remembered, was limited as to the food he might eat or even see, as to the garments he might wear; he might not ride, or see work done on holy days. Now, not only was "the Sabbath known, at all events in Accadian times, as a dies nefastus, a day on which certain work was forbidden to be done," but "the king himself, it is stated, must not eat flesh that has been cooked over the coals or in the smoke, he must not change the garments of his body, white robes he must not wear, sacrifices. he may not offer, in a chariot he may not ride." 1 In civilised communities the restrictions imposed upon both kings and priests have usually decreased in number and dwindled down to mere survivals-therein keeping pace with the diminution of the sacred powers ascribed to each. In less advanced stages of culture, where high priests and kings each exercise the divine powers deputed to them more extensively, the restrictions are more numerous and more real; and both the powers and the limitations are united and more extensive in the case of rulers who are, like the Egyptian, at once high priest and king. The parallel between the royal and the priestly office further extends to the conditions of tenure-kingship may be hereditary or elective, annual or lifelong, etc.-and, as we shall hereafter see, to the manner of consecration. At this point, however, our business is to see how the natural operation of the taboos would tend to differentiate the primitive institution into the two separate institutions of royalty and priesthood.

The infectiousness of taboo is such that the energies of primitive society are devoted to isolating the tabooed person or thing. A human being in whom the divine afflatus is permanently present is highly taboo, and the most stringent measures are taken to isolate him; and that is the original reason of the restrictions imposed on priests and kings. But the isolation acts or tends to act in a way not originally contemplated: even if it does not lead to the permanent and absolute seclusion of the ruler in his palace (as was the case with the Mikado and other sacred kings, in Ethiopia, Sabæa, Tonquin, and in Corea and Loango at the present day 2), still the number of prohibitions to which he is subjected is enough (as the taboos on the Flamen Dialis may show) to hamper and restrict him in such a way that he is as effectually cut 1 Sayce, Higher Criticism, 75.

2 G. B. 164.

off from intercourse with his subjects and the discharge of the active duties of kingship as if he were absolutely The result is that all real power

confined to his palace. passes out of the hands of a man in such a helpless condition. For a time the institution of king-priest may endure, because there are found men who are content to enjoy the power without the glory of ruling. But generally the pressure of external foes eventually makes it necessary for the king-priest to entrust the command of his subjects to a war-king. The office of war-king may be intended to be temporary 1-annual, or terminable at the end of the campaign -but it usually results in becoming lifelong and frequently hereditary. If the war-king, further, is not content with military power, but arrogates to himself the rest of the temporal power that originally belonged to the priest-king, and then succeeds in founding a family, the result will be the existence side by side of two institutions-one, the kingship, in which the temporal power is centred; the other, the pontificate, in which the spiritual powers remain. But the divinity which hedged in the priest-king was inevitably transferred with the transference of part of his functions to the temporal king. Even when the latter was, like the Tycoon of Japan, a mere usurper, the same fate eventually overtook his descendants as had befallen the Mikado, whose functions they usurped: "entangled in the same inextricable web of custom and law, they degenerated into mere puppets, hardly stirring from their palaces, and occupied in a perpetual round of empty ceremonies, while the real business of government was managed by the council of state." When, then, the war-king was not a usurper but was duly consecrated by the king-priest, the divine character of the original office would be likely à fortiori to be transmitted to the new institution (as in Mexico), wholly or in part. If the divine character was transmitted only in such degree that the king was not impeded in his work, the institution of royalty was safe from the danger which deprived the original institution of half its power; but if in a greater degree, then some means of evading the hampering restrictions of the

1 So in Mangaia, ib. 120.

So in Mexico and Colombia, ibid. 44, 113.

So in Tonquin, oc. cit. • Ibid. 119.

office had to be found. One such means was that adopted by the Mikado: it consisted in abdicating on the birth of a son and doing homage to the child, on whom thus fell all the restrictions, while the father, acting in the infant monarch's name, exercised all the power. It is in a similar way, we may conjecture, that the priesthoods administered by young men or children were transferred to them by their fathers; for the rules which would hamper the father in his daily life and work could be observed with less practical inconvenience in the case of the young or infant son. For, it need hardly be remarked, the priest, even when temporal power had passed to the kingship, still retained the divine character, and with it the incapacity for mixing in the affairs of daily life, which attached to the priest-king. Thus in Tartary, we find Father Grueber saying," Duo hoc in Regno Reges sunt, quorum prior Regni negotiis recte administrandis incumbit, et Dena dicitur; alter ab omni negotiorum extraneorum mole avulsus, intra secretos palatii sui secessus otio indulgens, Numinis instar adoratur . . . hunc veluti Deum verum et vivum, quem et Patrem æternum et cœlestem vocant, . . . adorant." 2

