object:1.24 - The Killing of the Divine King
book class:The Golden Bough
author class:James George Frazer
subject class:Occultism
class:chapter
XXIV. The Killing of the Divine King
1. The Mortality of the Gods
MAN has created gods in his own likeness and being himself mortal he
has naturally supposed his creatures to be in the same sad
predicament. Thus the Greenlanders believed that a wind could kill
their most powerful god, and that he would certainly die if he
touched a dog. When they heard of the Christian God, they kept
asking if he never died, and being informed that he did not, they
were much surprised, and said that he must be a very great god
indeed. In answer to the enquiries of Colonel Dodge, a North
American Indian stated that the world was made by the Great Spirit.
Being asked which Great Spirit he meant, the good one or the bad
one, "Oh, neither of _them,_" replied he, "the Great Spirit that
made the world is dead long ago. He could not possibly have lived as
long as this." A tribe in the Philippine Islands told the Spanish
conquerors that the grave of the Creator was upon the top of Mount
Cabunian. Heitsi-eibib, a god or divine hero of the Hottentots, died
several times and came to life again. His graves are generally to be
met with in narrow defiles between mountains. When the Hottentots
pass one of them, they throw a stone on it for good luck, sometimes
muttering, "Give us plenty of cattle." The grave of Zeus, the great
god of Greece, was shown to visitors in Crete as late as about the
beginning of our era. The body of Dionysus was buried at Delphi
beside the golden statue of Apollo, and his tomb bore the
inscription, "Here lies Dionysus dead, the son of Semele." According
to one account, Apollo himself was buried at Delphi; for Pythagoras
is said to have carved an inscription on his tomb, setting forth how
the god had been killed by the python and buried under the tripod.
The great gods of Egypt themselves were not exempt from the common
lot. They too grew old and died. But when at a later time the
discovery of the art of embalming gave a new lease of life to the
souls of the dead by preserving their bodies for an indefinite time
from corruption, the deities were permitted to share the benefit of
an invention which held out to gods as well as to men a reasonable
hope of immortality. Every province then had the tomb and mummy of
its dead god. The mummy of Osiris was to be seen at Mendes; Thinis
boasted of the mummy of Anhouri; and Heliopolis rejoiced in the
possession of that of Toumou. The high gods of Babylon also, though
they appeared to their worshippers only in dreams and visions, were
conceived to be human in their bodily shape, human in their
passions, and human in their fate; for like men they were born into
the world, and like men they loved and fought and died.
2. Kings killed when their Strength fails
IF THE HIGH gods, who dwell remote from the fret and fever of this
earthly life, are yet believed to die at last, it is not to be
expected that a god who lodges in a frail tabernacle of flesh should
escape the same fate, though we hear of African kings who have
imagined themselves immortal by virtue of their sorceries. Now
primitive peoples, as we have seen, sometimes believe that their
safety and even that of the world is bound up with the life of one
of these god-men or human incarnations of the divinity. Naturally,
therefore, they take the utmost care of his life, out of a regard
for their own. But no amount of care and precaution will prevent the
man-god from growing old and feeble and at last dying. His
worshippers have to lay their account with this sad necessity and to
meet it as best they can. The danger is a formidable one; for if the
course of nature is dependent on the man-god's life, what
catastrophes may not be expected from the gradual enfeeblement of
his powers and their final extinction in death? There is only one
way of averting these dangers. The man-god must be killed as soon as
he shows symptoms that his powers are beginning to fail, and his
soul must be transferred to a vigorous successor before it has been
seriously impaired by the threatened decay. The advantages of thus
putting the man-god to death instead of allowing him to die of old
age and disease are, to the savage, obvious enough. For if the
man-god dies what we call a natural death, it means, according to
the savage, that his soul has either voluntarily departed from his
body and refuses to return, or more commonly that it has been
extracted, or at least detained in its wanderings, by a demon or
sorcerer. In any of these cases the soul of the man-god is lost to
his worshippers, and with it their prosperity is gone and their very
existence endangered. Even if they could arrange to catch the soul
of the dying god as it left his lips or his nostrils and so transfer
it to a successor, this would not effect their purpose; for, dying
of disease, his soul would necessarily leave his body in the last
stage of weakness and exhaustion, and so enfeebled it would continue
to drag out a languid, inert existence in any body to which it might
be transferred. Whereas by slaying him his worshippers could, in the
first place, make sure of catching his soul as it escaped and
transferring it to a suitable successor; and, in the second place,
by putting him to death before his natural force was abated, they
would secure that the world should not fall into decay with the
decay of the man-god. Every purpose, therefore, was answered, and
all dangers averted by thus killing the man-god and transferring his
soul, while yet at its prime, to a vigorous successor.
The mystic kings of Fire and Water in Cambodia are not allowed to
die a natural death. Hence when one of them is seriously ill and the
elders think that he cannot recover, they stab him to death. The
people of Congo believed, as we have seen, that if their pontiff the
Chitom were to die a natural death, the world would perish, and the
earth, which he alone sustained by his power and merit, would
immediately be annihilated. Accordingly when he fell ill and seemed
likely to die, the man who was destined to be his successor entered
the pontiff's house with a rope or a club and strangled or clubbed
him to death. The Ethiopian kings of Meroe were worshipped as gods;
but whenever the priests chose, they sent a messenger to the king,
ordering him to die, and alleging an oracle of the gods as their
authority for the command. This command the kings always obeyed down
to the reign of Ergamenes, a contemporary of Ptolemy II., King of
Egypt. Having received a Greek education which emancipated him from
the superstitions of his countrymen, Ergamenes ventured to disregard
the command of the priests, and, entering the Golden Temple with a
body of soldiers, put the priests to the sword.
Customs of the same sort appear to have prevailed in this part of
Africa down to modern times. In some tribes of Fazoql the king had
to administer justice daily under a certain tree. If from sickness
or any other cause he was unable to discharge this duty for three
whole days, he was hanged on the tree in a noose, which contained
two razors so arranged that when the noose was drawn tight by the
weight of the king's body they cut his throat.
