CHAPTER XIX
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Westermarck, Edward
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.224 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.225 The Burmese kings used to have victims buried alive at the gates of their capitals, “so that their spirits might watch over the city.”226 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.”227 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.228 Thus, according to a North 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.229 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.”230 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.”231
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.232 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.”233 A message was likewise sent to the head juju with the slave who was sacrificed to it;234 and a message saluting the rain-god was put in the mouth of the woman who was sacrificed when there was too much rain.235 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.”236 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.237 Very frequently 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,238 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.239 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.”240 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.241 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.”242 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.”243 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.244 In Florida the human victim who was offered up at harvest time was chosen from among the Spaniards wrecked on the coast.245 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.”246 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.”247 In Great Benin, according to Captain Roupell, the people who were kept for sacrifice were bad men, or men with bad sickness, and they were all slaves.248 In Fiji the victims were generally prisoners of war, but sometimes they were slaves procured by purchase from other tribes.249 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.”250 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.”251 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.”252 It is said to be contrary to the Káyán custom to sell or sacrifice one of their own nation.253 The Gāro hill tribes “generally select their victims out of the Bengali villages in the plains.”254 The Kandhs considered that the victim must be a stranger. “If we spill our own blood,” they said, “we shall have no descendants”;255 and even the children of Meriahs, who were reared for sacrificial purposes, were never offered up in the village of
their birth.256
Source notes
216 Ellis, Polynesian Researches, iv. 322.
217 Burns, ‘Kayans of the North-West of Borneo,’ in Journal of the Indian Archipelago, iii. 145.
218 Ralston, Songs of the Russian People, p. 126. Cf. Krauss, loc. cit. p. 21 sq. (Southern Slavs).
219 Grimm, Teutonic Mythology, i. 45, n. 2.
220 Baring-Gould, Strange Survivals, p. 2. For various instances of similar beliefs, see Sartori, in Zeitschr. f. Ethnol. xxx. 14 sqq.; Crawley, Mystic Rose, p. 25.
221 Baring-Gould, op. cit. p. 4.
222 Crawley, op. cit. p. 25.
223 Westermarck, ‘Nature of the Arab Ğinn, illustrated by the Present Beliefs of the People of Morocco,’ in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xxix. 253, 260.
224 Tylor, Primitive Culture, i. 106. Grant Allen, op. cit. p. 248 sqq. Lippert, Christenthum, Volksglaube und Volksbrauch, p. 456 sq. Idem, Kulturgeschichte der Menschheit, ii. 270. Gaidoz, in Mélusine, iv. 14 sqq. Sartori, in Zeitsthr. f. Ethnol. xxx. 32 sqq.
225 Tylor, Primitive Culture, i. 107.
226 Woodthorpe, in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xxvi. 24. See also Shway Yoe, The Burman, i. 286.
227 Alabaster, Wheel of the Law, p. 212 sq. Cf. Gaidoz, loc. cit. p. 14 sq.
228 See Nyrop, Romanske Mosaiker, p. 73 sqq.; also infra, p. 465 sq.
229 Nyrop, op. cit. p. 73.
230 Crooke, Popular Religion of Northern India, ii. 174.
231 See Trumbull, Threshold Covenant, passim.
232 Dorman, op. cit. p. 213.
233 Moor and Roupell, quoted by Read and Dalton, op. cit. p. 7; also by Ling Roth, Great Benin, p. 72.
234Supra, p. 456.
235Supra, p. 444.
236 Ling Roth, op. cit. p. 72.
237 Frazer, Golden Bough, i. 15 sq.
238 Grimm, Teutonic Mythology, i. 45.
239 Holtzmann, Deutsche Mythologie, p. 232.
240 Cæsar, De bello gallico, vi. 16.
241 Diodorus Siculus, xx. 14.
242 Clavigero, op. cit. i. 282.
243 Bancroft, op. cit. ii. 704.
244 Stoll, op. cit. p. 40.
245 Bry, op. cit. p. 11.
246 Garcilasso de la Vega, op. cit. i. 50.
247 Ellis, Tshi-speaking Peoples, p. 170.
248 Ling Roth, Great Benin, p. 70.