favours or to ward off evils^ are made here to gbosts and liere to gods. When a Kaffir chief kills a bullock that he may thereby get the help in war of a dead ancestor^ we are reminded that ^^ King Agamemnon offered up a fat ox^ of five years old, to the powerful son of Saturn/' • When among the Amazulu, after " an abundant hardest sometimes the head of the village dreams that it is said to him — ^ How is it, when you have been given so much food, that you do not give thanks?''' and when he thereupon sacrifices to the Amatongo (ghosts of the dead), his act differs in no respect from that of offering first-fruits to deities. And when at another time ^' he tells his dream, and says — ' Let a sin-offering be sacrificed, lest the Itongo be angry and kill us;''' we are reminded of sin-offerings made among various peoples to avert divine vengeance. There is a no less complete correspondence between the sacrifices made at fixed periods. As above shown, we find in addition to other oblations to the dead, annual oblations; and these answer to the festivals in honour of deities. More- over, in both cases guidance by astronomical events is used. The parallel holds also in respect of the things offered: they are identical, so far as the products of different regions permit. In both cases we have oxen, goats, etc.; in both cases bread and cakes occur; in both cases the local drink is given — ^wine where it exists, chicha among American races, beer among various African tribes; in both cases, too, we find incense used;. and in both cases flowers. In short, whatever consumable commodities are most valued, down even to tobacco. As we saw above, an African chief expected to get aid by emptying his snuff-box to the gods; and among the Kaffirs, when the spirits -^ are invited to eat, beer and snuff are usually added." Nor is there any difference in the mode of preparation. Both to spirits and to deities we find uncooked offerings aud also burnt offerings. Yet another likeness must be named. Ghosts and gods are supposed to profit. by the 28 i THE DATA Of SOCIOLOGT.
sacrificos in like ways and to be similarly pleased. As given in the Iliadj Zens^ reason for fayonring Troy is tliat ''there my altars never lacked a due banquet and libation and savour/' And in the Odyssey, Athena is represented as coming in person to receive the roasted heifer offered to her, and as rewarding the offerer. So that food for deities and food for ancestors, similarly utilized, has similar effects. Lastly, we have the significant fact that in sundry oases the sacrifices to ghosts and gods coexist in undistinguishable forms. By the Sandwich Islanders provisions are placed before the dead and before images of the deities. Among the Egyptians' " the offerings made to the dead were similar to the ordinary oblations in honour of the gods.*' The mummies were kept in closets, " out of which i^ey were taken by the minor functionaries to a small altar, before which the priest officiated */* and on this altar they made ''offerings of incense and libations, with cakes, flowers, and fruits.''
There is, then, an unbroken connection between refresh- ments placed for the dead and religious offerings at large. The derivation of the last from the first, made sufficiently clear by the traceable gradations, is made still clearer by the maintenance of the same essential traits.
§ 140. There are reasons for suspecting that another religious observance arises incidentally along with the fore- going observances. Little as we should look for such an origin, we meet with facts suggesting that &sting, sa a religious rite, is a sequence of funeral rites. Probably the practice arises in more ways than one. Livoluntary as the going without food often is with the primitive man, and causing as it then does vivid dreams, it becomes a deliber- ately-adopted method of obtaining interviews with the spirits. Among various savage races fasting has now, as it had among the Jews of Talmudic times, this as one of its motives. In other cases it has the allied motive of bring- SACBSD PLACES^ TIMPLSSj AITD ALTARS; ETC. 285 ing on that pretemataral excitement regarded as inspiration.
But besides fastings of these kinds there is the fasting I which results from making excessiye provision for the ^ dead. This^ by implication^ becomes an accepted mark of reverence for the dead; and finally a religions act.
