1898.

The two great works by which Hinschius established his fame are the Decretales Pseudo-Isidorianae et capitula Angilramni (2 parts, Leipzig, 1863) and Das Kirchenrecht der Katholiken und Protestanten in Deutschland, vols, i.-vi. (Berlin, 1869-1877). The first of these, for which during 1860 and 1861 he had gathered materials in Italy, Spain, France, England, Scotland, Ireland, Holland and Belgium, was the first critical edition of the False Decretals. His most monumental work, however, is the Kirchenrecht, which remains incomplete. The six volumes actually published (System des katholischen Kirchenrechts) cover only book i. of the work as planned; they are devoted to an exhaustive historical and analytical study of the Roman Catholic hierarchy and its government of the church. The work is planned with special reference to Germany; but in fact its scheme embraces the whole of the Roman Catholic organization in its principles and practice. Unfortunately even this part of the work remains incomplete; two chapters of book i. and the whole of book ii., which was to have dealt with “the rights and duties of the members of the hierarchy,” remain unwritten; the most notable omission is that of the ecclesiastical law in relation to the regular orders. Incomplete as it is, however, the Kirchenrecht remains a work of the highest scientific authority. Epoch-making in its application of the modern historical method to the study of ecclesiastical law in its theory and practice, it has become the model for the younger school of canonists.

See the articles s.v. by E. Seckel in Herzog-Hauck, Realencyklopädie (3rd ed., 1900), and by Ulrich Steitz in the Allgemeine deutsche Biographie, vol. 50 (Leipzig, 1905).

HINTERLAND (German for “the land behind”), the region lying behind a coast or river line, or a country dependent for trade or commerce on any other region. In the purely physical sense “interior” or “back country” is more commonly used, but the word has gained a distinct political significance. It first came into prominence during 1883-1885, when Germany insisted that she had a right to exercise jurisdiction in the territory behind those parts of the African coast that she had occupied. The “doctrine of the hinterland” was that the possessor of the littoral was entitled to as much of the back country as geographically, economically or politically was dependent upon the coast lands, a doctrine which, in the space of ten years, led to the partition of Africa between various European powers.

HINTON, JAMES (1822-1875), English surgeon and author, son of John Howard Hinton (1791-1873), Baptist minister and author of the History and Topography of the United States and other works, was born at Reading in 1822. He was educated at his grandfather’s school near Oxford, and at the Nonconformist school at Harpenden, and in 1838, on his father’s removal to London, was apprenticed to a woollen-draper in Whitechapel. After retaining this situation about a year he became clerk in an insurance office. His evenings were spent in intense study, and this, joined to the ardour, amounting to morbidness, of his interest in moral problems, so affected his health that in his nineteenth year he resolved to seek refuge from his own thoughts by running away to sea. His intention having, however, been discovered, he was sent, on the advice of the physician who was consulted regarding his health, to St Bartholomew’s Hospital to study for the medical profession. After receiving his diploma in 1847, he was for some time assistant surgeon at Newport, Essex, but the same year he went out to Sierra Leone to take medical charge of the free labourers on their voyage thence to Jamaica, where he stayed some time. He returned to England in 1850, and entered into partnership with a surgeon in London, where he soon had his interest awakened specially in aural surgery, and gave also much of his attention to physiology. He made his first appearance as an author in 1856 by contributing papers on physiological and ethical subjects to the Christian Spectator; and in 1859 he published Man and his Dwelling-place. A series of papers entitled “Physiological Riddles,” in the Cornhill Magazine, afterwards published as Life in Nature (1862), as well as another series entitled Thoughts on Health (1871), proved his aptitude for popular scientific exposition. After being appointed aural surgeon to Guy’s Hospital in 1863, he speedily acquired a reputation as the most skilful aural surgeon of his day, which was fully borne out by his works, An Atlas of Diseases of the membrana tympani (1874), and Questions of Aural Surgery (1874). But his health broke down, and in 1874 he gave up practice; and he died at the Azores of acute inflammation of the brain on the 16th of December 1875. In addition to the works already mentioned, he was the author of The Mystery of Pain (1866) and The Place of the Physician (1874). On account of their fresh and vigorous discussion of many of the important moral and social problems of the time, his writings had a wide circulation on both sides of the Atlantic.

His Life and Letters, edited by Ellice Hopkins, with an introduction by Sir W. W. Gull, appeared in 1878.

HIOGO [Hyogo], a town of Japan in the province of Settsu, Nippon, on the western shore of the bay of Osaka, adjoining the foreign settlement of Kobe, 21 m. W. of Osaka by rail. The growth of its prosperity has been very remarkable. Its population, including that of Kobe, was 135,639 in 1891, and 285,002 in 1903. From 1884 to the close of the century its trade increased nearly eightfold, and the increase was not confined to a few staples of commerce, but was spread over almost the whole trade, in which silk and cotton fabrics, floor-mats, straw-plaits, matches, and cotton yarns are specially important. Kobe owes much of its prosperity to the fact of serving largely as the shipping port of Osaka, the chief manufacturing town in Japan. The foreign community, exclusive of Chinese, exceeds 1000 persons. Kobe is considered the brightest and healthiest of all the places assigned as foreign settlements in Japan, its pure, dry air and granite subsoil constituting special advantages. It is in railway communication with all parts of the country, and wharves admit of steamers of large size loading and discharging cargo without the aid of lighters. The area originally appropriated for a foreign settlement soon proved too restricted, and foreigners received permission to lease lands and houses direct from Japanese owners beyond the treaty limits, a privilege which, together with that of building villas on the hills behind the town, ultimately involved some diplomatic complications. Kobe has a shipbuilding yard, and docks in its immediate neighbourhood.

Hiogo has several temples of interest, one of which has near it a huge bronze statue of Buddha, while by the Minatogawa, which flows into the sea between Hiogo and Kobe, a temple commemorates the spot where Kusunoki Masashige, the mirror of Japanese loyalty, met his death in battle in 1336. The temple of Ikuta was erected on the site of the ancient fane built by Jingo on her return from Korea in the 3rd century.

Hiogo’s original name was Bako. Its position near the entrance of the Inland Sea gave it some maritime importance from a very early period, but it did not become really prominent until the 12th century, when Kiyomori, chief of the Taira clan, transferred the capital from Kioto to Fukuhara, in Hiogo’s immediate neighbourhood, and undertook various public works for improving the place. The change of capital was very brief, but Hiogo benefited permanently from the distinction.

