Among the Banians of India, proselytes are obliged by the Brahmans to eat cow-dung for six months. They begin with one pound daily, and diminish from day to day. A subtle commentator, says Picart, might institute a comparison between the nourishment of these fanatics and the dung of cows which the Lord ordered the prophet Ezekiel to mingle with his food.[36]
This was the opinion held by Voltaire on this subject. Speaking of the prophet Ezekiel, he said: “He is to eat bread of barley, wheat, beans, lentils, and millet, and to cover it with human excrement.”[37] It is thus, he says, that the “children of Israel shall eat their bread defiled among the nations among which they shall be banished.” But “after having eaten this bread of affliction, God permits him to cover it with the excrement of cattle simply.”
The view entertained by some biblical commentators is that the excrement was used for baking the bread; but if this be true, why should human fæces be used for such a purpose? (Consult Lange’s Commentaries, article “Ezekiel,” and McClintock and Strong’s Cyclopædia, article “Dung.”)
“For mere filth, what can be fouler than 2 Kings xviii. 27, Isaiah xxxvi. 12, and Ezekiel iv. 12-15 (where the Lord changes human ordure into ‘cow chips’)? ‘Ce qui excuse Dieu,’ said Henri Bayle, ‘ce qu’il n’existe pas.’ I add, as man has made him.”—(Richard F. Burton, “Terminal Essay” to his edition of the “Arabian Nights,” vol. x. p. 181, foot-note, London, 1886.)
Bayle does not allude to the baking of bread with ordure in his brief article upon the prophet Ezekiel; neither does Prof. J. Stuart Blaikie in his more comprehensive dissertation in the Encyclopædia Britannica, article “Ezekiel.”
“The use of dung by the ancient Israelites is collected incidentally from the passage in which the prophet Ezekiel, being commanded, as a symbolic action, to bake his bread with dung, excuses himself from the use of an unclean thing, and is permitted to employ cow’s dung instead.”—(Strong and McClintock’s “Cyclopædia of Biblical and Classical Literature,” New York, 1868, vol. ii. article “Dung.”)
“I fear that Voltaire cannot be taken as an authority on Hebrew matters. I believe that the passage from Ezekiel is correctly rendered in the revised edition, where at verse 15 ‘thereon’ is substituted for ‘therewith’ of the old version. The use of dried cow’s-dung as fuel is common among the poorer classes in the East; and in a siege, fuel, always scarce, would be so scarce that a man’s dung might have to be used. I do not think that one need look further for the explanation of verses 15-17; the words of verse 15 are not ambiguous, and that used for dung is the same as the Arabs still apply to the dried cakes of cow’s dung used for fuel. Voltaire and Picart both seem to have used the Vulgate, in which verse 12 is wrongly rendered.”—(Personal letter from Prof. W. Robertson Smith, Cambridge, England.)
“Les nombreux exemples qui précèdent rendent moins intéressante la question de savoir an Ezéchias stercus comederit; ce ne serait qu’un mangeur de plus. Pourtant on peut voir dans la Bible le verset 12 du chap. iv. de ce prophète: ‘et quasi sub cinericium hordaceum comedes illud et stercore quod egreditur de homine operies illud in oculis eorum;’ et les diverses interprétations données par les différents traducteurs et commentateurs.”—(Bibliotheca Scatalogica, pp. 93-96.)
Schurig consacre un paragraphe à discuter an Ezechias stercus comederit.—(Idem, p. 39.)
Just exactly what Schurig thought on this subject may be stated in his own words. Although not positive, he inclines to the opinion that Ezekiel did eat excrement:—
“Denique, mandato divino, Propheta Ezechiel, cap. iv. ver. 12, placentam hordeaceam cum stercore humano parasse atque comedisse primo intuitu videtur, juxta versionem Lutheri.... Juxta Junium et Tremellium allegata verba sic sonant: Comedes cibum ut placentam hordeaceam, et ad orbes excrementi humani parabis placentam istam in oculis illorum. Juxta Sebastianum Schmidium: Sicut placentam hordeorum comedes eum; quod ad ipsum tamen, cum stercore fimi hominis facies in oculis eorum. Bene etiam hunc locum explicat Textus Gallicus meæ editionis: Tu mangeras de fouaces d’orge, et les cuiras avec la fiente qui sort hors de l’homme eux le voyans.”—(“Chylologia,” Dresden, 1725, pp. 782, 783.)
“Ezekiel says that his God told him to lie for three hundred and ninety days on his left side, and then forty days on his right side, when ‘he would lay hands on him and turn him from one side to another;’ also that during all this period he was only to eat barley bread baked in too disgusting a manner to be described.”—(“Rivers of Life,” Forlong, vol. ii. p. 597.)
“This last command was, however, so strongly resented that his Deity somewhat relaxed it.”—(Idem.)
The most rational explanation of this much-disputed and ambiguous passage must necessarily be such as can be deduced from a consideration of Ezekiel’s environment.
