Chapter IV. Sacrifice
Reading tools
Religion and Myth, by James Macdonald, [1883], at sacred-texts.com
p. 61
CHAPTER IV
SACRIFICE
We have already seen that the earliest form of human sacrifice was associated in the minds of men with killing the god himself. The divine King of Congo was put to death by his successor. In the Fiji Islands old people are hurried alive. When a king of Kabonga is near his end the magicians quietly strangle him. Certain tribes of East Africa put their kings to death as soon as wrinkles or grey hairs appear. * A modification of the custom of king- killing was introduced when the expedient of temporary kings was reached. These could be put to death at stated intervals. We have met with examples of this in Sofala and Calicut. Ancient Babylonia affords another illustration. There, when the time drew near that the king should be put to death, he abdicated for a few days, during which a temporary monarch reigned and suffered in his stead. "A prisoner condemned to death was dressed in the king's robes, seated on the king's throne, allowed to issue whatever commands he pleased, to eat, drink, and enjoy himself, and to lie with the king's concubines. But at the end of the
p. 62
five days he was stripped of his royal robes, scourged and crucified." * This same custom, softened down, is observed in Cambodia, where the king abdicates annually for a few days. The substitute performs all functions of State, and receives the revenues for the time he reigns. At the close of his brief term of office he goes and does homage to the king, and then, as his last act, orders the elephants to trample the "mountain of rice." This is a large scaffold hung round with rice-sheaves. When they are trampled down the people gather up the rice, each man taking home a portion to mix with his seed-corn and so secure a good harvest. †
Once the idea of substitution was reached, sacrifice as an institution would develop rapidly, and the curious thing is, that a trace of the original system of killing the god has remained to tell the world of an older and ruder conception of divinity. To the ancient man-god it was so convenient to have another take his place, that we can fancy the innovation being hailed with joy by the ruling castes, who by it were freed from the uncertainties of popular discontent and the accidental advent of signs of decay. But the doctrine of substitution had its disadvantages, and these in course of time would be felt and have far-reaching effects. Under the old order men were accustomed to offer homage to the living king; and their supreme and final act of worship was when he was put to death that his spirit might enter his successor as the creative, fructifying and preserving power of the world.
p. 63
[paragraph continues] Worshippers who associated such ideas with sacrifice could not be prevented from viewing the real victim offered, even as a substitute, as in some sort divine by inherent right. If divine by inherent right, the question of the spirit's return to the real king might be raised. Advanced thinkers would ask whether the spirit of the god, or the god-life, left the king to enter the substitute, slave or criminal, when the former abdicated, and if so, whether other causes might not lead to the same result? Could a successful revolt, headed by a bold and fearless man, secure to the usurper the god-life the moment the king was deposed or slain? If so, revolt and revolution might be, if not lawful, at all events possible, without the collapse of the world. Again, was there a true transference of divinity to the temporary king, his mean and common spirit taking the place of the god in the hereditary monarch? If so, might not men of ambition become substitutes, and at the last act rally their friends in order to retain the divine spirit permanently? Would the substitute's spirit, which dwelt in the king, give place to the returning god-spirit, "poor fluttering thing," after the victim was slain? With such questions pressing for solution—and for a question to be raised among savage men is to find an answer—kings and their advisers would naturally seek to foster faith in an hereditary principle of divinity apart from the actual sacrifice of the god himself. We call this the divine right of kings. When this conception of hereditary divinity was reached, men would sacrifice to the king-god as a personal and hereditary spirit—a spirit dwelling
p. 64
in the king in virtue of his office, or whom he represented to men—rather than to the spirit of creative and reproductive energy and vegetation which, in an earlier and ruder age was undoubtedly the savage's conception of his divine king. He was divine, not because he was a personal immortal spirit, but because in him was contained that spirit or power which ensured the orderly continuance of the course of nature.
