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[[underlined]] Chapter XVIII. [[/underlined]] 39^[[8/99.]]

of the globe.
  Now the inhabitants of the Wa Cha Hsieh site were, as we have just seen, primarily planters. Hence their religious ideas, like those of most primitive planting peoples, were pretty certainly based on the concept of fertility--- of reproduction in general. Ceremonies for the encouragement and assistance of this process, so vital to the common welfare, almost certainly included orgiastic mating-festivals and seasonal dances meant to symbolize and magically ensure the proper and regular recurrence of the annual rhythm of seed-time and harvest. Such rites, or modified traces of them, have survived among very many of those less advanced peoples of eastern Asia and the adjacent islands, just mentioned. [[superscript]] (355) [[/superscript]]
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[[superscript]] (355) [[/superscript]]  See, for many interesting examples and discussions of such rites, Marcel Granet: [[underlined]] Fêtes et chansons anciennes de la Chine [[/underlined]], Paris, 1919 (2nd edit., 1929).
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The presence in the culture-deposits at Wa Cha Hsieh of baked clay phalli, for example, can most plausibly be explained as having some religious significance in connection with just such fertility-rites.
  On the other hand the site yielded none of those figurines of naked women (goddesses?) found in various other lands; nor did any of the designs on the painted pottery have any obvious bearing on the idea of reproduction. Any such connotation, if such there was, must have been wholly conventional and symbolic.
  In addition to their emphasis on sympathetic magic in connection with fertility and fruitfulness, cults of the sort under consideration have frequently included human sacrifice; for the notion that "the blood is the life" is very ancient and widespread. [[superscript]] (356) [[/superscript]] Apparently to avoid sp^[[il]]-
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[[superscript]] (356) [[/superscript]] See, [[underlined]] e.g. [[/underlined]], Lev., xvii, 11-14. A classical instance of this association of ideas is that of the Khonds of Orissa, with their Meriah sacrifices. That similar practices once prevailed over great part of southern and eastern Asia, there is much to indicate.
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