In § 108, it was shown how extensive is in many cases the destruction of property, of cattle, of food, at the tomb. I have cited the fact that, as a consequence, among the Dyaks burial-rites frequently reduce survivors to poverty; and that, on the Gold Coast, '^ a funeral is usually absolute ruin to a poor family.^^ If, as in some extinct , American societies, everything a man had except his land \ went into his grave with him — ^if on the death of a Toda I '^ his entire herd '^ of oxen was sacrificed; the implication is that his widow and children had to sufEer great want. I When, of the Chippewayans, we are told that " no article is spared by these unhappy men when a near relative dies^' — when we learn that among the Bagos a chiefs widows bum all their stores of food at his funeral; we can- not but infer lack of food as a result. And so we find it to be. Bancroft tells us that ''the Indians of the Rocky Mountains bum with the deceased all his effects, and even those of his nearest relatives, so that it not unf requently happens that a family is reduced to absolute starvation ^^; and of the Bagos above named, Cailli6 says '' the family of the deceased, who are ruined by this act of superstition [burning his property], are supported through the next harvest by the inhabitants of the village." " Now when along with these facts, so obviously related as cause and consequence, we join the fact stated by Cruikshank, that the Gold Coast people, to their other mourning observances add fasting; as well as the fact concerning the Dahomans which Burton gives, that ''the weeping relatives must fast"; we can scarcely avoid the conclusion that what is at first a natural result of great sacrifice to the dead, becomes even- tually a usage signifying such sacri6ce; and continues as 286 THB DATA OV SOCIOLOGT.
a usage when no longer made needful by impoverislunent. We shall see the more reason for concluding this on finding that fasting was a funeral rite among extinct peoples whose attentions to the dead were elaborate. According to Landa^ the Yucatanese '^ fasted for the sake of the dead"^^; and the like happened among the Egyptians: during the mourning for a king ^' a solemn fast was established/^ Even among the Hebrews fasting was associated with mourning dresses.
This connection of practices and ideas is strengthened by the like connection consequent on daily offerings to the dead. The habit of throwing aside a portion of each meal for the spirits^ must often associate in thought sacrificing with fasting. Short of food^ as the improyident savage frequently is^ the giving a part of his meal to the ancestral ghosts^ diminishing the little he has^ entails hunger; and voluntarily -borne hunger thus becomes a vividly impressed sjmDibol of duty to the dead. How it thence passes into the notion of duty to the gods, is well shown by the Polynesian legend concerning Maui and his brothers. Having had a great success in fishing, Maui says to them — '^ After I am gone, be courageous and patient; do not eat food until I return, and do not let our fish be cut up, but rather leave it until I have carried an offering to the gods for this great haul of fish. * * * I y^iW then return, and we can* cut up this fish in safety.^' And the story goes on to describe the catastrophe resulting from the anger of the gods, because the brothers proceeded to eat before the offering had been made.
Naturally the fasting arising in this manner, and giving occasions for self-discipline, comes to be used for self -disci- pline after the original purpose is forgotten. There still clings to it, however, the notion that the approval of a super- natural power is gained; and the clinging of this notion supports the inference which we otherwise find probable.
§ 141. Beturning from this incidental result, introduced BACBED PLACES, TEMPLES, AND ALTARS; ETC. 287 parenthetically, and resuming our study of the way in which the offerings at burials develop into religious offerings, we come next to observances scarcely separable from those de- scribed above, but which yet may be conveniently grouped by themselves, I refer to propitiations in which human beings are sacrificed to the dead, and in which those who do not sacrifice themselves, sacrifice parts of themselves.