HIP. (1) (From O. Eng. hype, a word common in various forms to many Teutonic languages; cf. Dutch heup, and Ger. Hüfte), the projecting part of the body formed by the top of the thighbone and the side of the pelvis, in quadrupeds generally known as the haunch (see Joints). (2)(O. Eng. héope, from same root as M. H. Ger. hiefe, a thorn-bush), the fruit of the dog-rose (Rosa canina); “hips” are usually joined with “haws,” the fruit of the hawthorn.

HIP-KNOB, in architecture, the finial on the hip of a roof, between the barge-boards of a gable.

HIPPARCHUS (fl. 146-126 B.C.), Greek astronomer, was born at Nicaea in Bithynia early in the 2nd century B.C. He observed in the island of Rhodes probably from 161, certainly from 146 until about 126 B.C., and made the capital discovery of the precession of the equinoxes in 130 (see Astronomy: History). The outburst of a new star in 134 B.C. is stated by Pliny (Hist. nat. ii. 26) to have prompted the preparation of his catalogue of 1080 stars, substantially embodied in Ptolemy’s Almagest. Hipparchus founded trigonometry, and compiled the first table of chords. Scientific geography originated with his invention of the method of fixing terrestrial positions by circles of latitude and longitude. There can be little doubt that the fundamental part of his astronomical knowledge was derived from Chaldaea. None of his many works has survived except a Commentary on the Phaenomena of Aratus and Eudoxus, published by P. Victorius at Florence in 1567, and included by D. Petavius in his Uranologium (Paris, 1630). A new edition was published by Carolus Manitius (Leipzig, 1894).

See J. B. J. Delambre, Histoire de l’astronomie ancienne, i. 173; P. Tannery, Recherches sur l’histoire de l’astr. ancienne, p. 130; A. Berry, Hist. of Astronomy, pp. 40-61; M. Marie, Hist. des sciences, i. 207; G. Cornewall Lewis, Astronomy of the Ancients, p. 207; R. Grant, Hist. of Phys. Astronomy, pp. 318, 437; F. Boll, Sphaera, p. 61 (Leipzig, 1903); R. Wolf, Geschichte der Astronomie, p. 45; J. F. Montucla, Hist. des mathématiques, t. i. p. 257; J. A. Schmidt, Variorum philosophicorum decas, cap. i. (Jenae, 1691).

(A. M. C.)

HIPPASUS OF METAPONTUM, Pythagorean philosopher, was one of the earliest of the disciples of Pythagoras. He is mentioned both by Diogenes Laërtius and by Iamblichus, but nothing is known of his life. Diogenes says that he left no writings, but other authorities make him the author of a μυστικὸς λόγος directed against the Pythagoreans. According to Aristotle (Metaphysica, i. 3), he was an adherent of the Heraclitean fire-doctrine, whereas the Pythagoreans maintained the theory that number is the principle of everything. He seems to have regarded the soul as composed of igneous matter, and so approximates the orthodox Pythagorean doctrine of the central fire, or Hestia, to the more detailed theories of Heraclitus. In spite of this divergence, Hippasus is always regarded as a Pythagorean.

See Diogenes viii. 84; Brandis, History of Greek and Roman Philosophy; also Pythagoras.

HIPPEASTRUM, in botany, a genus of the natural order Amaryllidaceae, containing about 50 species of bulbous plants, natives of tropical and sub-tropical South America. In cultivation they are generally known as Amaryllis. The handsome funnel-shaped flowers are borne in a cluster of two to many, at the end of a short hollow scape. The species and the numerous hybrids which have been obtained artificially, show a great variety in size and colour of the flower, including the richest deep crimson and blood-red, white, or with striped, mottled or blended colours. They are of easy culture, and free-blooming habit. Like other bulbs they are increased by offsets, which should be carefully removed when the plants are at rest, and should be allowed to attain a fair size before removal. These young bulbs should be potted singly in February or March, in mellow loamy soil with a moderate quantity of sand, about two-thirds of the bulb being kept above the level of the soil, which should be made quite solid. They should be removed to a temperature of 60° by night and 70° by day, very carefully watered until the roots have begun to grow freely, after which the soil should be kept moderately moist. As they advance the temperature should be raised to 70° at night, and to 80° or higher with sun heat by day. They do not need shading, but should have plenty of air, and be syringed daily in the afternoon. When growing they require a good supply of water. After the decay of the flowers they should be returned to a brisk moist temperature of from 70° to 80° by day during summer to perfect their leaves, and then be ripened off in autumn. Through the winter they should have less water, but must not be kept entirely dry. The minimum temperature should now be about 55°, to be increased 10° or 15° in spring. As the bulbs get large they will occasionally need shifting into larger pots. Propagation is also readily effected by seeds for raising new varieties. Seeds are sown when ripe in well drained pans of sandy loam at a temperature of about 65°. The seedlings when large enough to handle are placed either singly in very small pots or several in a pot or shallow pan, and put in a bottom heat, in a moist atmosphere with a temperature from 60° to 70°. H. Ackermanni, with large, handsome, crimson flowers—itself a hybrid—is the parent of many of the large-flowered forms; H. equestre (Barbados lily), with yellowish-green flowers tipped with scarlet, has also given rise to several handsome forms; H. aulicum (flowers crimson and green), H. pardinum (flowers creamy-white spotted with crimson), and H. vittatum (flowers white with red stripes, a beautiful species and the parent of many varieties), are stove or warm greenhouse plants. These kinds, however, are now only regarded as botanical curiosities, and are rarely grown in private or commercial establishments. They have been ousted by the more gorgeous looking hybrids, which have been evolved during the past 100 years. H. Johnsoni is named after a Lancashire watchmaker who raised it in 1799 by crossing H. Reginae with H. vittatum. Since that time other species have been used for hybridizing, notably H. reticulatum, H. aulicum, H. solandriflorum, and sometimes H. equestre and H. psittacinum. The finest forms since 1880 have been evolved from H. Leopoldi and H. pardinum.

(J. Ws.)

HIPPED ROOF, the name given in architecture to a roof which slopes down on all four sides instead of terminating on two sides against a vertical gable. Sometimes a compromise is made between the two, half the roof being hipped and half resting on the vertical wall; this gives much more room inside the roof, and externally a most picturesque effect, which is one of the great attractions of domestic architecture in the south of England, and is rarely found in other countries.