The sacrifice made in former days of the king himself by the priests, would, under the advance of thought, be made in the first instance to the king, and the more costly the sacrifices, and the more elaborate the ritual, the greater would be the virtue, and by consequence his influence and power. Kings attaining to great eminence as conquerors and administrators would be greatly honoured with sacrificial offerings during their lives, and revered after their death. Their successors, especially if weaker men, would, in order to secure the continued allegiance of their people, pay respect to their memory. This, without any revolution of thought, would take the form of offerings, prayer, and sacrifice. Then the spirit of the departed king visited his successor in dreams and visions. At such times he entered his person; hence the common saying, "He got the spirit of his father." By such means he kept his successor informed of his wishes, which were respected and obeyed; thus enabling a weakling to retain power which otherwise would have dropped from his nerveless grasp. That this is no phantasy is clearly proved by beliefs common among
p. 65
[paragraph continues] Africans at the present day. A Kaffir who has a remarkable dream will begin to tell it next day by saying: "My father's soul was within me last night." Prophets claim to be god-possessed, or, in other words, to have within them the souls of departed priests or chiefs. In this case they work themselves into, or through long practice assume, a state of semi-coma. During their paroxysms and the succeeding unconsciousness they are treated as objects of worship; in other words, they are truly divine for the time being.
Let us now proceed to illustrate these general statements by an examination of the sacrificial system common throughout the continent, and in doing so it will be well to select a few places, widely apart, as typical illustrations. The natives of South Africa discontinued human sacrifices before they had much contact with Europeans, and, being of mixed origin, we study their religious institutions at a disadvantage. But an examination of their system of thought leads us up to a time when their rites and sacrifices differed in no essential from what is common to the vast majority of the tribes inhabiting the continent, from 10° of north latitude to the farthest promontory of the south.
When the course of nature is not to a Kaffir's mind, as during drought, floods, sickness among men or cattle, misfortune in war, failure in hunting or a visitation of locusts, he offers propitiatory sacrifices to the offended deities. Each man sacrifices to his own ancestors; each clan, through the magician, to the heads of the clan; the tribe to the ancestors
p. 66
of its chief; but in the latter case the sacrifice can only be offered by the tribal priest, or by the chief in those rare instances in which he is not only the ruler but the high priest also. I am not aware of any ruler at present in South Africa being his own high priest, but the combination is not unknown. The chief Makoma used to offer the sacrifices on important occasions himself.
Here we have the curious anomaly of sacrifices to minor divinities made by ordinary householders, while those to superior deities can only be offered by the high priest if they are to be acceptable to the god. Those whose function it is to stand between men and the unseen, approach divinity with an offering for men's sins. They stand there as representatives or substitutes, taking the place of the worshippers. For a tribal offering may be made by the priest without a muster of the tribe or even the army. The sacred functions belong to sacred persons, and they determine how and when these are to be performed, and only obey certain general principles, without which no sacrifice is a genuine offering. One of these is that all sacrifices must be made by fire. Unless portions of the animal slain are burned, there has been no true offering, and the gods view the whole ceremony in grief and anger. Another is, that the animal must be honestly come by. A man may purchase a sacrifice, but this is rare, and, I think, regarded as irregular; but no man would sacrifice a beast that had been stolen. The most acceptable sacrifice is that which is a man's very own. There is also one phrase in the
p. 67
dedicatory prayer which is never omitted. It is this: "We do not offer the dead; it is blood. We offer life. Behold, O ye hosts." During the time when the sacrifice is offered the priest stands as intercessor for the people in room of the chief His orders are obeyed as the chief's, and his deliverances accepted as the very oracles of God.