We have seen that for the immolation of human victims at funerals, there are two motives: one of them being the supply of food for the deM; and the other being the supply of attendants for service in the future life* We will glance at the two in this order. Bemembering how prevalent cannibalism is among primitive men, and remem- bering that a man^s other-self is supposed still to like the food he liked before death, we shall see that among canni- bals the offering of human flesh to the dead as a propitia- tion, is inevitable. Those ferocious anthropophagi the Fijians, who have victims buried with them, and whose apotheosized chiefs join other gods to whom "human flesh is still the most valued offering ''; show us the entire series of sequences — cannibalism during life, cannibal ghosts, cannibal deities, and human sacrifices made as religious rites. So, too, was it with the ancient Mexicans. The man-eating habits of their ruling race, were accompanied by slayings of slaves, etc., at burials, as well as by slayings of prisoners before their gods; and though the immolations at graves were not, during their later times, avowedly food-offerings, yet we may suspect that they were so in earlier times, on seeing how literally a victim immolated to the god was made a food- offering — the heart being torn out, put into the mouth of the idol, and its lips anointed with the blood. When, too, Piedrahita tells us of the Chibchas that they offered men to the Spaniards as food; and when Acosta, remarking that the Chibchas were not themselves cannibals, asks '^ can they have believed that the Spaniards, as sons of the Sun (as they were styled by them), must take delight in the bar* barons holocausts they offered to that star '' 7 we may sxis* pect that their immolations at funerals, like their immola- tions to the Sun, were the remains of an extinct cannibalism. Having before us such facts as that some Khonds believe the god eats the human being killed for him; that the Tahitians thought their gods fed on the spirits of the dead, and therefore provided them with such spirits by fre- quent slaughterings; and that the Tongans made offerings of children to their gods, who were deified chiefs; we can- not doubt that human sacrifices at graves had originally the purpose of supplying human flesh, along with other food, for the soul of the deceased; and that the sacrificing of human beings as a religious rite was a sequence. The like holds of slaying men as attendants. Already we have seen (§ 104) how conmion, in uncivilized and semi- civilized societies, is the killing of prisoners, and slaves, and wives, and friends, to follow the departed; and in some cases there is a repetition of the observance. Among the Mexicans additional slaves were slain on the fifth day after the burial, on the twentieth, on the fortieth, on the sixtieth, and on the eightieth days. In Dahomy there are frequent beheadings that the victims, going to the other world to serve the dead king, may carry messages from his living descendant. Human sacrifices thus repeated to propitiate the ghosts of the dead, evidently pass without break into the periodic human sacrifices that have commonly been elements in primitive religions.
In § 89 were brought together, from peoples in all parts of the world, examples of blood-offerings to the dead. Meaningless sa such offerings otherwise are, they have meaning as made by primitive cannibals. That any men, in common with most ferocious brutes, should delight in drinking blood — especially the blood of their own species — is almost incredible to us. But on reading that in Australia, human fiesh "is eaten raw'' by /^the blood-revengers''; that the Fijian chief Tanoa, cut off a cousin's arm, drank the SACSED PLACES, TEMPLBS, AND ALTARS; ETC. 289 blood, cooked tlie arm, and ate it in presence of the owner; that the cannibal Yateans will exhnme, cook, and eat, bodies that have been buried even more than three days; that among the Ebidahs of the Pacific States^ the taamish, or inspired medicine-man, '^ springs on the first person he meets, bites out and swallows one or more mouthf uls of the man's living flesh wherever he can fix his teeth, then rushes to another and another *'; and that among the neighbour- ing Nootkas the medicine-man, instead of doing this, ^* is satisfied with what his teeth can tear from the corpses in the burial-places ''; we see that horrors beyond our imaginations of possibility are committed by primitive men, and, among them, the drinking of warm human blood. We may infer, indeed, that the vampyre-legends of European folk-lore, probably grew out of such facts concerning primitive can- nibals: the original vampyre being the supposed other-self of a ferocious savage, still seeking to satisfy his blood- sucking propensities. And we shall not doubt that those blood-offerings to the dead described in § 89, were origin- ally, as Burton says they are now in Dahomy, " drink for the deceased.'' Indeed, as there is no greater difference between drinking animal-blood and drinking human blood, than there is between eating animal-flesh and eating human flesh, hesitation disappears on reading that even now, the Gamoyedes delight in the warm blood of animals, and on remembering that XTlysses describes the ghosts in the Greek Hades as flocking to drink the sacrificial blood he provides for them, and as being refreshed by it. If, then, blood shed at a funeral was at first meant for the refreshment of the ghost — ^if when shed on subsequent occasions, as by the sanguinary Dahomans to get the aid of a dead king's ghost in war, it became a blood-offering to a supernatural being for special propitiation; it cannot be doubted that the offering of human blood to a deity with a like motive, is but a further development of the practice. The case of the Mexicans is typical. Their ruling races descended from u 290 THE DAI A OF BOClOUiQY.