Giving due weight to every doubt, there remains this feature: the prophet unquestionably was influenced and actuated by the ideas of his day and generation, which looked upon the humiliations to which he subjected himself as the outward manifestations of an inward spirituality.
Psychologically speaking, there is no great difference between the consumption of human excrement and the act of lying on one’s side for three hundred and ninety days; both are indications of the same perverted cerebration, mistaken with such frequency for piety and holiness.
“Isaiah had periods of indecent maniacal outbursts; for we are told that he once went about stark naked for three years, because so commanded by the Lord.”—(“Rivers of Life,” vol. ii. p. 537, quoting Isaiah xx. 2, 3.)
The foregoing testimony, which could readily be swelled in volume, proves the sacred character of these excreta, which may be looked upon as substitutes for a more perfect sacrifice. In the early life of the Hindus it is more than likely that the cow or the heifer was slaughtered by the knife or burnt; as population increased in density, domestic cattle became too costly to be offered as a frequent oblation, and on the principle that the part represents the whole, hair, milk, butter, urine, and ordure superseded the slain carcass, while the incinerated excrement was made to do duty as a burnt sacrifice.[38]
It was hardly probable that such practices, or an explanation of the causes which led to their adoption and perpetuation, should have escaped the keen criticism of E. B. Tylor.
“For the means of some of his multifarious lustrations, the Hindu has recourse to the sacred cow.... The Parsi religion prescribes a system of lustration which well shows its common origin with that of Hinduism by its similar use of cow’s urine and water.... Applications of nirang, washed off with water, form part of the daily religious rites, as well as of such special ceremonies as the naming of the new-born child, the putting on of the sacred cord, the purification of the mother after childbirth, and the purification of him who has touched a corpse.”—(E. B. Tylor, “Primitive Culture,” London, 1871, vol. ii. pp. 396, 397.)
“It will help us to realize how the sacrifice of an animal may atone for a human life, if we notice in South Africa how a Zulu will redeem a lost child from the finder by a bullock, or a Kimbunda will expiate the blood of a slave by the offering of an ox, whose blood will wash away the other. For instances of the animal substituted for man in sacrifice, the following may serve: Among the Khonds of Orissa, where Colonel MacPherson was engaged in putting down the sacrifice of human victims by the sect of the Earth-goddess, they at once began to discuss the plan of sacrificing cattle by way of substitutes. Now, there is some reason to think that this same course of ceremonial change may account for the following sacrificial practice in the other Khond sect. It appears that those who worship the Light-god hold a festival in his honor, when they slaughter a buffalo in commemoration of the time when, as they say, the Earth-goddess was prevailing on men to offer human sacrifices to her, but the Light-god sent a tribe-deity who crushed the bloody-minded Earth-goddess under a mountain and dragged a buffalo out of the jungle, saying, ‘Liberate the man, and sacrifice the buffalo.’ It looks as though this legend, divested of its mythic garb, may really record a historical substitution of animal for human sacrifice. In Ceylon, the exorcist will demand the name of the demon possessing a demoniac, and the patient in frenzy answers, giving the demon’s name, ‘I am So-and-so; I demand a human sacrifice, and I will not go without.’ The victim is promised, the patient comes to from the fit, and a few weeks later the sacrifice is made; but instead of a man they offer a fowl. Classic examples of a substitution of this sort may be found in the sacrifice of a doe for a virgin to Artemis in Laodicæa, a goat for a boy to Dionysos at Potniæ.
“There appears to be a Semitic connection here, as there clearly is in the story of the Æolians of Tenedos sacrificing to Melikertes (Melkarth) instead of a new-born child a new-born calf, shoeing it with buskins and tending the mother cow as if a human mother.”—(Idem, vol. ii. p. 366; or in New York edition, 1879, vol. ii. pp. 403, 404.)
“O Maker of the material world, thou Holy One! which is the urine wherewith the corpse-bearers shall wash their hair and their bodies? Is it of sheep or of oxen? Is it of man or of woman?
“Ahura Mazda answered: It is of sheep or of oxen, not of man nor of woman, except these two, the nearest kinsman (of the dead) or his nearest kinswoman. The worshippers of Mazda shall therefore procure the urine wherewith the corpse-bearers shall wash their hair and their bodies.”—(Fargard vii., Avendidad, Zendavesta, Oxford, 1890, p. 96.)
“A prince may sacrifice his enemy, having first invoked the axe with holy texts, by substituting a buffalo or goat, calling the victim by the name of the enemy throughout the whole ceremony.”—(“The Sanguinary Chapter,” translated from the “Calica Purana,” in vol. 5, “Transactions Asiatic Society,” 4th edition, London, 1807, p. 386.)