It may at first sight be difficult to connect this doctrine of propitiatory sacrifice with that of substitution, as we have seen that in the case of the killing of the temporary king. And if this propitiatory system of sacrifice were our only guide, it would be impossible to do so. But there is another system, complete in all its parts and distinct from the idea of propitiation, observed by the same people alongside of this doctrine. It is that of thank-offering and sacrificial thanksgiving. For every supposed benefit a man makes a thank-offering. It may be but a single grain of corn, or even an article of no value, as a tuft of grass, but it is never omitted. When a father offers a sheep as a thank-offering for the birth of a child, his idea is not only to recompense the soul of his father for good offices by so much burning fat, but to "give to those who were before" the keeping of the child's soul; giving the soul to them in homage and thankfulness. This is undoubtedly the dedicatory offering of the soul by the sacrifice of a sheep as a substitute for the firstborn, a custom with which we are only too familiar elsewhere. Besides, the first child of a widow who re-marries, should her husband have fallen in war, is put to death: offered to the gods
p. 68
as "the child of the assegai." * In making thank-offerings for good offices a man adds to the portion of the sacrifice that is burned something from his own person, and men have been known to cut off a finger or toe for this purpose, to enhance the value of the offering. The Israelitish practice of shaving, as a sign of having made a vow or formed a resolve, is not unknown. † Adopting peculiar garments as a head-dress, in token of anything remarkable having happened to a man, is common.
When a tribe is at war, or preferably before entering upon hostilities, if an enemy can be caught he is put to death. The warriors eat his heart raw. ‡ Various parts of his body, supposed to be the seat of particular virtues, are used in the preparation of the compound known as war medicine, while shreds of fat from his kidneys are burned in the fire. Much the same is done in the case of a slain enemy who has distinguished himself for bravery and feats of strength. § This, though the people do not say so, is undoubtedly an offering made to the gods. The explanation given is, "Our people always did so," and that war medicine, without the fat burning in the fire while it is being prepared, would not act. ** For the true significance of such acts we must seek an explanation, not from the people, who can give none, but from analogy,. and their resemblance to other acts performed by the same people, or by others having customs in common with them. The fat burned in the fire.
p. 69
when oxen are sacrificed in time of war, drought, or the great annual festival of firstfruits, is avowedly a gift to the gods, * the odour of which they inhale; † and when we find the burning of human fat in almost identical circumstances—i.e., war—and the preparation of a magic decoction into which calcined human flesh largely enters, and on which depends its efficacy, the conclusion is forced upon us that here we have the last lingering traces of human sacrifice. Nor is this the only use made of portions of the human body in connection with the religious ritual of the people. The dried fingers of a man's hand is an essential portion of a magician's outfit when he goes to curse his chief's enemies. ‡ Wizards deal largely in human flesh. §
The multiplication of sacrifices is acceptable to all the gods ** of heathendom, and one case is on record in which tribes killed every hoof of cattle and destroyed every peck of corn to secure the favour of their ancestors. True, the priest who ordered this to be done promised that there should be a general resurrection of both ancestors and cattle on a given day, that of full moon; but this only adds to the completeness of the faith reposed in his predictions as the oracles of God. On the appointed day thousands of men and women gathered for a moon dance; folds had been erected for the cattle that were to rise; stores for the corn which men were to gather; houses for the ancestors who were to come clad in armour. In honour of the great event
p. 70
the sun was to rise double on the resurrection morning. During that night sounds of revelry were heard far and near, but when day came the sun rose alone while his companion lagged behind. Black fear entered every heart. Starvation stared men in the face. Umlanjeni declared they had mistaken the day of full moon, and urged a resumption of the dance with assured triumph on the morrow. But men had no heart left, and the next twenty-four hours were but a sorry time. Once more the sun rose in lonely majesty, and men's worst fears were realised; the gods had betrayed them. By such experiences did men learn to differentiate the natural and supernatural.
When a chief dies, one at least, or it may be many persons are put to death for having killed the king by the exercise of the unlawful art of witchcraft; but this falls rather under magic and divination than under sacrifice. The only connection it has with the latter is, that among most tribes the chief is never allowed "to go alone." A few of his wives, servants and slaves must be killed to accompany him and attend to his wants. It may also be noted that the ruling chief may order, even in the case of accusations of having caused his father's death, the substitution of an ox for the condemned person. * The ox is sacrificed, not killed, as a criminal substitute for the wizard, who is set at liberty. This seems to point to the victims of witchcraft, whom we generally regard as criminals under native law, being in reality a sacrifice to the
p. 71
gods. The substitution of an animal, which is killed as a sacrifice, is common in cases where the patient has recovered, though causing sickness with intent to kill is a capital crime.
