Below the clients came the plebeians, whose position, as M. Fustel de Coulanges himself points out, corresponded very closely to that of the Sūdras. The plebeians had no religion and no ancestors; they did not belong to a family or a gens.192 They were a despised and abject class, who lived like beasts outside the proper boundary of the city. The touch of the plebeian was impure.193 “When tribunes were created a special law was necessary to protect their life and liberty, and it was promulgated as follows: ‘It is forbidden to strike or kill a tribune, as if he was an ordinary plebeian.’ It would appear then that a patrician had the right to strike or kill an ordinary plebeian, or at least that he was amenable to no legal punishment for doing so.”194 Similarly in the ancient Greek cities the citizens were known as ἀγαθοί or good, and the plebeians as κακοί or bad. This latter class is described by the poet Theognis as having had aforetime neither tribunals nor laws; they were not allowed even to enter the town, but lived outside like wild beasts. They had no part in the religious feasts and could not intermarry with the proper citizens.195
This position corresponds exactly with that of the Sūdras and the existing impure castes, who have to live outside the village and cannot enter or even approach Hindu temples.
M. de Coulanges considers that the plebeians were to a large extent made up of conquered and subjected peoples. An asylum was also established at Rome for broken men and outlaws from other cities, with a view to increasing the population and strength of the state. Subsequently the class of clients became absorbed among the plebeians.
Thus the gradation of society in the city-states of Greece and Italy, the account given above being typical of them all, is seen to correspond fairly closely with that of the Hindus, as exemplified in the Hindu classics and the microcosm of Hindu society, the village community. It is desirable, therefore, to inquire what was the tie which united the members of the gens, the curia or phratry, and the city, and which distinguished the patricians from the plebeians. On this point M. Fustel de Coulanges leaves us in no doubt at all. The bond of union among all these bodies was a common sacrifice or sacrificial meal, at which all the members had to be present. “The principal ceremony of the religion of the household was a meal, which was called a sacrifice. To eat a meal prepared on an altar was, according to all appearance, the first form of religious worship.”196 “The principal ceremony of the religion of the city was also a public feast; it had to be partaken of communally by all the citizens in honour of the tutelary deities. The custom of holding these public feasts was universal in Greece; and it was believed that the safety of the city depended on their accomplishment.”197 M. de Coulanges quotes from the Odyssey an account of one of these sacred feasts at which nine long tables were set out for the people of Pylos; five hundred citizens were seated and nine bulls were slaughtered for each table. When Orestes arrived at Athens after the murder of his mother, he found the people, assembled round their king, about to hold the sacred feast. Similar feasts were held and numerous victims were slaughtered in Xenophon’s time.198 At these meals the guests were crowned with garlands and the vessels were of a special form and material, such as copper or earthenware, no doubt dating from the antique past.199 As regards the importance and necessity of being present at the Gentile sacrificial feast, the same author states: “The Capitol was blockaded by the Gauls; but Fabius left it and passed through the hostile lines, clad in religious garb, and carrying in his hand the sacred objects; he was going to offer a sacrifice on the altar of his gens which was situated on the Quirinal. In the second Punic war another Fabius, he who was called the buckler of Rome, was holding Hannibal in check; it was assuredly of the greatest importance to the Republic that he should not leave his army; he left it, however, in the hands of the imprudent Minucius; it was because the anniversary day of the sacrifice of his gens had come and it was necessary that he should hasten to Rome to perform the sacred rite.” In Greece the members of the gens were known by the fact that they performed communal sacrifices together from a remote period.200 As already seen, a communal sacrifice meant the eating together of the sacred food, whether the flesh of a victim or grain.
The Roman city sacrifice of the Suovetaurilia, as described by M. de Coulanges, is of the greatest interest. The magistrate whose duty it was to accomplish it, that is in the first place the king, after him the consul, and after him the censor, had first to take the auspices and ascertain that the gods were favourable. Then he summoned the people through a herald by a consecrated form of words. On the appointed day all the citizens assembled outside the walls; and while they stood silent the magistrate proceeded three times round the assembly, driving before him three victims—a pig, a ram and a bull. The combination of these three victims constituted with the Greeks as well as the Romans an expiatory sacrifice. Priests and attendants followed the procession: when the third round had been accomplished, the magistrate pronounced a prayer and slaughtered the victims. From this moment all sins were expiated, and neglect of religious duties effaced, and the city was at peace with its gods.