A custom of putting their divine kings to death at the first
symptoms of infirmity or old age prevailed until lately, if indeed
it is even now extinct and not merely dormant, among the Shilluk of
the White Nile, and in recent years it has been carefully
investigated by Dr. C. G. Seligman. The reverence which the Shilluk
pay to their king appears to arise chiefly from the conviction that
he is a reincarnation of the spirit of Nyakang, the semi-divine hero
who founded the dynasty and settled the tribe in their present
territory. It is a fundamental article of the Shilluk creed that the
spirit of the divine or semi-divine Nyakang is incarnate in the
reigning king, who is accordingly himself invested to some extent
with the character of a divinity. But while the Shilluk hold their
kings in high, indeed religious reverence and take every precaution
against their accidental death, nevertheless they cherish "the
conviction that the king must not be allowed to become ill or
senile, lest with his diminishing vigour the cattle should sicken
and fail to bear their increase, the crops should rot in the fields,
and man, stricken with disease, should die in ever-increasing
numbers." To prevent these calamities it used to be the regular
custom with the Shilluk to put the king to death whenever he showed
signs of ill-health or failing strength. One of the fatal symptoms
of decay was taken to be an incapacity to satisfy the sexual
passions of his wives, of whom he has very many, distributed in a
large number of houses at Fashoda. When this ominous weakness
manifested itself, the wives reported it to the chiefs, who are
popularly said to have intimated to the king his doom by spreading a
white cloth over his face and knees as he lay slumbering in the heat
of the sultry afternoon. Execution soon followed the sentence of
death. A hut was specially built for the occasion: the king was led
into it and lay down with his head resting on the lap of a nubile
virgin: the door of the hut was then walled up; and the couple were
left without food, water, or fire to die of hunger and suffocation.
This was the old custom, but it was abolished some five generations
ago on account of the excessive sufferings of one of the kings who
perished in this way. It is said that the chiefs announce his fate
to the king, and that afterwards he is strangled in a hut which has
been specially built for the occasion.
From Dr. Seligman's enquiries it appears that not only was the
Shilluk king liable to be killed with due ceremony at the first
symptoms of incipient decay, but even while he was yet in the prime
of health and strength he might be attacked at any time by a rival
and have to defend his crown in a combat to the death. According to
the common Shilluk tradition any son of a king had the right thus to
fight the king in possession and, if he succeeded in killing him, to
reign in his stead. As every king had a large harem and many sons,
the number of possible candidates for the throne at any time may
well have been not inconsiderable, and the reigning monarch must
have carried his life in his hand. But the attack on him could only
take place with any prospect of success at night; for during the day
the king surrounded himself with his friends and bodyguards, and an
aspirant to the throne could hardly hope to cut his way through them
and strike home. It was otherwise at night. For then the guards were
dismissed and the king was alone in his enclosure with his favourite
wives, and there was no man near to defend him except a few
herdsmen, whose huts stood a little way off. The hours of darkness
were therefore the season of peril for the king. It is said that he
used to pass them in constant watchfulness, prowling round his huts
fully armed, peering into the blackest shadows, or himself standing
silent and alert, like a sentinel on duty, in some dark corner. When
at last his rival appeared, the fight would take place in grim
silence, broken only by the clash of spears and shields, for it was
a point of honour with the king not to call the herdsmen to his
assistance.
Like Nyakang himself, their founder, each of the Shilluk kings after
death is worshipped at a shrine, which is erected over his grave,
and the grave of a king is always in the village where he was born.
The tomb-shrine of a king resembles the shrine of Nyakang,
consisting of a few huts enclosed by a fence; one of the huts is
built over the king's grave, the others are occupied by the
guardians of the shrine. Indeed the shrines of Nyakang and the
shrines of the kings are scarcely to be distinguished from each
other, and the religious rituals observed at all of them are
identical in form and vary only in matters of detail, the variations
being due apparently to the far greater sanctity attributed to the
shrines of Nyakang. The grave-shrines of the kings are tended by
certain old men or women, who correspond to the guardians of the
shrines of Nyakang. They are usually widows or old men-servants of
the deceased king, and when they die they are succeeded in their
office by their descendants. Moreover, cattle are dedicated to the
grave-shrines of the kings and sacrifices are offered at them just
as at the shrines of Nyakang.
In general the principal element in the religion of the Shilluk
would seem to be the worship which they pay to their sacred or
divine kings, whether dead or alive. These are believed to be
animated by a single divine spirit, which has been transmitted from
the semi-mythical, but probably in substance historical, founder of
the dynasty through all his successors to the present day. Hence,
regarding their kings as incarnate divinities on whom the welfare of
men, of cattle, and of the corn implicitly depends, the Shilluk
naturally pay them the greatest respect and take every care of them;
and however strange it may seem to us, their custom of putting the
divine king to death as soon as he shows signs of ill-health or
failing strength springs directly from their profound veneration for
him and from their anxiety to preserve him, or rather the divine
spirit by which he is animated, in the most perfect state of
efficiency: nay, we may go further and say that their practice of
regicide is the best proof they can give of the high regard in which
they hold their kings. For they believe, as we have seen, that the
king's life or spirit is so sympathetically bound up with the
prosperity of the whole country, that if he fell ill or grew senile
the cattle would sicken and cease to multiply, the crops would rot
in the fields, and men would perish of widespread disease. Hence, in
their opinion, the only way of averting these calamities is to put
the king to death while he is still hale and hearty, in order that
the divine spirit which he has inherited from his predecessors may
be transmitted in turn by him to his successor while it is still in
full vigour and has not yet been impaired by the weakness of disease
and old age. In this connexion the particular symptom which is
commonly said to seal the king's death-warrant is highly
significant; when he can no longer satisfy the passions of his
numerous wives, in other words, when he has ceased, whether
partially or wholly, to be able to reproduce his kind, it is time
for him to die and to make room for a more vigorous successor. Taken
along with the other reasons which are alleged for putting the king
to death, this one suggests that the fertility of men, of cattle,
and of the crops is believed to depend sympathetically on the
generative power of the king, so that the complete failure of that
power in him would involve a corresponding failure in men, animals,
and plants, and would thereby entail at no distant date the entire
extinction of all life, whether human, animal, or vegetable. No
wonder, that with such a danger before their eyes the Shilluk should
be most careful not to let the king die what we should call a
natural death of sickness or old age. It is characteristic of their
attitude towards the death of the kings that they refrain from
speaking of it as death: they do not say that a king has died but
simply that he has "gone away" like his divine ancestors Nyakang and
Dag, the two first kings of the dynasty, both of whom are reported
not to have died but to have disappeared. The similar legends of the
mysterious disappearance of early kings in other lands, for example
at Rome and in Uganda, may well point to a similar custom of putting
them to death for the purpose of preserving their life.
