The origin and development of the moral ideas

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.”152 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.”153 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.”154 Garcilasso de la Vega, again, denies the existence of any such custom in the kingdom of the Incas,155 but asserts that, before their reign, the Indians of Peru offered up their own children on certain occasions.156 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.157 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.”158 The Tahitians offered human sacrifices during the illnesses of their rulers.159 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.160 Among the Dyaks, when a raja “falls sick, or goes on a journey, it is 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.”161 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.”162 In India human sacrifices were also offered to the goddess Chandiká to save the life of a king.163 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,164 and for the sacrifice of a Brahmin which a raja of Ratanpúr had offered up to Deví every year.165 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.166 Among the ancient Gauls persons who were troubled with unusually severe diseases either sacrificed men or promised that they would make such sacrifices.167 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.168 According to Macrobius, the ancient Romans immolated children to the goddess Mania, the mother of the Lares, “to promote the health of the families.”169 Suetonius states that Nero, frightened by the sight of a comet, sacrificed a number of Roman noblemen in order to avert the disaster from himself.170 Antinous, according to one account, sacrificed himself to prolong the life of Hadrian.171 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.172

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.”173 In Hindu traditions and books a numerous offspring is promised to him who offers a man in sacrifice.174 In Jainteapore, east of Sylhet, human sacrifices were made to the goddess Kali, in hopes of procuring progeny.175 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 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.176 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.177 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.178

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.179 In New South Wales the firstborn of every lubra used to be eaten by the tribe “as part of a religious ceremony.”180 In the realm of Khai-muh, in China, according to a native account, it was customary to kill and devour the eldest son alive.181 Among certain tribes in British Columbia the first child is often sacrificed to the sun.182 The Indians of Florida, according to Le Moyne de Morgues, sacrificed the firstborn son to the chief.183 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.”184 The heathen Russians often sacrificed their firstborn to the god Perun.185 The rule laid down in Exodus186 and Numbers,187 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.188 Among the Hindus, until the beginning of the last century, many parents sacrificed their firstborn to the river Ganges.189