There were two essential features of this ceremony: the first, that no stranger should be present at it; and the second, that no citizen should be absent from it. In the latter case the whole city might not have been freed from impurity. The Suovetaurilia was therefore preceded by a census, which was conducted with the greatest care both at Rome and Athens. The citizen who was not enrolled and was not present at the sacrifice could no longer be a member of the city. He could be beaten and sold as a slave, this rule being relaxed only in the last two centuries of the Republic. Only male citizens were present at the sacrifice, but they gave a list of their families and belongings to the censor, and these were considered to be purified through the head of the family.201
This sacrifice was called a lustratio or purification, and in the historical period was considered to be expiatory. But it does not seem probable that this was its original significance. For there would not in that case have been the paramount necessity for every citizen to be present. All females and children under power were purified through the list given to the censor, and there seems no reason why absent citizens could not have been purified in the same manner. But participation in this sacrifice was itself the very test and essence of citizenship. And it has been seen that a public meal was the principal religious rite of the city. The conclusion therefore seems reasonable that the Suovetaurilia was originally also a sacrificial meal of which each citizen partook, and that the eating of the deified domestic animals in common was the essence of the rite and the act which conferred the privilege of citizenship. The driving of the sacrificial animals round the citizens three times might well be a substitute for the previous communal meal, if for any reason, such as the large number of citizens, the practice of eating them had fallen into abeyance. The original ground for the taking of a census was to ensure that all the citizens were present at the communal sacrifice; and it was by the place which a man occupied on this day that his rank in the city was determined till the next sacrifice. If the censor counted him among the senators, he remained a senator; if among the equites, he remained a knight; if as a simple member of a tribe, he belonged henceforward to the tribe in which he was counted. If the censor refused to enumerate him, he was no longer a citizen.202 Such was the vital importance of the act of participation in the sacrifice.
The Roman sacrifice of the Suovetaurilia was in no way peculiar, similar rites being found in other Greek and Latin cities. Some instances are recorded in the article on Kasai, and in Themis203 Miss Jane Harrison gives an account of a sacrifice at Magnesia in which a bull, ram and he- and she-goats were sacrificed to the gods and partaken of communally by the citizens. As already seen, the act of participation in the sacrifice conferred the status of citizenship. The domestic animals were not as a rule eaten, but their milk was drunk, and they were used for transport, and clothes were perhaps sometimes made from their hair and skins. Hence they were the principal source of life of the tribe, as the totem had been of the clan, and were venerated and deified. One common life was held to run through all the members of the tribe and all the domestic animals of the species which was its principal means of support. In the totem or hunting stage the clan had necessarily been small, because a large collection of persons could not subsist together by hunting and the consumption of roots and fruits. When an additional means of support was afforded by the domestication of an important animal, a much larger number of persons could live together, and apparently several clans became amalgamated into a tribe. The sanctity of the domestic animals was much greater than that of the totem because they lived with man and partook of his food, which was the strongest tie of kinship; and since he still endowed them with self-consciousness and volition, he thought they had come voluntarily to aid him in sustaining life. Both on this account and for fear of injuring the common life they were not usually killed. But it was necessary to primitive man that the tie should take a concrete form and that he should actually assimilate the life of the sacred animal by eating its flesh, and this was accordingly done at a ceremonial sacrifice, which was held annually, and often in the spring, the season of the renewal and increase of life. Since this renewal of the communal life was the concrete tie which bound the tribe together, any one who was absent from it could no longer be a member of the tribe. The whole of this rite and the intense importance attached to it are inexplicable except on the supposition that the tie which had originally constituted the totem-clan was the eating of the totem-animal, and that this tie was perpetuated in the tribe by the communal eating of the domestic animal. The communal sacrifice of the domestic animal was, as already seen, typical of society in the tribal or pastoral stage. But one very important case, in addition to those given above and in the article on Kasai, remains