CHAPTER XIX

HUMAN SACRIFICE

It still remains for us to consider some particular cases in which destruction of human life is sanctioned by custom or law.

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Men are killed with a view to gratifying the desires of superhuman beings. We meet with human sacrifice in the past history of every so-called Aryan race. It occurred, at least occasionally, in ancient India, and several of the modern Hindu sects practised it even in the last century. There are numerous indications that it was known among the early Greeks. At certain times it prevailed in the Hellenic cult of Zeus; indeed, in the second century after Christ men seem still to have been sacrificed to Zeus Lycæus in Arcadia. To the historic age likewise belongs the sacrifice of the three Persian prisoners of war whom Themistocles was compelled to slay before the battle of Salamis." In Rome, also, human sacrifices, though

1 See Hehn, Wanderings of Plants and Animals from their First Home, p. 414 sqq.

2 Weber, Indische Streifen, i. 54 sqq. Wilson, Human Sacrifices in the Ancient Religion of India,' in Works, ii. 247 sqq. Oldenberg, Religion des Veda, p. 363 sqq. Barth, Religions of India, p. 57 sqq. Monier Williams, Brahmanism and Hinduism, p. 24. Hopkins, Religions of India, pp. 198, 363. Rájendralála Mitra, Indo-Aryans, ii. 69 sqq. Crooke, Popular Religion and Folk-Lore of

Northern India, ii. 167 sqq. Chevers,
Manual of Medical Jurisprudence for
India, p. 396 sqq.

3 See Geusius, Victima Humana, passim; von Lasaulx, Sühnofper der Griechen und Römer, passim; Farnell, Cults of the Greek States, i. 41 sq.; Stengel, Die griechischen Kultusaltertümer, p. 114 sqq.

4 Cf. Farnell, op. cit. i. 93; Stengel, op. cit. p. 116.

Pausanias, viii. 38. 7.

6 Plutarch, Themistocles, 13.

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exceptional, were not unknown in historic times.1 Pliny records that in the year 97 B.C. a decree forbidding such sacrifices was passed by the Roman Senate, and afterwards the emperor Hadrian found it necessary to renew this prohibition. Porphyry asks, “Who does not know that to this day, in the great city of Rome, at the festival of Jupiter Latiaris, they cut the throat of a man?" 4 And Tertullian states that in North Africa, even to the proconsulship of Tiberius, infants were publicly sacrificed to Saturn. Human sacrifices were offered by Celts, Teutons, and Slavs; by the ancient Semites and Egyptians; 10 by the Japanese in early days; and, in the New World, by the Mayas 12 and, to a frightful extent, by the Aztecs. "Scarcely any author," says Prescott in his History of the Conquest of Mexico," "pretends to estimate the yearly sacrifices throughout the empire at less than twenty thousand, and some carry the number as high as fifty thousand.” 13 The same practice is imputed by Spanish writers to the Incas of Peru, and probably not without good reason.14 Before their rule, at all events, it

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5 Tertullian, Apologeticus, 9 (Migne, Patrologia cursus, i. 314).

6 Cesar, De bello gallico, vi. 16.
Tacitus, Annales, xiv. 30. Diodorus
Siculus, Bibliotheca, v. 31, P. 354.
Pliny, Historia naturalis,
Strabo, iv. 5, p. 198. Joyce, Social
History of Ancient Ireland, i. 281 sqq.

XXX. 4.

7 Tacitus, Germania, 9. Adam of Bremen, Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiæ pontificum, iv. 27 (Migne, op. cit. cxlvi. 644). Grimm, Teutonic Mythology, i. 44 sqq. Vigfusson and Powell, Corpus Poeticum Boreale, i. 409 sq. Freytag, Riesen und Menschenopfer in unsern Sagen und Märchen,' in Am Ur-Quell, i. 1890, pp. 179-183, 197 sqq.

Mone, Geschichte des nordischen Heidenthums, i. 119, quoted by Frazer,

11

Golden Bough, ii. 52. Krauss, in Am Ur-Quell, vi. 1896, p. 137 sqq. (Servians).

9 Ghillany, Die Menschenopfer der alten Hebräer, passim. Robertson Smith, Religion of the Semites, p. 362 sqq. Wellhausen, Reste arabischen Heidentums, p. 115 sq. von Kremer, Studien zur vergleichenden Culturgeschichte, i. 42 sqq. Chwolsohn, Die Ssabier und der Ssabismus, ii. 147

59% Amélineau, L'évolution des idées morales dans l'Égypte Ancienne, p. 12. 11 Griffis, Religions of Japan, p. 75. Lippert, Seelencult, p. 79.

12 Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific States, ii. 704, 725.

13 Prescott, History of the Conquest of Mexico, p. 38. Cf. Clavigero, History of Mexico, i. 281; Acosta, Natural and Moral History of the Indies, ii. 346.

