The origin and development of the moral ideas

“The Japanese calendar of saints,” says Mr. Griffis, “is not filled with reformers, alms-givers, and founders of hospitals or orphanages, but is overcrowded with canonised suicides and committers of harakiri. Even to-day, no man more … surely draws homage to his tomb, securing even apotheosis, than the suicide, though he may have committed a crime.”101 There were two kinds of harakiri, or “belly-cutting,” one obligatory and the other voluntary. The former was a boon granted by government, who graciously permitted criminals of the Samurai, or military, class thus to destroy themselves instead of being handed over to the common executioner; but this custom is now quite extinct. Voluntary harakiri, again, was practised out of loyalty to a dead superior, or in order to protest, when other protests might be unavailing, against the erroneous conduct of a living superior, or to avoid beheading by the enemy in a lost battle, or to restore injured honour if revenge was impossible. Under any circumstances harakiri cleansed from every stain, and ensured an honourable interment and a respected memory.102 It is said in a Japanese manuscript, “To slay his enemy against whom he has cause of hatred, and then to kill himself, is the part of a noble Samurai, and it is sheer nonsense to look upon the place where he has disembowelled himself as polluted.”103 In old days the ceremony used to be performed in a temple.104

Among the Hindus we meet with the practice of self-immolation of widows—until recently very prevalent in many parts of India105—and various forms of self-destruction for religious purposes. Suicide has always been considered by the Hindus to be one of the most acceptable rites that can be offered to their deities. According to the Ayen Akbery, there were five kinds of suicide held to be meritorious in the Hindu, namely:—starving; covering himself with cow-dung and setting it on fire and consuming himself therein; burying himself in snow; immersing himself in the water at the extremity of Bengal, where the Ganges discharges itself into the sea through a thousand channels, enumerating his sins, and praying till the alligators come and devour him; cutting his throat at Allahabad, at the confluence of the Ganges and Jumna.106 To these might be added drowning at Hurdwar, Allahabad, and Saugor; perishing in the cold of the Himalayas; the practice of dying under the wheels of Juggurnath’s car;107 and the custom of men throwing themselves down from certain rocks to fulfil the vows of their mothers, or to receive forgiveness for sins, or to be re-born rajas in their next state of transmigration.108 It is also common for persons who are afflicted with leprosy or any other incurable disease to bury or drown themselves with due ceremonies, by which they are considered acceptable sacrifices to the deity,109 or to roll themselves into fires with the notion that thus purified they will receive a happy transmigration into a healthy body.110 Suicide was further resorted to by Brâhmans for

the purpose of avenging an injury, as it was believed that the ghost of the deceased would persecute the offender, and, presumably, also because of the great efficacy which was attributed to the curse of a dying Brâhman.111 When one of the Rajput rajas once levied a war-subsidy on the Brâhmans, some of the wealthiest, having expostulated in vain, poniarded themselves in his presence, pouring maledictions on his head with their last breath; and thus cursed, the raja laboured under a ban of excommunication even amongst his personal friends.112 We are told of a Brâhman girl who, having been seduced by a certain raja, burned herself to death, and in dying imprecated the most fearful curses on the raja’s kindred, after which they were visited with such a succession of disasters that they abandoned their family settlement at Baliya, where the woman’s tomb is worshipped to this day.113 Once when a raja ordered the house of a Brâhman to be demolished and resumed the lands which had been conferred upon him, the latter fasted till he died at the palace gate, and became thus a Brahm, or malignant Brâhman ghost, who avenged the injury he had suffered by destroying the raja and his house.114 At Azimghur, in 1835, a Brâhman “threw himself down a well, that his ghost might haunt his neighbour.”115 The same idea undoubtedly underlies the custom of “sitting dharna” which was practised by creditors who sat down before the doors of their debtors threatening to starve themselves to death if their claims were not paid;116 and the sin attached to causing the death of a Brâhman would further

increase the efficacy of the creditor’s threats.117 At the same time religious suicide is said to be a crime in a Brâhman.118 And in the sacred books we read that for him who destroys himself by means of wood, water, clods of earth, stones, weapons, poison, or a rope, no funeral rites shall be performed by his relatives;119 that he who resolves to die by his own hand shall fast for three days; and that he who attempts suicide, but remains alive, shall perform severe penance.120 The Buddhists allow a man under certain circumstances to take his own life, but maintain that generally dire miseries are in store for the self-murderer, and look upon him as one who must have sinned deeply in a former state of existence.121 It should be added that in India, as elsewhere, the souls of those who have killed themselves or met death by any other violent means are regarded as particularly malevolent and troublesome.122

The Old Testament mentions a few cases of suicide.123 In none of them is any censure passed on the perpetrator of the deed, nor is there any text which expressly forbids a man to die by his own hand; and of Ahithophel it is said that he was buried in the sepulchre of his father.124 It seems, however, that according to Jewish custom persons who had killed themselves should be left unburied till sunset,125 perhaps for fear lest the spirit of the deceased otherwise might find its way back to the old home.126 Josephus, who mentions this custom, denounces suicide as an act of cowardice, as a crime most remote from the common nature of all animals, as impiety against the Creator; and he maintains that the souls of those who have thus acted madly against themselves will go to the darkest place in Hades.127 The Talmud considers suicide justifiable, if not meritorious, in the case of the chief of a vanquished army who is sure of disgrace and death at the hands of the exulting conqueror,128 or when a person has reason to fear being forced to renounce his religion.129 In all other circumstances the Rabbis consider it criminal for a person to shorten his own life, even when he is undergoing tortures which must soon end his earthly career;130 and they forbid all marks of mourning for a self-murderer, such as wearing sombre apparel and eulogising him.131 Islam prohibits suicide, as an act which interferes with the decrees of God.132 Muhammedans say that it is a greater sin for a person to kill himself than to kill a fellow-man;133 and, as a matter of fact, suicide is very rare in the