CHAPTER XIII.DIBBARA,[418]A GOD OF PESTILENCE.
There does not appear to be an exception to the rule, that every people has, to a greater or less extent, referred the causation of epidemic and other diseases to supernatural powers.[419]In Oriental countries evil spirits were believed to be accountable for it; and, indeed, in the West, the Red Indians entertained the same notion, as the reader of Mr. Dorman’s interesting book[420]is well aware. The uncultured mind cannot, it would seem, grasp the idea that things which the senses cannot readily perceive may, nevertheless, be entirely natural.
The Babylono-Assyrians, like the American Indians, believed in the existence of innumerable bad as well as good spirits; in fact, to them every object and force in nature was believed to have azi, or spirit, more or less subject to control.[421]The bad ones, of whom there were seven emphatically such, delighted in injuring man and afflicting him with diseases, often taking possession of him. Evidently this doctrine, when fully developed,—that is, when the bad spirits were almost or quite as free to act as the good ones, as among the Parsis,—afforded a simple and very satisfactory explanation of the existence of apparent good and evil in the world. The practiceof medicine, based on such views, could, at best, be little better than mere Shamanism.
I may here observe that the Chaldeans and others regarded imprecations as effective in causing diseases, as well as other evils. In a quotation from a tablet, given by Lenormant, it is said:—
“The malevolent imprecation acts on man like a wicked demon;The voice which curses has power over him.”[422]
“The malevolent imprecation acts on man like a wicked demon;The voice which curses has power over him.”[422]
“The malevolent imprecation acts on man like a wicked demon;The voice which curses has power over him.”[422]
“The malevolent imprecation acts on man like a wicked demon;
The voice which curses has power over him.”[422]
I need hardly say that a very similar belief is still all but universal. It appears to be instructive. At any rate, it is practiced enormously. From the “damn you” of the street-urchin to the formal and solemn “anathema” of the Pope of Rome, we are familiar with all grades of it.
There has always and everywhere been a tendency to accord great divinities power to dispense both evil and good. Men have made their chief gods like themselves, anthropomorphic, variable in their feelings and actions. Apollo could cause disease and he could remove it.[423]Of the Hebrews’ God the same is true. Offense at the “sins” of men in both cases inspires the infliction of pestilential and other diseases. The numbering of the people by David, although forbidden, leads to the occurrence of a destructive epidemic.[424]In “Ecclesiasticus” it is explicitly said, “He that sinneth in the sight of his Maker shall fall into the hands of the physician.”[425]
Among those who clothed one evil spirit with imperial power, so to speak, that spirit has been mainly held accountable for the occurrence of disease. The Iranian,Angra-Mainyu, furnishes an example. And since the notion of the “devil” (our devil) began,[426]he has been often charged with the offense. Thus, we are told in the Bible that it was he that “smote Job with sores, from the sole of his foot unto his crown.”[427]Still, in this case he was subject to orders, so to speak.
Now, it would be strange if, among the evil spirits the exuberant fancy of uncultured man has called into existence, there were not a leading one with the special function of causing, at least, pestilential diseases. Such a one is not met with in the mythology of the Romans, Greeks, or even the Egyptians;[428]but a remarkable one is found in the Accadio-Sumerian, Dibbara, the leader of the plague-demons.[429]He was subject to the orders of Ana and Hea. In the Izdhubar legend of the flood it is said: “Let Dibbara appear, and let men be mown down.”
Our knowledge of Dibbara, or Lubara, is largely of modern date. Until the recent translations of cuneiform inscriptions were made, the records of him had almost faded out of sight. On his exploits there is an interesting chapter in George Smith’s “Chaldean Account of Genesis.”[430]His history promises to throw considerable light on passages in the Bible and elsewhere. Thus, his title of “the darkening one” appears to have suggested to the Psalmist the phrase, “The pestilence that walketh indarkness.”[431]He was, probably, the prototype of the destroying “angel” spoken of in the Bible.[432]
Dibbara, like many other personifications of evil, partook of the serpentine form. Not unlikely he was originally, to a great degree, similar to, if not identical with, the fabulous dragon combated by Marduk. This was an embodiment of the chaos of the deep, the principle of chaos and darkness. He was the serpent of the night, and may have been primarily the darkness overcome by the sun.