1

to be consumed by the god as well as by his worshippers, just as in Samoa the people feasted, as the Rev. G. Turner says, "with" as well as "before their god." But in the Yagna sacrifice the victim is eaten sacramentally, as a means of entering into communion with the god; and the Chinese view of sacrifice is the same. According to Professor Legge, "the general idea symbolised by the character Ki is an offering whereby communication and communion with spiritual beings is effected." 2 These are two different, though not necessarily inconsistent aspects of the sacrificial rite one is the eating with the god, the other the eating of the god. Both require examination and illustration. We will begin with the latter.

In the Saracen rite, with a description of which this chapter began, the whole of the victim, "body and bones, skin, blood, and entrails," was consumed by the worshippers. The same thing is perhaps implied by the words of Pausanias in what he says about the offerings to Apollo Parrhasios and to the Meilichioi. The Mongols also regarded it as sacrilege to leave any of the sacred victim unconsumed; and in Hawaii a terrible visitation was the penalty for not consuming the whole of the offering. The consumption of the bones, blood, skin, and entrails is evidently a practice which advancing civilisation could not but discard; and we find that the ancient Prussians had left it behind, but what they did not eat had to be disposed of somehow, and it was buried. In Samoa the custom was the same as in ancient Prussia: "whatever was over after the meal was buried at the beach "; 3 and so elsewhere in Polynesia: "they were careful to bury or throw into the sea whatever food was over after the festival." In Thibet, at the end of the rite already described, the bones of the animal were carried away in a coffer. Amongst the Jakuts, "the bones and other offal are burnt, and the sacrifice is complete." 5 The Tartars, who make their gods of a sheep-skin, eat the body of the sheep and burn the bones. In the Hindoo Súlagava sacrifice, "the tail, hide, tendons, and hoof of the victim are to be thrown.

к

into the fire."1 Amongst the Kaffirs, on occasion of the sacrifice of an ox to the Amachlosi, when the flesh has been eaten, "many tribes burn the bones of the victim."2 The Tscheremiss at the annual feast to their supreme god Juma, poured the blood of the victim in the fire: head, lungs, and heart were offered, the rest eaten, and the remnants, if any, were thrown into the fire.8 Our English word "bon-fire" bone-fire points in the same direction. Finally, burning

=

was the mode adopted by the Hebrews.*

Now this custom (of eating the whole of the victim) requires explanation, not the custom of burning or burying what was not eaten, that is plainly the mode adopted by advancing civilisation for effecting the same end-whatever it was that the primitive worshipper accomplished by consuming the whole of the victim. But the custom of consuming everything, even bones, entrails, tendons, etc., could only have originated in a barbarous stage of society. Evidently, therefore, the belief also which led to the custom could only have originated in savagery. Therefore, again, it is to savage ideas that we must look for an explanation, not to conceptions which could only have been formed long after the custom. Of such savage ideas there are several which might well have given rise to the practice in question. It is, for instance, a belief amongst various savage hunters that if the bones of an animal are put together and carefully buried, the animal itself will hereafter revive. They accordingly take this precaution, partly in order to secure a supply of game in the future, and partly because they think that, if the animal is not thus buried, the surviving animals of the species resent the indignity, and desert the country or decline to be captured.5 But this custom and belief do not help us : they might account for the burying of the bones, but they do not account for burning the bones or for what really requires explanation, namely, the custom of consuming the bones, etc. Indeed, the two customs are, as we now see, fundamentally

1 Rajendralála Mitra, Indo-Aryans, i. 365.

2 Hartmann, Die Völker Afrikas, 224. 3 Bastian, Der Mensch, iii. 157. 4 Robertson Smith, Religion of the Semites, 239, referring to Lev. vii. 15 ff., xix. 6, xxii. 30.

For instances, see Frazer, Golden Bough, ch, iii. § 12,

inconsistent with one another: the one aims at destroying the bones, and is observed in the case of sacred animals; the other at preserving them, and is observed in the case of game.

Another savage parallel may be found in a belief already illustrated,1 namely, that the food of a divine king, such as the Mikado, or a superior chief, is fatal to his subjects or slaves. Much more, therefore, would the sacrificial animal of which a god had partaken be fatal, and great would be the need to save incautious, heedless persons from the danger of eating the remains which they might find lying about. Here we are approaching the true explanation; but, since we hope to show before the end of this chapter that the conception of the god's eating the victim only came relatively late, we cannot see in it the origin of the primitive custom in question, though we do see in it a powerful reinforcement thereof.

