Nor is there any reason whatever to suppose that the Brahman boys whom the Gonds of India used to kidnap and keep as victims to be sacrificed on various occasions,109 were regarded as representatives of a spirit or god. They were offered up to Bhímsen, the chief object of worship among the Gonds, represented by a piece of iron fixed in a stone or in a tree,110 now “to sanctify a marriage, now to be wedded to the soil, and again to be given away to the evil spirit of the epidemic raging,” or “on the eve of a struggle.”111

Dr. Frazer writes:—“At Lagos In Guinea it was the custom annually to impale a young girl alive soon after the spring equinox in order to secure good crops…. A similar sacrifice used to be annually offered at Benin.”112 But Dr. Frazer omits an important fact mentioned or alluded to by the two authorities he quotes which gives us the key to the custom, without suggesting that it has anything to do with the corn-spirit. Adams states that the young woman was impaled “to propitiate the favour of the goddess presiding over the rainy season, that she may fill the horn of plenty.”113 And M. Bouche observes, “Au Bénin, on a conservé jusqu’à présent un usage qui régnait jadis à Lagos et ailleurs: celui d’empaler une jeune fille, au commencement de la saison des pluies, afin de rendre les orichas propices aux récoltes.”114 From these statements it appears that the sacrifice was intended to influence the rain, on which the crops essentially depend. That its immediate object was to produce rain is expressly affirmed by Sir R. Burton. At Benin he saw “a young woman lashed to a scaffolding upon the summit of a tall blasted tree and being devoured by the turkey-buzzards. The people declared it to be a ‘fetish,’ or charm for bringing rain.”115 We have previously noticed that the people of Benin also have recourse to a human sacrifice if there is too much rain, or too much sun, so that the crops are in danger of being spoiled.116 The theory of substitution accounts for all these cases.

The practice of offering human victims for the purpose of preventing drought and famine by producing rain is apparently not restricted to West Africa. In the beginning of their year, the ancient Mexicans sacrificed many prisoners of war and children who had been purchased for that purpose, to the gods of water, so as to induce them to give the rain necessary for the crops.117 The Pipiles of Guatemala celebrated every year two festivals which were accompanied by human sacrifices, the one in the beginning of the rainy season, the other in the beginning of the dry season.118 In India, among the aboriginal tribes to the south-west of Beerbhoom, Sir W. W. Hunter “heard vague reports of human sacrifices in the forests, with a view to procuring the early arrival of the rains.”119 Without venturing to express any definite opinion on a very obscure subject which has already led to so many guesses,120 I may perhaps be justified in here calling attention to the fact that Zeus Lycæus, in whose cult human sacrifices played a prominent part, was conceived of as a god who sent the rain.121 It appears from ancient traditions or legends that the idea of procuring rainfall by means of such sacrifices was not unfamiliar to the Greeks. A certain Molpis offered himself to Zeus Ombrios, the rain-god, in time of drought.122 Pausanias tells us that once, when a drought had for some time afflicted Greece, messengers were sent to Delphi to inquire the cause, and to beg for a riddance of the evil. The Pythian priestess told them to propitiate Zeus, and that Aeacus should be the intercessor; and then Aeacus, by sacrifices and prayers to Panhellenian Zeus, procured rain for Greece.123 But Diodorus adds that the drought and famine, whilst ceasing in all other parts of the country, still continued in Attica, so that the Athenians once more resorted to the Oracle. The answer was now given them that they had to expiate the murder of Androgeus, and that this should be done in any way his father, Minos, required. The satisfaction demanded by the latter was, that they every nine years should send seven boys and as many girls to be devoured by the Minotaur, and that this should be done as long as the monster lived. So the Athenians did, and the calamity ceased.124

As an instance of the close relationship which exists between human sacrifices offered for agricultural purposes and other human sacrifices, the following case may also be mentioned. According to Strachey, the Indians in some part of Virginia had a yearly sacrifice of children. These sacrifices they held so necessary that if they should omit them, they supposed their gods “would let them no deare, turkies, corne, nor fish,” and, besides, “would make a great slaughter amongst them.”125

Men require for their subsistence not only food, but drink. Hence when the earth fails to supply them with water, they are liable to regard it as an attempt against their lives, which can be averted only by the sacrifice of a human substitute.

In India, in former times, human victims were offered to several minor gods “whenever a newly excavated tank failed to produce sufficient water.”126 In Kâthiâwâr, for instance, if a pond had been dug and would not hold water, a man was sacrificed; and the Vadala lake in Bombay “refused to hold water till the local spirit was appeased by the sacrifice of the daughter of the village headman.”127 There is a legend that, when the bed of the Saugor lake remained dry, the builder “was told, in a dream, or by a priest, that it would continue so till he should consent to sacrifice his own daughter, then a girl, and the young lad to whom she had been affianced, to the tutelary god of the place. He accordingly built a little shrine in the centre of the valley, which was to become the bed of the lake, put the two children in, and built up the doorway. He had no sooner done so than the whole of the valley became filled with water.”128 When Colonel Campbell was rescuing Meriahs among the Kandhs, it was believed by some that he was collecting victims for the purpose of sacrificing them on the plains to the water deity, because the water had disappeared from a large tank which he had constructed.129 According to a story related by Pausanias, the district of Haliartus was originally parched and waterless, hence one of the rulers went to Delphi and inquired how the people should find water in the land. “The Pythian priestess commanded him to slay the first person he should meet on his return to Haliartus. On his arrival he was met by his son Lophis, and, without hesitation, he struck the young man with his sword. The youth had life enough left to run about, and where the blood flowed water gushed from the ground. Therefore the river is called Lophis.”130

Human sacrifices are offered with a view to averting perils arising from the sea or from rivers.

