The Golden Bough is an anthropological book written by James George Frazer, a Scottish anthropologist. It deals with a comparative study of religion and mythology.
The book was first published in two volumes in 1890 and in twelve volumes from 1906–1915. It has also been published in an abridged one-volume edition. This book is meant for a wide, literate audience. The influence of The Golden Bough on European literature is enormous.
Frazer defined religious belief and scientific thought. He discusses fertility rites, human sacrifice, the dying God, the scapegoat, and many other symbols. His opinion is that the most ancient religions were fertility cults that revolved around the worship and periodic sacrifice of a Sacred King according to the cycle of seasons. Frazer, like Auguste Comte, said that the natural world progresses from magic through religious belief to scientific thought.
The book tells that Aeneas and the Sybil present the golden bough taken from a sacred grove to the gatekeeper of Hades to gain admission. The pre-Roman priest-king Rex Nemorensis, a priest in Lake Nemi, was ritually murdered by his successor. The king was the incarnation of a dying and reviving God. A solar deity who was married to a Goddess of Earth died at the harvest and was reincarnated in the spring. This legend of rebirth was central to almost all of the world’s mythologies.
In the mental evolution of humanity, an age of magic preceded an age of religion. Magic aims at controlling nature directly. Religion aims at controlling it indirectly by propitiating Gods and Goddesses. Man appeals for help and protection.
The Golden Bough was not free from controversy. He himself wrote — “Books like mine are merely speculation and will be superseded sooner or later.” (“The sooner the better,” he said.) In 1922, at the inauguration of the Frazer Lectureship in Anthropology, Frazer said —
“It is my earnest wish that the lectureship should be used solely for the disinterested pursuit of truth and not for the dissemination and propagation of any theories or opinions of mine.”
The lasting influence of The Golden Bough has been in the literary rather than the academic world.
The Golden Bough inspired much of the creative literature of the period. Robert Graves adapted Frazer’s concept of the dying king. W. B. Yeats refers to Frazer’s thesis in his poem Sailing to Byzantium. T. S. Eliot acknowledged his indebtedness to Frazer in his first note to his poem The Waste Land. Many were influenced by Frazer’s The Golden Bough— William Carlos Williams, James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, William Gaddis, and D. H. Lawrence.
The Golden Bough will remain inspirational for enterprising students seeking escape from today’s sterile academic climate.
On the whole, The Golden Bough is a great research work in Anthropology, and it is truly golden.
(The views expressed are the writer’s own.)
Radhakanta Seth is a Former Income tax officer in Sambalpur. He is a Freelance writer and his articles have been published in some Oriya dailies like Sambad, Samaj, Dharitri and English dailies like The Telegraph and in a sociological journal ‘Folklore’ published from Kolkata.
(Photo has collected from net )