for notice. The Id-ul-Zoha or Bakr-Id festival of the Muhammadans is such a rite. In pre-Islamic times this sacrifice was held at Mecca and all the Arab tribes went to Mecca to celebrate it. The month in which the sacrifice was held was one of those of truce, when the feuds between the different clans were in abeyance so that they could meet at Mecca. Muhammad continued the sacrifice of the Id-ul-Zoha and it is this sacrifice which a good Muhammadan takes the pilgrimage to Mecca to perform. He must be at Mecca on the tenth day of the month of Z’ul Hijjah and perform the sacrifice there, and unless he does this there is no special merit in making the journey to Mecca. It is incumbent on every Muhammadan who can afford it to make the pilgrimage to Mecca or the Hajj once in his life and perform the sacrifice there; and though as a matter of fact only a very small minority of Muhammadans now carry out the rule, the pilgrimage and sacrifice may yet be looked upon as the central and principal rite of the Muhammadan religion. All Muhammadans who cannot go to Mecca nevertheless celebrate the sacrifice at home at the Indian festival of the Id-ul-Zoha and the Turkish and Egyptian Idu-Bairām. At the Id-ul-Zoha any one of four domestic animals, the camel, the cow, the sheep or the goat, may be sacrificed; and this rule makes it a connecting link between the two great Semitic sacrifices described in the article on Kasai, the camel sacrifice of the Arabs in pre-Islamic times and the Passover of the Jews. At the present time one-third of the flesh of the sacrificial animal should be given to the poor, one-third to relations, and the remainder to the sacrificer’s own family.204 Though it has now become a household sacrifice, the communal character thus still partly survives.
Both in Athens and Rome there was a division known as phratry or curia. This apparently consisted of a collection of gentes, γένη, or clans, and would correspond roughly to a Hindu subcaste. The evidence does not show, however, that it was endogamous. The bond which united the phratry or curia was precisely the same as that of the gens or clan and the city. It consisted also in a common meal, which was prepared on the altar, and was eaten with the recitation of prayers, a part being offered to the god, who was held to be present. At Athens on feast-days the members of the phratry assembled round their altar. A victim was sacrificed and its flesh cooked on the altar, and divided among the members of the phratry, great care being taken that no stranger should be present. A young Athenian was presented to the phratry by his father, who swore that the boy was his son. A victim was sacrificed and cooked on the altar in the presence of all the members of the phratry; if they were doubtful of the boy’s legitimacy, and hence wished to refuse him admittance, as they had the right to do, they refused to remove the flesh from the altar. If they did not do this, but divided and partook of the flesh with the candidate, he was finally and irrevocably admitted to the phratry. The explanation of this custom, M. de Coulanges states, is that food prepared on an altar and eaten by a number of persons together, was believed to establish between them a sacred tie which endured through life.205 Even a slave was to a certain degree admitted into the family by the same tie of common eating of food. At Athens he was made to approach the hearth; he was purified by pouring water on his head, and ate some cakes and fruit with the members of the family. This ceremony was analogous to those of marriage and adoption. It signified that the new arrival, hitherto a stranger, was henceforth a member of the family and participated in the family worship.206
The analogy of Greece and Rome would suggest the probability that the tie uniting the members of the Indian caste or subcaste is also participation in a common sacrificial meal, and there is a considerable amount of evidence to support this view. The Confarreatio or eating together of the bride and bridegroom finds a close parallel in the family sacrament of the Meher or marriage cakes, which has already been described. This would appear formerly to have been a clan rite, and to have marked the admission of the bride to the bridegroom’s clan. It is obligatory on relations of the families to attend a wedding and they proceed from great distances to do so, and clerks and other officials are much aggrieved if the exigencies of Government business prevent them from obtaining leave. The obligation seems to be of the same character as that which caused Fabius to leave the army in order to attend his Gentile sacrifice at Rome. If he did not attend the Gentile sacrifice he was not a member of the gens, and if a Hindu did not attend the feast of his clan in past times perhaps he did not remain a member of the clan. Among the Marātha Brāhmans the girl-bride eats with her husband’s relations on this day only to mark her admission into their clan, and among the Bengali Brāhmans, when the wedding guests are collected, the bride comes and puts a little sugar on each of their leaf-plates, which they eat in token of their recognition of her in her new status of married woman. The members of the caste or subcaste also