On the whole the theory and practice of the divine kings of the
Shilluk correspond very nearly to the theory and practice of the
priests of Nemi, the Kings of the Wood, if my view of the latter is
correct. In both we see a series of divine kings on whose life the
fertility of men, of cattle, and of vegetation is believed to
depend, and who are put to death, whether in single combat or
otherwise, in order that their divine spirit may be transmitted to
their successors in full vigour, uncontaminated by the weakness and
decay of sickness or old age, because any such degeneration on the
part of the king would, in the opinion of his worshippers, entail a
corresponding degeneration on manking, on cattle, and on the crops.
Some points in this explanation of the custom of putting divine
kings to death, particularly the method of transmitting their divine
souls to their successors, will be dealt with more fully in the
sequel. Meantime we pass to other examples of the general practice.
The Dinka are a congeries of independent tribes in the valley of the
White Nile. They are essentially a pastoral people, passionately
devoted to the care of their numerous herds of oxen, though they
also keep sheep and goats, and the women cultivate small quantities
of millet and sesame. For their crops and above all for their
pastures they depend on the regularity of the rains: in seasons of
prolonged drought they are said to be reduced to great extremities.
Hence the rain-maker is a very important personage among them to
this day; indeed the men in authority whom travellers dub chiefs or
sheikhs are in fact the actual or potential rain-makers of the tribe
or community. Each of them is believed to be animated by the spirit
of a great rain-maker, which has come down to him through a
succession of rain-makers; and in virtue of this inspiration a
successful rain-maker enjoys very great power and is consulted on
all important matters. Yet in spite, or rather in virtue, of the
high honour in which he is held, no Dinka rain-maker is allowed to
die a natural death of sickness or old age; for the Dinka believe
that if such an untoward event were to happen, the tribe would
suffer from disease and famine, and the herds would not yield their
increase. So when a rain-maker feels that he is growing old and
infirm, he tells his children that he wishes to die. Among the Agar
Dinka a large grave is dug and the rain-maker lies down in it,
surrounded by his friends and relatives. From time to time he speaks
to the people, recalling the past history of the tribe, reminding
them how he has ruled and advised them, and instructing them how
they are to act in the future. Then, when he has concluded his
admonition, he bids them cover him up. So the earth is thrown down
on him as he lies in the grave, and he soon dies of suffocation.
Such, with minor variations, appears to be the regular end of the
honourable career of a rain-maker in all the Dinka tribes. The
Khor-Adar Dinka told Dr. Seligman that when they have dug the grave
for their rain-maker they strangle him in his house. The father and
paternal uncle of one of Dr. Seligman's informants had both been
rain-makers and both had been killed in the most regular and
orthodox fashion. Even if a rain-maker is quite young he will be put
to death should he seem likely to perish of disease. Further, every
precaution is taken to prevent a rain-maker from dying an accidental
death, for such an end, though not nearly so serious a matter as
death from illness or old age, would be sure to entail sickness on
the tribe. As soon as a rain-maker is killed, his valuable spirit is
supposed to pass to a suitable successor, whether a son or other
near blood relation.
In the Central African kingdom of Bunyoro down to recent years
custom required that as soon as the king fell seriously ill or began
to break up from age, he should die by his own hand; for, according
to an old prophecy, the throne would pass away from the dynasty if
ever the king were to die a natural death. He killed himself by
draining a poisoned cup. If he faltered or were too ill to ask for
the cup, it was his wife's duty to administer the poison. When the
king of Kibanga, on the Upper Congo, seems near his end, the
sorcerers put a rope round his neck, which they draw gradually
tighter till he dies. If the king of Gingiro happens to be wounded
in war, he is put to death by his comrades, or, if they fail to kill
him, by his kinsfolk, however hard he may beg for mercy. They say
they do it that he may not die by the hands of his enemies. The
Jukos are a heathen tribe of the Benue River, a great tributary of
the Niger. In their country "the town of Gatri is ruled by a king
who is elected by the big men of the town as follows. When in the
opinion of the big men the king has reigned long enough, they give
out that 'the king is sick'--a formula understood by all to mean
that they are going to kill him, though the intention is never put
more plainly. They then decide who is to be the next king. How long
he is to reign is settled by the influential men at a meeting; the
question is put and answered by each man throwing on the ground a
little piece of stick for each year he thinks the new king should
rule. The king is then told, and a great feast prepared, at which
the king gets drunk on guinea-corn beer. After that he is speared,
and the man who was chosen becomes king. Thus each Juko king knows
that he cannot have very many more years to live, and that he is
certain of his predecessor's fate. This, however, does not seem to
frighten candidates. The same custom of king-killing is said to
prevail at Quonde and Wukari as well as at Gatri." In the three
Hausa kingdoms of Gobir, Katsina, and Daura, in Northern Nigeria, as
soon as a king showed signs of failing health or growing infirmity,
an official who bore the title of Killer of the Elephant appeared
and throttled him.
The Matiamvo is a great king or emperor in the interior of Angola.
