CHAPTER XIX. Human Sacrifice

HUMAN SACRIFICE

IT still remains for us to consider some particular cases in which destruction of human life is sanctioned by custom or law.

Men are killed with a view to gratifying the desires of superhuman beings. We meet with human sacrifice in the past history of every so-called Aryan race. It occurred, at least occasionally, in ancient India, and several of the modern Hindu sects practised it even in the last century. There are numerous indications that it was known among the early Greeks. At certain times it prevailed in the Hellenic cult of Zeus; indeed, in the second century after Christ men seem still to have been sacrificed to Zeus Lycæus in Arcadia. To the historic age likewise belongs the sacrifice of the three Persian prisoners of war whom Themistocles was compelled to slay before the battle of Salamis. In Rome, also, human sacrifices, though {435} exceptional, were not unknown in historic times. Pliny records that in the year 97 B.C. a decree forbidding such sacrifices was passed by the Roman Senate, and afterwards the Emperor Hadrian found it necessary to renew this prohibition. Porphyry asks, "Who does not know that to this day, in the great city of Rome, at the festival of Jupiter Latiaris, they cut the throat of a man?" And Tertullian states that in North Africa, even to the proconsulship of Tiberius, infants were publicly sacrificed to Saturn. Human sacrifices were offered by Celts, Teutons, and Slavs; by the ancient Semites and Egyptians; by the Japanese in early days; and, in the New World, by the Mayas and, to a frightful extent, by the Aztecs. "Scarcely any author," says Prescott in his 'History of the Conquest of Mexico,' "pretends to estimate the yearly sacrifices throughout the empire at less than twenty thousand, and some carry the number as high as fifty thousand." The same practice is imputed by Spanish writers to the Incas of Peru, and probably not without good reason. Before their rule, at all events, it {436} was of frequent occurrence among the Peruvian Indians. It also prevailed, or still prevails, among the Caribs and some North American tribes; in various South Sea islands, especially Tahiti and Fiji; among certain tribes in the Malay Archipelago; among several of the aboriginal tribes of India; and very commonly in Africa.

From this enumeration it appears that the practice of human sacrifice cannot be regarded as a characteristic of savage races. On the contrary, it is found much more {437} frequently among barbarians and semi-civilised peoples than among genuine savages, and at the lowest stages of culture known to us it is hardly heard of. Among some peoples the practice has been noticed to become increasingly prevalent in the course of time. In the Society Islands "human sacrifices, we are informed by the natives, are comparatively of modern institution: they were not admitted until a few generations antecedent to the discovery of the islands**"; and in ancient legends there seems to be certain indications that they were once prohibited in Polynesia. In India human sacrifices were apparently much rarer among the Vedic people than among the Brahmanists of a later age. We are told that such sacrifices were adopted by the Aztecs only in the beginning of the fourteenth century, about two hundred years before the conquest, and that, "rare at first, they became more frequent with the wider extent of their empire; till, at length, almost every festival was closed with this cruel abomination." Of the Africans Mr. Winwood Reade remarks, "The more powerful the nation the grander the sacrifice."

Men offer up human victims to their gods because they think that the gods are gratified by such offerings. In many cases the gods are supposed to have an appetite for human flesh or blood. The Fijian gods are described as "delighting in human flesh." Among the Ooryahs of India the priest, when offering a human sacrifice to the war-god Manicksoro, said to the god, "The sacrifice we now offer you must eat." Among the Iroquois, when an enemy was tortured at the stake, the savage executioners leaped around him crying, "To thee, Arieskoi, great spirit, we slay this victim, that thou mayest eat his flesh and be moved thereby to give us henceforth luck and {438} victory over our foes." Among the ancient nations of Central America the blood and heart of the human victims offered in sacrifice were counted the peculiar portion of the gods. Thus, in Mexico, the high-priest, after cutting open the victim's breast, tore forth the yet palpitating heart, offered it first to the sun, threw it then at the feet of the idol, and finally burned it; sometimes the heart was placed in the mouth of the idol with a golden spoon, and its lips were anointed with the victim's blood.

But the human victim is not always, as has been erroneously supposed, intended to serve the god as a food-offering. The Tshi-speaking peoples of the Gold Coast, as Major Ellis observes, maintain that their gods require not only food, but attendants; "the ghosts of the human victims sacrificed to them are believed to pass at once into a condition of ghostly servitude to them, just as those sacrificed at the funerals of chiefs are believed to pass into a ghostly attendance." Cieza de Leon mentions the prevalence of a similar belief among the ancient Peruvians. At the hill of Guanacaure, "on certain days they sacrificed men and women, to whom, before they were put to death, the priest addressed a discourse, explaining to them that they were going to serve that god who was being worshipped."

Moreover, an angry god may be appeased simply by the death of him or those who aroused his anger, or of some representative of the offending community, or of somebody belonging to the kin of the offender. Among the E[(w]e-speaking peoples of the Slave Coast, "in the case of human victims the gods are not believed to devour the {439} souls; and as these souls are, by the majority of the natives, believed to proceed to Dead-land like all others, the object of human sacrifice seems to be to gratify or satiate the malignancy of the gods at the expense of chosen individuals, instead of leaving it to chance--the victims are in fact slain for the benefit of the community at large." One reason why the human victims are so frequently criminals, is no doubt the intention of appeasing the god by offering up to him an individual who is hateful to him. The Sandwich Islanders "sacrifice culprits to their gods, as we sacrifice them in Europe to justice." Among the Teutons the execution of a criminal was, in many cases at least, a sacrifice to the god whose peculiar cult had been offended by the crime. Thus the Frisian law describes as an immolation to the god the punishment of one who violates his temple. In ancient Rome the corn thief, if he was an adult, was hanged as an offering to Ceres; and Ovid tells us that a priestess of Vesta who had been false to her vows of chastity was sacrificed by being buried alive in the earth, Vesta and Tellus being the same deity. In consequence of the sacrilege of Menalippus and Comætho, who had polluted a temple of Artemis by their amours, the Pythian priestess ordained that the guilty pair should be sacrificed to the goddess, and that, besides, the people should every year sacrifice to her a youth and a maiden, the fairest of their sex. The Hebrew cherem, or ban, was originally applied to malefactors and other enemies of Yahveh, and sometimes also to their possessions. "Cherem," says Professor Kuenen, "is properly dedication to Yahveh, which in reality amounted to destruction or annihilation. The persons who were {440} 'dedicated,' generally by a solemn vow, to Yahveh, were put to death, frequently by fire, whereby the resemblance to an ordinary burnt-offering was rendered still more apparent; their dwellings and property were also consumed by fire; their lands were left uncultivated for ever. Such punishments were very common in the ancient world. But in Israel, as elsewhere, they were at the same time religious acts." The sacrifice of offenders has, in fact, survived in the Christian world, since every execution performed for the purpose of appeasing an offended and angry god may be justly called a sacrifice.

It is impossible to discover in every special case in what respect the worshippers believe the offering of a fellow-creature to be gratifying to the deity. Probably they have not always definite views on the subject themselves. They know, or believe, that on some certain occasion, they are in danger of losing their lives; they attribute this to the designs of a supernatural being; and, by sacrificing a man, they hope to gratify that being's craving for human life, and thereby avert the danger from themselves. That this principle mainly underlies the practice of human sacrifice appears from the circumstances in which such sacrifices generally occur.

Human victims are often offered in war, before a battle, or during a siege.