assemble and eat together on three occasions: at a marriage, which will have the effect of bringing new life into the community; at a death, when a life is lost; and at the initiation of a new member or the readmission of an offender temporarily put out of caste. It is a general rule of the caste feasts that all members of the subcaste in the locality must be invited, and if any considerable number of them do not attend, the host’s position in the community is impugned. For this reason he has to incur lavish expenditure on the feast, so as to avoid criticism or dissatisfaction among his guests. These consider themselves at liberty to comment freely on the character and quality of the provisions offered to them. In most castes the feast cannot begin until all the guests have assembled; the Maheshri Banias and one or two other castes are distinguished by the fact that they allow the guests at the pangat or caste feast to begin eating as they arrive. Those who bear the host a grudge purposely stay away, and he has to run to their houses and beg them to come, so that his feast can begin. When the feast has begun it was formerly considered a great calamity if any accident should necessitate the rising of the guests before its conclusion. Even if a dog or other impure animal should enter the assembly they would not rise. The explanation of this rule was that it would be disrespectful to Um Deo, the food-god, to interrupt the feast. At the feast each man sits with his bare crossed knees actually touching those of the men on each side of him, to show that they are one brotherhood and one body. If a man sat even a few inches apart from his fellows, people would say he was out of caste; and in recent times, since those out of caste have been allowed to attend the feasts, they sit a little apart in this manner. The Gowāris fine a man who uses abusive language to a fellow-casteman at a caste feast, and also one who gets up and leaves the feast without the permission of the caste headman. The Hatkars have as the names of two exogamous groups Wakmār, or one who left the Pangat or caste feast while his fellows were eating; and Polya, or one who did not take off his turban at the feast. It has been seen also207 that in one or two castes the exogamous sections are named after the offices which their members hold or the duties they perform at the caste feast. Among the Halbas the illegitimate subcaste Surāit is also known as Chhoti Pangat or the inferior feast, with the implication that its members cannot be admitted to the proper feast of the caste, but have an inferior one of their own.
When an outsider is admitted to the caste the rite is usually connected with food. A man who is to be admitted to the Dahāit caste must clean his house, break his earthen cooking-vessels and buy new ones, and give a feast to the caste-fellows in his house. He sits and takes food with them, and when the meal is over he takes a grain of rice from the leaf-plate of each guest and eats it, and drinks a drop of water from his leaf-cup. After this he cannot be readmitted to his own caste. A new Mehtar or sweeper gives water to and takes bread from each casteman. In Mandla a new convert to the Panka caste vacates his house and the caste panchāyat or committee go and live in it, in order to purify it. He gives them a feast inside the house, while he himself stays outside. Finally he is permitted to eat with the panchāyat in his own house in order to mark his admission into the caste. A candidate for admission in the Mahli caste has to eat a little of the leavings of the food of each of the castemen at a feast. The community of robbers known as Badhak or Baoria formerly dwelt in the Oudh forests. They were accustomed to take omens from the cry of the jackal, and they may probably have venerated it as representing the spirit of the forest and as a fellow-hunter. They were called jackal-eaters, and it was said that when an outsider was admitted to one of their bands he was given jackal’s flesh to eat.
Again, the rite of initiation or investiture with the sacred thread appears to be the occasion of the admission of a boy to the caste community. Before this he is not really a member of the caste and may eat any kind of food. The initiation is called by the Brāhmans the second birth, and appears to be the birth of the soul or spirit. After it the boy will eat the sacrificial food at the caste feasts and be united with the members of the caste and their god. The bodies of children who have not been initiated are buried and not burnt. The reason seems to be that their spirits will not go to the god nor be united with the ancestors, but will be born again. Formerly such children were often buried in the house or courtyard so that their spirits might be born again in the same family. The lower castes sometimes consider the rite of ear-piercing as the initiation and sometimes marriage. Among the Panwār Rājpūts a child is initiated when about two years old by being given cooked rice and milk to eat. The initiation cannot for some reason be performed by the natural father, but must be done by a guru or spiritual father, who should thereafter be regarded with a reverence equal to or even exceeding that paid to the natural father.