One of the inferior kings of the country, by name Challa, gave to a
Portuguese expedition the following account of the manner in which
the Matiamvo comes by his end. "It has been customary," he said,
"for our Matiamvos to die either in war or by a violent death, and
the present Matiamvo must meet this last fate, as, in consequence of
his great exactions, he has lived long enough. When we come to this
understanding, and decide that he should be killed, we invite him to
make war with our enemies, on which occasion we all accompany him
and his family to the war, when we lose some of our people. If he
escapes unhurt, we return to the war again and fight for three or
four days. We then suddenly abandon him and his family to their
fate, leaving him in the enemy's hands. Seeing himself thus
deserted, he causes his throne to be erected, and, sitting down,
calls his family around him. He then orders his mother to approach;
she kneels at his feet; he first cuts off her head, then decapitates
his sons in succession, next his wives and relatives, and, last of
all, his most beloved wife, called Anacullo. This slaughter being
accomplished, the Matiamvo, dressed in all his pomp, awaits his own
death, which immediately follows, by an officer sent by the powerful
neighbouring chiefs, Caniquinha and Canica. This officer first cuts
off his legs and arms at the joints, and lastly he cuts off his
head; after which the head of the officer is struck off. All the
potentates retire from the encampment, in order not to witness his
death. It is my duty to remain and witness his death, and to mark
the place where the head and arms have been deposited by the two
great chiefs, the enemies of the Matiamvo. They also take possession
of all the property belonging to the deceased monarch and his
family, which they convey to their own residence. I then provide for
the funeral of the mutilated remains of the late Matiamvo, after
which I retire to his capital and proclaim the new government. I
then return to where the head, legs, and arms have been deposited,
and, for forty slaves, I ransom them, together with the merchandise
and other property belonging to the deceased, which I give up to the
new Matiamvo, who has been proclaimed. This is what has happened to
many Matiamvos, and what must happen to the present one."
It appears to have been a Zulu custom to put the king to death as
soon as he began to have wrinkles or grey hairs. At least this seems
implied in the following passage written by one who resided for some
time at the court of the notorious Zulu tyrant Chaka, in the early
part of the nineteenth century: "The extraordinary violence of the
king's rage with me was mainly occasioned by that absurd nostrum,
the hair oil, with the notion of which Mr. Farewell had impressed
him as being a specific for removing all indications of age. From
the first moment of his having heard that such a preparation was
attainable, he evinced a solicitude to procure it, and on every
occasion never forgot to remind us of his anxiety respecting it;
more especially on our departure on the mission his injunctions were
particularly directed to this object. It will be seen that it is one
of the barbarous customs of the Zoolas in their choice or election
of their kings that he must neither have wrinkles nor grey hairs, as
they are both distinguishing marks of disqualification for becoming
a monarch of a warlike people. It is also equally indispensable that
their king should never exhibit those proofs of having become unfit
and incompetent to reign; it is therefore important that they should
conceal these indications so long as they possibly can. Chaka had
become greatly apprehensive of the approach of grey hairs; which
would at once be the signal for him to prepare to make his exit from
this sublunary world, it being always followed by the death of the
monarch." The writer to whom we are indebted for this instructive
anecdote of the hair oil omits to specify the mode in which a
grey-haired and wrinkled Zulu chief used "to make his exit from this
sublunary world"; but on analogy we may conjecture that he was
killed.
The custom of putting kings to death as soon as they suffered from
any personal defect prevailed two centuries ago in the Caffre
kingdom of Sofala. We have seen that these kings of Sofala were
regarded as gods by their people, being entreated to give rain or
sunshine, according as each might be wanted. Nevertheless a slight
bodily blemish, such as the loss of a tooth, was considered a
sufficient cause for putting one of these god-men to death, as we
learn from the following passage of an old Portuguese historian: "It
was formerly the custom of the kings of this land to commit suicide
by taking poison when any disaster or natural physical defect fell
upon them, such as impotence, infectious disease, the loss of their
front teeth, by which they were disfigured, or any other deformity
or affliction. To put an end to such defects they killed themselves,
saying that the king should be free from any blemish, and if not, it
was better for his honour that he should die and seek another life
where he would be made whole, for there everything was perfect. But
the Quiteve (king) who reigned when I was in those parts would not
imitate his predecessors in this, being discreet and dreaded as he
was; for having lost a front tooth he caused it to be proclaimed
throughout the kingdom that all should be aware that he had lost a
tooth and should recognise him when they saw him without it, and if
his predecessors killed themselves for such things they were very
foolish, and he would not do so; on the contrary, he would be very
sorry when the time came for him to die a natural death, for his
life was very necessary to preserve his kingdom and defend it from
his enemies; and he recommended his successors to follow his
example."
The king of Sofala who dared to survive the loss of his front tooth
was thus a bold reformer like Ergamenes, king of Ethiopia. We may
conjecture that the ground for putting the Ethiopian kings to death
was, as in the case of the Zulu and Sofala kings, the appearance on
their person of any bodily defect or sign of decay; and that the
oracle which the priests alleged as the authority for the royal
execution was to the effect that great calamities would result from
the reign of a king who had any blemish on his body; just as an
oracle warned Sparta against a "lame reign," that is, the reign of a
lame king. It is some confirmation of this conjecture that the kings
of Ethiopia were chosen for their size, strength, and beauty long
before the custom of killing them was abolished. To this day the
Sultan of Wadai must have no obvious bodily defect, and the king of
Angoy cannot be crowned if he has a single blemish, such as a broken
or a filed tooth or the scar of an old wound. According to the Book
of Acaill and many other authorities no king who was afflicted with
a personal blemish might reign over Ireland at Tara. Hence, when the
great King Cormac Mac Art lost one eye by an accident, he at once
abdicated.
Many days' journey to the north-east of Abomey, the old capital of
Dahomey, lies the kingdom of Eyeo. "The Eyeos are governed by a
king, no less absolute than the king of Dahomey, yet subject to a
regulation of state, at once humiliating and extraordinary. When the
people have conceived an opinion of his ill-government, which is
sometimes insidiously infused into them by the artifice of his
discontented ministers, they send a deputation to him with a present
of parrots' eggs, as a mark of its authenticity, to represent to him
that the burden of government must have so far fatigued him that
they consider it full time for him to repose from his cares and
indulge himself with a little sleep. He thanks his subjects for
their attention to his ease, retires to his own apartment as if to
sleep, and there gives directions to his women to strangle him. This
is immediately executed, and his son quietly ascends the throne upon
the usual terms of holding the reins of government no longer than
whilst he merits the approbation of the people." About the year
1774, a king of Eyeo, whom his ministers attempted to remove in the
customary manner, positively refused to accept the proffered
parrots' eggs at their hands, telling them that he had no mind to
take a nap, but on the contrary was resolved to watch for the
benefit of his subjects. The ministers, surprised and indignant at
his recalcitrancy, raised a rebellion, but were defeated with great
slaughter, and thus by his spirited conduct the king freed himself
from the tyranny of his councillors and established a new precedent
for the guidance of his successors. However, the old custom seems to
have revived and persisted until late in the nineteenth century, for
a Catholic missionary, writing in 1884, speaks of the practice as if
it were still in vogue. Another missionary, writing in 1881, thus
describes the usage of the Egbas and the Yorubas of West Africa:
"Among the customs of the country one of the most curious is
unquestionably that of judging, and punishing the king. Should he
have earned the hatred of his people by exceeding his rights, one of
his councillors, on whom the heavy duty is laid, requires of the
prince that he shall 'go to sleep,' which means simply 'take poison
and die.' If his courage fails him at the supreme moment, a friend
renders him this last service, and quietly, without betraying the
secret, they prepare the people for the news of the king's death. In
Yoruba the thing is managed a little differently. When a son is born
to the king of Oyo, they make a model of the infant's right foot in
clay and keep it in the house of the elders (_ogboni_). If the king
fails to observe the customs of the country, a messenger, without
speaking a word, shows him his child's foot. The king knows what
that means. He takes poison and goes to sleep." The old Prussians
acknowledged as their supreme lord a ruler who governed them in the
name of the gods, and was known as "God's Mouth." When he felt
himself weak and ill, if he wished to leave a good name behind him,
he had a great heap made of thorn-bushes and straw, on which he
mounted and delivered a long sermon to the people, exhorting them to
serve the gods and promising to go to the gods and speak for the
people. Then he took some of the perpetual fire which burned in
front of the holy oak-tree, and lighting the pile with it burned
himself to death.