When we leave South Africa and pass into the Lake region all doubt about substitutionary human sacrifice is set at rest. If a Wayao murderer is caught he may make compensation by giving a few slaves to be put to death, so that they may accompany the murdered man, taking his place to attend upon him. * Should the murderer escape, one of his relatives is caught and treated as if he were the murderer. The object here is not so much the punishment of crime as an offering to the deceased, whose spirit would naturally be enraged at his own relatives were they not to pay due honour to it by sending, either the murderer to be his slave, or such of his relatives or slaves as may make amends for his absence. Of departed spirits some have considerable influence among the gods. Matanga of the Wayao has many powerful servants, and arranges most of the details of the spirit world in that region. † He is capricious and easily offended, but can be coaxed by judicious flattery. Men having ghostly relations with him, or with lesser divinities through him, can compound for personal service by substitution. So, instead of betaking themselves to the land of shades, as in duty bound, when a relative to whom they owe allegiance dies, they send a number of slaves as their representatives to do duty by proxy.
p. 72
But it is when we enter the territories of powerful kings, like Mr. Stanley's friend Mtesa, that we can study primitive sacrificial institutions to best advantage. Broken and scattered tribes like those round Lake Nyassa, or bands of marauding warriors like the ancestors of the tribes inhabiting South Africa, do not retain the institutions of their forefathers in their unblemished splendour. In the one case, poverty, oppression, and the constant fear of death or captivity, slowly but surely undermine and modify original institutions. In the latter, daring warriors learn by degrees to defy even the gods, or at least neglect them. That stout old Roman who threw the sacred chickens into the sea was not a bolder reformer than the Zulu monarch who gave battle to the army of Moselekatse when all the omens of heaven and earth warned him of defeat. More fortunate than the Roman, a decisive victory saved both his own head and his country's freedom.
Among the Wagogo the simplest form of human sacrifice is when the magician comes to the palace with two bunches of grass dipped in the blood of a victim slain quietly and without ostentation. * These he lays on the lintel or threshold, where they are touched by the king, and so offered to the gods. Of these gods the principal is Makusa, who, as we have seen, claims a right higher than the king over the Lake, as the embodiment of the powers of nature. He it is that is personified by the Lubare, who is the real object of worship. Makusa as a sort of Neptune is but a chief Lubare. † He enters
p. 73
a person; that person is god, and to him sacrifices are offered. Closely bound up with the worship of the Lubare is the care of the place where the king's predecessors are kept, or rather of these predecessors themselves, for the Lubare holds converse with the dead as with the living. *
Associated with, or subordinate to the Lubare are Nende, Kajangeyewe, and Kubuka, who are a kind of national guardian spirits. These appear in persons who are god-possessed, and such persons are always accompanied by magicians, priests, and executioners; † that is to say, those who slay victims for the sacrifices. The god-possessed person has but to demand a victim, when a wayfarer is caught, bound, beheaded, and offered in sacrifice. Every person holding the sacred office of priest or magician claims to have the spirit of the king dwelling in him, or at least visiting him at intervals. ‡ The head wife of every great man's harem is called "Kuda Lubare " §—i.e., slave of the spirit, meaning one in whom the god dwells. The same terms are applied to the child of a woman long barren, and who offered sacrifice and prayed to the Lubare for offspring. This is a true dedication of issue at the shrine when the offering is made. Of this we have an illustration, in widely different circumstances, when Hannah said: "O Lord of hosts, if thou wilt indeed look on the affliction of thine handmaid, and give unto thine handmaid a man child, then I will give him unto the Lord all the days of his life, **
p. 74
which vow Eli, worthy man, thought to be but the ravings of a drunken votary.