When a man is readmitted to caste after exclusion for some offence, the principal feature of the rite is a feast at which he is again permitted to eat with his fellows. There are commonly two feasts, one known as the Maili Roti or impure meal, and the other as Chokhi or pure, both being at the cost of the offender. The former is eaten by the side of a stream or elsewhere on neutral ground, and by it the offender is considered to be partly purified; the latter is in his own house, and by eating there the castemen demonstrate that no impurity attaches to him, and he is again a full member. Some castes, as the Dhobas, have three feasts: the first is eaten at the bank of a stream, and at this the offender’s hair is shaved and thrown into the stream; the second is in his yard; and the third in his house. The offender is not allowed to partake of the first two meals himself, but he joins in the third, and before it begins the head of the panchāyat gives him water to drink in which gold has been dipped as a purificatory rite. Among the Gonds the flesh of goats is provided at the first meal, but at the second only grain cooked with water, which they now, in imitation of the Hindus, consider as the sacred sacrificial food. Frequently the view obtains that the head of the caste panchāyat takes the offender’s sins upon himself by commencing to eat, and in return for this a present of some rupees is deposited beneath his plate. Similarly among some castes, as the Bahnas, exclusion from caste is known as the stopping of food and water. The Gowāris readmit offenders by the joint drinking of opium and water. One member is especially charged with the preparation of this, and if there should not be enough for all the castemen to partake of it, he is severely punished. Opium was also considered sacred by the Rājpūts, and the chief and his kinsmen were accustomed to drink it together as a pledge of amity.208
Grain cooked with water is considered as sacred food by the Hindus. It should be eaten only on a space within the house called chauka purified with cowdung, and sometimes marked out with white quartz-powder or flour. Before taking his meal a member of the higher castes should bathe and worship the household gods. At the meal he should wear no sewn clothes, but only a waist-cloth made of silk or wool, and not of cotton. The lower castes will take food cooked with water outside the house in the fields, and are looked down upon for doing this, so that those who aspire to raise their social position abandon the practice, or at least pretend to do so. Sir J.G. Frazer quotes a passage showing that the ancient Brāhmans considered the sacrificial rice-cakes cooked with water to be transformed into human bodies.209 The Urdu word bali means a sacrifice or offering, and is applied to the portion of the daily meal which is offered to the gods and to the hearth-fire. Thus all grain cooked with water is apparently looked upon as sacred or sacramental food, and it is for this reason that it can only be eaten after the purificatory rites already described. The grain is venerated as the chief means of subsistence, and the communal eating of it seems to be analogous to the sacrificial eating of the domestic animals, such as the camel, horse, ox and sheep, which is described above and in the article on Kasai. Just as in the hunting stage the eating of the totem-animal, which furnished the chief means of subsistence, was the tie which united the totem-clan: and in the pastoral stage the domestic animal which afforded to the tribe its principal support, not usually as an article of food, but through its milk and its use as a means of transport, was yet eaten sacrificially owing to the persistence of the belief that the essential bond which united the tribe was the communal eating of the flesh of the animal from which the tribe obtained its subsistence: so when the community reaches the agricultural stage the old communal feast is retained as the bond of union, but it now consists of grain, which is the principal support of life.
The totem-animal was regarded as a kinsman, and the domestic animal often as a god.210 But in both these cases the life of the kinsman and god was sacrificed in order that the community might be bound together by eating the body and assimilating the life. Consequently, when grain came to be the sacrificial food, it was often held that an animal or human being must be sacrificed in the character of the corn-god or spirit, whether his own flesh was eaten or the sacred grain was imagined to be his flesh. Numerous instances of the sacrifice of the corn-spirit have been adduced by Sir J.G. Frazer in The Golden Bough, and it was he who brought this custom prominently to notice. One of the most important cases in India was the Meriah-sacrifice of the Khonds, which is described in the article on that tribe.