14 Acosta, op. cit. ii. 344. de Molina, 'Fables and Rites of the Yncas,' in Narratives of the Rites and Laws of the Yncas, pp. 55, 56, 59. According to

was of frequent occurrence among the Peruvian Indians.1 It also prevailed, or still prevails, among the Caribs and some North American tribes; in various South Sea islands, especially Tahiti and Fiji; among certain tribes in the Malay Archipelago; among several of the aboriginal tribes of India; and very commonly in Africa.7

From this enumeration it appears that the practice of human sacrifice cannot be regarded as a characteristic of savage races. On the contrary, it is found much more

frequently among barbarians and semi-civilised peoples than among genuine savages, and at the lowest stages of culture known to us it is hardly heard of. Among some peoples the practice has been noticed to become increasingly prevalent in the course of time. In the Society Islands "human sacrifices, we are informed by the natives, are comparatively of modern institution: they were not admitted until a few generations antecedent to the discovery of the islands"; and in ancient legends there seem to be certain indications that they were once prohibited in Polynesia.2 In India human sacrifices were apparently much rarer among the Vedic people than among the Brahmanists of a later age. We are told that such sacrifices were adopted by the Aztecs only in the beginning of the fourteenth century, about two hundred years before the conquest, and that, "rare at first, they became more frequent with the wider extent of their empire; till, at length, almost every festival was closed with this cruel abomination." 4 Of the Africans Mr. Winwood Reade remarks, "The more powerful the nation the grander the sacrifice."5

Men offer up human victims to their gods because they think that the gods are gratified by such offerings. In many cases the gods are supposed to have an appetite for human flesh or blood." The Fijian gods are described as "delighting in human flesh." Among the Ooryahs of India the priest, when offering a human sacrifice to the war-god Manicksoro, said to the god, "The sacrifice we now offer you must eat."8 Among the Iroquois, when an enemy was tortured at the stake, the savage executioners leaped around him crying, "To thee, Arieskoi, great spirit, we slay this victim, that thou mayest eat his flesh and be moved thereby to give us henceforth luck and

Ellis, Polynesian Kesearches, i. 106.

2 Fornander, op. cit. i. 129.

3 Wilson, Works, ii. 268 sq. 4 Prescott, History of the Conquest of Mexico, p. 36.

Reade, Savage Africa, p. 52.

See Lippert, Seelencult, p. 77 sqq.;

Schneider, Naturvölker, i. 190.

7 Williams and Calvert, op. cit. p. 195.

Campbell, Wild Tribes of Khondistan, p. 211. Cf. Macpherson, Memorials of Service in India, p. 120 (Kandhs).

victory over our foes."1 Among the ancient nations of

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Central America the blood and heart of the human victims offered in sacrifice were counted the peculiar portion of the gods. Thus, in Mexico, the high priest, after cutting open the victim's breast, tore forth the yet palpitating heart, offered it first to the sun, threw it then at the feet of the idol, and finally burned it; sometimes the heart was placed in the mouth of the idol with a golden spoon, and its lips were anointed with the victim's blood.3

But the human victim is not always, as has been erroneously supposed, intended to serve the god as a foodoffering. The Tshi-speaking peoples of the Gold Coast, as Major Ellis observes, maintain that their gods require not only food, but attendants; "the ghosts of the human victims sacrificed to them are believed to pass at once into a condition of ghostly servitude to them, just as those sacrificed at the funerals of chiefs are believed to pass into a ghostly attendance." Cieza de Leon mentions the prevalence of a similar belief among the ancient Peruvians. At the hill of Guanacaure, "on certain days they sacrificed men and women, to whom, before they were put to death, the priest addressed a discourse, explaining to them that they were going to serve that god who was being worshipped."

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Moreover, an angry god may be appeased simply by the death of him or those who aroused his anger, or of some representative of the offending community, or of somebody belonging to the kin of the offender. Among the Ewe-speaking peoples of the Slave Coast, "in the case of human victims the gods are not believed to devour the

1 Müller, Geschichte der Amerikanischen Urreligionen, p. 142.

2 Bancroft, op. cit. ii. 307, 310, 311, 707 599.

Clavigero, op. cit. i. 279.

4 Réville, Hibbert Lectures on the Native Religions of Mexico and Peru, p. 75 sq. Idem, Prolegomena of the History of Religions, p. 132. Trum

bull, Blood Covenant, p. 189. Steinmetz, Endokannibalismus, p. 60, n. 1. Schrader, Reallexikon der indogermanischen Altertumskunde, p. 603.

Ellis, Tshi-speaking Peoples of the Gold Coast, p. 169.

6 Cieza de Leon, Segunda parte de la Crónica del Perú, p. 109.