Cæsar wrote of the Gauls, "They who are engaged in battles and dangers, either sacrifice men as victims, or vow that they will sacrifice them . . . ; because they think that unless the life of a man be offered for the life of a man, the mind of the immortal gods cannot be rendered propitious." The Lusitanians sacrificed a man and a horse at the commencement of a military enterprise. Before going to war, or before the beginning of a battle, or during a siege, the Greeks offered a human victim to ensure victory. When hard-pressed in battle, {441} the King of Moab sacrificed his eldest son as a burnt offering on the wall. In times of great calamities, such as war, the Phenicians sacrificed some of their dearest friends, who were selected by votes for this purpose. During a battle with king Gelo of Syracuse, the general Hamilcar sacrificed innumerable human victims, from dawn to sunset; and when Carthage was reduced to the last extremities, the noble families were compelled to give up two hundred of their sons to be offered to Baal. In Hindu scriptures and traditions success in war is promised to him who offers a man in sacrifice. In Jeypore "the blood-red god of battle" is propitiated by human victims. "Thus, on the eve of a battle, or when a new fort, or even an important village is to be built, or when danger of any kind is to be averted, this sanguinary being must be propitiated with human blood." In Great Benin human blood was shed in a case of common danger when an enemy was at the gate of the city. The Yorubas sacrifice men in times of national need. Among the E[(w]e-speaking peoples of the Slave Coast, such sacrifices "are ordinarily only made in time of war, pestilence, or great calamity." The Tahitians offered human sacrifices in seasons of war, or when war was in agitation.

After a victory, captured enemies are sacrificed to the god to whose assistance the success is ascribed. This sacrifice has been represented as a thank-offering; but, in many cases at least, it seems to be offered either to fulfil a vow previously made, or to induce the god to continue his favours for the future. Among the Kayans of Borneo it is the custom that, when captives are brought to an enemy's country, "one should suffer death, to bring prosperity and abolish the curse of the enemy in their lands."

Human sacrifices are offered for the purpose of stopping or preventing epidemics.

{442} The Phenicians sacrificed "some of their dearest friends," not only in war, but in times of pestilence. In similar circumstances the ancient Greeks had recourse to human sacrifices. In seasons of great peril, as when a pestilence was raging, the ancient Italians made a vow that they would sacrifice every living being that should be born in the following spring. In West Gothland, in Sweden, the people decreed a human sacrifice to stay the digerdöd, or Plague, hence two beggar children, having just then come in, were buried alive. In Fur, in Denmark, there is a tradition that, for the same purpose, a child was interred alive in the burial ground. Among the Chukchi, in 1814, when a sudden and violent disease had broken out and carried off both men and reindeer, the Shamans, after having had recourse in vain to their usual conjurations, determined that one of the most respected chiefs must be sacrificed to appease the irritated spirits. In Great Benin, "when the doctors declared a man had died owing to Ogiwo, if they think an epidemic imminent, they can tell Overami [the king] that Ogiwo vex. Then he can take a man and a woman, all the town can fire guns and beat drums. The man and woman are brought out, and the head Jujuman can make this prayer: 'Oh, Ogiwo, you are very big man; don't let any sickness come for Ado. Make all farm good, and every woman born man son.'" In the same country twelve men, besides various animals, were offered yearly on the anniversary of the death of Adolo, king Overami's father. King Overami, calling his father loudly by name, spoke as follows: "Oh, Adolo, our father, look after all Ado [that is, Great Benin], don't let any sickness come to us, look after me and my people, our slaves, cows, goats, and fowls, and everything in the farms."

The sacrifice of human victims is resorted to as a method of putting an end to a devastating famine.

{443} Instances of this practice are reported to have occurred among the ancient Greeks and Phenicians. In a grievous famine, after other great sacrifices, of oxen and of men, had proved unavailing, the Swedes offered up their own king Dómaldi. Chinese annals tell us that there was a great drought and famine for seven years after the accession of T'ang, the noble and pious man who had overthrown the dynasty of Shang. It was then suggested at last by some one that a human victim should be offered in sacrifice to Heaven, and prayer be made for rain, to which T'ang replied, "If a man must be the victim I will be he." Up to quite recent times, the priests of Lower Bengal have, in seasons of scarcity, offered up children to Siva; in the years 1865 and 1866, for instance, recourse was had to such sacrifices in order to avert famine.

For people subsisting on agriculture a failure of crops means starvation and death, and is, consequently, attributed to the murderous designs of a superhuman being, such as the earth spirit, the morning star, the sun, or the rain-god. By sacrificing to that being a man, they hope to appease its thirst for human blood; and whilst some resort to such a sacrifice only in case of actual famine, others try to prevent famine by making the offering in advance. This I take to be the true explanation of the custom of securing good crops by means of human sacrifice, of which many instances have been produced by Dr. Frazer. There are obvious links between this custom and that of the actual famine-sacrifice. Thus the ancient Peruvians sacrificed children after harvest, when they prepared to make ready the land for the next year, not every year, however, but "only when the weather was not good, and seasonable." In Great Benin, "if there is too much {444} rain, then all the people would come from farm and beg Overami [the king] to make juju, and sacrifice to stop the rain. Accordingly a woman was taken, a prayer made over her, and a message saluting the rain god put in her mouth, then she was clubbed to death and put up in the execution tree so that the rain might see. . . . In the same way if there is too much sun so that there is a danger of the crops spoiling, Overami can sacrifice to the Sun God." The principle of substitution admits of a considerable latitude in regard to the stage of danger at which the offering is made; the danger may be more imminent, or it may be more remote. This holds good of various kinds of human sacrifice, not only of such sacrifices as are intended to influence the crops. I am unable to subscribe to the hypothesis cautiously set forth by Dr. Frazer, that the human victim who is killed for the purpose of ensuring good crops is regarded as a representative of the corn-spirit and is slain as such. So far as I can see, Dr. Frazer has adduced no satisfactory evidence in support of his supposition; whereas a detailed examination of various cases mentioned by him in connection with it indicates that they are closely related to human sacrifices offered on other occasions, and explicable from the same principle, that of substitution.

"The best known case of human sacrifices, systematically offered to ensure good crops," says Dr. Frazer, "is supplied by the Khonds or Kandhs." The victims, or Meriahs, are represented by our authorities as being offered to propitiate the Earth goddess, Tari Pennu or Bera Pennu, but from their treatment both before and after death it appears to Dr. Frazer that the custom cannot be explained as merely a propitiatory sacrifice. The flesh and the ashes of the Meriah, he observes, were believed to possess a magic power of fertilising the land, quite independent of the indirect efficacy which they might have as an offering to secure the goodwill of the deity. For, though a part of the flesh was offered to the Earth Goddess, the rest of it {445} was buried by each householder in his fields, and the ashes of the other parts of the body were scattered over the fields, laid as paste on the granaries, or mixed with the new corn. The same intrinsic power was ascribed to the blood and tears of the Meriah, his blood causing the redness of the turmeric and his tears producing rain; and magic power as an attribute of the victim appears, also in the sovereign virtue believed to reside in anything that came from his person, as his hair or spittle. Considering further that, according to our authorities, the Meriah was regarded as "something more than mortal," or that "a species of reverence, which it is not easy to distinguish from adoration, is paid to him," Dr. Frazer concludes that he may originally have represented the Earth deity or perhaps a deity of vegetation, and that he only in later times came to be regarded rather as a victim offered to a deity than as himself an incarnate deity.

The premise on which Dr. Frazer bases his argument appears to me quite untenable. It is an arbitrary supposition that the ascription of a magical power to the Meriah "indicates that he was much more than a mere man sacrificed to propitiate a deity." A sacrifice is very commonly believed to be endowed with such a power, not as an original quality, but in consequence of its contact or communion with the supernatural being to which it is offered. Just as the Meriah of the Kandhs is taken round the village, from door to door, and some pluck hair from his head, while others beg for a drop of his spittle, so, among the nomadic Arabs of Morocco, at the Muhammedan "Great Feast," a man dressed in the bloody skin of the sheep which has been sacrificed on that occasion, goes from tent to tent, and beats each tent with his stick so as to confer blessings on its inhabitants. For he is now endowed with l-baraka del-[(]id, "the benign virtue of the feast"; and the same power is ascribed to various parts of the sacrificed sheep, which are consequently used for magical purposes. If Dr. Frazer's way of arguing were correct we should have to conclude that the victim was originally the god himself, or a representative of the god, to whom it is now offered in sacrifice. But the absurdity of any such inference becomes apparent at once when we consider that, in Morocco, every offering to a holy person, for instance to a deceased saint, is considered to participate in its sanctity. When the saint has his feast, and animals and other presents are brought to his tomb, it is customary for his descendants--who have a right to the offerings--to distribute {446} some flesh of the slaughtered animals among their friends, thereby conferring l-baraka of the saint upon those who eat it; and even candles which have been offered to the saint are given away for the same purpose, being instinct with his baraka. Of course, what holds good of the Arabs in Morocco does not necessarily hold good of the Kandhs of Bengal; but it should be remembered that Dr. Frazer's argument is founded on the notion that the ascription of a magic power to a victim which is offered in sacrifice to a god indicates that the victim was once regarded as a divine being or as the god himself; and the facts I have recorded certainly prove the arbitrariness of this supposition.