Two features of the Khond sacrifice of a human victim as a corn-spirit appear to indicate its derivation from the sacrifice of the domestic animal and the eating of the totem-animal, the ties uniting the clan and tribe: first, that the flesh was cut from the living victim, and, second, that the sacrifice was communal. When the Meriah-victim was bound the Khonds hacked at him with their knives while life remained, leaving only the head and bowels untouched, so that each man might secure a strip of flesh. This rite appears to recall the earliest period when the members of the primitive group or clan tore their prey to pieces and ate and drank the raw flesh and blood. The reason for its survival was apparently that it was the actual life of the divine victim, existing in concrete form in the flesh and blood which they desired to obtain, and they thought that this end was more certainly achieved by cutting the flesh off him while he was still alive. In the sacrifice of the camel in Arabia the same procedure was followed; the camel was bound on an altar and the tribesmen cut the flesh from the body with their knives and swallowed it raw and bleeding.211 M. Salomon Reinach shows how the memory of similar sacrifices in Greece has been preserved in legend:212 “Actaeon was really a great stag sacrificed by women devotees, who called themselves the great hind and the little hinds; he became the rash hunter who surprised Artemis at her bath and was transformed into a stag and devoured by his own dogs. The dogs are a euphemism; in the early legend they were the human devotees of the sacred stag who tore him to pieces and devoured him with their bare teeth. These feasts of raw flesh survived in the secret religious cults of Greece long after uncooked food had ceased to be consumed in ordinary life. Orpheus (ophreus, the haughty), who appears in art with the skin of a fox on his head, was originally a sacred fox devoured by the women of the fox totem-clan; these women call themselves Bassarides in the legend, and bassareus is one of the old names of the fox. Hippolytus in the fable is the son of Theseus who repels the advances of Phaedra, his stepmother, and was killed by his runaway horses because Theseus, deceived by Phaedra, invoked the anger of a god upon him. But Hippolytus in Greek means ‘one torn to pieces by horses.’ Hippolytus is himself a horse whom the worshippers of the horse, calling themselves horses and disguised as such, tore to pieces and devoured.” All such sacrifices in which the flesh was taken from the living victim may thus perhaps be derived from the common origin of totemism. The second point about the Khond sacrifice is that it was communal; every householder desired a piece of the flesh, and for those who could not be present at the sacrifice relays of messengers were posted to carry it to them while it was still fresh and might be supposed to retain the life. They did not eat the strips of flesh, but each householder buried his piece in his field, which they believed would thereby be fertilised and caused to produce the grain which they would eat. The death of the victim was considered essential to the life of the tribe, which would be renewed and strengthened by it as in the case of the sacrifice of the domestic animal. Lord Avebury gives in The Origin of Civilisation213 an almost exact parallel to the Khond sacrifice in which the flesh of the victim actually was eaten. This occurred among the Marimos, a tribe of South Africa much resembling the Bechuanas. The ceremony was called ‘the boiling of the corn.’ A young man, stout but of small stature, was usually selected and secured by violence or by intoxicating him with yaala. “They then lead him into the fields, and sacrifice him in the fields, according to their own expression, for seed. His blood, after having been coagulated by the rays of the sun, is burned along with the frontal bone, the flesh attached to it and the brain. The ashes are then scattered over the fields to fertilise them and the remainder of the body is eaten.” In other cases quoted by the same author an image only was made of flour and eaten instead of a human being:214 “In Mexico at a certain period of the year the priest of Quetzalcoatl made an image of the Deity, of meal mixed with infants’ blood, and then, after many impressive ceremonies, killed the image by shooting it with an arrow, and tore out the heart, which was eaten by the king, while the rest of the body was distributed among the people, every one of whom was anxious to procure a piece to eat, however small.” Here the communal sacrificial meal, the remaining link necessary to connect the sacrifice of the corn-spirit with that of the domestic animal and clan totem, is present. Among cases of animals sacrificed as the corn-spirit in India that of the buffalo at the Dasahra festival is the most important. The rite extends over most of India, and a full and interesting account of it has recently been published by Mr. W. Crooke.215 The buffalo is probably considered as the corn-spirit because it was the animal which mainly damaged the crops in past times. Where the sacrifice still survives the proprietor of the village usually makes the first cut in the buffalo and it is then killed and eaten by the inferior castes, as Hindus cannot now touch the flesh. In the Deccan after the buffalo is killed the Mahārs rush on the carcase and each one secures a piece of the flesh. This done they go in procession round the walls, calling on the spirits and demons, and asking them to accept the pieces of meat as offerings, which are then thrown to them backwards over the wall.216 The buffalo is now looked upon in