Mention has been made of the tombs of the king's predecessors. This is a large hut, of comparatively slight construction, and needing frequent repair or renewal. Connected with it is a large college of sorceresses, whose chief duty it is to tend the spirits of the departed and guard the sacred place. When the king decides that it must be repaired, he issues his orders to the members of this college, who see the work done, and report when it is completed. Offerings must now be made to their majesties as a kind of solatium for the trouble they were put to, owing to the disturbance in connection with the repair of their quarters. As many as two thousand victims have been offered on such occasions. These are to the Lubare as the earth god, rather than to the kings, for the Lubare is the genius of the country, the object of universal worship. So general is the worship of Lubare that no one leaves his hut in the morning without first throwing out an offering, as a wisp of grass, saying, "Here, Lubare, take that. *
To them Katonga, or Creator, and Lubare mean the same, for every phenomenon is subject to Lubare. Crops, famine, food, rain, thunder, storms on the lake, day, night; everything in nature has its Lubare, and still Lubare is one and not many. It is the spirit of Makusa, who is all and is everywhere—a kind of universal deification of nature as animate. When sacrifices are offered to the Lubare,
p. 75
as on the completion of repairs of the "house of the king's ancestors" or the death of a great man, the method of procuring victims is at once simple and sufficient. If victims were selected by choice from the sub-tribes and clans, difficulties of no ordinary kind would be met with in the case of a sudden demand for a parcel of five hundred or a thousand; if chosen by lot, expedients would be adopted to avoid the ordeal. All these inconveniences are avoided by the executioners, of which a small army is kept, posting themselves on the great highways approaching the capital and seizing travellers on their way to the palace. At such times the gods send the proper victims, and when a sufficient number has been caught the sacrifices are offered. These victims go as royal messengers, or more properly pages, to attend on the king's ancestors.
Turning to West Africa, where all religious institutions are modified by Fetish, the systems at first seem distinct, not only in details, but in original conception of what is due to divinity. A closer examination shows that the conceptions of Central and West Africa regarding the unseen world are substantially the same, and that the intention in sacrifice is the same. From killing the god they passed to substitution, thence to propitiatory sacrifice and thank-offerings. Each kingdom has its own particular customs and yearly festivals, presenting an infinite variety of detail, but in their general features the same; marking the steady advance of thought from the rude conceptions of
p. 76
the days when the world was young, to a conception of divinity akin to Pantheism, and passing over into that system at various points.
In Gomba, when a sacrifice is offered, the victim is paraded about the streets after the manner of the Lord Mayor's show. He is decked out in finery, adorned with jewels, and wearing a crown and other insignia of royalty. From being a slave, he becomes something more than a king; he becomes a demigod. He may do whatever he pleases and have all he fancies, should his tastes be like those of the damsel who asked the Baptist's head. Nothing is denied him, as long as it does not imply his escaping his doom at the appointed hour. As he parades the streets he receives and accepts the homage due to a god, and when slain, men prostrate themselves before the body. The body itself is taken up by the women, decorated and honoured as divine, and finally treated more as god than an offering to a god. The object seems to be, not so much an offering to the god as the killing of the god himself by substitutionary sacrifice. The King of Ashantee, when holding the great annual Fetish festival, calls it the festival of his fathers, * and is himself for the time regarded as the personification of the gods. His actions are not so much that of their delegate, which he claims at all times to be, but their actions, their words, and their very movements. If the king rises, the gods stand; if he reclines, they sleep; should he dance, they too caper about with the movements of his arms and legs. For the festival
p. 77
he arrays himself with scrupulous care and with extraordinary grandeur. Whatever of wealth and splendour his palace holds is wrapped round his person or attached to his garments. He is literally loaded with precious gems and the most costly ornaments. The drums that are to accompany him in procession are decorated with human skulls, while soldiers, priests and executioners deck themselves with what is acceptable to the gods and on which they love to gaze. During the festival, sheep, goats, and human beings are indiscriminately sacrificed. The king, during the pageant procession, is carried by the priests, and must on no account walk or even touch the ground. He receives homage on behalf of his fathers, and it is impossible to determine how much the intention is to sacrifice to them or to the king himself. They reside in him as the god in the Fetish, and in virtue of such possession he is divine.