3. Kings killed at the End of a Fixed Term
IN THE CASES hitherto described, the divine king or priest is
suffered by his people to retain office until some outward defect,
some visible symptom of failing health or advancing age, warns them
that he is no longer equal to the discharge of his divine duties;
but not until such symptoms have made their appearance is he put to
death. Some peoples, however, appear to have thought it unsafe to
wait for even the slightest symptom of decay and have preferred to
kill the king while he was still in the full vigour of life.
Accordingly, they have fixed a term beyond which he might not reign,
and at the close of which he must die, the term fixed upon being
short enough to exclude the probability of his degenerating
physically in the interval. In some parts of Southern India the
period fixed was twelve years. Thus, according to an old traveller,
in the province of Quilacare, "there is a Gentile house of prayer,
in which there is an idol which they hold in great account, and
every twelve years they celebrate a great feast to it, whither all
the Gentiles go as to a jubilee. This temple possesses many lands
and much revenue: it is a very great affair. This province has a
king over it, who has not more than twelve years to reign from
jubilee to jubilee. His manner of living is in this wise, that is to
say: when the twelve years are completed, on the day of this feast
there assemble together innumerable people, and much money is spent
in giving food to Bramans. The king has a wooden scaffolding made,
spread over with silken hangings: and on that day he goes to bathe
at a tank with great ceremonies and sound of music, after that he
comes to the idol and prays to it, and mounts on to the scaffolding,
and there before all the people he takes some very sharp knives, and
begins to cut off his nose, and then his ears, and his lips, and all
his members, and as much flesh off himself as he can; and he throws
it away very hurriedly until so much of his blood is spilled that he
begins to faint, and then he cuts his throat himself. And he
performs this sacrifice to the idol, and whoever desires to reign
another twelve years and undertake this martyrdom for love of the
idol, has to be present looking on at this: and from that place they
raise him up as king."
The king of Calicut, on the Malabar coast, bears the title of
Samorin or Samory. He "pretends to be of a higher rank than the
Brahmans, and to be inferior only to the invisible gods; a
pretention that was acknowledged by his subjects, but which is held
as absurd and abominable by the Brahmans, by whom he is only treated
as a Sudra." Formerly the Samorin had to cut his throat in public at
the end of a twelve years' reign. But towards the end of the
seventeenth century the rule had been modified as follows: "Many
strange customs were observed in this country in former times, and
some very odd ones are still continued. It was an ancient custom for
the Samorin to reign but twelve years, and no longer. If he died
before his term was expired, it saved him a troublesome ceremony of
cutting his own throat, on a publick scaffold erected for the
purpose. He first made a feast for all his nobility and gentry, who
are very numerous. After the feast he saluted his guests, and went
on the scaffold, and very decently cut his own throat in the view of
the assembly, and his body was, a little while after, burned with
great pomp and ceremony, and the grandees elected a new Samorin.
Whether that custom was a religious or a civil ceremony, I know not,
but it is now laid aside. And a new custom is followed by the modern
Samorins, that jubilee is proclaimed throughout his dominions, at
the end of twelve years, and a tent is pitched for him in a spacious
plain, and a great feast is celebrated for ten or twelve days, with
mirth and jollity, guns firing night and day, so at the end of the
feast any four of the guests that have a mind to gain a crown by a
desperate action, in fighting their way through 30 or 40,000 of his
guards, and kill the Samorin in his tent, he that kills him succeeds
him in his empire. In anno 1695, one of those jubilees happened, and
the tent pitched near Pennany, a seaport of his, about fifteen
leagues to the southward of Calicut. There were but three men that
would venture on that desperate action, who fell in, with sword and
target, among the guard, and, after they had killed and wounded
many, were themselves killed. One of the desperados had a nephew of
fifteen or sixteen years of age, that kept close by his uncle in the
attack on the guards, and, when he saw him fall, the youth got
through the guards into the tent, and made a stroke at his Majesty's
head, and had certainly despatched him if a large brass lamp which
was burning over his head had not marred the blow; but, before he
could make another, he was killed by the guards; and, I believe, the
same Samorin reigns yet. I chanced to come that time along the coast
and heard the guns for two or three days and nights successively."
The English traveller, whose account I have quoted, did not himself
witness the festival he describes, though he heard the sound of the
firing in the distance. Fortunately, exact records of these
festivals and of the number of men who perished at them have been
preserved in the archives of the royal family at Calicut. In the
latter part of the nineteenth century they were examined by Mr. W.
Logan, with the personal assistance of the reigning king, and from
his work it is possible to gain an accurate conception both of the
tragedy and of the scene where it was periodically enacted down to
1743, when the ceremony took place for the last time.