HIPPEL, THEODOR GOTTLIEB VON (1741-1796), German satirical and humorous writer, was born on the 31st of January 1741, at Gerdauen in East Prussia, where his father was rector of a school. He enjoyed an excellent education at home, and in his sixteenth year he entered Königsberg university as a student of theology. Interrupting his studies, he went, on the invitation of a friend, to St Petersburg, where he was introduced at the brilliant court of the empress Catherine II. Returning to Königsberg he became a tutor in a private family; but, falling in love with a young lady of high position, his ambition was aroused, and giving up his tutorship he devoted himself with enthusiasm to legal studies. He was successful in his profession, and in 1780 was appointed chief burgomaster in Königsberg, and in 1786 privy councillor of war and president of the town. As he rose in the world, however, his inclination for matrimony vanished, and the lady who had stimulated his ambition was forgotten. He died at Königsberg on the 23rd of April 1796, leaving a considerable fortune. Hippel had extraordinary talents, rich in wit and fancy; but his was a character full of contrasts and contradictions. Cautiousness and ardent passion, dry pedantry and piety, morality and sensuality; simplicity and ostentation composed his nature; and, hence, his literary productions never attained artistic finish. In his Lebensläufe nach aufsteigender Linie (1778-1781) he intended to describe the lives of his father and grandfather, but he eventually confined himself to his own. It is an autobiography, in which persons well known to him are introduced, together with a mass of heterogeneous reflections on life and philosophy. Kreuz- und Querzüge des Ritters A bis Z (1793-1794) is a satire levelled against the follies of the age—ancestral pride and the thirst for orders, decoration and the like. Among others of his better known works are Über die Ehe (1774) and Über die bürgerliche Verbesserung der Weiber (1792). Hippel has been called the fore-runner of Jean Paul Richter, and has some resemblance to this author, in his constant digressions and in the interweaving of scientific matter in his narrative. Like Richter he was strongly influenced by Laurence Sterne.

In 1827-1838 a collected edition of Hippel’s works in 14 vols., was issued at Berlin. Über die Ehe has been edited by E. Brenning (Leipzig, 1872), and the Lebensläufe nach aufsteigender Linie has in a modernized edition by A. von Öttingen (1878), gone through several editions. See J. Czerny, Sterne, Hippel und Jean Paul (Berlin, 1904).

HIPPIAS OF ELIS, Greek sophist, was born about the middle of the 5th century B.C. and was thus a younger contemporary of Protagoras and Socrates. He was a man of great versatility and won the respect of his fellow-citizens to such an extent that he was sent to various towns on important embassies. At Athens he made the acquaintance of Socrates and other leading thinkers. With an assurance characteristic of the later sophists, he claimed to be regarded as an authority on all subjects, and lectured, at all events with financial success, on poetry, grammar, history, politics, archaeology, mathematics and astronomy. He boasted that he was more popular than Protagoras, and was prepared at any moment to deliver an extempore address on any subject to the assembly at Olympia. Of his ability there is no question, but it is equally certain that he was superficial. His aim was not to give knowledge, but to provide his pupils with the weapons of argument, to make them fertile in discussion on all subjects alike. It is said that he boasted of wearing nothing which he had not made with his own hands. Plato’s two dialogues, the Hippias major and minor, contain an exposé of his methods, exaggerated no doubt for purposes of argument but written with full knowledge of the man and the class which he represented. Ast denies their authenticity, but they must have been written by a contemporary writer (as they are mentioned in the literature of the 4th century), and undoubtedly represent the attitude of serious thinkers to the growing influence of the professional Sophists. There is, however, no question that Hippias did a real service to Greek literature by insisting on the meaning of words, the value of rhythm and literary style. He is credited with an excellent work on Homer, collections of Greek and foreign literature, and archaeological treatises, but nothing remains except the barest notes. He forms the connecting link between the first great sophists, Protagoras and Prodicus, and the innumerable eristics who brought their name into disrepute.

For the general atmosphere in which Hippias moved see Sophists; also histories of Philosophy (e.g. Windelband, Eng. trans. by Tufts, pt. 1, c. 2, §§ 7 and 8).

HIPPO, a Greek philosopher and natural scientist, classed with the Ionian or physical school. He was probably a contemporary of Archelaus and lived chiefly in Athens. Aristotle declared that he was unworthy of the name of philosopher, and, while comparing him with Thales in his main doctrine, adds that his intellect was too shallow for serious consideration. He held that the principle of all things is moisture (τὸ ὑγρόν); that fire develops from water, and from fire the material universe. Further he denied all existence save that of material things as known through the senses, and was, therefore, classed among the “Atheists.” The gods are merely great men canonized by popular tradition. It is said that he composed his own epitaph, wherein he claims for himself a place in this company.

HIPPOCRAS, an old medicinal drink or cordial, made of wine mixed with spices—such as cinnamon, ginger and sugar—and strained through woollen cloths. The early spelling usual in English was ipocras, or ypocras. The word is an adaptation of the Med. Lat. Vinum Hippocraticum, or wine of Hippocrates, so called, not because it was supposed to be a receipt of the physician, but from an apothecary’s name for a strainer or sieve, “Hippocrates’ sleeve” (see W. W. Skeat, Chaucer, note to the Merchant’s Tale).

HIPPOCRATES, Greek philosopher and writer, termed the “Father of Medicine,” was born, according to Soranus, in Cos, in the first year of the 80th Olympiad, i.e. in 460 B.C. He was a member of the family of the Asclepiadae, and was believed to be either the nineteenth or seventeenth in direct descent from Aesculapius. It is also claimed for him that he was descended from Hercules through his mother, Phaenarete. He studied medicine under Heraclides, his father, and Herodicus of Selymbria; in philosophy Gorgias of Leontini and Democritus of Abdera were his masters. His earlier studies were prosecuted in the famous Asclepion of Cos, and probably also at Cnidos. He travelled extensively, and taught and practised his profession at Athens, probably also in Thrace, Thessaly, Delos and his native island. He died at Larissa in Thessaly, his age being variously stated as 85, 90, 104 and 109. The incidents of his life are shrouded by uncertain traditions, which naturally sprang up in the absence of any authentic record; the earliest biography was by one of the Sorani, probably Soranus the younger of Ephesus, in the 2nd century; Suidas, the lexicographer, wrote of him in the 11th, and Tzetzes in the 12th century. In all these biographies there is internal evidence of confusion; many of the incidents related are elsewhere told of other persons, and certain of them are quite irreconcilable with his character, so far as it can be judged of from his writings and from the opinions expressed of him by his contemporaries; we may safely reject, for instance, the legends that he set fire to the library of the Temple of Health at Cnidos, in order to destroy the evidence of plagiarism, and that he refused to visit Persia at the request of Artaxerxes Longimanus, during a pestilential epidemic, on the ground that he would in so doing be assisting an enemy. He is referred to by Plato (Protag. p. 283; Phaedr. p. 211) as an eminent medical authority, and his opinion is also quoted by Aristotle. The veneration in which he was held by the Athenians serves to dissipate the calumnies which have been thrown on his character by Andreas, and the whole tone of his writings bespeaks a man of the highest integrity and purest morality.