This is by no means the only objection which may be raised against Dr. Frazer's hypothesis. In his description of the rite in question he has emphasised its connection with agriculture to a degree which is far from being justified by the accounts given by our authorities. Mr. Macpherson states that the human sacrifice to Tari Pennu was celebrated as a public oblation by tribes, branches of tribes, or villages, both at social festivals held periodically, and when special occasions demanded exceptional propitiations. It was celebrated "upon the occurrence of an extraordinary number of deaths by disease; or should very many die in childbirth; or should the flocks or herds suffer largely from disease, or from wild beasts; or should the greater crops threaten to fail"; while the occurrence of any marked calamity to the families of the chiefs, whose fortunes were regarded as the principal indication of the disposition of Tari towards their tribes, was held to be a token of wrath which could not be too speedily averted. Moreover, besides these social offerings, the rite was performed by individuals to avert the wrath of Tari from themselves and their families, for instance, if a child, when watching his father's flock, was carried off by a tiger. So, also, Mr. Campbell observes that the human blood was offered to the Earth goddess, "in the hope of thus obtaining abundant crops, averting calamity, and insuring general prosperity"; or that it was supposed "that good crops, and safety from all disease and accidents, were ensured by this slaughter." According to another authority, Mr. Russell, the assembled multitude, when dancing round the victim, addressed the earth in the following words, "O God, we offer this sacrifice to you; give us good crops, seasons, and health." Nor was the magic {447} virtue of the Meriah utilised solely for the benefit of the crops. According to one account, part of the flesh was buried near the village idol as an offering to the earth, and part on the boundaries of the village; whilst in the invocation made by the priest, the goddess was represented as saying, "Let each man place a shred of the flesh in his fields, in his grain-store, and in his yard." The ashes, again, were scattered over the fields, or "laid as paste over the houses and granaries." It is also worth noticing that, among the Kandhs of Maji Deso, the offering was not at all made for the special purpose of obtaining cereal produce, "but for general prosperity, and blessings for themselves and families"; and that in the neighbouring principality, Chinna Kimedy, inhabited for the most part by Ooryahs, the sacrifice was not offered to the earth alone, "but to a number of deities, whose power is essential to life and happiness," especially to the god of war, the great god, and the sun god. Now, whilst all these facts are in perfect agreement with the theory of substitution, they certainly do not justify the supposition that the Meriah was the representative of a deity of vegetation.

The same may be said about other cases mentioned by Dr. Frazer, when more closely examined. "The Indians of Guayaquil, in Ecuador," he says, "used to sacrifice human blood and the hearts of men when they sowed their fields." But our authority, Cieza de Leon, adds that those Indians also offered human victims when their chiefs were sick "to appease the wrath of their gods." "The Pawnees," Dr. Frazer writes, "annually sacrificed a human victim in spring when they sowed their fields. The sacrifice was believed to have been enjoined on them by the Morning Star, or by a certain bird which the Morning Star had sent to them as its messenger . . . . They thought that an omission of this sacrifice would be followed by the total failure of the crops of maize, beans, and pumpkins. James, to whom Dr. Frazer refers, and other authorities say that the human sacrifice was a propitiatory offering made to that star, a planet which especially with the Skidi--the only section {448} of the Pawnees who offered human sacrifices--was an object of superstitious veneration. Sickness, misfortune, and personal mishaps of various kinds were often spoken of as attributable to the incurred ill-will of the heavenly bodies; and the object of the sacrifice to the morning star is expressly said to have been "to avert the evil influences exerted by that planet." According to Mr. Dunbar, whose important article dealing with the subject has escaped Dr. Frazer's notice, "the design of the bloody ordeal was to conciliate that being and secure a good crop. Hence," he continues, "it has been supposed that the morning star was regarded by them as presiding over agriculture, but this was a mistake. They sacrificed to that star because they feared it, imagining that it exerted malign influence if not well disposed. It has also been stated that the sacrifice was made annually. This, too, was an error. It was made only when special occurrences were interpreted as calling for it." At the present day the Indians speak of the sacrifice as having been made to Ti-ra'-wa, the Supreme Being or the deity "who is in and of everything." In the detailed account of the rite, which was given to Mr. Grinnell by an old chief who had himself witnessed it several times, it is said:--"While the smoke of the blood and the buffalo meat, and of the burning body, ascended to the sky, all the people prayed to Ti-ra'-wa, and walked by the fire and grasped handfuls of the smoke, and passed it over their bodies and over those of their children, and prayed Ti-ra'-wa to take pity on them, and to give them health, and success in war, and plenteous crops . . . . This sacrifice always seemed acceptable to Ti-ra'-wa, and when the Skidi made it they always seemed to have good fortune in war, and good crops, and they were always well." According to this description, then, the human sacrifice of the Pawnees, like that of the Kandhs, was not an exclusively agricultural rite, but was performed for the purpose of averting dangers of various kinds. And this is also suggested by Mr. Dunbar's relation of the last instance of this sacrifice, which occurred in April, 1838. In the previous winter the Skidi, soon after starting on their hunt, had a successful fight with a band of Oglala Dacotahs, and fearing that the Dacotahs would retaliate by coming upon them in overwhelming force, {449} they returned for safety to their village before taking a sufficient number of buffaloes. "With little to eat, they lived miserably, lost many of their ponies from scarcity of forage, and, worst of all, one of the captives proved to have the small-pox, which rapidly spread through the band, and in the spring was communicated to the rest of the tribe. All these accumulated misfortunes the Ski'-di attributed to the anger of the morning star; and accordingly they resolved to propitiate its favour by a repetition of the sacrifice, though in direct violation of a stipulation made two years before that the sacrifice should not occur again."

Nor is there any reason whatever to suppose that the Brahman boys whom the Gonds of India used to kidnap and keep as victims to be sacrificed on various occasions, were regarded as representatives of a spirit or god. They were offered up to Bhímsen, the chief object of worship among the Gonds, represented by a piece of iron fixed in a stone or in a tree, now "to sanctify a marriage, now to be wedded to the soil, and again to be given away to the evil spirit of the epidemic raging," or "on the eve of a struggle."

Dr. Frazer writes:--"At Lagos In Guinea it was the custom annually to impale a young girl alive soon after the spring equinox in order to secure good crops . . . . A similar sacrifice used to be annually offered at Benin." But Dr. Frazer omits an important fact mentioned or alluded to by the two authorities he quotes which gives us the key to the custom, without suggesting that it has anything to do with the corn-spirit. Adams states that the young woman was impaled "to propitiate the favour of the goddess presiding over the rainy season, that she may fill the horn of plenty." And M. Bouche observes, "Au Bénin, on a conservé jusqu'à présent un usage qui régnait jadis à Lagos et ailleurs: celui d'empaler une jeune fille, au commencement de la saison des pluies, afin de rendre les orichas propices aux récoltes." From these statements it appears that the sacrifice was intended to influence the rain, on which the crops essentially depend. That its immediate object was to produce rain is expressly affirmed by Sir R. Burton. At Benin he saw "a young woman lashed to a scaffolding upon the summit of a tall blasted tree and being devoured by the turkey-buzzards. The people declared it to be a 'fetish,' or {450} charm for bringing rain." We have previously noticed that the people of Benin also have recourse to a human sacrifice if there is too much rain, or too much sun, so that the crops are in danger of being spoiled. The theory of substitution accounts for all these cases.

