punish the community for the sins of one of its members. They visit the iniquity of the fathers and forefathers upon the children and descendants. The Sibuyaus, a tribe belonging to the Sea Dyaks, "are of opinion that an unmarried girl proving with child must be offensive to the superior powers, who, instead of always chastising the individual, punish the tribe by misfortunes happening to its members. They, therefore, on the discovery of the pregnancy fine the lovers, and sacrifice a pig to propitiate offended Heaven, and to avert that sickness or those misfortunes that might otherwise follow; and they inflict heavy mulcts for every one who may have suffered from any severe accident, or who may have been drowned within a month before the religious atonement was made." 1 According to Chinese beliefs, whole kingdoms are punished for the conduct of their rulers by spirits who act as avengers with orders or approval from the Tao, or Heaven.2 Prevalent opinion in China, continuously inspired anew by literature of all times and ages, further admits that spiritual vengeance may come down upon the culprit's offspring in the form of disease or death. When a maimed or deformed child is born the Japanese say that its parents or ancestors must have committed some great sin.1 The Vedic people ask Varuna to forgive the wrongs committed by their fathers.5 Says the poet :"What we ourselves have sinned in mercy pardon; my own misdeeds do thou, O god, take from me, and for another's sin let me not suffer."6 According to the ancient Greek theory of divine retribution, the community has to suffer for the sins of some of its members, children for the sins of their fathers. Hesiod says that often a whole town is punished with famine, pestilence, barrenness of its women, or loss of its army or vessels for the misdeeds of a single individual.8 Croesus atoned by the forfeiture of his kingdom for the crime of Gyges, his fifth ancestor, who had murdered his master and usurped his throne. Cytissorus brought down the anger of gods upon his descendants by 1 St. John, Life in the Forests of the Far East, i. 63. 2 de Groot, op. cit. (vol. iv. book) ii. 432, 435. Davis, China, ii. 34 sq. 3 de Groot, op. cit. (vol. iv. book) ii. 452. 4 Griffis, Mikado's Empire, p. 472. 5 Rig Veda, vii. 86. 5. Cf. AtharvaVeda, v. 30. 4; x. 3. 8. VOL. I 6 Rig-Veda, ii. 28. 9. Cf. ibid. vi. 51. 7; vii. 52. 2. 7 Nägelsbach, Nachhomerische Theologie des griechischen Volksglaubens, p. 34 sq. Schmidt, op. cit. i. 67 sqq. Farnell, Cults of the Greek States, 76 sq. Hesiod, Opera et dies, 240 sqq. 9 Herodotus, i. 91. E rescuing Athamas, whom the Achaians intended to offer up as an expiatory sacrifice on behalf of their country.1 When hearing of the death of his wife, Theseus exclaims, "This must be a heaven-sent calamity in consequence of the sins of an ancestor, which from some remote source I am bringing on myself.": According to Hebrew notions, sin affects the nation through the individual and entails guilt on succeeding generations. The anger of the Lord is kindled against the children of Israel on account of Achan's sin. The sin of the sons of Eli is visited on his whole house from generation to generation.5 Because Saul has slain the Gibeonites, the Lord sends, in the days of David, a three years' famine, which ceases only when seven of Saul's sons are hanged. The sins of Manasseh are expiated even by the better generation under Josiah. The notion of a jealous God who visits the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate Him, is also frequently met with in the Old Testament Apocrypha. "The inheritance of sinners' children shall perish, and their posterity shall have a perpetual reproach."9 "The seed of an unrighteous bed shall be rooted out." 10 The same idea has survived among Christian peoples. It was referred to in Canon Law as a principle to be imitated by human justice,11 and by Innocent III. in justification of a bull which authorised the confiscation of the goods of heretics.12 Up to quite recent times it was a common belief in Scotland that the punishment of the cruelty, oppression, or misconduct of an individual descended as a curse on his children to the third and fourth generation. It was not confined to the common people; "all ranks were influenced by it; and many believed that if the curse did not fall upon the first or second generation it would inevitably descend upon the succeeding." 13 In the dogma that the whole human race is condemned on 2 Kings, xxiii. 26; xxiv. 3. Jeremiah, xv. 4 sqq. 8 Exodus, xx. 5; xxiv. 7. Numbers, xiv. 18. Deuteronomy, v. 9. Cf. Leviticus, xxvi. 39. 9 Ecclesiasticus, xli. 6. Cf. ibid. xvi. 4; xli. 5, 7 sqq. 10 Wisdom of Solomon, iii. 16. Cf. ibid. iii. 12, 13, 17 sqq. 11 Eicken, op. cit. p. 572. 12 Lecky, History of Rationalism in Europe, ii. 37 n. 13 Stewart, Sketches of the Character, &c., of the Highlanders of Scotland, p. 127. account of the sin of its first parents, the doctrine of collective responsibility has reached its pitch. Men originally attribute to their gods mental qualities similar to their own, and imagine them to be no less fierce and vindictive than they are themselves. Thus the retribution of a god is, in many cases, nothing but an outburst of sudden anger, or an act of private revenge, .and as such particularly liable to comprise, not only the offender himself, but those connected with him. Plutarch even argued that the punishments inflicted by gods on cities for ill-deeds committed by their former inhabitants. allowed of a just defence, on the ground that a city is "one continuous entity, a sort of creature that never changes from age, or becomes different by time, but is ever sympathetic with and conformable to itself," and therefore "answerable for whatever it does or has done for the public weal, as long as the community by its union and federal bonds preserves its unity."1 He further observes that a bad man is