Volume III Part 37 (1/2)
”At a later period the conception is found current that any food which two men partake of together, so that the same substance enters into their flesh and blood, is enough to establish some sacred unity of life between them; but in ancient times this significance seems to be always attached to partic.i.p.ation in the flesh of a sacrosanct victim, and the solemn mystery of its death is justified by the consideration that only in this way can the sacred cement be procured which creates or keeps alive a living bond of union between the wors.h.i.+ppers and their G.o.d. This cement is nothing less than the actual life of the sacred and kindred animal, which is conceived as residing in its flesh, but especially in its blood, and so, in the sacred meal, is actually distributed among all the partic.i.p.ants, each of whom incorporated a particle of it with his own individual life.” [362]
11. The blood-feud.
It thus appears that the sacrifice of the divine animal which was the G.o.d of the tribe or clan, and the eating of its flesh and drinking of its blood together, was the only tangible bond or obligation on which such law and morality as existed in primitive society was based. Those who partic.i.p.ated in this sacrifice were brothers and forbidden to shed each other's blood, because in so doing they would have spilt the blood of the G.o.d impiously and unlawfully; the only lawful occasion on which it could be shed being by partic.i.p.ation of all the clan or kinsmen in the sacrificial meal. All other persons outside the clan were strangers or enemies, and no rights or obligations existed in connection with them; the only restraint on killing them being the fear that their kinsmen would take blood-revenge, not solely on the murderer, but on any member of his clan. A man's life was protected only by this readiness of his clansmen to avenge him; if he slew a fellow-kinsman, thus shedding the blood of the G.o.d which flowed in the veins of every member, or committed any other great impiety against the G.o.d, he was outlawed, and henceforth there was no protection for his life except such as he could afford himself by his own strength. This reflection puts the importance of the blood-feud in primitive society in a clear light. It was at that time really a beneficent inst.i.tution, being the only protection for human life; and its survival among such backward races as the Pathans and Corsicans, long after the State has undertaken the protection and avenging of life and the blood-feud has become almost wholly useless and evil, is more easily understood.
12. Taking food together and hospitality.
The original idea of the sacrificial meal was that the kinsmen in concert partook of the body of the G.o.d, thereby renewing their kins.h.i.+p with him and with each other. By a.n.a.logy, however, the tie thus formed was extended to the whole practice of eating together. It has been seen how a stranger who partook of food with an Arab became sacred and as a kinsman to his host and all the latter's clan for such time as any part of the food might remain in his system, a period which was conventionally taken as about three days. ”The Old Testament records many cases where a covenant was sealed by the parties eating and drinking together. In most of these the meal is sacrificial, and the deity is taken in as a third party to the covenant. But in Joshua i. 14 the Israelites enter into alliance with the Gibeonites by taking of their victuals without consulting Jehovah. A formal league confirmed by an oath follows, but by accepting the proffered food the Israelites are already committed to the alliance.” [363] From the belief in the strength and sanct.i.ty of the tie formed by eating together the obligation of hospitality appears to be derived. And this is one of the few moral ideas which are more binding in primitive than in civilised society.
13. The Roman sacra.
”A good example of the clan sacrifice, in which a whole kins.h.i.+p periodically joins, is afforded by the Roman sacra gentilicia. As in primitive society no man can belong to more than one kindred, so among the Romans no one could share in the sacra of two gentes--to do so was to confound the ritual and contaminate the purity of the gens. The sacra consisted in common anniversary sacrifices, in which the clansmen honoured the G.o.ds of the clan, and after them the whole kin, living and dead, were brought together in the service.” [364]
14. The Hindu caste-feasts.
The intense importance thus attached to eating in common on ceremonial occasions has a very familiar ring to any one possessing some acquaintance with the Indian caste-system. The resemblance of the gotra or clan and the subcaste to the Greek phratry and phule and the Roman gens and curia or tribe has been pointed out by M. Emile Senart in Les Castes dans l'Inde. The origin of the subcaste or group, whose members eat together and intermarry, cannot be discussed here. But it seems probable that the real bond which unites it is the capacity of its members to join in the ceremonial feasts at marriages, funerals, and the readmission of members temporarily excluded, which are of a type closely resembling and seemingly derived from the sacrificial meal. Before a wedding the ancestors of the family are formally invited, and when the wedding-cakes are made they are offered to the ancestors and then partaken of by all relatives of the family as in the Roman sacra. In this case grain would take the place of flesh as the sacrificial food among a people who no longer eat the flesh of animals. Thus Sir J. G. Frazer states: ”At the close of the rice harvest in the East Indian island of Buro each clan (fenna) meets at a common sacramental meal, to which every member of the clan is bound to contribute a little of the new rice. This meal is called 'eating the soul of the rice,' a name which clearly indicates the sacramental character of the repast. Some of the rice is also set apart and offered to the spirits.” [365] Grain cooked with water is sacred food among the Hindus. The bride and bridegroom wors.h.i.+p Gauri, perhaps a corn-G.o.ddess, and her son Ganesh, the G.o.d of prosperity and full granaries. It has been suggested that yellow is the propitious Hindu colour for weddings, because it is the colour of the corn. [366]
At the wedding feast all the guests sit knee to knee touching each other as a sign of their brotherhood. Sometimes the bride eats with the men in token of her inclusion in the brotherhood. In most castes the feast cannot begin until all the guests have come, and every member of the subcaste who is not under the ban of exclusion must be invited. If any considerable number of the guests wilfully abstain from attending it is an insult to the host and an implication that his own position is doubtful. Other points of resemblance between the caste feast and the sacrificial meal will be discussed elsewhere.