The festival at which the king of Calicut staked his crown and his
life on the issue of battle was known as the "Great Sacrifice." It
fell every twelfth year, when the planet Jupiter was in retrograde
motion in the sign of the Crab, and it lasted twenty-eight days,
culminating at the time of the eighth lunar asterism in the month of
Makaram. As the date of the festival was determined by the position
of Jupiter in the sky, and the interval between two festivals was
twelve years, which is roughly Jupiter's period of revolution round
the sun, we may conjecture that the splendid planet was supposed to
be in a special sense the king's star and to rule his destiny, the
period of its revolution in heaven corresponding to the period of
his reign on earth. However that may be, the ceremony was observed
with great pomp at the Tirunavayi temple, on the north bank of the
Ponnani River. The spot is close to the present railway line. As the
train rushes by, you can just catch a glimpse of the temple, almost
hidden behind a clump of trees on the river bank. From the western
gateway of the temple a perfectly straight road, hardly raised above
the level of the surrounding rice-fields and shaded by a fine
avenue, runs for half a mile to a high ridge with a precipitous
bank, on which the outlines of three or four terraces can still be
traced. On the topmost of these terraces the king took his stand on
the eventful day. The view which it commands is a fine one. Across
the flat expanse of the rice-fields, with the broad placid river
winding through them, the eye ranges eastward to high tablelands,
their lower slopes embowered in woods, while afar off looms the
great chain of the western Ghauts, and in the furthest distance the
Neilgherries or Blue Mountains, hardly distinguishable from the
azure of the sky above.
But it was not to the distant prospect that the king's eyes
naturally turned at this crisis of his fate. His attention was
arrested by a spectacle nearer at hand. For all the plain below was
alive with troops, their banners waving gaily in the sun, the white
tents of their many camps standing sharply out against the green and
gold of the ricefields. Forty thousand fighting men or more were
gathered there to defend the king. But if the plain swarmed with
soldiers, the road that cuts across it from the temple to the king's
stand was clear of them. Not a soul was stirring on it. Each side of
the way was barred by palisades, and from the palisades on either
hand a long hedge of spears, held by strong arms, projected into the
empty road, their blades meeting in the middle and forming a
glittering arch of steel. All was now ready. The king waved his
sword. At the same moment a great chain of massy gold, enriched with
bosses, was placed on an elephant at his side. That was the signal.
On the instant a stir might be seen half a mile away at the gate of
the temple. A group of swordsmen, decked with flowers and smeared
with ashes, has stepped out from the crowd. They have just partaken
of their last meal on earth, and they now receive the last blessings
and farewells of their friends. A moment more and they are coming
down the lane of spears, hewing and stabbing right and left at the
spearmen, winding and turning and writhing among the blades as if
they had no bones in their bodies. It is all in vain. One after the
other they fall, some nearer the king, some farther off, content to
die, not for the shadow of a crown, but for the mere sake of
approving their dauntless valour and swordsmanship to the world. On
the last days of the festival the same magnificent display of
gallantry, the same useless sacrifice of life was repeated again and
again. Yet perhaps no sacrifice is wholly useless which proves that
there are men who prefer honour to life.
"It is a singular custom in Bengal," says an old native historian of
India, "that there is little of hereditary descent in succession to
the sovereignty. . . . Whoever kills the king, and succeeds in
placing himself on that throne, is immediately acknowledged as king;
all the _amirs, wazirs,_ soldiers, and peasants instantly obey and
submit to him, and consider him as being as much their sovereign as
they did their former prince, and obey his orders implicitly. The
people of Bengal say, 'We are faithful to the throne; whoever fills
the throne we are obedient and true to it.'" A custom of the same
sort formerly prevailed in the little kingdom of Passier, on the
northern coast of Sumatra. The old Portuguese historian De Barros,
who informs us of it, remarks with surprise that no wise man would
wish to be king of Passier, since the monarch was not allowed by his
subjects to live long. From time to time a sort of fury seized the
people, and they marched through the streets of the city chanting
with loud voices the fatal words, "The king must die!" When the king
heard that song of death he knew that his hour had come. The man who
struck the fatal blow was of the royal lineage, and as soon as he
had done the deed of blood and seated himself on the throne he was
regarded as the legitimate king, provided that he contrived to
maintain his seat peaceably for a single day. This, however, the
regicide did not always succeed in doing. When Ferno Peres
d'Andrade, on a voyage to China, put in at Passier for a cargo of
spices, two kings were massacred, and that in the most peaceable and
orderly manner, without the smallest sign of tumult or sedition in
the city, where everything went on in its usual course, as if the
murder or execution of a king were a matter of everyday occurrence.
Indeed, on one occasion three kings were raised to the dangerous
elevation and followed each other in the dusty road of death in a
single day. The people defended the custom, which they esteemed very
laudable and even of divine institution, by saying that God would
never allow so high and mighty a being as a king, who reigned as his
vicegerent on earth, to perish by violence unless for his sins he
thoroughly deserved it. Far away from the tropical island of Sumatra
a rule of the same sort appears to have obtained among the old
Slavs. When the captives Gunn and Jarmerik contrived to slay the
king and queen of the Slavs and made their escape, they were pursued
by the barbarians, who shouted after them that if they would only
come back they would reign instead of the murdered monarch, since by
a public statute of the ancients the succession to the throne fell
to the king's assassin. But the flying regicides turned a deaf ear
to promises which they regarded as mere baits to lure them back to
destruction; they continued their flight, and the shouts and clamour
of the barbarians gradually died away in the distance.
When kings were bound to suffer death, whether at their own hands or
at the hands of others, on the expiration of a fixed term of years,
it was natural that they should seek to delegate the painful duty,
along with some of the privileges of sovereignty, to a substitute
who should suffer vicariously in their stead. This expedient appears
to have been resorted to by some of the princes of Malabar. Thus we
are informed by a native authority on that country that "in some
places all powers both executive and judicial were delegated for a
fixed period to natives by the sovereign. This institution was
styled _Thalavettiparothiam_ or authority obtained by decapitation.
. . . It was an office tenable for five years during which its bearer
was invested with supreme despotic powers within his jurisdiction.
On the expiry of the five years the man's head was cut off and
thrown up in the air amongst a large concourse of villagers, each of
whom vied with the other in trying to catch it in its course down.
He who succeeded was nominated to the post for the next five years."