In this connection we may note it as a further indication of the original indivisible unity of the office of priest and king, that even when the two functions have come to be exercised by different persons there is a perpetual tendency to revert to the old organic unity: it is not merely that each of the separate offices retains some part of the divine character that attached to the undivided office, but the functions themselves tend to reunite-reverting in their unity sometimes to the priest and sometimes to the king. If, for instance, the priesthood becomes (or remains) hereditary, and temporal rulers are appointed ad hoc and from time. to time, the temporal functions naturally relapse into the priesthood in the intervals (longer or shorter) when no judge or war leader is forthcoming. Indeed, even in the latest times, the consecration of the king by a priest testifies to the original source of the king's office. On the other hand, if the kingship becomes hereditary but the priesthood not, then, in spite of the existence of priests, priestly functions tend to attach themselves to the kingly office; hence it is a 2 Thevenot, Divers Voyages, iv. 22.

1 Loc. cit.

ancient times that If this reunion of

very general feature of the kingship in the king can offer sacrifice, like a priest. the two functions becomes so intimate as to amount to a reversion to the ancestral organism, so to speak, then the same process of fission which originally gave birth to the king will be repeated; and the temporal ruler, whose office originated in a delegation of power from the king-priest, will himself have to appoint a delegate to do those warlike duties which the sanctity of his office prevents him from discharging himself-by the side of a Baoiλeus we shall find a πоλéμaρxos, by the side of the "king" a heretoga. The tendency to reversion, however, which manifests itself particularly when either of the derived offices is hereditary, may be averted without danger to the hereditary principle, if the hereditary priest (or king) delegates his temporal (or priestly) functions to his brother, or other relative and his descendants.

A further and remarkable fact which tends to connect kingship and priesthood together, and to prove their common origin, is the common fate to which divine kings and divine priests alike were liable: at the end of a certain period of time the king had to commit suicide or was put to death. In India, the king of Calicut had to cut his throat in public at the end of a twelve years' reign; so, too, the king of Quilacare in South India. The divine kings of Mero in Ethiopia could be ordered to die whenever the priests chose.2 In various parts of Africa, kings and priests having supernatural powers are put to death, sometimes when old age threatens, sometimes when they have developed the least bodily blemish, such as the loss of a tooth; and the executioner may be the destined successor of the king. Amongst the ancient Prussians, the ruler, whose title was God's Mouth, might commit suicide by burning himself in front of the sacred oak. Amongst other peoples death seems not to have been insisted on at all unless drought or pestilence or other calamities occurred. But even 80, a

4

difficulty was found in obtaining persons willing to take office. In Savage Island, " of old they had kings, but as they were the high priests as well, and were supposed to cause the

1 Frazer, G. B. i. 224.

3 Ibid. 223.

2 Ibid. 218.

E.g. the Swedes, ibid. 47.

food to grow, the people got angry with them in times of scarcity, and killed them, so the end of it was that no one wished to be king."1 On the other hand, it is clear that peoples who wished to retain the institution of kingship would have to give up requiring suicide of the king. The requirement, however, would not have been made in the first instance if there had not been a very powerful motivewhatever the motive might have been-for making it; and the motive operated against the abolition of this condition of holding royal office, as also it must have operated in inducing the occupants of the office to comply with it. Eventually the condition was evaded. Amongst the Western Semites, in Babylon, the tenure of office seems to have been annualthe original term, as we shall hereafter argue and at the end of the year the king was put to death. In course of time the community seem to have consented to an evasion: when the time for execution came, the king abdicated, and a criminal was allowed to reign in his stead for five days, at the end of which time the criminal was executed and the king resumed his throne. Elsewhere the king abdicates annually, and a temporary king is appointed but is not killed, he is only subject to a mock execution. In two places (Cambodia and Jambi) the temporary kings come of a stock believed to be akin to the royal family. Sometimes the mock king is not appointed annually, but once for all for a few days at the beginning of the reign, which seems to indicate that in this case the custom of annually executing a substitute for the king had given way to the practice of executing one, once for all, at the accession of the king. Finally, it is suggested by Mr. Frazer that a criminal would probably not at first have been accepted by the community as an adequate substitute: hence possibly the original substitute was the king's firstborn son.5 The practice of sacrificing the firstborn to the gods is well known.

It seems probable that originally the office of divine priest-king was held for a year, because in that case the difficulty and cruelty of insisting on the fulfilment of the condition of tenure would naturally lead to an extension 2 Frazer, op. cit. 227. 5 Ibid.

1 Turner, Samoa, 304. 4 Ibid. 234.

& Ibid. 228-31.