Born of a family of priest-physicians, and inheriting all its traditions and prejudices, Hippocrates was the first to cast superstition aside, and to base the practice of medicine on the principles of inductive philosophy. It is impossible to trace directly the influence exercised upon him by the great men of his time, but one cannot fail to connect his emancipation of medicine from superstition with the widespread power exercised over Greek life and thought by the living work of Socrates, Plato, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Herodotus and Thucydides. It was a period of great intellectual development, and it only needed a powerful mind such as his to bring to bear upon medicine the same influences which were at work in other sciences. It must be remembered that his training was not altogether bad, although superstition entered so largely into it. He had a great master in Democritus, the originator of the doctrine of atoms, and there is every reason to believe that the various “asclepia” were very carefully conducted hospitals for the sick, possessing a curious system of case-books, in the form of votive tablets, left by the patients, on which were recorded the symptoms, treatment and result of each case. He had these records at his command; and he had the opportunity of observing the system of training and the treatment of injuries in the gymnasia. One of his great merits is that he was the first to dissociate medicine from priest-craft, and to direct exclusive attention to the natural history of disease. How strongly his mind revolted against the use of charms, amulets, incantations and such devices appears from his writings; and he has expressly recorded, as underlying all his practice, the conviction that, however diseases may be regarded from the religious point of view, they must all be scientifically treated as subject to natural laws (De aëre, 29). Nor was he anxious to maintain the connexion between philosophy and medicine which had for long existed in a confused and confusing fashion.1 His knowledge of anatomy, physiology and pathology was necessarily defective, the respect in which the dead body was held by the Greeks precluding him from practising dissection; thus we find him writing of the tissues without distinguishing between the various textures of the body, confusing arteries, veins and nerves, and speaking vaguely of the muscles as “flesh.” But when we come to study his observations on the natural history of disease as presented in the living subject, we recognize at once the presence of a great clinical physician. Hippocrates based his principles and practice on the theory of the existence of a spiritual restoring essence or principle, φύσις, the vis medicatrix naturae, in the management of which the art of the physician consisted. This art could, he held, be only obtained by the application of experience, not only to disease at large, but to disease in the individual. He strongly deprecated blind empiricism; the aphorism “ἡ πεῖρα σφαλερή, ἡ κρίσις χαλεπή” (whether it be his or not), tersely illustrates his position. Holding firmly to the principle, νούσων φύσιες ἰητροί, he did not allow himself to remain inactive in the presence of disease; he was not a merely “expectant” physician; as Sydenham puts it, his practice was “the support of enfeebled and the coercion of outrageous nature.” He largely employed powerful medicines and blood-letting both ordinary and by cupping. He advises, however, great caution in their application. He placed great dependence on diet and regimen, and here, quaint as many of his directions may now sound, not only in themselves, but in the reasons given, there is much which is still adhered to at the present day. His treatise Περὶ ἀέρων, ὑδάτων, καὶ τόπων (Airs, Waters, and Places) contains the first enunciation of the principles of public health. Although the treatises Περὶ κρισίμων cannot be accepted as authentic, we find in the Προγνωστικόν evidence of the acuteness of observation in the manner in which the occurrence of critical days in disease is enunciated. His method of reporting cases is most interesting and instructive; in them we can read how thoroughly he had separated himself from the priest-physician. Laennec, to whom we are indebted for the practice of auscultation, freely admits that the idea was suggested to him by study of Hippocrates, who, treating of the presence of morbid fluids in the thorax, gives very particular directions, by means of succussion, for arriving at an opinion regarding their nature. Laennec says, “Hippocrate avait tenté l’auscultation immédiate.” Although the treatise Περὶ νούσων is doubtfully from the pen of Hippocrates, it contains strong evidence of having been the work of his grandson, representing the views of the Father of Medicine. Although not accurate in the conclusions reached at the time, the value of the method of diagnosis is shown by the retention in modern medicine of the name and the practice of “Hippocratic succussion.” The power of graphic description of phenomena in the Hippocratic writings is illustrated by the retention of the term “facies Hippocratica,” applied to the appearance of a moribund person, pictured in the Prognostics. In surgery his writings are important and interesting, but they do not bear the same character of caution as the treatises on medicine; for instance, in the essay On Injuries of the Head, he advocates the operation “of trephining” more strongly and in wider classes of cases than would be warranted by the experience of later times.

The Hippocratic Collection consists of eighty-seven treatises, of which a part only can be accepted as genuine. The collection has been submitted to the closest criticism in ancient and modern times by a large number of commentators (for full list of the early commentators, see Adams’s Genuine Works of Hippocrates, Sydenham Society, i. 27, 28). The treatises have been classified according to (1) the direct evidence of ancient writers, (2) peculiarities of style and method, and (3) the presence of anachronisms and of opinions opposed to the general Hippocratic teaching—greatest weight being attached to the opinions of Erotian and Galen. The general estimate of commentators is thus stated by Adams: “The peculiar style and method of Hippocrates are held to be conciseness of expression, great condensation of matter, and disposition to regard all professional subjects in a practical point of view, to eschew subtle hypotheses and modes of treatment based on vague abstractions.” The treatises have been grouped in the four following sections: (1) genuine; (2) those consisting of notes taken by students and collected after the death of Hippocrates; (3) essays by disciples; (4) those utterly spurious. Littré accepts the following thirteen as absolutely genuine: (1) On Ancient Medicine (Περὶ ἀρχαίης ἰητρικῆς); (2) The Prognostics (Προγνωστικόν); (3) The Aphorisms (Ἀφορισμοί); (4) The Epidemics, i. and iii. (Ἐπιδημιῶν α′ καὶ γ′); (5) On Regimen in Acute Diseases (Περὶ διαίτης ὀξέων); (6) On Airs, Waters, and Places (Περὶ ἀέρων, ὑδάτων, καὶ τόπων); (7) On the Articulations (Περὶ ἄρθρων); (8) On Fractures (Περὶ ἀγμῶν); (9) The Instruments of Reduction (Μοχλικός); (10) The Physician’s Establishment, or Surgery (Κατ᾽ ἰητρεῖον); (11) On Injuries of the Head (Περὶ τῶν ἐν κεφαλῇ τρωμάτων); (12) The Oath (Ὅρκος); (13) The Law (Νόμος). Of these Adams accepts as certainly genuine the 2nd, 6th, 5th, 3rd (7 books), 4th, 7th, 8th, 9th and 12th, and as “pretty confidently acknowledged as genuine, although the evidence in their favour is not so strong,” the 1st, 10th and 13th, and, in addition, (14) On Ulcers (Περὶ ἑλκῶν); (15) On Fistulae (Περὶ συρίγγων); (16) On Hemorrhoids (Περὶ αἱμοῤῥοΐδων); (17) On the Sacred Disease (Περὶ ἱερῆς νούσου). According to the sceptical and somewhat subjective criticism of Ermerins, the whole collection is to be regarded as spurious except Epidemics, books i. and iii. (with a few interpolations), On Airs, Waters, and Places, On Injuries of the Head (“insigne fragmentum libri Hippocratei”), the former portion of the treatise On Regimen in Acute Diseases, and the “obviously Hippocratic” fragments of the Coan Prognostics. Perhaps also the Oath may be accepted as genuine; its comparative antiquity is not denied. The Aphorisms are certainly later and inferior. In the other non-Hippocratic writings Ermerins thinks he can distinguish the hands of no fewer than nineteen different authors, most of them anonymous, and some of them very late.