When once kings, who had hitherto been bound to die a violent death
at the end of a term of years, conceived the happy thought of dying
by deputy in the persons of others, they would very naturally put it
in practice; and accordingly we need not wonder at finding so
popular an expedient, or traces of it, in many lands. Scandinavian
traditions contain some hints that of old the Swedish kings reigned
only for periods of nine years, after which they were put to death
or had to find a substitute to die in their stead. Thus Aun or On,
king of Sweden, is said to have sacrificed to Odin for length of
days and to have been answered by the god that he should live so
long as he sacrificed one of his sons every ninth year. He
sacrificed nine of them in this manner, and would have sacrificed
the tenth and last, but the Swedes would not allow him. So he died
and was buried in a mound at Upsala. Another indication of a similar
tenure of the crown occurs in a curious legend of the deposition and
banishment of Odin. Offended at his misdeeds, the other gods
outlawed and exiled him, but set up in his place a substitute, Oller
by name, a cunning wizard, to whom they accorded the symbols both of
royalty and of godhead. The deputy bore the name of Odin, and
reigned for nearly ten years, when he was driven from the throne,
while the real Odin came to his own again. His discomfited rival
retired to Sweden and was afterwards slain in an attempt to repair
his shattered fortunes. As gods are often merely men who loom large
through the mists of tradition, we may conjecture that this Norse
legend preserves a confused reminiscence of ancient Swedish kings
who reigned for nine or ten years together, then abdicated,
delegating to others the privilege of dying for their country. The
great festival which was held at Upsala every nine years may have
been the occasion on which the king or his deputy was put to death.
We know that human sacrifices formed part of the rites.
There are some grounds for believing that the reign of many ancient
Greek kings was limited to eight years, or at least that at the end
of every period of eight years a new consecration, a fresh
outpouring of the divine grace, was regarded as necessary in order
to enable them to discharge their civil and religious duties. Thus
it was a rule of the Spartan constitution that every eighth year the
ephors should choose a clear and moonless night and sitting down
observe the sky in silence. If during their vigil they saw a meteor
or shooting star, they inferred that the king had sinned against the
deity, and they suspended him from his functions until the Delphic
or Olympic oracle should reinstate him in them. This custom, which
has all the air of great antiquity, was not suffered to remain a
dead letter even in the last period of the Spartan monarchy; for in
the third century before our era a king, who had rendered himself
obnoxious to the reforming party, was actually deposed on various
trumped-up charges, among which the allegation that the ominous sign
had been seen in the sky took a prominent place.
If the tenure of the regal office was formerly limited among the
Spartans to eight years, we may naturally ask, why was that precise
period selected as the measure of a king's reign? The reason is
probably to be found in those astronomical considerations which
determined the early Greek calendar. The difficulty of reconciling
lunar with solar time is one of the standing puzzles which has taxed
the ingenuity of men who are emerging from barbarism. Now an
octennial cycle is the shortest period at the end of which sun and
moon really mark time together after overlapping, so to say,
throughout the whole of the interval. Thus, for example, it is only
once in every eight years that the full moon coincides with the
longest or shortest day; and as this coincidence can be observed
with the aid of a simple dial, the observation is naturally one of
the first to furnish a base for a calendar which shall bring lunar
and solar times into tolerable, though not exact, harmony. But in
early days the proper adjustment of the calendar is a matter of
religious concern, since on it depends a knowledge of the right
seasons for propitiating the deities whose favour is indispensable
to the welfare of the community. No wonder, therefore, that the
king, as the chief priest of the state, or as himself a god, should
be liable to deposition or death at the end of an astronomical
period. When the great luminaries had run their course on high, and
were about to renew the heavenly race, it might well be thought that
the king should renew his divine energies, or prove them unabated,
under pain of making room for a more vigorous successor. In Southern
India, as we have seen, the king's reign and life terminated with
the revolution of the planet Jupiter round the sun. In Greece, on
the other hand, the king's fate seems to have hung in the balance at
the end of every eight years, ready to fly up and kick the beam as
soon as the opposite scale was loaded with a falling star.
Whatever its origin may have been, the cycle of eight years appears
to have coincided with the normal length of the king's reign in
other parts of Greece besides Sparta. Thus Minos, king of Cnossus in
Crete, whose great palace has been unearthed in recent years, is
said to have held office for periods of eight years together. At the
end of each period he retired for a season to the oracular cave on
Mount Ida, and there communed with his divine father Zeus, giving
him an account of his kingship in the years that were past, and
receiving from him instructions for his guidance in those which were
to come. The tradition plainly implies that at the end of every
eight years the king's sacred powers needed to be renewed by
intercourse with the godhead, and that without such a renewal he
would have forfeited his right to the throne.
Without being unduly rash we may surmise that the tribute of seven
youths and seven maidens whom the Athenians were bound to send to
Minos every eight years had some connexion with the renewal of the
king's power for another octennial cycle. Traditions varied as to
the fate which awaited the lads and damsels on their arrival in
Crete; but the common view appears to have been that they were shut
up in the labyrinth, there to be devoured by the Minotaur, or at
least to be imprisoned for life. Perhaps they were sacrificed by
being roasted alive in a bronze image of a bull, or of a bull-headed
man, in order to renew the strength of the king and of the sun, whom
he personated. This at all events is suggested by the legend of
Talos, a bronze man who clutched people to his breast and leaped
with them into the fire, so that they were roasted alive. He is said
to have been given by Zeus to Europa, or by Hephaestus to Minos, to
guard the island of Crete, which he patrolled thrice daily.
According to one account he was a bull, according to another he was
the sun. Probably he was identical with the Minotaur, and stripped
of his mythical features was nothing but a bronze image of the sun
represented as a man with a bull's head. In order to renew the solar
fires, human victims may have been sacrificed to the idol by being
roasted in its hollow body or placed on its sloping hands and
allowed to roll into a pit of fire. It was in the latter fashion
that the Carthaginians sacrificed their offspring to Moloch. The
children were laid on the hands of a calf-headed image of bronze,
from which they slid into a fiery oven, while the people danced to
the music of flutes and timbrels to drown the shrieks of the burning
victims. The resemblance which the Cretan traditions bear to the
Carthaginian practice suggests that the worship associated with the
names of Minos and the Minotaur may have been powerfully influenced
by that of a Semitic Baal. In the tradition of Phalaris, tyrant of
Agrigentum, and his brazen bull we may have an echo of similar rites
in Sicily, where the Carthaginian power struck deep roots.
