Professor von Schroeder comments on this, "Es ist merkwurdig genug zu
sehen wie das Tanzen nach dem Glauben primitiver Volker eine ahnliche
Kraft und Bedeutung zu haben scheint wie man sie auf hoheren
Kulturstufen dem inbrunstigen Gebete zuschreibt."[15] He cites the case
of the Tarahumara Indians of Central America; while the family as a
whole are labouring in the fields it is the office of one man to dance
uninterruptedly on the dance place of the house; if he fails in his
office the labour of the others will be unsuccessful. The one sin of
which a Tarahumara Indian is conscious is that of not having danced
enough. Miss Harrison, in commenting on the dance of the Kouretes,
remarks that among certain savage tribes when a man is too old to
dance he hands on his dance to another. He then ceases to exist
socially; when he dies his funeral is celebrated with scanty rites;
having 'lost his dance' he has ceased to count as a social unit.[16]
With regard to the connection of the Kouretes with the infant Zeus,
Miss Harrison makes the interesting suggestion that we have here a
trace of an Initiation Dance, analogous to those discussed by
M. Van Gennep in his Rites du Passage, that the original form was
Titan, 'White-clay men,' which later became Titan, 'Giants,' and she
draws attention to the fact that daubing the skin with white clay is
a frequent practice in these primitive rituals.
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