The earliest Greek edition of the Hippocratic writings is that which was published by Aldus and Asulanus at Venice in 1526 (folio); it was speedily followed by that of Frobenius, which is much more accurate and complete (fol., Basel, 1538). Of the numerous subsequent editions, probably the best was that of Foesius (Frankfort, 1595, 1621, Geneva, 1657), until the publication of the great works of Littré, Œuvres complètes d’Hippocrate, traduction nouvelle avec le texte grec en regard, collationnée sur les manuscrits et toutes les éditions, accompagnée d’une introduction, de commentaires médicaux, de variantes, et de notes philologiques (10 vols., Paris, 1839-1861), and of F. Z. Ermerins, Hippocratis et aliorum medicorum veterum reliquiae (3 vols., Utrecht, 1859-1864). See also Adams (as cited above), and Reinhold’s Hippocrates (2 vols., Athens, 1864-1867). Daremberg’s edition of the Œuvres choisies (2nd ed., Paris, 1855) includes the Oath, the Law, the Prorrhetics, book i., the Prognostics, On Airs, Waters, and Places, Epidemics, books i. and iii., Regimen, and Aphorisms. Of the separate works attributed to Hippocrates the editions and translations are almost innumerable; of the Prognostics, for example, seventy editions are known, while of the Aphorisms there are said to exist as many as three hundred. For some notice of the Arabic, Syriac and Hebrew translations of works professedly by Hippocrates (Ibukrat or Bukrat), the number of which greatly exceeds that of the extant Greek originals, reference may be made to Flügel’s contribution to the article “Hippokrates” in the Encyklopädie of Ersch and Gruber. They have been partially catalogued by Fabricius in his Bibliotheca Graeca.

(J. B. T.)

1 “Hippocrates Cous, primus quidem ex omnibus memoria dignus, ab studio sapientiae disciplinam hanc separavit, vir et arte et facundia insignis” (Celsus, De medicina).

HIPPOCRENE (the “fountain of the horse,” ἡ ἵππου κρήνη), the spring on Mt Helicon, in Boeotia, which, like the other spring there, Aganippe, was sacred to the Muses and Apollo, and hence taken as the source of poetic inspiration. The spring, surrounded by an ancient wall, is now known as Kryopegadi or the cold spring. According to the legend, it was produced by the stamping of the hoof of Bellerophon’s horse Pegasus. The same story accounts for the Hippocrene in Troezen and the spring Peirene at Corinth.

HIPPODAMUS, of Miletus, a Greek architect of the 5th century B.C. It was he who introduced order and regularity into the planning of cities, in place of the previous intricacy and confusion. For Pericles he planned the arrangement of the harbour-town Peiraeus at Athens. When the Athenians founded Thurii in Italy he accompanied the colony as architect, and afterwards, in 408 B.C., he superintended the building of the new city of Rhodes. His schemes consisted of series of broad, straight streets, cutting one another at right angles.

HIPPODROME (Gr. ἱππόδρομος, from ἵππος, horse, and δρόμος, racecourse), the course provided by the Greeks for horse and chariot racing; it corresponded to the Roman circus, except that in the latter only four chariots ran at a time, whereas ten or more contended in the Greek games, so that the width was far greater, being about 400 ft., the course being 600 to 700 ft. long. The Greek hippodrome was usually set out on the slope of a hill, and the ground taken from one side served to form the embankment on the other side. One end of the hippodrome was semicircular, and the other end square with an extensive portico, in front of which, at a lower level, were the stalls for the horses and chariots. The modern hippodrome is more for equestrian and other displays than for horse racing. The Hippodrome in Paris somewhat resembles the Roman amphitheatre, being open in the centre to the sky, with seats round on rising levels.

HIPPOLYTUS, in Greek legend, son of Theseus and Hippolyte, queen of the Amazons (or of her sister Antiope), a famous hunter and charioteer and favourite of Artemis. His stepmother Phaedra became enamoured of him, but, finding her advances rejected, she hanged herself, leaving a letter in which she accused Hippolytus of an attempt upon her virtue. Theseus thereupon drove his son from his presence with curses and called upon his father Poseidon to destroy him. While Hippolytus was driving along the shore at Troezen (the scene of the Hippolytus of Euripides), a sea-monster (a bull or phoca) sent by Poseidon emerged from the waves; the horses were scared, Hippolytus was thrown out of the chariot, and was dragged along, entangled in the reins, until he died. According to a tradition of Epidaurus, Asclepius restored him to life at the request of Artemis, who removed him to Italy (see Virbius). At Troezen, where he had a special sanctuary and priest, and was worshipped with divine honours, the story of his death was denied. He was said to have been rescued by the gods at the critical moment, and to have been placed amongst the stars as the Charioteer (Auriga). It was also the custom of the Troezenian maidens to cut off a lock of their hair and to dedicate it to Hippolytus before marriage (see Frazer on Pausanias ii. 32. 1). Well-known classical parallels to the main theme are Bellerophon and Antea (or Stheneboea) and Peleus and Astydamia. The story was the subject of two plays by Euripides (the later of which is extant), of a tragedy by Seneca and of Racine’s Phèdre. A trace of it has survived in the legendary death of the apocryphal martyr Hippolytus, a Roman officer who was torn to pieces by wild horses as a convert to Christianity (see J. J. Döllinger, Hippolytus and Callistus, Eng. tr. by A. Plummer, 1876, pp. 28-39, 51-60).