The practice of offering human victims for the purpose of preventing drought and famine by producing rain is apparently not restricted to West Africa. In the beginning of their year, the ancient Mexicans sacrificed many prisoners of war and children who had been purchased for that purpose, to the gods of water, so as to induce them to give the rain necessary for the crops. The Pipiles of Guatemala celebrated every year two festivals which were accompanied by human sacrifices, the one in the beginning of the rainy season, the other in the beginning of the dry season. In India, among the aboriginal tribes to the south-west of Beerbhoom, Sir W. W. Hunter "heard vague reports of human sacrifices in the forests, with a view to procuring the early arrival of the rains." Without venturing to express any definite opinion on a very obscure subject which has already led to so many guesses, I may perhaps be justified in here calling attention to the fact that Zeus Lycæus, in whose cult human sacrifices played a prominent part, was conceived of as a god who sent the rain. It appears from ancient traditions or legends that the idea of procuring rainfall by means of such sacrifices was not unfamiliar to the Greeks. A certain Molpis offered himself to Zeus Ombrios, the rain-god, in time of drought. Pausanias tells us that once, when a drought had for some time afflicted Greece, messengers were sent to Delphi to inquire the cause, and to beg for a riddance of the evil. The Pythian priestess told them to propitiate Zeus, and that Aeacus should be the intercessor; and then Aeacus, by sacrifices and prayers to Panhellenian Zeus, procured rain for Greece. But Diodorus adds that the drought and famine, whilst ceasing in all other parts of the country, still continued in Attica, so that the {451} Athenians once more resorted to the Oracle. The answer was now given them that they had to expiate the murder of Androgeus, and that this should be done in any way his father, Minos, required. The satisfaction demanded by the latter was, that they every nine years should send seven boys and as many girls to be devoured by the Minotaur, and that this should be done as long as the monster lived. So the **Athenians did, and the calamity ceased.

As an instance of the close relationship which exists between human sacrifices offered for agricultural purposes and other human sacrifices, the following case may also be mentioned. According to Strachey, the Indians in some part of Virginia had a yearly sacrifice of children. These sacrifices they held so necessary that if they should omit them, they supposed their gods "would let them no deare, turkies, corne, nor fish," and, besides, "would make a great slaughter amongst them."

Men require for their subsistence not only food, but drink. Hence when the earth fails to supply them with water, they are liable to regard it as an attempt against their lives, which can be averted only by the sacrifice of a human substitute.

In India, in former times, human victims were offered to several minor gods "whenever a newly excavated tank failed to produce sufficient water." In Kâthiâwâr, for instance, if a pond had been dug and would not hold water, a man was sacrificed; and the Vadala lake in Bombay "refused to hold water till the local spirit was appeased by the sacrifice of the daughter of the village headman." There is a legend that, when the bed of the Saugor lake remained dry, the builder "was told, in a dream, or by a priest, that it would continue so till he should consent to sacrifice his own daughter, then a girl, and the young lad to whom she had been affianced, to the tutelary god of the place. He accordingly built a little shrine in the centre of the valley, which was to become the bed of the lake, put the two children in, and built up the doorway. He had no sooner done so than the whole of the valley became filled with water." When Colonel Campbell was rescuing Meriahs among the {452} Kandhs, it was believed by some that he was collecting victims for the purpose of sacrificing them on the plains to the water deity, because the water had disappeared from a large tank which he had constructed. According to a story related by Pausanias, the district of Haliartus was originally parched and waterless, hence one of the rulers went to Delphi and inquired how the people should find water in the land. "The Pythian priestess commanded him to slay the first person he should meet on his return to Haliartus. On his arrival he was met by his son Lophis, and, without hesitation, he struck the young man with his sword. The youth had life enough left to run about, and where the blood flowed water gushed from the ground. Therefore the river is called Lophis."

Human sacrifices are offered with a view to averting perils arising from the sea or from rivers.

When the Greeks were afflicted by stress of weather at Aulis, they were bidden to sacrifice Iphigenia, in order to lull the winds. Menelaus was persecuted by the Egyptians for sacrificing two children when he was desirous of sailing away and contrary winds detained him. According to an Athenian writer, the colonists who first went to Lesbos were directed by an oracle to throw a virgin into the sea, as an offering to Poseidon. Sextus Pompeius cast men into the sea as an offering to Neptune. Hamilcar, also, following a custom of his country, threw a company of priests into the sea, as a sacrifice to the sea god. The Saxons, when they were about to leave the coast of Gaul and sail home, sacrificed the tenth part of their captives. The Vikings of Scandinavia, when launching a new ship, seemed to have bound a victim to the rollers on which the vessel slipped into the sea, thus reddening the keel with sacrificial blood. In 1784, at the launching of one of the Bey of Tripoli's cruisers, a black slave was led forward and fastened at the prow of the vessel. The Fijians launched their canoes over the living bodies of slaves as rollers, or, according to {453} another account, when a large canoe was launched, they laid hold of the first person, man or woman, whom they encountered, and carried the victim home for a feast. On the deck of a new boat belonging to the most powerful chief in the group, ten or more men were slaughtered, in order that it might be washed with human blood.

The Zuñi Indians have a tradition that the waters of their valley once rose in a flood and compelled the inhabitants to flee to a table-land several hundred feet high for safety; and when the waters still rose, threatening to submerge the table-land itself, the priest determined to sacrifice a youth and a maiden to propitiate them. When Seleucus Nicator founded Antioch on the Orontes, the high priest sacrificed a virgin at a place between the town and the river, presumably in order to prevent the town from being flooded by the river. When the converted Franks marched to Italy under their king, Theodebert, to fight against the Goths under Vitigis, and were on the point of crossing the Po, they sacrificed what children and wives of Goths they found, and threw their corpses into the river, according to Procopius, "as the first fruits of the war." At Rome, every year on the Ides of May, the Vestal Virgins threw from the Sublician bridge into the Tiber thirty human effigies formed of rushes; the Romans themselves were of opinion that at an earlier period living men had been hurled into the river, and that it was Hercules who first substituted images of straw. In West Africa human sacrifices are often offered to rivers. Major Ellis states that at each town or considerable village upon the banks of the river Prah sacrifice is held on a day about the middle of October, to Prah. "As loss of life frequently occurs in this river, from persons attempting to cross it when flooded, from a sudden rise, or from those hundred minor accidents which must always occur in the neighbourhood of a deep and strong stream, the gods of the Prah are considered very malignant. The sacrifice is, in consequence, proportionate. The usual sacrifice in former times was two human adults, one male and one female. They. . . . were decapitated on the bank of the river, and the stool and image of the god washed with their {454} blood. The bodies were then cut into a number of pieces, which were distributed amongst the mangroves, or the sedge bordering the river, for the crocodiles to eat; crocodiles being sacred in Prah." According to M. le Comte de Cardi, all the river-side tribes of the Niger Delta used to propitiate the river deity by the sacrifice of a copper-coloured girl, procured from a tribe of Ibos inhabiting a country away in the hinterland of New Calabar, or in some places an Albino; and it seems that this custom is still practised in the British Protectorate. The Ibos themselves were in the habit of throwing human beings into the river to be eaten by alligators or fishes, or to fasten them to trees or branches, close to the river, where they were left to perish by hunger. In Eastern Central Africa, also, human sacrifices are offered to rivers. And in the East Indies there are various traditions of such sacrifices being made to the divine crocodiles of the sea.

In the cases which we have hitherto considered the offering of human sacrifices is mostly a matter of public concern, a method of ensuring the lives of many by the death of one or a few. But human life is also sacrificed, by way of substitution, for the purpose of preventing the death of some particular individual, especially a chief or a king, from sickness, old age, or other circumstances.