conquering cannibals; they had cannibal-gods whose idols were fed with human hearts; the priests^ when there had not been recent sacrifices^ reminded the kings that the idols "were starving with hunger/' war was made^ to take prisoners, " because their gods demanded something to eat; '' and thousands were for this reason sacrificed annually. When we add the facts that the blood of victims was sepa- rately offered; that " the Indians gave the idols, to drink, their own blood, drawn from their ears ''; " that the priests and digfuified persons also drew blood from their legs and daubed the temples ''; and that "the effusion of blood was frequent and daily with some of the priests ''; we shall see an obvious filiation. Even in the records of ancient Eastern nations we find blood-offerings common to the two sets of rites. That self-bleedings at funerals occurred among the Hebrews, if not indigenously then by adoption from their neighbours, is proved by the fact that in Deuteronomy they are forbidden to cut themselves for the dead. And that self -bleeding was a religious ceremony among their neighbours, is proved by the fact that in pro- pitiation of their god the prophets of Baal cut themselves "'till the blood gushed out of them.''
The only question is how &r this kind of propitiatory offering has passed into the kind we have now to glance at — the sacrificing a part of the body as a mark of subordi- nation. In § 89 were given many cases of mutilation as a funeral rite, and they might readily be multiplied. Among the Nateotetains of North America, a woman " cuts off one joint of a finger upon the death of a near relative. In con- sequence of this practice, some old women may be seen with two joints off every finger on both hands." On the death of a Salish chief, it is the custom for the bravest woman and the man who is to be the succeeding chief, to cut off portions of one another's flesh, and throw them into the fire along with meat and a root. Paralleling these funeral mutilations, we elsewhere in America find mutilations as religions obaerrances. Some of the Mexicans practised circnmcision (or something like it), and mntilations mnch more serions than circnmcision, in propitiation of their deities. The Gnancavilcas, a Perayian race, pnlled out three teeth from each jaw of their young children, which they thought *^ very acceptable to their gods '*; while, as we before saw, knocking out one of the front teeth is a rite at the funeral of a chief in the Sandwich Islands.
Yet a further mutilation is common to the two classes of observances. Proofs that at funerals the cutting-off of hair is habitual among savages, have been given in abundance; and it occurs also as a religious sacrifice. In the Sand- wich Islands, on the occasion of the volcanic eruption of 1799, when, to appease the gods, many offerings were made in vain, we are told that at length the king Tamehameha cut off part of his own hair, which was considered sacred^ and threw it into the torrent, as the most valuable offering. Daily by the Peruvians, hair was given as an act of wor- ship. " In making an offering they pulled a hair out of their eyebrows,'' says Garcilasso; and Jos. d'Acosta simi- larly describes the presentation of eyelashes or eyebrows to the deities. Even among the Greeks we trace a kindred observance: on a marriage the bride sacrificed a lock of her hair to Aphrodite.
Alike, then, in the immolation of human victims, in the offering of blood that flows from the living as well as the dying, in the offering of portions of the body, and even in the offering of hair, we see that funeral rites are paralleled by religious rites.* § 142. Is there no further way in which the good will of these invisible beings may be secured f If savages in general * Ab it win be at leait lotne yean before I come to the diyision of tbia work treating of Ceremonial Goremment, I may as well here briefly indicate the oondnsion concerning bodily mntilations in general, which mnltitndiuons fiicts onite in supporting. All mntilations begin with the taking of trophies 292 THE DATA OF SOCIOLOOT.
tbink^ as the Aleutian Islanders do^ that the shades of the departed must be propitiated '^ as being able to give good and evil/' will they not ask this question and find an affirma- tive answer? When alive their relatives were pleased hj « applause; and now that^ though invisible^ they are wandering about, often within hearing, praise will still be pleasing to them. Hence another group of observances.