According to the older explanations, Hippolytus represented the sun, which sets in the sea (cf. the scene of his death and the story of Phaëthon), and Phaedra the moon, which travels behind the sun, but is unable to overtake it. It is more probable, however, that he was a local hero famous for his chastity, perhaps originally a priest of Artemis, worshipped as a god at Troezen, where he was closely connected and sometimes confounded with Asclepius. It is noteworthy that, in a speech put into the mouth of Theseus by Euripides, the father, who of course believes his wife’s story and regards Hippolytus as a hypocrite, throws his son’s pretended misogyny and asceticism (Orphism) in his teeth. This seems to point to a struggle between a new ritual and that of Poseidon, the chief deity of Troezen, in which the representative of the intruding religion meets his death through the agency of the offended god, as Orpheus (q.v.) was torn to pieces by the votaries of the jealous Dionysus. According to S. Reinach (Archiv für Religionswissenschaft, x., 1907, p. 47), the Troezenian Hippolytus was a horse, the hypostasis of an equestrian divinity periodically torn to pieces by the faithful, who called themselves, and believed themselves to be, horses. Death was followed by resuscitation, as in the similar myths of Adonis (the sacred boar), Orpheus (the fox), Pentheus (the fawn), Phaëthon (the white sun-horse).

See Wilamowitz-Möllendorff’s Introduction to his German translation of Euripides’ Hippolytus (1891); A. Kalkmann, De Hippolytis Euripideis (Bonn, 1882); and (for representations in art) “Über Darstellung der Hippolytussage” in Archäologische Zeitung (xli. 1883); J. E. Harrison, Mythology and Monuments of Ancient Athens (1890), cl.

HIPPOLYTUS, a writer of the early Church. The mystery which enveloped the person and writings of Hippolytus,1 one of the most prolific ecclesiastical writers of early times, had some light thrown upon it for the first time about the middle of the 19th century by the discovery of the so-called Philosophumena (see below). Assuming this writing to be the work of Hippolytus, the information given in it as to the author and his times can be combined with other traditional dates to form a tolerably clear picture. Hippolytus must have been born in the second half of the 2nd century, probably in Rome. Photius describes him in his Bibliotheca (cod. 121) as a disciple of Irenaeus, and from the context of this passage it is supposed that we may conclude that Hippolytus himself so styled himself. But this is not certain, and even if it were, it does not necessarily imply that Hippolytus enjoyed the personal teaching of the celebrated Gallic bishop; it may perhaps merely refer to that relation of his theological system to that of Irenaeus which can easily be traced in his writings. As a presbyter of the church at Rome under Bishop Zephyrinus (199-217), Hippolytus was distinguished for his learning and eloquence. It was at this time that Origen, then a young man, heard him preach (Hieron. Vir. ill. 61; cp. Euseb. H.E. vi. 14, 10). It was probably not long before questions of theology and church discipline brought him into direct conflict with Zephyrinus, or at any rate with his successor Calixtus I. (q.v.). He accused the bishop of favouring the Christological heresies of the Monarchians, and, further, of subverting the discipline of the Church by his lax action in receiving back into the Church those guilty of gross offences. The result was a schism, and for perhaps over ten years Hippolytus stood as bishop at the head of a separate church. Then came the persecution under Maximinus the Thracian. Hippolytus and Pontius, who was then bishop, were transported in 235 to Sardinia, where it would seem that both of them died. From the so-called chronograph of the year 354 (Catalogus Liberianus) we learn that on the 13th of August, probably in 236, the bodies of the exiles were interred in Rome and that of Hippolytus in the cemetery on the Via Tiburtina. So we must suppose that before his death the schismatic was received again into the bosom of the Church, and this is confirmed by the fact that his memory was henceforth celebrated in the Church as that of a holy martyr. Pope Damasus I. dedicated to him one of his famous epigrams, and Prudentius (Peristephanon, 11) drew a highly coloured picture of his gruesome death, the details of which are certainly purely legendary: the myth of Hippolytus the son of Theseus was transferred to the Christian martyr. Of the historical Hippolytus little remained in the memory of after ages. Neither Eusebius (H.E. vi. 20, 2) nor Jerome (Vir. ill. 61) knew that the author so much read in the East and the Roman saint were one and the same person. The notice in the Chronicon Paschale preserves one slight reminiscence of the historical facts, namely, that Hippolytus’s episcopal see was situated at Portus near Rome. In 1551 a marble statue of a seated man was found in the cemetery of the Via Tiburtina: on the sides of the seat were carved a paschal cycle, and on the back the titles of numerous writings. It was the statue of Hippolytus, a work at any rate of the 3rd century; at the time of Pius IX. it was placed in the Lateran Museum, a record in stone of a lost tradition.

Hippolytus’s voluminous writings, which for variety of subject can be compared with those of Origen, embrace the spheres of exegesis, homiletics, apologetics and polemic, chronography and ecclesiastical law. His works have unfortunately come down to us in such a fragmentary condition that it is difficult to obtain from them any very exact notion of his intellectual and literary importance. Of his exegetical works the best preserved are the Commentary on the Prophet Daniel and the Commentary on the Song of Songs. In spite of many instances of a want of taste in his typology, they are distinguished by a certain sobriety and sense of proportion in his exegesis. We are unable to form an opinion of Hippolytus as a preacher, for the Homilies on the Feast of Epiphany which go under his name are wrongly attributed to him. He wrote polemical words directed against the pagans, the Jews and heretics. The most important of these polemical treatises is the Refutation of all Heresies, which has come to be known by the inappropriate title of the Philosophumena. Of its ten books, the second and third are lost; Book i. was for a long time printed (with the title Philosophumena) among the works of Origen; Books iv.-x. were found in 1842 by the Greek Minoides Mynas, without the name of the author, in a MS. at Mount Athos. It is nowadays universally admitted that Hippolytus was the author, and that Books i. and iv.-x. belong to the same work. The importance of the work has, however, been much overrated; a close examination of the sources for the exposition of the Gnostic system which is contained in it has proved that the information it gives is not always trustworthy. Of the dogmatic works, that on Christ and Antichrist survives in a complete state. Among other things it includes a vivid account of the events preceding the end of the world, and it was probably written at the time of the persecution under Septimius Severus, i.e. about 202. The influence of Hippolytus was felt chiefly through his works on chronographic and ecclesiastical law. His chronicle of the world, a compilation embracing the whole period from the creation of the world up to the year 234, formed a basis for many chronographical works both in the East and West. In the great compilations of ecclesiastical law which arose in the East since the 4th century (see below: also Apostolic Constitutions) much of the material was taken from the writings of Hippolytus; how much of this is genuinely his, how much of it worked over, and how much of it wrongly attributed to him, can no longer be determined beyond dispute even by the most learned investigation.