the light of a scape-goat, but the procedure described above cannot be satisfactorily explained on the scape-goat theory, and would appear clearly to have been substituted for the former eating of the flesh. In the Marātha Districts the lower castes have a periodical sacrifice of a pig to the sun; they eat the flesh of the pig together, and even the Panwār Rājpūts of the Waringanga Valley join in the sacrifice and will allow the impure caste of Mahars to enter their houses and eat of this sacrifice with them, though at other times the entry of a Mahār would defile a Panwār’s house.217 The pig is sacrificed either as the animal which now mainly injures the crops or because it was the principal sacrificial animal of the non-Aryan tribes, or from a combination of both reasons. Probably it may be regarded as the corn-spirit because pigs are sacrificed to Bhanisasur or the buffalo demon for the protection of the crops.
When the community reached the national or agricultural stage some central executive authority became necessary for its preservation. This authority usually fell into the hands of the priest who performed the sacrifice, and he became a king. Since the priest killed the sacrificial animal in which the common life of the community was held to be centred, it was thought that the life passed to him and centred in his person. For the idea of the extinction of life was not properly understood, and the life of a human being or animal might pass by contact, according to primitive ideas, to the person or even the weapon which killed it, just as it could pass by assimilation to those who ate the flesh. In most of the city-states of Greece and Italy the primary function of the kings was the performance of the communal or national sacrifices. Through this act they obtained political power as representing the common life of the people, and its performance was sometimes left to them after their political power had been taken away.218 After the expulsion of the kings from Rome the duty of performing the city sacrifices devolved on the consuls. In India also the kings performed sacrifices. When a king desired to be paramount over his neighbours he sent a horse to march through their territories. If it passed through them without being captured they became subordinate to the king who owned the horse. Finally the horse was sacrificed at the Ashva-medha, the king paramount making the sacrifice, while the other kings performed subordinate parts at it.219 Similarly the Rāja of Nāgpur killed the sacrificial buffalo at the Dasahra festival. But the common life of the people was sometimes conveyed from the domestic animal to the king by other methods than the performance of a sacrifice. The king of Unyoro in Africa might never eat vegetable food but must subsist on milk and beef. Mutton he might not touch, though he could drink beer after partaking of meat. A sacred herd was kept for the king’s use, and nine cows, neither more nor less, were daily brought to the royal enclosure to be milked for his majesty. The boy who brought the cows from the pasture to the royal enclosure must be a member of a particular clan and under the age of puberty, and was subject to other restrictions. The milk for the king was drawn into a sacred pot which neither the milkman nor anybody else might touch. The king drank the milk, sitting on a sacred stool, three times a day, and any which was left over must be drunk by the boy who brought the cows from pasture. Numerous other rules and restrictions are detailed by Sir J.G. Frazer, and it may be suggested that their object was to ensure that the life of the domestic animal and with it the life of the people should be conveyed pure and undefiled to the king through the milk. The kings of Unyoro had to take their own lives while their bodily vigour was still unimpaired. When the period for his death arrived the king asked his wife for a cup of poison and drank it. “The public announcement of the death was made by the chief milkman. Taking a pot of the sacred milk in his hands he mounted the house-top and cried, ‘Who will drink the milk?’ With these words he dashed the pot on the roof; it rolled off and falling to the ground was broken in pieces. That was the signal for war to the death between the princes who aspired to the throne. They fought till only one was left alive. He was the king.”220 After completing the above account, of which only the principal points have been stated, Sir J.G. Frazer remarks: “The rule which obliged the kings of Unyoro to kill themselves or be killed before their strength of mind and body began to fail through disease or age is only a particular example of a custom which appears to have prevailed widely among barbarous tribes in Africa and to some extent elsewhere. Apparently this curious practice rests on a belief that the welfare of the people is sympathetically bound up with the welfare of their king, and that to suffer him to fall into bodily or mental decay would be to involve the whole kingdom in ruin.”221 Other instances connecting the life of the king with the ox or other domestic animal are given in Totemism and Exogamy and The Golden Bough222 Among the Hereros the body of a dead chief was wrapped up in the hide of an ox before being buried.223 In the Vedic horse-sacrifice in India the horse was stifled in robes. The chief queen approached him; a cloak having been thrown over them both, she performed a repulsively obscene act symbolising the transmission to her of his fructifying powers.224 In other cases the king was identified with the corn-spirit, and in this manner he also, it may be suggested, represented the common life of the people.