not bad only when he breaks out into crime, but has the seeds of vice in his nature, and that the deity, knowing the nature and disposition of every man, prefers stifling crime in embryo to waiting till it becomes ripe." But there are yet special reasons for extending the retribution of a god beyond the limits of individual guilt. Whilst the resentment of a man is a matter of experience, that of a god is a matter of inference. That some particular case of suffering is a divine punishment, is inferred either from its own peculiar character, suggesting the direct interference of a god, or from the assumption that a certain act, on account of its offensiveness, cannot be left unpunished. Now experience shows that, in many instances, the sinner himself escapes all punishment, leading a happy life till his death; hence the conclusion. is near at hand that any grave misfortune which befalls his descendants, is the delayed retribution of the offended. god. Such a conclusion is quite in harmony with the common notions of divine power. It especially forces itself upon a mind which has no idea of a hell with post mortem punishments for the wicked. And, where the spirit of a man after his death is believed to be still ardently concerned for the welfare of his family, the affliction of his descendants naturally appears as a punishment inflicted upon himself. As Dr. de Groot observes, the doctrine of the Chinese, that spiritual vengeance may descend on the offender's offspring, tallies perfectly with their conception "that the severest punishment which may be inflicted on one, both in his present life and the next, is decline or extermination of his male issue, leaving nobody to support him in his old age, nobody to protect him after his death from misery and hunger by caring for corpse and grave, and sacrificing to his manes." 3 The retributive sufferings which innocent persons have to undergo in consequence of the sins of the guilty, are not always supposed to be inflicted upon them directly, as a result of divine resentment. They are often attributed to infection. Sin is looked upon in the light of a contagious matter which may be transmitted from parents to children, or be communicated by contact. his This idea is well illustrated by the funeral ceremonies of the Tahitians. "When the house for the dead had been erected, and the corpse placed upon the platform or bier, the priest ordered a hole to be dug in the earth or floor near the foot of the platform. Over this he prayed to the god by whom it was supposed the spirit of the deceased had been required. The purport of his prayer was that all the dead man's sins, and especially that for which his soul had been called to the po, might be deposited there, that they might not attach in any degree to the survivors, and that the anger of the god might be appeased." All who were employed in embalming the dead were also, during the process, carefully avoided by every person, 1 Cf. Isocrates, Oratio de pace, 120; Cicero, De natura Deorum, iii. 38; Nägelsbach, op. cit. p. 33 sq. 2 Cf. Schmidt, op. cit. i. 71 sq. (ancient Greeks). 3 de Groot, op. cit. (vol. iv. book) ii. as the guilt of the crime for which the deceased had died was believed to contaminate such as came in contact with the corpse; and as soon as the ceremony of depositing the sins in the hole was over, all who had touched the body or the garments of the deceased, which were buried or destroyed, fled precipitately into the sea to cleanse themselves from the pollution.1 In one part of New Zealand "a service was performed over an individual, by which all the sins of the tribe were supposed to be transferred to him, a fern stalk was previously tied to his person, with which he jumped into the river and there unbinding, allowed it to float away to the sea, bearing their sins with it."2 The Iroquois White Dog Feast, which was held every year in January, February, or early in March,3 implied, according to most authorities, a ceremony of sin-transference. The following description of it is given by Mrs. Jemison, a white woman who was captured by the Indians in the year 1755-Two white dogs, without spot or blemish, are strangled and hung near the door of the council-house. On the fourth or fifth day the "committee," consisting of from ten to twenty active. men who have been appointed to superintend the festivities, "collect the evil spirit, or drive it off entirely, for the present, and also concentrate within themselves all the sins of their tribe, however numerous or heinous. On the eight or ninth day, the committee having received all the sin, as before observed, into their own bodies, they take down the dogs, and after having transfused the whole of it into one of their own number, he, by a peculiar sleight of hand, or kind of magic, works it all out of himself into the dogs. The dogs, thus loaded with all the sins of the people, are placed upon a pile of wood that is directly set on fire. Here they are burnt, together with the sins with which they were loaded."5 Among the Badágas of India, at a burial, "an elder, standing by the corpse, offers up a prayer that the dead may not go to hell, that the sins committed on earth may be forgiven, and that the sins may be borne by a calf, which is let loose in the jungle and used thenceforth for no manner of work." At Utch-Kurgan, in Turkestan, Mr. Schuyler saw an old man, constantly Ellis, Polynesian Researches, i. 401 Mrs. Mary Jemison, p. 158 sqq. Cf. Mr. Clark's description, quoted by Beauchamp, loc. cit. p. 238. Taylor, Te Ika a Maui, p. 101. 3 Beauchamp, 'Iroquois White Dog Feast,' in American Antiquarian, vii. 236 sq. Hale, Iroquois Sacrifice of the White Dog,' ibid. vii. 7. Beauchamp, loc. cit. p. 237 sq. 6 6 Thurston, Badagas of the Nil giris,' in the Madras Government Museum's Bulletin, ii. 4. Cf. Metz, Tribes inhabiting the Neilgherry Hills, p. 78; Graul, Reise nach Ostindien, iii. 296 sqq. |