In Guatemala, in the case of a dangerous illness, human sacrifice was resorted to when all other attempts to cure the patient failed. Of the Indians of Guayaquil, Cieza de Leon states:--"When the chiefs were sick, to appease the wrath of their gods, and pray for health, they made . . . . sacrifices of a superstitious nature, killing men (as I was told), and believing that human blood was a grateful offering." Acosta writes:--"They vsed in Peru to sacrifice yong children of foure or six yeares old vnto tenne; and the greatest parte of these sacrifices were for the affaires that did import the Ynca, as in sickness for his health, and when he went to the {455} warres for victory, or when they gave the wreathe to their new Ynca, which is the marke of a King, as heere the Scepter and the Crowne be. In this solemnitie they sacrificed the number of two hundred children, from foure to ten yeares of age . . . . If any Indian qualified or of the common sorte were sicke, and that the Divine told him confidently that he should die, they did then sacrifice his owne sonne to the Sunne or to Virachoca, desiring them to be satisfied with him, and that they would not deprive the father of life." According to Molina, "the Lord Ynca offered sacrifices [of children] when he began to reign, that the huacas [or idols] might give him health, and preserve his dominions in peace." Herrera tells us that the ancient Peruvians, when any person of note was sick, and the priest predicted his death, sacrificed the patient's son, "desiring the idol to be satisfie'd with him, and not to take away his father's life." Garcilasso de la Vega, again, denies the existence of any such custom in the kingdom of the Incas, but asserts that, before their reign, the Indians of Peru offered up their own children on certain occasions. According to Jerez, some of the Peruvian Indians sacrificed their own children each month, and anointed with the blood the faces of their idols and the doors of their temples. The Tonga Islanders had a ceremony called nawgia, or the ceremony of strangling children as sacrifices to the gods, for the recovery of a sick relative. Our informant says:--"All the bystanders behold the innocent victim with feelings of the greatest pity; but it is proper, they think, to sacrifice a child who is at present of no use to society, and perhaps may not otherwise live to be, with the hope of recovering a sick chief, whom all esteem and whom all think it a most important duty to respect, defend, and preserve, that his life may be of advantage to the country." The Tahitians offered human sacrifices during the illnesses of their rulers. In the Philippines, if a prince was dangerously ill or dying, slaves were slaughtered in order to satisfy the malignant ancestral soul who was supposed to have caused the disease. Among the Dyaks, when a raja "falls sick, or goes on a journey, it is {456} common for him to vow a head to his tribe in case of recovery or of safe return. Should he die, one or two heads are usually offered by the tribe as a kind of sacrifice." Among the Banjârîlu of Southern India, who are great travelling traders, it was formerly the custom "before starting out on a journey to procure a little child, and bury it in the ground up to its shoulders, and then drive their loaded bullocks over the unfortunate victim, and in proportion to the bullocks thoroughly trampling the child to death, so their belief in a successful journey increased." In India human sacrifices were also offered to the goddess Chandiká to save the life of a king. It is probable that the idea of substitution likewise accounts for the sacrifice of a young girl which a certain raja is reported to have offered in 1861, at the shrine of the goddess Durga, in the town of Jaipúr, when he installed himself at his father's decease, and for the sacrifice of a Brahmin which a raja of Ratanpúr had offered up to Deví every year. In Great Benin, once a year, at the end of the rainy season, all the king's beads were brought out by the boys in whose care they were kept. They were put in a heap, and a slave was compelled to kneel down over them. The king cut or struck the head of the slave with a spear so that the blood ran over the beads, and said to them, "Oh, beads, when I put you on, give me wisdom and don't let any juju or bad thing come near me." Then the slave was told, "So you shall tell the head juju when you see him." The slave was led out and beheaded, but his head was brought in again, and the beads were touched with it. Among the ancient Gauls persons who were troubled with unusually severe diseases either sacrificed men or promised that they would make such sacrifices. In the Ynglingasaga we are told that King Aun sacrificed nine sons, one after the other, to Odin for the purpose of obtaining a prolongation of his life. According to Macrobius, the ancient Romans immolated children to the goddess Mania, the mother of the Lares, "to promote the health of the families." Suetonius states that Nero, frightened by the sight of a comet, sacrificed a number of Roman noblemen {457} in order to avert the disaster from himself. Antinous, according to one account, sacrificed himself to prolong the life of Hadrian. The notion that the death of one person may serve as a substitute for the death of another still prevails in the Vatican. When, during Leo XIII.'s last illness, one of the Cardinals died, it was said that his death had saved the life of the Pope, Heaven being satisfied with one victim. In Morocco, if a son or a daughter dies, it is customary to say to the afflicted parents, "Why are you sorry? Your child took away your misfortune (bas)." A similar custom prevails in Syria and Palestine.

Men are sacrificed not only to preserve the lives of other men, but to help other men into existence. Barrenness is attributed to some god keeping back the children which would otherwise be born in the due course of nature. And in order to remove this obstacle a human being, generally a child, is sacrificed to serve, as it were, as a substitute. This I take to be the explanation of the practice of offering a human sacrifice with a view to promoting fecundity, a practice which has been particularly common in India.

In the history of ancient Mexico we read of Nezahualcoyotl, prince of the Tezcucans, who had been married some years without being blest with issue. "The priests represented that it was owing to his neglect of the gods of his country, and that his only remedy was to propitiate them by human sacrifice." In Hindu traditions and books a numerous offspring is promised to him who offers a man in sacrifice. In Jainteapore, east of Sylhet, human sacrifices were made to the goddess Kali, in hopes of procuring progeny. Speaking of the Mahadeo sandstone hills which, in the Sathpore range, overlook the Nerbudda to the south, Sir W. H. Sleeman states:--"When a woman is without children she makes votive offerings to all the gods who can, she thinks, assist her; and promises of still greater in case they should grant what she wants. Smaller promises being found of no avail, she at last promises her first-born, if a {458} male, to the god of destruction, Mahadeo. If she gets a son she conceals from him her vows till he has attained the age of puberty; she then communicates it to him, and enjoins him to fulfil it." From that moment he regards himself as devoted to the god, and, at the annual fair on the Mahadeo hills, throws himself from a perpendicular height of four or five hundred feet, and is dashed to pieces upon the rocks below. In one of the tales of Somadeva an ascetic tells a woman that, if she killed her young son and offered him to the divinity, another son would certainly be born to her. We meet with a similar idea in the story of king Somaka. For some time he did not succeed in getting a single son from any of his one hundred wives. Finally he got a single son; but he wanted more, and asked the family priest whether there was not a ceremony which could help him to a hundred sons. The family priest answered:--"O king! let me set on foot a sacrifice, and thou must sacrifice thy son, Jantu, in it. Then on no distant date, a century of handsome sons will be born to thee. When Jantu's fat will be put into the fire as an offering to the gods, the mothers will take a smell of that smoke, and bring forth a number of sons, valorous and strong. And Jantu also will once more be born as a self-begotten son of thine, in that very mother; and on his back there will appear a mark of gold." The son was sacrificed; the wives smelt the smell of the burnt-offering; all of them became with child; and when ten months had passed one hundred sons were born to Somaka, of whom Jantu was the eldest, being born of his former mother. But the family priest departed this life, and was grilled for a certain period in a terrible hell as a punishment for what he had done.

Among certain peoples it is a regular custom to kill the firstborn child, or the firstborn son.

Among some natives of Australia a mother used to kill and eat her first child, as this was believed to strengthen her for later births. In New South Wales the firstborn of every lubra used to be eaten by the tribe "as part of a religious ceremony." In the realm of Khai-muh, in China, according to {459} a native account, it was customary to kill and devour the eldest son alive. Among certain tribes in British Columbia the first child is often sacrificed to the sun. The Indians of Florida, according to Le Moyne de Morgues, sacrificed the firstborn son to the chief. We are told that, among the people of Senjero in Eastern Africa, many families "must offer up their firstborn sons as sacrifices, because once upon a time, when summer and winter were jumbled together in a bad season, and the fruits of the field would not ripen, the sooth-sayers enjoined it." The heathen Russians often sacrificed their firstborn to the god Perun. The rule laid down in Exodus and Numbers, that all the firstborn of men and of beasts belonged to the Lord, but that the former were to be redeemed, seems to indicate the existence of an earlier custom among the Hebrews of offering up as a sacrifice, not only the firstling of an animal, but the firstborn child. As traces of such a custom may probably be regarded the story of Abraham's surrender of his firstborn son to God and the tradition of the origin of the Passover. Among the Hindus, until the beginning of the last century, many parents sacrificed their firstborn to the river Ganges.