In the province of Lagos, the Ijebu tribe of the Yoruba race is
divided into two branches, which are known respectively as the Ijebu
Ode and the Ijebu Remon. The Ode branch of the tribe is ruled by a
chief who bears the title of Awujale and is surrounded by a great
deal of mystery. Down to recent times his face might not be seen
even by his own subjects, and if circumstances obliged him to
communicate with them he did so through a screen which hid him from
view. The other or Remon branch of the Ijebu tribe is governed by a
chief, who ranks below the Awujale. Mr. John Parkinson was informed
that in former times this subordinate chief used to be killed with
ceremony after a rule of three years. As the country is now under
British protection the custom of putting the chief to death at the
end of a three years' reign has long been abolished, and Mr.
Parkinson was unable to ascertain any particulars on the subject.
At Babylon, within historical times, the tenure of the kingly office
was in practice lifelong, yet in theory it would seem to have been
merely annual. For every year at the festival of Zagmuk the king had
to renew his power by seizing the hands of the image of Marduk in
his great temple of Esagil at Babylon. Even when Babylon passed
under the power of Assyria, the monarchs of that country were
expected to legalise their claim to the throne every year by coming
to Babylon and performing the ancient ceremony at the New Year
festival, and some of them found the obligation so burdensome that
rather than discharge it they renounced the title of king altogether
and contented themselves with the humbler one of Governor. Further,
it would appear that in remote times, though not within the
historical period, the kings of Babylon or their barbarous
predecessors forfeited not merely their crown but their life at the
end of a year's tenure of office. At least this is the conclusion to
which the following evidence seems to point. According to the
historian Berosus, who as a Babylonian priest spoke with ample
knowledge, there was annually celebrated in Babylon a festival
called the Sacaea. It began on the sixteenth day of the month Lous,
and lasted for five days, during which masters and servants changed
places, the servants giving orders and the masters obeying them. A
prisoner condemned to death was dressed in the king's robes, seated
on the king's throne, allowed to issue whatever commands he pleased,
to eat, drink, and enjoy himself, and to lie with the king's
concubines. But at the end of the five days he was stripped of his
royal robes, scourged, and hanged or impaled. During his brief term
of office he bore the title of Zoganes. This custom might perhaps
have been explained as merely a grim jest perpetrated in a season of
jollity at the expense of an unhappy criminal. But one
circumstance--the leave given to the mock king to enjoy the king's
concubines--is decisive against this interpretation. Considering the
jealous seclusion of an oriental despot's harem we may be quite
certain that permission to invade it would never have been granted
by the despot, least of all to a condemned criminal, except for the
very gravest cause. This cause could hardly be other than that the
condemned man was about to die in the king's stead, and that to make
the substitution perfect it was necessary he should enjoy the full
rights of royalty during his brief reign. There is nothing
surprising in this substitution. The rule that the king must be put
to death either on the appearance of any symptom of bodily decay or
at the end of a fixed period is certainly one which, sooner or
later, the kings would seek to abolish or modify. We have seen that
in Ethiopia, Sofala, and Eyeo the rule was boldly set aside by
enlightened monarchs; and that in Calicut the old custom of killing
the king at the end of twelve years was changed into a permission
granted to any one at the end of the twelve years' period to attack
the king, and, in the event of killing him, to reign in his stead;
though, as the king took care at these times to be surrounded by his
guards, the permission was little more than a form. Another way of
modifying the stern old rule is seen in the Babylonian custom just
described. When the time drew near for the king to be put to death
(in Babylon this appears to have been at the end of a single year's
reign) he abdicated for a few days, during which a temporary king
reigned and suffered in his stead. At first the temporary king may
have been an innocent person, possibly a member of the king's own
family; but with the growth of civilisation the sacrifice of an
innocent person would be revolting to the public sentiment, and
accordingly a condemned criminal would be invested with the brief
and fatal sovereignty. In the sequel we shall find other examples of
a dying criminal representing a dying god. For we must not forget
that, as the case of the Shilluk kings clearly shows, the king is
slain in his character of a god or a demigod, his death and
resurrection, as the only means of perpetuating the divine life
unimpaired, being deemed necessary for the salvation of his people
and the world.
A vestige of a practice of putting the king to death at the end of a
year's reign appears to have survived in the festival called
Macahity, which used to be celebrated in Hawaii during the last
month of the year. About a hundred years ago a Russian voyager
described the custom as follows: "The taboo Macahity is not unlike
to our festival of Christmas. It continues a whole month, during
which the people amuse themselves with dances, plays, and
sham-fights of every kind. The king must open this festival wherever
he is. On this occasion his majesty dresses himself in his richest
cloak and helmet, and is paddled in a canoe along the shore,
followed sometimes by many of his subjects. He embarks early, and
must finish his excursion at sunrise. The strongest and most expert
of the warriors is chosen to receive him on his landing. This
warrior watches the canoe along the beach; and as soon as the king
lands, and has thrown off his cloak, he darts his spear at him, from
a distance of about thirty paces, and the king must either catch the
spear in his hand, or suffer from it: there is no jesting in the
business. Having caught it, he carries it under his arm, with the
sharp end downwards, into the temple or _heavoo._ On his entrance,
the assembled multitude begin their sham-fights, and immediately the
air is obscured by clouds of spears, made for the occasion with
blunted ends. Hamamea [the king] has been frequently advised to
abolish this ridiculous ceremony, in which he risks his life every
year; but to no effect. His answer always is, that he is as able to
catch a spear as any one on the island is to throw it at him. During
the Macahity, all punishments are remitted throughout the country;
and no person can leave the place in which he commences these
holidays, let the affair be ever so important."
That a king should regularly have been put to death at the close of
a year's reign will hardly appear improbable when we learn that to
this day there is still a kingdom in which the reign and the life of
the sovereign are limited to a single day. In Ngoio, a province of
the ancient kingdom of Congo, the rule obtains that the chief who
assumes the cap of sovereignty is always killed on the night after
his coronation. The right of succession lies with the chief of the
Musurongo; but we need not wonder that he does not exercise it, and
that the throne stands vacant. "No one likes to lose his life for a
few hours' glory on the Ngoio throne."
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