But the great festival of the year is the yam festival. Before the day appointed for the king to eat fresh yams there are processions, reviews, dances, and general rejoicing, in which the king takes an active part. On the fifth day of the festival a human sacrifice is offered, or, to be correct, a "messenger" is despatched by the king to the spirit world. As this messenger is not designed for any of his ancestors, nor charged with any commission to them, the inference is that like the Khond sacrifices to Tari, the sacrifice is to the world of life and reproduction. After the sacrifice is made, the king eats fresh yams from a dish held by the chief cook, who keeps stirring the contents with a gold fork,
p. 78
while the nobles stand before him uncovered. * At this and the palm-wine festival the honours of adoration are all done to the king, and the progress of the festival is consecrated by any stray person about the palace doors being seized and slain as an act of reverence to his majesty. † The treatment of such victims after execution is thus described by Kühne, who frequently witnessed such scenes.
"One took a finger, another an arm or foot, and whoever obtained the head danced in crazy ecstasy, painted its forehead red and white, kissed it on the mouth, laughing, or with mocking words of pity, and finally hung it round his neck or seized it with his teeth. Another took out the heart and washed it, carried it in one hand and a loaf of maize bread in the other, and walked about as if he were eating his breakfast.
"In the evening they brought the skulls of their most important enemies from the mausoleum at Bantama, and placed them, in the stillness of the night, in front of the Fetish. Among them was the skull of Sir Charles Macarthy, kept in a brass basin and covered with a white cloth. . . . . On the next day all laws were abrogated, and every one drinking freely was permitted to do what was good in his own eyes. Even funerals were celebrated for those who had suffered capital punishment."
Here we have, in the extreme west, the common Pondo custom of the abrogation of all law at the feast of firstfruits. From the last sentence, which Kühne does not explain, it is to be inferred that
p. 79
holding funerals for persons executed is, according to Ashantee notions, the farthest extreme of license to which men can go.
The festival of Bantama affords the king an opportunity of sending a messenger to his fathers. He delivers his charge slowly and deliberately, as if giving a diplomatic commission, and then the executioners cut off the victim's head, a knife having been previously run through his cheek and left there. Should the king remember anything he wished to say after the victim is slain, he orders another to be brought, and sends him with a hurried postscript lest his ancestors should be offended at the matter not being referred to in the original communication.
Bantama is the resting-place or mausoleum of the departed kings, and when Kühne was in Ashantee there were fourteen of the king's predecessors within its walls. It is a long building, divided into small cells, each of which contains the skeleton of a king; * the coffins containing these, as well as the skeletons themselves, being connected together with gold wires. Each cell contains such articles as the tenant loved best during his life. At the festival of Bantama the skeletons are placed on chairs in the audience hall to receive the royal visitor. This they do in the order of seniority. The king on entering offers each skeleton food, and as he does so, passing from one to another, the victim selected for each is decapitated in the approved manner by the executioners. During the succeeding night, and after the monarchs are returned to their cells and coffins,
p. 80
victims are slain at intervals by beat of drum or sound of horn. With the regularity of the minute-gun, the horn sounds a double blast, which means "death"; then three rapid blasts, which signify an order to cut off a victim's head; followed by one long blast to tell that the head has dropped. When the building needs repair, the king pays it a visit of inspection, after which the same ritual as we saw among the Wagogo is observed, the victims being counted by hundreds. Should the king dance with his wives, a messenger must be sent to his fathers to explain why he is at that particular time engaged in the light pastime. *
But it is not necessary to go so far afield as Ashantee to find illustration of messages being sent to the spirit world. My father, who over seventy years ago resided for some years in the Highlands of Perthshire, used to tell how at that time the people of Glenlyon and Glendochart charged their dying relatives with messages beyond the grave, and that people came long distances to ask, as an extreme favour, that their wishes should be made known "beyond" about certain particulars, one of the most common requests being to explain away shady transactions: "If you meet such an one, tell him how we are, and all that is going on. I gave every penny he left to his daughter. Mind you tell him the dun horse, which I kept to get a better price for, died." Such were the commissions entrusted to the dying by pious Calvinists as late as the second decade of the present century;
p. 81
commissions from which even elders of the kirk were not exempt. If this may happen in the green tree of Puritanism, what may not be done in the dry tree of Paganism.
