substitutional in character may or may not be intended to satisfy the material needs of supernatural beings. In some cases, as we have seen, their object is to appease a resentful god by the mere death of the victim.'

4

2

We have further noticed that, in the case of human sacrifice, the victim is occasionally regarded as a messenger between the worshippers and their god, even though the primary object of the rite be a different one. The same is sometimes true of other offerings as well.3 The Iroquois' sacrifice of the white dog was, according to Mr. Morgan, intended "to send up the spirit of the dog as a messenger to the Great Spirit, to announce their continued fidelity to his service, and, also, to convey to him their united thanks for the blessings of the year and in their thanksgiving addresses they were in the habit of throwing leaves of tobacco into the fire from time to time that their words might ascend to the dwelling of the Great Spirit in the smoke of their offerings. The Huichols of Mexico often use the arrows which they sacrifice to their gods as carriers of special prayers."

Not only are sacrifices used as bearers of prayers, but they are also frequently offered for the purpose of transferring curses. In Morocco every siyid of any importance is constantly visited by persons who desire to invoke the saint to whom it is dedicated with a view to being cured. of some illness, or being blessed with children, or getting a suitable husband or wife, or receiving help against an enemy, or deriving some other benefit from the saint. Το secure his assistance the visitor makes 'ár upon him; and the Moorish 'ár, of which I have spoken above, implies the transference of a conditional curse, whether it be made upon an ordinary man or a saint, living or dead. The 'âr put upon a saint may consist in throwing stones upon a cairn connected with his sanctuary, or making a pile of

1 Supra, i. 438 sqq.

2 Supra, i. 465 sq.

3 Cf. Hubert and Mauss, Essai sur la nature et la fonction du sacrifice,' in L'année sociologique, ii. 106, n. I.

See supra, i. 53, 64.

5 Morgan, League of the Iroquois, p. 216 sqq.

6 Lumholtz, Unknown Mexico, ii. 205. 7 For the meaning of this word see supra, ii. 584.

Supra, i. 586 sq.; ii. 584 sq.

stones to him, or tying a piece of cloth at the siyid, or knotting the leaves of some palmetto or the stalks of white broom growing in its vicinity, or offering an animal sacrifice to the saint. This making of 'ar is accompanied by a promise to reward the saint if he grants the request; but the sacrifice offered in fulfilment of such a promise. (l-wa 'da) is totally distinct from that offered as 'år. It is a genuine gift, whereas the 'âr-sacrifice is a means of constraining the saint. When an animal is killed as ‘âr the usual phrase bismillah, " In the name of God," is not used, and the animal may not be eaten, except by poor people. On the other hand, the animal which is sacrificed as wa'da is always killed "in the name of God," and is offered for the very purpose of being eaten by the saint's earthly representatives. Nothing can better show than the Moorish distinction between l-'ar and l-wa'da how futile it would be to try to explain every kind of sacrifice by one and the same principle. The distinction between. them is fundamental: the former is a threat, the latter is a promised reward. But at the same time it is not improbable that the idea of transferring curses to a supernatural being by means of a sacrifice was originally suggested by the previous existence of sacrifice as a religious act, combined with the ascription of mysterious propensities to blood, and especially to sacrificial blood, which, according to primitive ideas, made it a most efficient conductor of curses.

1 Westermarck, 'L-'år, or the Transference of Conditional Curses in Morocco,' in Anthropological Essays presented to E. B. Tylor, p. 368 sqq.

2 However, if the siyid has a mkáddam, or regular attendant, he tries to induce the petitioner to give him the victim alive, so that he may himself kill it in the name of God," and thus make it eatable. Then the descendants of the saint, if he has any, and the mkáddam himself, have no hesitation in eating the animal, even though it was intended by the visitor as 'ar on the saint, bismilláh being a holy word which removes the curse or evil energy

inherent in l-‘Ar.

3 When I have asked how it is that a saint, although invoked with /-'âr, does not always grant the request made to him, the answer has been that the saint does all that he can, but that he is not all-powerful and the failure is due to the fact that God does not listen to his prayer. But it also occurs that a person who has in vain made 'ar upon a saint goes to another siyid to complain of him. There is a general belief that saints do not help unless 'år is made on them-an idea which is not very flattering to their character.

There are obvious indications that the 'ár-sacrifice of the Moors is not unique of its kind, but has its counterpart among certain other peoples. In ancient religions. sacrifice is often supposed to exercise a constraining influence on the god to whom it is offered. We meet with this idea in Zoroastrianism,' in many of the Vedic hymns, and especially in Brahmanism. "Here," says Barth, "the rites of religion are the real deities, or at any rate they constitute together a sort of independent and superior power, before which the divine personalities disappear, and which almost holds the place allotted to destiny in other systems. The ancient belief, which is already prominent in the Hymns, that sacrifice conditionates the regular course of things, is met with here in the rank of a commonplace, and is at times accompanied with incredible details." Now, there can be little doubt that this ascription of a magic power to the sacrifice, by means of which it could control the actions of the gods, was due to the idea that it served as a conductor of imprecations; for it was invariably accompanied by a formula which was considered to possess irresistible force. In the invocation. lies the hidden energy which gives the efficacy to the sacrifice; without Brahmanaspati, the lord of prayer, sacrifice does not succeed.1 The Greeks actually offered anathemata, or curses, to their gods." The ancient Arabs, again, after killing the sacrificial animal, threw its hair on holy tree as a curse. But so little has the true import of such sacrifices been understood even by eminent. scholars, that they have been represented as votive offerings or gifts to the deity."