“An interesting chapter of the Aitareya-brahmanam, on the sacrifice of animals, shows us how, next to man, the horse was the supreme sacrifice offered to the gods; how the cow afterwards took the place of the horse, the sheep of the cow, the goat of the sheep; and at last vegetable products were substituted for animals,—a substitution or cheating of the gods in the sacrifice, which perhaps explains even more the fraud of which, in popular stories, the simpleton is always the victim; the simpleton hero being the god himself, and the cheater man, who changes, under a sacred pretext, the noblest and most valued animals for common and less valued ones, and finally for vegetables apparently of no value whatever. In Hindu codes of law we have the same fraudulent substitution of animals under a legal pretext. ‘The killer of a cow,’ says the code attributed to Yagnavalkyas, ‘must stay a month in penitence, drinking the panchakaryam’ (that is, the five good productions of the cow, which, according to Manus, are milk, curds, butter, urine, and dung), sleeping in a stable, and following the cows.’”—(“Zoöl. Mythol.,” De Gubernatis, vol. i. pp. 44, 45.)
“The sacred books of the Hindus contain the most formal and detailed instructions about human sacrifices, and on what occasions and with what ceremonies they are to be offered; sometimes on an enormous scale,—as many as one hundred and fifty human victims at one sacrifice.”—(Ragozin, “Assyria,” New York, 1887, pp. 127-128.)
Continuing, Ragozin says: “When bloody sacrifices, even of animals, were in great part abolished, and offerings of cakes of rice and wheat were substituted, the humane change was authorized by a parable which told how the sacrificial virtue had left the highest and most valuable victim, man, and descended into the horse, from the horse into the steer, from the steer into the goat, from the goat into the sheep, and from that at last passed into the earth, where it was found abiding in the grains of rice and wheat laid in it for seed.
“This was an ingenious way of intimating that henceforth harmless offerings of rice and wheat cakes would be as acceptable to the deity as the living victims, human and animal, formerly were.”—(Idem, p. 128.)
As the animal victim became more and more valuable, we have seen that its excreta were offered in its place.
The Celtic stock, it is now generally admitted, represents a very early migration from India. Exactly when this migration began and was completed we have no means of determining; but we may safely say, judging from the prominence in Celtic folk-lore of the chicken-dung, that it did not occur until the cultus of India was beginning to cast about for some suitable substitute for human sacrifice.[39]
Inman takes the ground that the very same substitution occurred among the Hebrews. Commenting upon 1 Kings xix. 18, he says: “In the Vulgate the passage is thus rendered: ‘They say to these, Sacrifice the men who adore the calves;’ while the Septuagint renders the words, ‘Sacrifice men, for the calves have come to an end,’ indicating a reversion to human sacrifice.”—(Inman, “Ancient Faiths Embodied in Ancient Names,” London, 1878, article “Hosea.”)
“He that killeth an ox as if he slew a man; he that sacrificeth a lamb as if he cut off a dog’s neck; he that offereth an oblation as if he offered swine’s blood; he that burneth incense as if he blessed an idol.”—(Isaiah lxvi. 3. Reference given to the above by Prof. W. Robertson Smith.)
“In the earliest period the horse seems to have been the favorite animal for sacrifice.”—(“Teutonic Mythology,” Jacob Grimm, vol. i. p. 47.)
“The Brahmans show how, in Hindostan, the lower animals became vicarious substitutes for man in sacrifice.”—(“Myth, Ritual, and Religion,” Andrew Lang, vol. ii. p. 40, footnote.)
If the cow have displaced a human victim, may it not be within the limits of probability that the ordure and urine of the sacred bovine are substitutes, not only for the complete carcass, but that they symbolize a former use of human excreta?[40] The existence of ur-orgies has been indicated in Siberia, where the religion partakes of many of the characteristics of Buddhism.[41] The minatory phraseology of the Brahminical inhibition of the use of the fungi which enter into these orgies has been given verbatim; so that, even did no better evidence exist, enough has been presented to open up a wide range of discussion as to the former area of distribution of loathsome and disgusting ceremonials, which are now happily restricted to small and constantly diminishing zones.
It is well to remember, however, that in India the more generally recognized efficacy of cow urine and cow dung has not blinded the fanatical devotee to the necessity of occasionally having recourse to the human product.
“At about ten leagues to the southward of Seringapatam there is a village called Nan-ja-na-gud, in which there is a temple famous all over the Mysore. Amongst the number of votaries of every caste who resort to it, a great proportion consists of barren women, who bring offerings to the god of the place, and pray for the gift of fruitfulness in return. But the object is not to be accomplished by the offerings and prayers alone, the disgusting part of the ceremony being still to follow. On retiring from the temple, the woman and her husband repair to the common sewer to which all the pilgrims resort in obedience to the calls of nature. There the husband and wife collect, with their hands, a quantity of the ordure, which they set apart, with a mark upon it, that it may not be touched by any one else; and with their fingers in this condition, they take the water of the sewer in the hollow of their hands and drink it. Then they perform ablution and retire. In two or three days they return to the place of filth to visit the mass of ordure which they left. They turn it over with their hands, break it, and examine it in every possible way; and, if they find that any insects or vermin are engendered in it, they consider it a favorable prognostic for the woman.”—(Abbé Dubois, “People of India,” London, 1817, p. 411.)[42]