In his Native Bdces of the Pacific States, Bancroft quotes from an eyewitness the account of a funeral in which a man, carrying on his back the corpse of his wife to the burial cave, expresses his sense of loss by chanting her various virtues; and is followed by others of the tribe repeating his utterances. This practice, which is in large measure the natural expression of bereavement, is a prevalent practice into which there enters also the idea of propitiation. Of the Tupis, Southey tells us that at a funeral feast, " songs were sung in praise of the dead.*' Among the Lower Califomians, one of the honours paid to the departed is that " a quama, or priest, sings his praises "; and among the Ghippewas such praises are made permanent by placing in war — trophies carried home by conquerors to prove their prowess. When the conquered man is slain, and either left behind or devoured, the trophy is of course taken without regard to the destructiveness of the mutilation;, but when the conquered man is made a slave, the taking of a trophy must neither kill him nor seriously diminish his usefiilness. Mutilations of captives, thus at first incident on the taking of trophies, necessarily imply marks borne by the subjugated — signs of subordination. At first distinctive of those taken in war, such marks become signs of subordination in subjected tribes, and in those who are bom slaves. Having been established as badges of sub- mission to a conqueror, and as badges of class-submission, they come into use as badges of submission to the dead, voluntarily inflicted to propitiate their ghosts: first only the ghost of ferocious departed chiefs, who were greatly feared, and thence spreading downwards, as all ceremonial observances do. In the end they become politico-ecclesiastical rites, carrying with them vague notions of submission and sacredness, after their special meanings are lost. And as happens in cases furnished by civiliased lif e^ these marks of subordina- tion often grow into sources of pride, and acquire a decorative character.
Ghishes are so made as to produce admired arrangements of scars, and tatooiug develops into ornamental patterns.
SACEED PLACES^ TEMPLES^ AND ALTARS; ETC. 293 afc the grave a post bearing '^ devices denoting tlie ntimber of times lie has been in battle^ and the number of scalps lie has taken'': mach as, among ourselves, praises are made permanent by inscriptions on tombstones. By partially- civilized American peoples, funeral laudations were much more elaborated. Palacio tells us that in San Salvador " they chanted the lineage and deeds of the dead '' for four days and nights; and we learn from P. Simon, tl^at the Ghibchas ^' sang dirges and the great achievements of the deceased.'' So, too, in describing Peruvian obsequies, Gieza says they traverse the village " declaring in their songs, the deeds of the dead chief." Like observances occur in Polynesia. Ellis states that on the occasion of a death in Tahiti, there were ''elegiac ballads, prepared by the bards, and recited for the consolation of the family." We trace the same practice in Africa. According to CailliS, the Mandingoes, at a burial, deliver a eulogium on the departed; and by the great historic race in Africa, the like usage was developed in a degree proportionate to the elaboration of their social life. Not only did the Egyptians sing commemorative hymns on the occasion of a king's death, but kindred praises were general at deaths. There were hired mourners to enumerate the deceased's virtues; and when an ancient Egyptian of rank was deposited in his tomb, the priest read from a papyrus an account of his good deeds, and the multitude joined in praising him — ^uttered something like responses.
In many cases eulogies do not end with the funeral. Heriot remarks of the Brazilian Indians, that they " sing in honour of their dead as often as they pass near their graves," So, too, we read in Bancroft that ''for a long time after a death, relatives repair daily at sunrise and sunset to the vicinity of the grave to sing songs of mourning and praise." Garcilasso tells us that in Peru, for a month after death, "they loudly shouted out the deeds of the late Ynca in war, and the good he had done to the provinces, * * * After the first month they did the same every fortnight, at each phase of the moon, and this went on the whole year/' and P^scott says that '^ bards and minstrels were appointed to chronicle his achievements^ and their songs continued to be rehearsed at high festivals/' The motive parallels the religions motive. By the Amaznln these praises of the dead are repeated for the avowed par- pose of gaining favours or escaping punishments. Answer- ing the reproaches of his brother's angry ghost, a Zulu says — " I do call on you, and laud you by your laud-giving names." Again, " if there is illness in the village, the eldest son lauds him [the father] with the laud-giving names which he gained when fighting with the enemy, and at the same time lauds all the other Amatongo " [ancestral ghosts]. Further, there is an ascribed love of praise. After a good harvest, for which the people suppose themselves indebted to the spirits, the chief of the village is prompted to an act of worship by dreaming that a spirit 49ays to him — '' How is it, when you have been given so much food, that you do not give thanks?" And then we have also proof that in their desire for praise, these ancestral ghosts are jealous ghosts. Canon Callaway shows us that when, by a diviner, it has been determined which ancestral ghost has inflicted disease, this ghost is singled out for eulogy. Here is the statement of a Zulu named Umpengula Mbanda: —