3

Considering that the idea of sacrifice being a conductor of imprecations has hitherto almost entirely escaped the notice of students of early religion, it is impossible to say

1 Darmesteter, Ormazd et Ahriman, P. 330.

2 Rig Veda, iii. 45. I; iv. 15. 5; vi. 51. 8; viii. 2. 6. Oldenberg, Religion des Veda, p. 311 sq.

sq.

3 Barth, Religions of India, p. 47

Rig- Veda, i. 18. 7.

5 Rouse, Greek Votive Offerings, p. 337 sqq.

6 Wellhausen, Reste arabischen Heidentums, p. 124.

Rouse, op. cit. p. 337. Wellhausen, op. cit. p. 124.

3

how widely it prevails and whether it also occurs in the savage world. world. We know that the practice of cursing a god not only was familiar to the ancient nations of culture, including the Egyptians, Hebrews, and other Semites,2 but is common among peoples like the South African Bechuanas and the Nagas of India. And that the shedding of blood is frequently applied as a means of transferring curses is suggested by various cases in which, however, the object of the imprecation is not a god but a man. We have previously noticed the reception sacrifices offered to visiting strangers, presumably for the purpose of transmitting to them conditional curses; and a very similar idea seems to underlie certain cases of oath-taking. Sometimes the oath is taken in connection with a sacrifice made to a god, and then the sanctity of the sacrificial animal naturally increases the efficacy of the self-imprecation. In other instances the oath is taken on the blood of an animal which is killed for the purpose, apparently without being sacrificed to a god. But in either case, I believe, the blood of the animal is thought not only to add supernatural energy to the oath, but to transfer, as it were, the self-imprecation to the very person who pronounces it. The Mrús, a Chittagong hill tribe, "will swear by one of their gods, to whom, at the same time, a sacrifice must be offered." Among the ancient Norsemen both the accused and the accuser grasped the holy ring kept for that purpose on the altar, stained with the blood of a sacrificial bull, and made oath by invoking Freyr, Niordr, and the almighty among the Asas. At Athens a person who charged another with murder made an oath with imprecations upon himself and his family and his house, standing upon the entrails of a boar, a ram, and a bull,

1 Book of the Dead, ch. 125.

2 Exodus, xxii. 28. 1 Samuel, xvii. 43. Isaiah, viii. 21.

3 Chapman, Travels in the Interior of South Africa, i. 45 9.

Woodthorpe, 'Wild Tribes inhabiting the so-called Naga Hills,' in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xi. 70.

5 Supra, i. 590 sq.

6 Lewin, Wild Races of SouthEastern India, p. 233. Cf. ibid. p. 244 (Pankhos and Bunjogees).

Landnámabók, iv. 7 (Islendinga Sögur, i. 258). Lea, Superstition and Force, P. 27. Keyser, Efterladte Skrifter, ii. pt. i. 388. Gummere, Germanic Origins, p. 301.

which had been sacrificed by special persons on the appointed days.' Tyndareus "sacrificed a horse and swore the suitors of Helen, making them stand on the pieces of the horse," the oath being to defend Helen and him who might be chosen to marry her if ever they should be wronged. One of the three binding forms of oath prevalent among the Sânsiya in India is to "kill a cock and pouring its blood on the ground swear over it." 3 When the Annamese swear by heaven and earth, they often kill a buffalo or he-goat and drink its blood.* Among the ancient Arabs comrades in arms swore fidelity to each other by dipping their hands in the blood of a camel killed for the purpose."

The last mentioned case, which implies shedding of blood as a means of sealing a compact, leads us to a special class of sacrifices offered to gods, namely, the covenant sacrifice, known to us from Semitic antiquity. The Hebrews, as Professor Robertson Smith observes," thought of the national religion as constituted by a formal covenant sacrifice at Mount Sinai, where half of the blood of the sacrificed oxen was sprinkled on the altar and the other half on the people," or even by a still earlier covenant rite in which the parties were Yahve and Abraham; and the idea of sacrifice establishing a covenant between God and man is also apparent in the Psalms. In various cases recorded in the Old Testament sacrifice is accompanied by a sacrificial meal;10 "the god and his worshippers are wont to eat and drink together, and by this token their fellowship is declared

8

1 Demosthenes, Oratio(xxiii.) contra Aristocratem, 67 sq., p. 642.

2 Pausanias, iii. 20. 9. For Homeric oath sacrifices see Iliad, iii. 260 sqq. ; xix. 250 sqq.; Keller, Homeric Society, p. 176 sqq.

3 Crooke, Tribes and Castes of the North-Western Provinces, iv. 281. 4 Kohler, Rechtsvergleichende Studien, p. 208.

5 Wellhausen, Reste arabischen Heidentums, p. 128.

6 Robertson Smith, Religion of the Semites, p. 318 sq.

7 Exodus, xxiv. 4 sqq.
8 Genesis, xv. 8 sqq.
9 Psalms, 1. 5.

10 Genesis, xxxi. 54. Exodus, xxiv. II. I Samuel, xi. 15. Wellhausen says (Prolegomena to the History of Israel, p. 71) that, according to the practice of the older period, a meal was nearly always connected with a sacrifice.