The belief that the king was the incarnation of the common life of the people led to the most absurd restrictions on his liberty and conduct, a few instances of which from the large collection in The Golden Bough have been quoted in the article on Nai. Thus in an old account of the daily life of the Mikado it is stated: “In ancient times he was obliged to sit on the throne for some hours every morning, with the imperial crown on his head, but to sit altogether like a statue, without stirring either hands or feet, head or eyes, nor indeed any part of his body, because, by this means, it was thought that he could preserve peace and tranquillity in his empire; for if, unfortunately, he turned himself on one side or the other, or if he looked a good while towards any part of his dominions, it was apprehended that war, famine, fire or some great misfortune was near at hand to desolate the country.”225 Here it would appear that by sitting absolutely immobile the king conferred the quality of tranquillity on the common life of his people incarnate in his person; but by looking too long in any one direction he would cause a severe disturbance of the common life in the part to which he looked. And when the Israelites were fighting with the Amalekites, so long as Moses held up his hands the Israelites prevailed; but when his hands hung down they gave way before the enemy. Here apparently the common life was held to be centred in Moses, and when he held his arms up it was vigorous, but declined as he let them down. Similarly it was often thought that the king should be killed as soon as his bodily strength showed signs of waning, so that the common life might be renewed and saved from a similar decay. Even the appearance of grey hair or the loss of a tooth were sometimes considered sufficient reasons for putting the king to death in Africa.226 Another view was that any one who killed the king was entitled to succeed him, because the life of the king, and with it the common life of the people, passed to the slayer, just as it had previously passed from the domestic animal to the priest-king who sacrificed it. One or two instances of succession by killing the king are given in the article on Bhīl. Sometimes the view was that the king should be sacrificed annually, or at other intervals, like the corn-spirit or domestic animal, for the renewal of the common life. And this practice, as shown by Sir J.G. Frazer, tended to result in the substitution of a victim, usually a criminal or slave, who was identified with the king by being given royal honours for a short time before his death. Sometimes the king’s son or daughter was offered as a substitute for him, and such a sacrifice was occasionally made in time of peril, apparently as a means of strengthening or preserving the common life. When Chitor, the home of the Sesodia clan of Rājpūts, was besieged by the Muhammadans, the tradition is that the goddess of their house appeared and demanded the sacrifice of twelve chiefs as a condition of its preservation. Eleven of the chiefs sons were in turn crowned as king, and each ruled for three days, while on the fourth he sallied out and fell in battle. Lastly, the Rāna offered himself in order that his favourite son, Ajeysi, might be spared and might perpetuate the clan. In reality the chief and his sons seem to have devoted themselves in the hope that the sacrifice of the king might bring strength and victory to the clan. The sacrifice of Iphigenia and possibly of Jephthah’s daughter appear to be parallel instances. The story of Alcestis may be an instance of the substitution of the king’s wife. The position of the king in early society and the peculiar practices and beliefs attaching to it were brought to notice and fully illustrated by Sir J.G. Frazer. The argument as to the clan and the veneration of the domestic animal follows that outlined by the late Professor Robertson Smith in The Religion of the Semites.