When the Greeks were afflicted by stress of weather at Aulis, they were bidden to sacrifice Iphigenia, in order to lull the winds.131 Menelaus was persecuted by the Egyptians for sacrificing two children when he was desirous of sailing away and contrary winds detained him.132 According to an Athenian writer, the colonists who first went to Lesbos were directed by an oracle to throw a virgin into the sea, as an offering to Poseidon.133 Sextus Pompeius cast men into the sea as an offering to Neptune.134 Hamilcar, also, following a custom of his country, threw a company of priests into the sea, as a sacrifice to the sea god.135 The Saxons, when they were about to leave the coast of Gaul and sail home, sacrificed the tenth part of their captives.136 The Vikings of Scandinavia, when launching a new ship, seemed to have bound a victim to the rollers on which the vessel slipped into the sea, thus reddening the keel with sacrificial blood.137 In 1784, at the launching of one of the Bey of Tripoli’s cruisers, a black slave was led forward and fastened at the prow of the vessel.138 The Fijians launched their canoes over the living bodies of slaves as rollers,139 or, according to another account, when a large canoe was launched, they laid hold of the first person, man or woman, whom they encountered, and carried the victim home for a feast.140 On the deck of a new boat belonging to the most powerful chief in the group, ten or more men were slaughtered, in order that it might be washed with human blood.141

The Zuñi Indians have a tradition that the waters of their valley once rose in a flood and compelled the inhabitants to flee to a table-land several hundred feet high for safety; and when the waters still rose, threatening to submerge the table-land itself, the priest determined to sacrifice a youth and a maiden to propitiate them.142 When Seleucus Nicator founded Antioch on the Orontes, the high priest sacrificed a virgin at a place between the town and the river,143 presumably in order to prevent the town from being flooded by the river. When the converted Franks marched to Italy under their king, Theodebert, to fight against the Goths under Vitigis, and were on the point of crossing the Po, they sacrificed what children and wives of Goths they found, and threw their corpses into the river, according to Procopius, “as the first fruits of the war.”144 At Rome, every year on the Ides of May, the Vestal Virgins threw from the Sublician bridge into the Tiber thirty human effigies formed of rushes; the Romans themselves were of opinion that at an earlier period living men had been hurled into the river, and that it was Hercules who first substituted images of straw.145 In West Africa human sacrifices are often offered to rivers. Major Ellis states that at each town or considerable village upon the banks of the river Prah sacrifice is held on a day about the middle of October, to Prah. “As loss of life frequently occurs in this river, from persons attempting to cross it when flooded, from a sudden rise, or from those hundred minor accidents which must always occur in the neighbourhood of a deep and strong stream, the gods of the Prah are considered very malignant. The sacrifice is, in consequence, proportionate. The usual sacrifice in former times was two human adults, one male and one female. They … were decapitated on the bank of the river, and the stool and image of the god washed with their blood. The bodies were then cut into a number of pieces, which were distributed amongst the mangroves, or the sedge bordering the river, for the crocodiles to eat; crocodiles being sacred in Prah.”146 According to M. le Comte de Cardi, all the river-side tribes of the Niger Delta used to propitiate the river deity by the sacrifice of a copper-coloured girl, procured from a tribe of Ibos inhabiting a country away in the hinterland of New Calabar, or in some places an Albino; and it seems that this custom is still practised in the British Protectorate.147 The Ibos themselves were in the habit of throwing human beings into the river to be eaten by alligators or fishes, or to fasten them to trees or branches, close to the river, where they were left to perish by hunger.148 In Eastern Central Africa, also, human sacrifices are offered to rivers.149 And in the East Indies there are various traditions of such sacrifices being made to the divine crocodiles of the sea.150

In the cases which we have hitherto considered the offering of human sacrifices is mostly a matter of public concern, a method of ensuring the lives of many by the death of one or a few. But human life is also sacrificed, by way of substitution, for the purpose of preventing the death of some particular individual, especially a chief or a king, from sickness, old age, or other circumstances.

In Guatemala, in the case of a dangerous illness, human sacrifice was resorted to when all other attempts to cure the patient failed. Of the Indians of Guayaquil, Cieza de Leon states:—“When the chiefs were sick, to appease the wrath of their gods, and pray for health, they made … sacrifices of a superstitious nature, killing men (as I was told), and believing that human blood was a grateful offering.”151 Acosta writes:—“They vsed in Peru to sacrifice yong children of foure or six yeares old vnto tenne; and the greatest parte of these sacrifices were for the affaires that did import the Ynca, as in sickness for his health, and when he went to the warres for victory, or when they gave the wreathe to their new Ynca, which is the marke of a King, as heere the Scepter and the Crowne be. In this solemnitie they sacrificed the number of two hundred children, from foure to ten yeares of age…. 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