is erected. The Rev. G. Turner noted this feature in the Polynesian ritual. At the annual feast in May, he says, "the food brought as an offering was divided and eaten, there before the Lord,""1 and, at their annual festival," they feasted with and before their god."2 Far away from Polynesia, the Tehuelche Patagonians celebrate births, marriages, and deaths by the sacrifice of mares, and the animals are eaten on the spot. In a similar clime, but at the opposite end of the earth's pole, the same rule is observed; amongst the Jakuts, when a sacrifice is offered for a sick man's recovery, " tongue, heart, and liver are cooked and placed on a specially prepared one-legged table, the top of which has a round hole in the centre. The rest of the meat is consumed by the Jakuts." The Mongols regard it as sacrilege to leave any of the sacred victim unconsumed; 5 and in certain feasts of the Red Indians the meat must be wholly consumed. Returning to the Old World, we find that in Arcadia, the home of lingering cults, the sacrifice to Apollo Parrhasios must be consumed in the sanctuary: ἀναλίσκουσιν αὐτόθι τοῦ ἱερείου τὰ κρέα Even more interesting is the case of the Meilichioi. The festival at which the Athenians made sacrifice to Zeus Meilichios, the Diasia, was one of the most ancient of their institutions; but though they adhered closely to the ancient and primitive use, the Locrians of Myonia were still more faithful to the ritual which they had received from the common ancestors of Locrians and Athenians alike, for, like the Saracens and the Prussians, they offered the sacrifice by night, and consumed the victim before the rising of the sun: νυκτεριναὶ δὲ αἱ θυσίαι θεοῖς τοῖς Μειλιχίοις εἰσί καὶ ἀναλῶσαι τὰ κρέα αὐτόθι πρὶν ἢ ἥλιον ἐπισχεῖν νομίζουσι. It is therefore interesting to note the recurrence of this feature in another branch of the Aryan race, the Hindoos. According to the Grihya Sútra, "the time" for the Súlagava sacrifice "was after midnight, but some authorities preferred the dawn." In the next place, it was of the essence of the rite that 3 Journal of the Anthropological Institute, i. 200. Bastian, Der Mensch, iii. 151. "Müller, Geschichte der Amerikanischen Urreligionen, 86. 7 Pausanias, viii. 38. 'Rajendralála Mitra, Indo-Aryans, i. 364. 8 Ibid. x. 8. all, without exception, who were present should partake of the victim; and as the rite originally was a blood-covenant, or the renewal thereof between the totem clan and its supernatural ally, the primitive usage required the presence; of every clansman. But even in later times, when private sacrifice had come to be common, custom required that the whole of the household, or whatever the society making the sacrifice was, should partake of the victim. In some cases it is the individual members of the community who, like the Saracens, are eager to obtain their share of the sacred flesh; while elsewhere it is the community as a whole which is impressed with the necessity of compelling its members to partake. In the West Indies, the former was the case. The priest, says Hakluyt, "cutteth him (the victim) into smal peeces, and being cutte diuideth him in this manner to be eaten . . . and whosoeuer should haue no parte nor portion of the sacrificed enemie woulde thinke he shoulde bee ill accepted that yeere." 1 In Peru, also, the same alacrity was shown. "The bodies of the sheep were divided and distributed as very sacred things, a very small piece to each person." 2 The Red Indians represent probably a stage through which the ancestors of the Incas passed, and with them the whole community partook of the victim.3 In Hawaii, there may not have been less alacrity, but there was more compulsion. On the eighth day of the temple feast, the whole of the sacred offering (a pig) had to be eaten; any man who refused to eat would be put to death, and if the whole offering were not consumed, a terrible visitation would descend upon all the inhabitants. Amongst the Kaffirs, when an ox is offered to the Amachlosi, "the flesh is distributed and eaten." 5 As regards societies smaller or other than that of the clan or village community; at the Yagna sacrifice to the sun, each of the company of Brahmins ate a piece of the liver of the sacrificial ram, and thereby entered into communion with the deity. As the development of religion in China has many 1 Hakluyt, Historie of the West Indies, Decade vi, ch. vi. 2 Markham, Rites and Laws of the Yncas, 28. 3 Müller, Amerik. Urreligionen, 86. Bastian, Der Mensch, iii. 152. 5 Hartmann, Die Völker Afrikas, 224. peculiar features, it is the more necessary to call attention to the important points in which it follows the same laws and lines as other countries; and if, as we have sought to show, totemism has at one time or other been universal throughout the world, then its outcome, namely, animal sacrifice, should be found in China as well as elsewhere. It is so found; it is the subject of one of the Confucian books, the Li Ki; and it is a large part of the state religion. The greatest of the sacrifices was, like several which we have already mentioned, annual (at the winter solstice).1 The victim was not only killed, but eaten : "the viands of the feast were composed of a calf."2 The practice of eating the flesh raw, as in the Saracen rite, seems once to have been known. "At the sacrifices in the time of the Lord of Yu... there were the offerings of blood, of raw flesh, and of sodden flesh." Even the reversion to this savage practice, which is seen in some of the "mysteries" of ancient Greece, appears also in China, for in times of public calamity animals are torn in pieces, as by the Baccha. And, to come back to the matter in hand, namely, the primitive custom which demanded that the whole clan should partake of the victim, "when there was a sacrifice at the Shê altar of a village, some one went to it from every house."5 Again, by a post-Confucian custom, the Chinese pour wine (a very general substitute for blood) from a beaker on the straw image of Confucius, and then all present drink of it and taste the sacrificial victim in order to participate in the grace of Confucius.6 In Thibet, in the time of Marco Polo, when a wether was offered on behalf of a child, the flesh was divided amongst the relatives. Finally, to conclude these illustrations of the primitive custom requiring all present to partake of the victim, in the Pelew Islands sickness is attributed to the wrath of a god, who is appeased by the sacrifice of a pig, goat, or turtle, which must be consumed by the invalid's relatives and by the god.8 In the last quotation, it will be noted that the victim is 1 Legge, The Li Ki, i. 416 (Sacred Books of the East). 3 Ibid. 443. 7 Ibid. 157. 2 Ibid. 417. 4 Ibid. 307. 5 Ibid. 425. Bastian, Der Mensch, iii. 154. Bastian, Allerlei, i. 43. 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. will begin with the latter. We 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"; 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 1 Samoa, 26. 3 Turner, Samoa, 57. 5 Bastian, Allerlei, i. 208, 6 2 Legge, op. cit. 201 (note). 4 Turner, Polynesia, 241. Bastian, Der Mensch, ii. 257. 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. 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. 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, |