Again, it is a savage belief that you can injure a man not merely by means of his nail-parings, hair-clippings, and other things associated with him, but also by the refuse of his food. In Victoria, the natives believe that "if an enemy gets possession of anything that has belonged to them, even such things as bones of animals they have eaten, broken weapons, feathers, portions of dress, pieces of skin, or refuse of any kind, he can employ it as a charm to produce illness in the person to whom they belonged. They are therefore very careful to burn up all rubbish or uncleanness before leaving a camping-place "; 2 and "the practice of using a man's food to injure him is found in Polynesia generally, Tahiti, the Washington Islands, Fiji, Queensland, and amongst the Zulus and Kaffirs." 3 Now, this belief, coexisting as it does in Polynesia with the custom of burying the remnants of the sacrificial meal, cannot but strengthen the observance of that custom. But it is to be doubted whether it was the origin of the practice. The eagerness displayed by the Saracen worshippers to obtain a portion of the victim, and the dismay of Hakluyt's West Indians if they failed to get a piece, both show that originally, as in Peru, the victim was accounted

1 Supra, pp. 83, 84.

3 Folk-Lore, vi. 134, note 2.

2 Dawson, Australian Aborigines, 54.

'very sacred indeed"; and that the emotion which swayed the worshippers, and their motive for devouring the whole of the victim, was not fear lest the remnants should be used against them, still less anxiety about what might happen to incautious strangers, but desire on the part of each to obtain for himself as much as possible of something that was in the highest degree desirable. Now, that the sacrificial animal should be accounted "very sacred indeed" is intelligible enough, if it was (in the savage times when the whole victim was consumed) the totem animal and god of the clan making the sacrifice. As for the eagerness of the worshippers, it need not be doubted; but of the savage's motives for that eagerness we ought to try and form for ourselves some clear idea.

In the sacrificial rite itself, as an external act of worship, the essential feature is that the worshipper should partake of the offering; but it is only after a time that this central feature disengages itself from the repulsive accessories which were indeed inevitable concomitants of a savage feast, but were no part of the essence of the rite. We may therefore reasonably expect to find the rite on its inward side, i.e. as it presented itself to the worshipper, following a parallel line of development. That the idea of "communication and communion with spiritual beings," which, as we have seen, is the Chinese conception of sacrifice, is the aspect of the rite which has persisted longest, we will take for granted. Whether it was present dimly, and obscured or overlaid by other associations, but still implicitly present to the consciousness of savage man, is a question which depends for its answer on what view we take of that identity in difference which exists between civilised and uncivilised man, and makes the whole world kin. We may regard selfishness and the baser desires as alone "natural" and as constituting the sole identity; or, by the same question-begging epithet, we may credit the savage with the "natural" affections as well. The question has always divided philosophers, not merely in Europe, but in China, where Seun sides with Hobbes, and Han-yu anticipated the view of Butler that good instincts as well as bad are natural. If, therefore, here we take our stand, without hesitation, but without argument, on the side of the latter, it

is not that we wish to ignore the other view, but because this is not the place to discuss it. We shall therefore, with the reader's leave, assume that the mere existence of the family and of the clan implies the existence of some measure of affection between parents and children and between bloodrelations. But if this be granted, the rest follows: where affection exists in one direction it may come to exist in others; and communion is sought only with those towards whom we have affection. Here, then, lay the germ: in the conception of the clan-god as a permanently friendly power. As the leader of the clan in war, he claimed and received the affectionate loyalty of those on whom he conferred protection and victory; as the father of his worshippers, the filial affection of his children. It was not always or everywhere that the seed bore fruit: in the case of many savages still existing, e.g. most or all of the Australian aborigines, the conception of the totem-god as a protecting power has been lost, and they have lapsed almost into their original animism. But where it did germinate, its growth was accompanied by the intellectual and material development, by the movement towards civilisation, of the peoples amongst whom it flourished.

But the desire for union with the spiritual being with whom the fate and fortunes of the tribe were identified, was necessarily in savage times enveloped and conditioned by savage modes of thought and savage views of nature and her processes. One of these views has been called in by some writers to explain in part the motive with which the sacrificial victim was originally eaten it is that with the flesh. the qualities of the animal are absorbed and assimilated; and as a matter of fact some savages do eat tiger to give them courage, or deer to give them fleetness. But, it is important to note, it is not the characteristic quality of the totem animal that the savage, in his sacrificial meal, desires to appropriate many or most totems-turtle, snail, cockle, etc. -have, as mere animals, no obviously desirable qualities to recommend them. It is not the natural but the supernatural

"fact

1 Professor Tylor (Academy, No. 1237, N.S. p. 49) regards it as a that savage families, with all their rough ways, are held together by a bond of unselfish kindness, which is one of the wonders of human nature."