In some instances the firstborn seems to be killed, not in sacrifice to a god, but for the purpose of being eaten as a kind of medicine. In other cases the act is a sacrifice in the true sense of the word and, apparently, substitutional in character. Considering that children are occasionally sacrificed to save the lives of their parents, or for the health of the families, or to promote fecundity, it seems probable that the regular sacrifice of the firstborn has similar objects in view. This supposition, indeed, is strongly supported by some statements in which the motive of the act is expressly mentioned. Among the {460} Coast Salish of British Columbia the first child is sacrificed to the sun "to secure health and happiness to the whole family." The same is reported of a neighbouring people, the Kutonaqa. The mother prays to the sun:--"I am with child. When it is born I shall offer it to you. Have pity upon us." Among some tribes of South-Eastern Africa it is a rule that, when a woman's husband has been killed in battle and she marries again, the first child to which she gives birth after her second marriage must be put to death, whether she has it by her first or her second husband. Such a child is called "the child of the assegai," and if it were not killed, death or accident would be sure to befall the second spouse, and the woman herself would be barren. Among some peoples, including the ancient Hindus, we find the belief that the son is in some sense identical with his father, that he is a new birth, a new manifestation of the same person. The new birth might be supposed to endanger the life of the father, just as, according to a notion prevalent among the ancient Teutons and in some parts of Italy, a person would soon die if his name were given to his son or grandson whilst he was still alive. Among the Brazilian Tupis the father was accustomed to take a new name after the birth of each new son; whilst, on killing an enemy, a person used to take the enemy's name so as to annihilate not only his body but also his soul. Among the Kafirs, "if a mother gives birth to twins, one is frequently killed by the father, for the natives think that unless the father places a lump of earth in the mouth of one of the babies he will lose his strength." In some {461} cases the practice of killing the firstborn son might possibly be traced back to a similar belief. But I can quote no fact directly supporting this suggestion.

Human sacrifices are offered in connection with the foundation of buildings. This is a wide-spread custom, which not only occurs among various uncivilised and semi-civilised peoples of the present day, but which is proved to have existed among the so-called Aryan races. In India we find traces of it in traditions and popular beliefs. The Hindu rajas, we are told, used to lay the foundation of public buildings in human blood. When Mr. Grierson wanted to photograph a Bih[=a]r peasant house, the grandmother of the family refused to allow any of the children to appear in the picture, her reason being that the Government was building the bridge across the Gandak and wanted children to bury under the foundations. Among the ancient Romans the old custom survived in the practice of placing statues or images under the foundations of their buildings. In the island of Zacynthus the peasants to this day believe that in order to secure the durability of important buildings, such as bridges and fortresses, it is desirable to kill a man, especially a Muhammedan or a Jew, and bury him on the spot. South Slavonian folk-tales speak of the immuration of a woman or a child as a foundation sacrifice. In Servia no city was thought to be secure unless a human being, or at least the shadow of one, was built into its walls; and the Bulgarians, when {462} going to build, are still said to take a thread and measure the shadow of some casual passer-by, and then bury the measure under the foundation-stone, expecting that the man whose shadow has been thus treated will soon die. A similar custom prevails in Roumania. According to Nennius, when Dinas Emris in Wales was founded by Gortigern, all the materials collected for the fortress were carried away in one night; and materials were thus gathered thrice, and were thrice carried away. When he then asked of his Druids, "Whence this evil?" the Druids told him that it was necessary to find a child whose father was unknown, put him to death, and sprinkle with his blood the ground on which the citadel was to be built. A Scotch legend tells that, when St. Columba first attempted to build a cathedral on Iona, the walls fell down as they were erected; he then received supernatural information that they would never stand unless a human victim was buried alive, and, in consequence, his companion, Oran, was interred at the foundation of the structure. It is reported that, when not long ago the Bridge Gate of Bremen city walls was demolished, the skeleton of a child was found embedded in the groundwork; and when the new bridge at Halle, finished in 1843, was building, "the common people fancied a child was wanted to be walled into the foundations."

It seems highly probable that the building-sacrifice, like other kinds of human sacrifice, is based on the idea of substitution. A new house or dwelling-place is commonly regarded as dangerous, a wall or a tower is liable to fall down and cause destruction of life, a bridge may break, or the person who crosses it may tumble into the water and be drowned. In the Babar Islands, before entering a new house, offerings are thrown inside, that the spirit, Orloo, may not make the {463} inmates ill. Before the Sandwich Islanders could occupy their houses "offerings were made to the gods, and presents to the priest, who entered the house, uttered prayers, went through other ceremonies, and slept in it before the owner took possession, in order to prevent evil spirits from resorting to it, and to secure its inmates from the effects of incantation." Among the Kayans of Borneo, on the occasion of the king or principal chief taking possession of a newly-built house, a human victim was killed, and the blood was sprinkled on the pillars and under the house. The Russian peasant believes that the building of a new house "is apt to be followed by the death of the head of the family for which the new dwelling is constructed, or that the member of the family who is the first to enter it will soon die"; and, in accordance with a custom of great antiquity, the oldest member of a migrating household enters the new house first. In German folk-tales "the first to cross the bridge, the first to enter the new building or the country, pays with his life." Even nowadays, in the North of Europe, there is a wide-spread fear of being the first to enter a new building or of going over a newly-built bridge; "if to do this is not everywhere and in all cases thought to entail death, it is considered supremely unlucky." This superstition has been interpreted as a survival of a previous sacrifice; but there can be no doubt, I think, that the foundation sacrifice itself owes its origin to similar notions and fears of supernatural dangers. Uncultured people are commonly afraid of anything new, or of doing an act for the first time; and, apart from this, the erecting of a new building is an intrusion upon {464} the land of the local spirit, and therefore likely to arouse its anger. There are houses which remain haunted by spirits all their time. It is natural, then, that attempts should be made to avert the danger. And, human life being at stake, no preventive could be more effective than the offering up of a human victim.

On the other hand it is maintained that the foundation-sacrifice is partly, if not exclusively, performed for the purpose of converting the soul of the victim into a protecting demon. This opinion, no doubt, has the support of beliefs actually held by some of the peoples who practise the rite. When the gate of the new city of Tavoy, in Tenasserim, was built, Mason was told by an eye-witness that a criminal was put in each post-hole to become a guardian spirit. The Burmese kings used to have victims buried alive at the gates of their capitals, "so that their spirits might watch over the city." Formerly, in Siam, "when a new city gate was being erected, it was customary for a number of officers to lie in wait near the spot, and seize the first four or eight persons who happened to pass by, and who were then buried alive under the gate-posts, to serve as guardian angels." But whatever be the present notions of certain peoples concerning the object of the building-sacrifice, I do not believe that its primary object could have been to procure a spirit-guardian. According to early ideas, the ghost of a murdered man is not a friendly being, and least of all is he kindly disposed towards those who killed him. Several instances are known in which later generations have put upon human sacrifices an interpretation obviously foreign to their original purpose. Thus, according to a North {465} German tradition, a master-builder was immured by a certain knight in the tower which he had built, as a punishment for boasting that he could have built a still finer tower if he had liked to do so. An Indian raja, we are told, was once building a bridge over the river Jargoat Chunâr, and when it fell down several times he was advised to sacrifice a Brahman girl to the local deity; however, "she has now become the Marî or ghost of the place, and is regularly worshipped in time of trouble." Considering that the foundation-sacrifice was offered for the purpose of protecting the living against the attacks of the spirit of the place, it is quite intelligible that the ghost of the victim came in time to be looked upon as a guardian spirit; and it was all the more natural to attribute to the dead the function of a guard in cases where he was buried at the gate. But he was buried there, I presume, simply because that spot was thought to be the most dangerous. The gate of a town corresponds to the entrance of a house, and the threshold has almost universally been regarded as the proper haunt of what the Moors call "the owners of the place."