15. Sacrifice of the camel.
The sacrifice of the camel in Arabia, about the period of the fourth century, is thus described: ”The camel chosen as the victim is bound upon a rude altar of stones piled together, and when the leader of the band has thrice led the wors.h.i.+ppers round the altar in a solemn procession accompanied with chants, he inflicts the first wound while the last words of the hymn are still upon the lips of the congregation, and in all haste drinks of the blood that gushes forth. Forthwith the whole company fall on the victim with their swords, hacking off pieces of the quivering flesh and devouring them raw, with such wild haste that in the short interval between the rise of the day-star, which marked the hour for the service to begin, and the disappearance of its rays before the rising sun, the entire camel, body and bones, skin, blood and entrails, is wholly devoured.” [367]
In this case the camel was offered as a sacrifice to Venus or the Morning Star, and it had to be devoured while the star was visible. But it is clear that the camel itself had been originally revered, because except for the sacrifice it was unlawful for the Arabs to kill the camel otherwise than as a last resort to save themselves from starvation. ”The ordinary sustenance of the Saracens was derived from pillage or from hunting and from the milk of their herds. Only when these supplies failed they fell back on the flesh of their camels, one of which was slain for each clan or for each group which habitually pitched their tents together--always a fraction of a clan--and the flesh was hastily devoured by the kinsmen in dog-like fas.h.i.+on, half raw and merely softened over the fire.” [368] In Bhopal it is stated that a camel is still sacrificed annually in perpetuation of the ancient rite. Hindus who keep camels revere them like other domestic animals. When one of my tent-camels had broken its leg by a fall and had to be killed, I asked the camelman, to whom the animal belonged, to shoot it; but he positively refused, saying, 'How shall I kill him who gives me my bread'; and a Muhammadan orderly finally shot it.
16. The joint sacrifice.
The camel was devoured raw almost before the life had left the body, so that its divine life and blood might be absorbed by the wors.h.i.+ppers. The obligation to devour the whole body perhaps rested on the belief that its slaughter otherwise than as a sacrifice was impious, and if any part of the body was left unconsumed the clan would incur the guilt of murder. Afterwards, when more civilised stomachs revolted against the practice of devouring the whole body, the bones were buried or burnt, and it is suggested that our word bonfire comes from bone-fire. [369] Primitive usage required the presence of every clansman, so that each might partic.i.p.ate in shedding the sacred blood. Neither the blood of the G.o.d nor of any of the kinsmen might be spilt by private violence, but only by consent of the kindred and the kindred G.o.d. Similarly in shedding the blood of a member of the kin all the others were required to share the responsibility, and this was the ancient Hebrew form of execution where the culprit was stoned by the whole congregation. [370]
17. Animal sacrifices in Greece.
M. Salomon Reinach gives the following explanation of Greek myths in connection with the sacrificial meal: ”The primitive sacrifice of the G.o.d, usually accompanied by the eating of the G.o.d in fellows.h.i.+p, was preserved in their religious rites, and when its meaning had been forgotten numerous legends were invented to account for it. In order to understand their origin it is necessary to remember that the primitive wors.h.i.+ppers masqueraded as the G.o.d and took his name. As the object of the totem sacrifice is to make the partic.i.p.ants like the G.o.d and confer his divinity on them, the faithful endeavoured to increase the resemblance by taking the name of the G.o.d and covering themselves with the skins of animals of his species. Thus the Athenian damsels celebrating the wors.h.i.+p of the bear Artemis dressed themselves in bear-skins and called themselves bears; the Maenads who sacrificed the doe Penthea were clad in doe-skins. Even in the later rites the devotees of Bacchus called themselves Bacchantes. A whole series of legends can be interpreted as semi-rationalistic explanations of the sacrificial meal. Actaeon was really a great stag sacrificed by women devotees who called themselves the great hind and the little hinds; he became the rash hunter who surprised Artemis at her bath, and was transformed into a stag and devoured by his own dogs. The dogs are a euphemism; in the early legend they were the human devotees of the sacred stag who tore him to pieces and devoured him with their bare teeth. These feasts of raw flesh survived in the secret religious cults of Greece long after uncooked meat had ceased to be consumed in ordinary life. Orpheus (ophreus, the haughty), who appears in art with the skin of a fox on his head, was originally a sacred fox devoured by the women of the fox totem-clan; these women call themselves Ba.s.sarides in the legend, and ba.s.sareus is one of the old names of the fox. Zagreus is a son of Zeus and Persephone who transformed himself into a bull to escape from the t.i.tans, excited against him by Hera; the t.i.tans, wors.h.i.+ppers of the divine bull, killed and ate him; Zagreus was invoked in his wors.h.i.+p as the 'good bull,' and when Zagreus by the grace of Zeus was reborn as Dionysus, the young G.o.d carried on his forehead the horns which bore witness to his animal nature. Hippolytus in the fable is the son of Theseus who repels the advances of Phaedra, his stepmother, and was killed by his runaway horses because Theseus, deceived by Phaedra, invoked the anger of a G.o.d upon him. But Hippolytus in Greek means 'One torn to pieces by horses.' Hippolytus is himself a horse whom the wors.h.i.+ppers of the horse, calling themselves horses and disguised as such, tore to pieces and devoured. Phaethon (The s.h.i.+ning One) is a son of Apollo, who demands leave to drive the chariot of the sun, drives it badly, nearly burns up the world, and finally falls and perishes in the sea. This legend is the product of an old rite at Rhodes, the island of the sun, where every year a white horse and a burning chariot were thrown into the sea to help the sun, fatigued by his labours.” [371]