Adams gives the Samans no article of their own. She lists them once among the pagan nations as Samans, or Schamans, and under Schamanism refers the reader onward to Sammans without ever supplying the entry. The substance, the sramana ascetics of India and the Silk Road, is the thread the archive carries out of her gap, from the vault’s own sources.
In Hannah Adams
In Adams’s own words, from the 1817 Dictionary. Each passage is quoted verbatim under its own entry.
SAMMANS, Schamans, or Shamans, (as the first letter is SAM a differently pronounced,) were originally worshippers of the heavens, (i Heb. Shemim, ) and the heavenly bodies. Such were the ancient Chaldeans, Syrians, and Canaanites, whose idol was Baal-Samen, or El-Samen, the Lord or God of heaven, by which they meant the sun; and they had a city and temple, called Beth-Shemesh, the city or temple of the sun, whose Hebrew name is Shemesh.
From these Sammans seem to have sprung the Sammanes, an aucient sect of philosophers in India, from whom Dr. Priestley thinks the Hindoo religion was originally derived. «The Sammanians oe Sammans) being persecuted by the Bramins, and driven by them out of India Proper, are thought to have taken refuge in Pegu. Siam, and other countries beyond the Ganges; and it is supposed that the religéon of those countries was derived from their principles. The religion of the Lamas in Tibet is also said to be a reformed Schamanism. See Thibetians. And from the same source this author, with great probability, derives the modern Schamans of Siberia.
‘«‘The people are at present described as wholly illiterate; but their predecessors are said to have written many books on philosophy and religion. They believe in one God, the maker of all things; but they think that he pays no attentien to the affairs of men, leaving the government of the world to inferiour beings, to whom, therefore, all their devotions are addressed. Both the celestial bodies, and all terrestrial objects ofcon. siderable magnitude, are objects of worship to them; though some of them only believe that mountains, and great bodies of water, are the habitation of the gods, and not themselves animated. They have, however, a great variety of subordinate deities, whom they invoke for different purposes, viz. one for health, another for their cattle, another when they travel, another for the women, another for their children, another for their reindeer, &c. &c. thinking that particular spirits preside over and have the care of them. But thongh they have goddesses, as well as gods, they do not believe that they are married. These spirits, they suppose, appear to their priests in the form of bears, serpents, or owls; and on this account they have a particular respect for those animals.
“Besides these deities of a nature superiour to man, the Siberians worship the manes of their ancestors, and especially of the settlers of colonies, whom they regard as demi-gods. «They not only suppose that there are superiour beings of very different dispositions, some friendly and others unfriendly to mer, but think the best disposed of them are sometimes partial, obstinate, and vindictive: and over the malevolent deitics they place one of much; superiour power, whom they call Scaitan. But though he is very wicked, they think it possible to appease him, and therefore much of their worship is addressed to him.
“ They have no temples, but perform their religious rites in the open air, on eminences, or the banks of rivers. In some places their religious ceremonies are performed at any hour of the day indifferently; but generally during the night, by the light of a fire, kindled for the purpose.
“ They have idols of stone or wood, having some rude resemblance of the human form, and they pretend to feed them, smearing their faces with blood and grease. By way of incensing them, they make a smoke with burning flesh, blood, or boughs of fir and wormwood before them. But when misfortunes befall them, they load them with abuse, sometimes dash them against the ground, throw them into the water, or beat them with rods.
“ Man they believe to be compounded of soul and body; and that immediately after death the soul passes into another state of existence; which, however, most of them think to be at least but a very uncomfortable one, and therefore they have a great dread of death.”*
Hannah Adams, A Dictionary of All Religions and Religious Denominations, 4th ed. (Boston: Cummings and Hilliard, 1817), entry “Sammans” (pp. 254–256).