Whilst the man who is sacrificed is in some cases described as a guardian, he is in other cases regarded as a messenger. The Mayas of Yucatan maintained that the human victims whom they offered in times of distress were sent as messengers to the spirit-world to make known the wants of the people. The same idea prevailed in Great Benin. When the head jujuman had said the prayer in which he asked Ogiwo to let no sickness come for Benin, he thus addressed the slaves who were going to be clubbed to death and tied in the sacrifice-trees:--"So you shall tell Ogiwo. Salute him proper." A message was likewise sent to the head juju with the slave who was sacrificed to it; and a message saluting the rain-god was put in the {466} mouth of the woman who was sacrificed when there was too much rain. Mr. Ling Roth suggests that the main object of the human sacrifices which were offered in Benin "was the sending of prayers, by means of the special messengers, for the welfare of the community, to the spirits of the departed, or to other spirits, such as the spirits of the beads, the Rain-God, Sun-God, the God-Ogiwo"; and he thinks that this explains "a cult of world-wide prevalence." But considering that in Yucatan and Benin, as elsewhere, the human victim was sacrificed for the avowed purpose of averting some mortal danger from the community or the king, I conclude that there, also, the primary object of the rite was to offer a substitute, though this substitute came to be used as a messenger.

I do not affirm that the practice of human sacrifice is in every case based on the idea of substitution; the notion that a certain god has a desire for such sacrifices may no doubt induce his worshippers to gratify this desire for a variety of purposes. But I think there is sufficient evidence to prove that, when men offer the lives of their fellow-men in sacrifice to their gods, they do so as a rule in the hopes of thereby saving their own. Human sacrifice is essentially a method of life-insurance--absurd, no doubt, according to our ideas, but not an act of wanton cruelty. When practised for the benefit of the community or in a case of national distress, it is hardly more cruel than to advocate the infliction of capital punishment on the ground of social expediency, or to compel thousands of men to suffer death on the battle-field on behalf of their country. The custom of human sacrifice admits that the life of one is taken to save the lives of many, or that an inferior individual is put to death for the purpose of preventing the death of somebody who has a higher right to live. Sometimes the king or chief is sacrificed in times of scarcity or pestilence, but then he is probably held personally responsible for the calamity. Very frequently {467} the victims are prisoners of war or other aliens, or slaves, or criminals, that is, persons whose lives are held in little regard. And in many cases these are the only victims allowed by custom.

This was generally the case among the ancient Teutons, though they sometimes deemed a human sacrifice the more efficacious the more distinguished the victim, and the nearer his relationship to him who offered the sacrifice. The Gauls, says Cæsar, "consider that the oblation of such as have been taken in theft, or robbery, or any other offence, is more acceptable to the immortal gods; but when a supply of that class is wanting, they have recourse to the oblation of even the innocent." Diodorus Siculus states that the Carthaginians in former times used to sacrifice to Saturn the sons of the most eminent persons, but that, of later times, they secretly bought and bred up children for that purpose. The chief aim of the wars of the ancient Mexicans was to make prisoners for sacrificial purposes; other victims were slaves who were purchased for this object, and many criminals "who were condemned to expiate their crimes by the sacrifice of their lives." The Yucatans sacrificed captives taken in war, and only if such victims were wanting they dedicated their children to the altar "rather than let the gods be deprived of their due." In Guatemala the victims were slaves or captives or, among the Pipiles, illegitimate children from six to twelve years old who belonged to the tribe. In Florida the human victim who was offered up at harvest time was chosen from among the Spaniards wrecked on the coast. Of the Peruvian Indians before the time of the Incas, Garcilasso de la Vega states that, "besides ordinary things such as animals and maize, they sacrificed men and women of all ages, being captives taken in wars which they made against each other." Among the Tshi-speaking peoples of the Gold Coast, "the persons ordinarily sacrificed to the gods are prisoners of war or slaves. When the latter, they are usually aliens, as a protecting god is not so well satisfied with the sacrifice of his own people." In Great Benin, according to Captain Roupell, the people who were kept for sacrifice were bad men, or men with bad sickness, {468} and they were all slaves. In Fiji the victims were generally prisoners of war, but sometimes they were slaves procured by purchase from other tribes. In Nukahiva "the custom of the country requires that the men destined for sacrifice should belong to some neighbouring nation, and accordingly they are generally stolen." In Tahiti "the unhappy wretches selected were either captives taken in war, or individuals who had rendered themselves obnoxious to the chiefs or the priests.**" The Muruts of Borneo "never sacrifice one of their own people, but either capture an individual of a hostile tribe, or send to a friendly tribe to purchase a slave for the purpose." It is said to be contrary to the Káyán custom to sell or sacrifice one of their own nation. The G[=a]ro hill tribes "generally select their victims out of the Bengali villages in the plains." The Kandhs considered that the victim must be a stranger. "If we spill our own blood," they said, "we shall have no descendants"; and even the children of Meriahs, who were reared for sacrificial purposes, were never offered up in the village of their birth.

We find that various peoples who at a certain period have been addicted to the practice of human sacrifice, have afterwards, at a more advanced stage of civilisation, voluntarily given it up. The cause of this is partly an increase, or expansion, of the sympathetic sentiment, partly a change of ideas. With the growth of enlightenment men would lose faith in this childish method of substitution, and consequently find it not only useless, but objectionable; and any sentimental disinclination to the practice would by itself, in the course of time, lead to the belief that the deity no longer cares for it, or is averse to it. Brahmanism gradually abolished the immolation of human victims, incompatible as it was with the precept of ahimsâ, or respect for everything that has life; "the liberation of the victim, or the substitution in its stead and place of a {469} figure made of flour paste, both of which were at first matter of sufferance, became at length matter of requirement." According to the Mahabharata, the priest who performs a human sacrifice is cast into hell. In Greece, in the historic age, the practice was held in horror at least by all the better minds, though it was regarded as necessary on certain occasions. It was strongly condemned by enlightened Romans. Cicero speaks of it as a "monstrous and barbarous practice" still disgracing Gaul in his day; and Pliny, referring to the steps taken by Tiberius to stop it, declares it impossible to estimate the debt of the world to the Romans for their efforts to put it down.

The growing reluctance to offer human sacrifice led to various practices intended to replace it. Speaking of the Italian custom of dedicating as a sacrifice to the gods every creature that should be born in the following spring, Festus adds that, since it seemed cruel to kill innocent boys and girls, they were kept till they had grown up, then veiled and driven beyond the boundaries. Among various peoples human effigies or animals were offered instead of men.

Among the Malays of the Malay Peninsula dough models of human beings, actually called "the substitutes," are offered up to the spirits on the sacrificial trays; and in the same sense are the directions of magicians, that "if the spirit craves a human victim a cock may be substituted." We are told that, in Egypt, King Amosis ordered three waxen images to be burned in the temple of Heliopolis in lieu of the three men who in earlier times used to be sacrificed there. The Romans offered dolls; and in old Hindu families belonging to the sect of the Vámácháris a practice still obtains of sacrificing an effigy {470} instead of a living man. In India, Greece, and Rome, animals, also, were substituted for human victims. Of a similar substitution there is probably a trace in the Biblical story of Isaac being exchanged for a ram, and in the paschal sacrifice. On the Gold Coast the human victim who was formerly sacrificed to the god of the Prah is nowadays replaced by a bullock which is specially reserved and fattened for the purpose.

In other cases human sacrifices have been succeeded by practices involving the effusion of human blood without loss of life. We are told that, in Laconia, Lycurgus established the scourging of lads at the altar of Artemis Orthia, in place of the sacrifice of men, which had previously been offered to her; and Euripides represents Athena as ordaining that, when the people celebrate the festival of Artemis the Taurian goddess, the priest, to compensate her for the sacrifice of Orestes, "must hold his knife to a human throat, and blood must flow to satisfy the sacred claims of the goddess, that she may have her honours." There are also many instances of bleeding or mutilation practised for the same purpose as human sacrifice, probably according to the principle of pars pro toto, though it is impossible to decide whether they really are survivals of an earlier sacrifice.