In Dahomey the customs observed are in their main characteristics identical with those of Ashantee and other West African kingdoms. One peculiarity of Dahomeyan religion is—and in this, so far as I know, it is singular—that the Fetish priest is supposed to be able to visit the regions of the dead in propria persona, as the substitute or representative of the living, and there act for them as if they were themselves present in the land of shades. * For example, a man falls ill and believes that he is being warned by some ancestral spirit that his presence is required beyond the bourne. He consults the priest, who on receipt of a suitable fee agrees to descend and make reconciliation on his behalf, so that he may continue to enjoy the upper air for a further period. When this is done the patient recovers; if not, he is killed by evil persons; the spirits never called at all, for the intervention of the priest is, within limits, effectual in all cases when the matter is in the hands of the gods. But this leads us to the verge of the doctrine of devils, which is an advanced form of savage religious thought; the worship of devils being a late development as compared with that of the beneficent gods. After spirits were multiplied, men, in seasons of drought and times of disaster and stress of circumstances, would endeavour to conciliate the demon that
p. 82
brought calamity. Hence it is that demon worship is always propitiatory, while the worship of the gods is devotional and sympathetic, as in thank-offerings and tokens of goodwill and fellowship towards the unseen, whether regarded as personal or as the earth-god, nature, the mother of all. When a king of Dahomey dies he must enter the lower world in such regal state as became his dignity while he lived. The number of victims is almost incredible in order to make a grand procession. During his life he sends substitutes and messengers to spirit-land on the most slender pretext, or on no pretext at all.
Similar illustrations of the doctrine of substitution by sacrifice might be given from the observances of American Indians, South Sea Islanders, ancient Mexicans, and the Teutonic peoples of Europe. In tracing the system we have seen how the original practice of killing the god, as the spirit of vegetation and creative energy, passed into the form of substitution. Even in propitiatory sacrifice we see the same idea of the earth spirit reappearing whenever we can catch a glimpse of society under primitive conditions. Sacrifices to kings or Fetish are more to the earth-goddess than to the object to which they are immediately presented; that is, to the powers of nature as in vegetation and reproduction generally. This points back to the time when the divine element of natural force resided in kings, and was sacrificed to ensure a new resurrection with the opening year. Our inquiry has led u away from that original conception of primitive
p. 83
man to a more elaborate system of thought, which, gradually expanding, included within its range factors and forces, spirits personal and impersonal, and conceptions of man himself, of which the earlier philosophy took no account. To understand the further development of human thought, and how spirits came to be classified as good and bad, we must consider the restrictions under which divine and sacred persons were placed, and the reasons for such restrictions so far as these may be discovered.
Footnotes
61:* Isaacs, Travels and Adventures in East Africa.
62:* J. G. Frazer, quoting Athenæus.
68:‡ G. M. Theal, Boers and Bantu.
69:* Chalmers, J: Sutton, Hon. C. Brownlee.
69:‡ Hon. C. Brownlee, Christian Express.
70:* Hon. C. Brownlee, MS. notes.
Ask PRATIBHA about this text
Answers quote this scripture directly and show their sources.
Reflect on this passage
Only you can see these notes. They stay on this device.