Bibliography.—The edition of J. A. Fabricius, Hippolyti opera graece et latine (2 vols., Hamburg, 1716-1718, reprinted in Gallandi, Bibliotheca veterum patrum (vol. ii., 1766), and Migne, Cursus patrol. ser. Graeca, vol. x.) is out of date. The preparation of a complete critical edition has been undertaken by the Prussian Academy of Sciences. The task is one of extraordinary difficulty, for the textual problems of the various writings are complex and confused: the Greek original is extant in a few cases only (the Commentary on Daniel, the Refutation, on Antichrist, parts of the Chronicle, and some fragments); for the rest we are dependent on fragments of translations, chiefly Slavonic, all of which are not even published. Of the Academy’s edition one volume was published at Berlin in 1897, containing the Commentaries on Daniel and on the Song of Songs, the treatise on Antichrist, and the Lesser Exegetical and Homiletic Works, edited by Nathanael Bonwetsch and Hans Achelis. The Commentary on the Song of Songs has also been published by Bonwetsch (Leipzig, 1902) in a German translation based on a Russian translation by N. Marr of the Grusian (Georgian) text, and he added to it (Leipzig, 1904) a translation of various small exegetical pieces, which are preserved in a Georgian version only (The Blessing of Jacob, The Blessing of Moses, The Narrative of David and Goliath). A great part of the original of the Chronicle has been published by Adolf Bauer (Leipzig, 1905) from the Codex Matritensis Graecus, 221. For the Refutation we are still dependent on the editions of Miller (Oxford, 1851), Duncker and Schneidewin (Göttingen, 1859), and Cruice (Paris, 1860). An English translation is to be found in the Ante-Nicene Christian Library (Edinburgh, 1868-1869).

See Bunsen, Hippolytus and his Age (1852, 2nd ed., 1854; Ger. ed., 1853); Döllinger, Hippolytus und Kallistus (Regensb. 1853; Eng. transl., Edinb., 1876); Gerhard Ficker, Studien zur Hippolytfrage (Leipzig, 1893); Hans Achelis, Hippolytstudien (Leipzig, 1897); Karl Johannes Neumann, Hippolytus von Rom in seiner Stellung zu Staat und Welt, part i. (Leipzig, 1902); Adhémar d’Alès, La Théologie de Saint Hippolyte (Paris, 1906).

(G. K.)

1 According to the legend St Hippolytus was a Roman soldier who was converted by St Lawrence.

HIPPOLYTUS, THE CANONS OF. This book stands at the head of a series of Church Orders, which contain instructions in regard to the choice and ordination of Christian ministers, regulations as to widows and virgins, conditions of reception of converts from heathenism, preparation for and administration of baptism, rules for the celebration of the eucharist, for fasting, daily prayers, charity suppers, memorial meals, first-fruits, &c. We shall give (1) a description of the book as we have it at present; (2) a brief statement of its relation to allied documents; (3) some remarks on the evidence for its date and authorship.

1. We possess the Canons of Hippolytus only in an Arabic version, itself made from a Coptic version of the original Greek. Attention was called to the book by Wansleben and Ludolf towards the end of the 17th century, but it was only in 1870 that it was edited by Haneberg, who added a Latin translation, and so made it generally accessible. In 1891 H. Achelis reproduced this translation in a revised form, embodying it in a synopsis of allied documents. He suspected much interpolation and derangement of order, and consequently rearranged its contents with a free hand. In 1900 a German translation was made by H. Riedel, based on fresh MSS. These showed that the book, as hitherto edited, had been thrown into disorder by the displacement of two pages near the end; they also removed other difficulties upon which the theory of interpolation had been based. Further discoveries, to be spoken of presently, have added to our materials for the study of the book.

The book is attributed to “Hippolytus, the chief of the bishops of Rome,” and is divided into thirty-eight canons, to which short headings are prefixed. This division is certainly not original, but it is convenient for purposes of reference. Canon 1 is prefatory; it contains a brief confession of faith in the Trinity, and especially in the Word, the Son of God; and it speaks of the expulsion of heretics from the Church. Canons 2-5 give regulations for the selection and ordination of bishops, presbyters and deacons. The bishop is chosen by the whole congregation: “one of the bishops and presbyters” is to lay hands upon him and say a prayer which follows (3): he is at once to proceed with “the offering,” taking up the eucharistic service at the point where the sursum corda comes in. A presbyter (4) is to be ordained with the same prayer as a bishop, “with the exception of the word bishop”; but he is given no power of ordination (this appears to be inconsistent with c. 2). The duties of a deacon are described, and the prayer of his ordination follows (5). Canons 6-9 deal with various classes in the Church. One who has suffered punishment for the faith (6) is to be counted a presbyter without ordination: “his confession is his ordination.” Readers and sub-deacons (7) are given the Gospel, but are not ordained by laying-on of hands. A claim to ordination on the ground of gifts of healing (8) is to be admitted, if the facts are clear and the healing is from God. Widows are not ordained (9): “ordination is for men only.” Canons 10-15 describe conditions for the admission of converts. Certain occupations are incompatible with Christian life: only under compulsion may a Christian be a soldier. Canons 16-18 deal chiefly with regulations concerning women. Canon 19 is a long one dealing with catechumens, preparation for baptism, administration of that sacrament, and of the eucharist for the newly baptized. The candidate is twice anointed: first, with the oil of exorcism, after he has said, with his face westward, “I renounce thee, O devil, and all thy following”; and, again, immediately after the baptism. As he stands in the water, he declares his faith in response to an interrogatory creed; and after each of the three clauses he is immersed. After the second anointing the bishop gives thanks “for that Thou hast made them worthy that they should be born again, and hast poured out Thy Holy Ghost upon them, so that they may belong, each one of them, to the body of the Church”: he signs them with the cross on their foreheads, and kisses them. The eucharist then proceeds: “the bishop gives them of the body of Christ and says, This is the body of Christ, and they answer Amen”; and similarly for the cup. Milk and honey are then given to them as being “born a second time as little children.” A warning is added against eating anything before communicating. Canons 20-22 deal with fast-days, daily services in church, and the fast of the passover-week. Canon 23 seems as if it closed the series, speaking, as it does, of “our brethren the bishops” who in their cities have made regulations “according to the commands of our fathers the apostles”: “let none of our successors alter them; because it saith that the teaching is greater than the sea, and hath no end.” We pass on, however, to regulations about the sick (24) who are to be visited by the bishop, “because it is a great thing for the sick that the high-priest should visit them (for the shadow of Peter healed the sick).” Canons 25-27 deal again with prayers and church-services. The “seven hours” are specified, with reasons for their observance (25): attendance at sermons is urged (26), “for the Lord is in the place where his lordship is proclaimed” (comp. Didachè 4, part of the Two Ways). When there are no prayers in church, reading at home is enjoined (27): “let the sun each morning see the book upon thy knees” (comp. Ath. Ad virg., § 12, “Let the sun when he ariseth see the book in thy hands”). Prayer must be preceded by the washing of the hands. “No believer must take food before communicating, especially on fast-days”: only believers may communicate (28). The sacred elements must be guarded, “lest anything fall into the cup, and it be a sin unto death for the presbyters.” No crumb must be dropped, “lest an evil spirit get possession of it.” Canons 30-35 contain various rules, and specially deal with suppers for the poor (i.e. agapae) and memorial feasts. Then we have a prayer for the offering of first-fruits (36); a direction that ministers shall wear fair garments at “the mysteries” (37); and a command to watch during the night of the resurrection (38). The last canon hereupon passes into a general exhortation to right living, which forms a sixth part of the whole book. In Riedel’s translation we read this for the first time as a connected whole. It falls into two parts, and describes, first, the true life of ordinary Christians, warning them against an empty profession, and laying down many precepts of morality; and then it addresses itself to the “ascete” who “wishes to belong to the rank of the angels,” and who lives a life of solitude and poverty. He is encouraged by an exposition, on somewhat strange lines, of the temptations of our Lord, and is specially warned against spiritual pride and contempt of other men. The book closes with an appeal for love and mutual service, based on the parables in St Matthew xxv.