Besides the ceremony of nawgia, already described, the Tonga Islanders had another ceremony called tootoo-nima, or cutting off a portion of the little finger, as a sacrifice to the gods, for the recovery of a superior relation who was ill; and so commonly was this done that, in Mariner's days, there was scarcely a person living in the Tonga Islands who had not lost one or both little fingers, or at least a considerable portion of them. In Chinese literature there are frequently mentioned instances of persons cutting off flesh from their bodies to cure parents or paternal grandparents dangerously ill. In most cases {471} it remains unmentioned how the flesh was prepared; but it is sometimes stated that porridge or broth was made of it, or that it was mixed with medicine. Dr. de Groot maintains that it was in the first place the ascription of therapeutic virtues to parts of the human body that prompted such filial self-mutilation. But he adds that "often also we read of thigh-cutters invoking Heaven beforehand, solemnly asking this highest power to accept their own bodies as a substitute for the patients' lives they wanted to save; their mutilation thus assuming the character of self-immolation." According to the testimony of a native writer, there is scarcely a respectable house in all Bengal, the mistress of which has not at one time or other shed her blood, under the notion of satisfying the goddess Chandiká by the operation. "Whenever her husband or a son is dangerously ill, a vow is made that on the recovery of the patient, the goddess would be regaled with human blood. . . . The lady performs certain ceremonies, and then bares her breast in the presence of the goddess, and with a nail-cutter (naruna) draws a few drops of blood from between her breasts and offers them to the divinity." Garcilasso de la Vega states that, whilst some of the Peruvian Indians before the time of the Incas sacrificed men, there were others who, though they mixed human blood in their sacrifices, did not obtain it by killing anyone, but by bleeding the arms and legs, according to the importance of the sacrifice, and, in the most solemn cases, by bleeding the root of the nose where it is joined by the eyebrows.

There is one form of human sacrifice which has outlived all others, namely, the penal sacrifice of offenders. There can be no moral scruples in regard to a rite which involves a punishment regarded as just. Indeed, this kind of human sacrifice is even found where the offering of animals or lifeless things has fallen out of use or become a mere symbol. For this is the only sacrifice which is intended to propitiate the deity by the mere death of the victim; and gods are believed to be capable of feeling anger and revenge long after they have ceased to have material needs. The last trace of human sacrifice has {472} disappeared only when men no longer punish offenders capitally with a view to appeasing resentful gods.

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Human beings are sacrificed not only to gods, but to dead men, in order to serve them as companions or servants, or to vivify their spirits, or to gratify their craving for revenge.

From various quarters of the world we hear of the immolation of men for the service of the dead, the victims generally being slaves, wives, or captives of war, or, sometimes, friends. This rite occurs or has occurred, more or less extensively, in Borneo and the Philippine Islands, in Melanesia and Polynesia, in many different parts of Africa, and among some American tribes. In America, however, it was carried to its height by the more civilised nations of Central America and Mexico, Bogota and Peru. There is evidence to show that the funeral ceremonies {473} of the ancient Egyptians occasionally included human sacrifice at the gate of the tomb, although the practice would seem to have been exceptional, at any rate after Egypt had entered upon her period of greatness. It has been suggested that in China the burial of living persons with the dead dates from the darkest mist of ages, and that the cases on record in the native books are of relatively modern date only because in high antiquity the custom was so common, that it did not occur to the annalists and chroniclers to set down such everyday matters as anything remarkable. In the fourteenth century of our era, the funeral sacrifice of men was abolished, even for emperors and members of the imperial family, but it has assumed a modified shape under which it still maintains itself in China. "Daughters, daughters-in-law, and widows especially imbued with the doctrine that they are the property of their dead parents, parents-in-law, and husbands, and accordingly owe them the highest degree of submissive devotion, often take their lives, in order to follow them into the next world." And though it has been enacted that no official distinctions shall be awarded to such suttees, whereas honours are granted to widowed wives, concubines, and brides who, instead of destroying themselves, simply abjure matrimonial life for good, sutteeism of widows and brides still meets with the same applause as ever, and many a woman is no doubt prevailed upon, or even compelled, by her own relations, to become a suttee. Professor Schrader observes that "it is no longer possible to doubt that ancient Indo-Germanic custom ordained that the wife should die with her husband." It has been argued, it is true, that the burning of widows begins rather late in India; yet, though the modern ordinance of suttee-burning be a corrupt departure {474} from the early Brahmanic ritual, the practice seems to be, not a new invention by the later Hindu priesthood, but the revival of an ancient rite belonging originally to a period even earlier than the Veda. In the Vedic ritual there are ceremonies which obviously indicate the previous existence of such a rite. From Greece we have the instances of Evadne throwing herself into the funeral pile of her husband, and of the suicide of the three Messenian widows mentioned by Pausanias. Sacrifice of widows occurred, as it seems as a regular custom, among the Scandinavians, Heruli, and Slavonians. "The fact," says Mr. Ralston, "that, in Slavonic lands, a thousand years ago, widows used to destroy themselves in order to accompany their dead husbands to the world of spirits, seems to rest on incontestable evidence"; and if the dead was a man of means and distinction, he was also solaced by the sacrifice of his slaves. Funeral offerings of slaves occurred among the Teutons and the Gauls of Cæsar's time; and in the Iliad we read of twelve captives being laid on the funeral pile of Patroclus.

According to early notions, men require wives and servants not only during their life-time, but after their death. The surviving relatives want to satisfy their needs, out of affection or from fear of withholding from the dead what belongs to them--their wives and their slaves. The destruction of innocent life seems justified by the low social standing of the victims and their subjection to their husbands or masters. However, with advancing civilisation this sacrifice has a tendency to {475} disappear, partly, perhaps, on account of a change of ideas as regards the state after death, but chiefly, I presume, because it becomes revolting to public feelings. It then dwindles into a survival. As a probable instance of this may be mentioned a custom prevalent among the Tacullies of North America: the widow is compelled by the kinsfolk of the deceased to lie on the funeral pile where the body of her husband is placed, whilst the fire is lighting, until the heat becomes intolerable. In ancient Egypt little images of clay, or wood, or stone, or bronze, made in human likeness and inscribed with a certain formula, were placed within the tomb, presumably in the hopes that they would there attain to life and become the useful servants of the dead. So also the Japanese and Chinese, already in early times, placed images in, or at, the tombs of their dead as substitutes for human victims; and these images have always been considered to have no less virtual existence in the next world than living servitors, wives, or concubines. In China the original immolations were, moreover, replaced by the custom of allowing the nearest relatives and slaves of the deceased simply to settle on the tomb, instead of entering it, there to sacrifice to the manes, and by prohibiting widows from remarrying.

The practice of sacrificing human beings to the dead is not exclusively based on the idea that they require servants and companions. It is extremely probable that the funeral sacrifice of men and animals in many cases involves an intention to vivify the spirits of the deceased with the warm, red sap of life. This seems to be the meaning of the Dahoman custom of pouring blood over the graves of the ancestors of the king. So, also, in Ashanti "human sacrifices are frequent and ordinary, to {476} water the graves of the Kings." In the German folk-tale known under the name of 'Faithful John,' the statue said to the King, "If you, with your own hand, cut off the heads of both your children, and sprinkle me with their blood, I shall be brought to life again." According to primitive ideas, blood is life; to receive blood is to receive life; the soul of the dead wants to live, and consequently loves blood. The shades in Hades are eager to drink the blood of Odysseus' sacrifice, that their life may be renewed for a time. And it is all the more important that the soul should get what it desires as it otherwise may come and attack the living. The belief that the bloodless shades leave their graves at night and seek renewed life by drawing the blood of the living, is prevalent in many parts of the world. As late as the eighteenth century this belief caused an epidemic of fear in Hungary, resulting in a general disinterment, and the burning or staking of the suspected bodies. It is also possible that the mutilations and self-bleedings which accompany funerals are partly practised for the purpose of refreshing the departed soul. The Samoans called it "an offering of blood" for the dead when the mourners beat their heads with stones till the blood ran.

Finally, as offenders are sacrificed to gods in order to appease their wrath, so manslayers are in many cases killed in order to satisfy their victims' craving for revenge. In the next chapter we shall see that the execution of blood-revenge largely falls under the heading of "human sacrifice for the dead."