2. It is impossible to estimate the position of the Canons of Hippolytus without some reference to allied documents (see Apostolical Constitutions). (a) The most important of these is what is now commonly called the Egyptian Church Order. This is preserved to us in Coptic and Aethiopic versions, of which Achelis, in his synopsis, gives German translations. The subject-matter and arrangement of these canons correspond generally to those of Hippolytus; but many of the details are modified to bring them into accord with a later practice. A new light was thrown on the criticism of this work by Hauler’s discovery (1900) of a Latin version (of which, unfortunately, about half is missing) in the Verona palimpsest, from which he has also given us large Latin fragments of the Didascalia (which underlies books i.-vi. of the Apostolic Constitutions, and which hitherto we have only known from the Syriac). The Latin of the Egyptian Church Order is somewhat more primitive than the Coptic, and approaches more nearly, at some points, to the Canons of Hippolytus. It has a preface which refers to a treatise Concerning Spiritual Gifts, as having immediately preceded it; but neither this nor the Coptic-Aethiopic form has either the introduction or concluding exhortation which is found in the Canons of Hippolytus. (b) The Testament of the Lord is a document in Syriac, of which the opening part had been published by Lagarde, and of which Rahmani (1899) has given us the whole. It professes to contain instructions given by our Lord to the apostles after the resurrection. After an introduction containing apocalyptical matter, it passes on to give elaborate directions for the ordering of the Church, embodying, in a much-expanded form, the Egyptian Church Order, and showing a knowledge of the preface to that document which appears in the Latin version. It cannot be placed with probability earlier than the latter part of the 4th century. (c) The Apostolic Constitutions is a composite document, which probably belongs to the end of the 4th century. Its first six books are an expanded edition of a Didascalia which we have already mentioned: its seventh book similarly expands and modifies the Didachè its eighth book begins by treating of “spiritual gifts,” and then in c. 3 passes on to expand in like manner the Egyptian Church Order. The hand which has wrought up all these documents has been shown to be that of the interpolator of the Ignatian Epistles in the longer Greek recension. (d) The Canons of Basil is the title of an Arabic work, of which a German translation has been given us by Riedel, who thinks that they have come through Coptic from an original Greek book. They embody, in a modified form, considerable portions of the Canons of Hippolytus.

3. We now approach the difficult questions of date and authorship. Much of the material has been quite recently brought to light, and criticism has not had time to investigate and pronounce upon it. Some provisional remarks, therefore, are all that can prudently be made. It seems plain that we have two lines of tradition: (1) The Canons of Hippolytus, followed by the Canons of Basil; (2) the Egyptian Church Order, itself represented (a) by the Latin version, the Testament of the Lord, and the Apostolic Constitutions, which are linked together by the same preface (or portions of it); (b) by the Coptic and Aethiopic versions. Now, the preface of the Latin version points to a time when the canons were embodied in a corpus of similar materials, or, at the least, were preceded by a work on “Spiritual Gifts.” The Canons of Hippolytus have a wholly different preface, and also a long exhortation at the close. The question which criticism must endeavour to answer is, whether the Canons of Hippolytus are the original from which the Egyptian Church Order is derived, or whether an earlier body of canons lies behind them both. At present it is probably wise to assume that the latter is the true explanation. For the Canons of Hippolytus appear to contain contradictory regulations (e.g. cc. 2 and 4 of the presbyters), and also suggest that they have received a considerable supplement (after c. 23). There is, however, no doubt that they present us with a more primitive stage of Church life than we find in the Egyptian Church Order. The mention of sub-deacons (which, after Riedel’s fresh manuscript evidence, cannot now be dismissed as due to interpolation) makes it difficult to assign a date much earlier than the middle of the 3rd century.

The Puritan severity of the canons well accords with the temper of the writer to whom the Arabic title attributes them; and it is to be noted that the exhortation at the close contains a quotation from 2 Peter actually attributed to the apostle, and Hippolytus is perhaps the earliest author who can with certainty be said to have used this epistle. But the general style of Hippolytus, which is simple, straight-forward and strong, is in marked contrast with that of the closing passage of the canons; moreover, his mind, as presented to us in his extant writings, appears to be a much larger one than that of the writer of these canons; it is as difficult to think of Hippolytus as it would be to think of Origen in such a connexion. How, then, are we to account for the attribution? There is evidence to show that Hippolytus was highly reverenced throughout the East: his writings, which were in Greek, were known, but his history was entirely unknown. He was supposed to be “a pupil (γνώριμος) of apostles” (Palladius, 4th century), and the Arabic title calls him “chief of the bishops of Rome,” i.e. archbishop of Rome. It is hard to trust this attribution more than the attribution of a Coptic discourse on the Dormitio Mariae to “Evodius, archbishop of the great city Rome, who was the second after Peter the apostle” (Texts and Studies, iv. 2-44)—Evodius being by tradition first bishop of Antioch. A whole group of books on Church Order bears the name of Clement of Rome; and the attribution of our canons to Hippolytus may be only an example of the same tendency. The fact that Hippolytus wrote a treatise Concerning Spiritual Gifts, and that some such treatise is not only referred to in the Latin preface to the Egyptian Church Order, but is actually found at the beginning of book viii. of the Apostolic Constitutions, introduces an interesting complication; but we cannot here pursue the matter further. Dom Morin’s ingenious attribution of the canons to Dionysius of Alexandria (on the ground of Eusebius, H.E. vi. 46., 5) cannot be accepted in view of the broader church policy which that writer represents. If the Hippolytean authorship be given up, it is probable that Egypt will make the strongest claim to be the locality in which the canons were compiled in their present form.