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object:1.57 - Public Scapegoats
book class:The Golden Bough
author class:James George Frazer
subject class:Occultism
class:chapter



LVII. Public Scapegoats



1. The Expulsion of Embodied Evils

THUS far we have dealt with that class of the general expulsion of
evils which I have called direct or immediate. In this class the
evils are invisible, at least to common eyes, and the mode of
deliverance consists for the most part in beating the empty air and
raising such a hubbub as may scare the mischievous spirits and put
them to flight. It remains to illustrate the second class of
expulsions, in which the evil influences are embodied in a visible
form or are at least supposed to be loaded upon a material medium,
which acts as a vehicle to draw them off from the people, village,
or town.

The Pomos of California celebrate an expulsion of devils every seven
years, at which the devils are represented by disguised men. "Twenty
or thirty men array themselves in harlequin rig and barbaric paint,
and put vessels of pitch on their heads; then they secretly go out
into the surrounding mountains. These are to personify the devils. A
herald goes up to the top of the assembly-house, and makes a speech
to the multitude. At a signal agreed upon in the evening the
masqueraders come in from the mountains, with the vessels of pitch
flaming on their heads, and with all the frightful accessories of
noise, motion, and costume which the savage mind can devise in
representation of demons. The terrified women and children flee for
life, the men huddle them inside a circle, and, on the principle of
fighting the devil with fire, they swing blazing firebrands in the
air, yell, whoop, and make frantic dashes at the marauding and
bloodthirsty devils, so creating a terrific spectacle, and striking
great fear into the hearts of the assembled hundreds of women, who
are screaming and fainting and clinging to their valorous
protectors. Finally the devils succeed in getting into the
assembly-house, and the bravest of the men enter and hold a parley
with them. As a conclusion of the whole farce, the men summon
courage, the devils are expelled from the assembly-house, and with a
prodigious row and racket of sham fighting are chased away into the
mountains." In spring, as soon as the willow-leaves were full grown
on the banks of the river, the Mandan Indians celebrated their great
annual festival, one of the features of which was the expulsion of
the devil. A man, painted black to represent the devil, entered the
village from the prairie, chased and frightened the women, and acted
the part of a buffalo bull in the buffalo dance, the object of which
was to ensure a plentiful supply of buffaloes during the ensuing
year. Finally he was chased from the village, the women pursuing him
with hisses and gibes, beating him with sticks, and pelting him with
dirt.

Some of the native tribes of Central Queensland believe in a noxious
being called Molonga, who prowls unseen and would kill men and
violate women if certain ceremonies were not performed. These
ceremonies last for five nights and consist of dances, in which only
men, fantastically painted and adorned, take part. On the fifth
night Molonga himself, personified by a man tricked out with red
ochre and feathers and carrying a long feather-tipped spear, rushes
forth from the darkness at the spectators and makes as if he would
run them through. Great is the excitement, loud are the shrieks and
shouts, but after another feigned attack the demon vanishes in the
gloom. On the last night of the year the palace of the Kings of
Cambodia is purged of devils. Men painted as fiends are chased by
elephants about the palace courts. When they have been expelled, a
consecrated thread of cotton is stretched round the palace to keep
them out. In Munzerabad, a district of Mysore in Southern India,
when cholera or smallpox has broken out in a parish, the inhabitants
assemble and conjure the demon of the disease into a wooden image,
which they carry, generally at midnight, into the next parish. The
inhabitants of that parish in like manner pass the image on to their
neighbours, and thus the demon is expelled from one village after
another, until he comes to the bank of a river into which he is
finally thrown.

Oftener, however, the expelled demons are not represented at all,
but are understood to be present invisibly in the material and
visible vehicle which conveys them away. Here, again, it will be
convenient to distinguish between occasional and periodical
expulsions. We begin with the former.



2. The Occasional Expulsion of Evils in a Material Vehicle

THE VEHICLE which conveys away the demons may be of various kinds. A
common one is a little ship or boat. Thus, in the southern district
of the island of Ceram, when a whole village suffers from sickness,
a small ship is made and filled with rice, tobacco, eggs, and so
forth, which have been contributed by all the people. A little sail
is hoisted on the ship. When all is ready, a man calls out in a very
loud voice, "O all ye sicknesses, ye smallpoxes, agues, measles,
etc., who have visited us so long and wasted us so sorely, but who
now cease to plague us, we have made ready this ship for you, and we
have furnished you with provender sufficient for the voyage. Ye
shall have no lack of food nor of betel-leaves nor of areca nuts nor
of tobacco. Depart, and sail away from us directly; never come near
us again; but go to a land which is far from here. Let all the tides
and winds waft you speedily thither, and so convey you thither that
for the time to come we may live sound and well, and that we may
never see the sun rise on you again." Then ten or twelve men carry
the vessel to the shore, and let it drift away with the land-breeze,
feeling convinced that they are free from sickness for ever, or at
least till the next time. If sickness attacks them again, they are
sure it is not the same sickness, but a different one, which in due
time they dismiss in the same manner. When the demon-laden bark is
lost to sight, the bearers return to the village, whereupon a man
cries out, "The sicknesses are now gone, vanished, expelled, and
sailed away." At this all the people come running out of their
houses, passing the word from one to the other with great joy,
beating on gongs and on tinkling instruments.

Similar ceremonies are commonly resorted to in other East Indian
islands. Thus in Timor-laut, to mislead the demons who are causing
sickness, a small proa, containing the image of a man and
provisioned for a long voyage, is allowed to drift away with wind
and tide. As it is being launched, the people cry, "O sickness, go
from here; turn back; what do you here in this poor land?" Three
days after this ceremony a pig is killed, and part of the flesh is
offered to Dudilaa, who lives in the sun. One of the oldest men
says, "Old sir, I beseech you make well the grand-children,
children, women, and men, that we may be able to eat pork and rice
and to drink palmwine. I will keep my promise. Eat your share, and
make all the people in the village well." If the proa is stranded at
any inhabited spot, the sickness will break out there. Hence a
stranded proa excites much alarm amongst the coast population, and
they immediately burn it, because demons fly from fire. In the
island of Buru the proa which carries away the demons of disease is
about twenty feet long, rigged out with sails, oars, anchor, and so
on, and well stocked with provisions. For a day and a night the
people beat gongs and drums, and rush about to frighten the demons.
Next morning ten stalwart young men strike the people with branches,
which have been previously dipped in an earthen pot of water. As
soon as they have done so, they run down to the beach, put the
branches on board the proa, launch another boat in great haste, and
tow the disease-burdened bark far out to sea. There they cast it
off, and one of them calls out, "Grandfather Smallpox, go away--go
willingly away--go visit another land; we have made you food ready
for the voyage, we have now nothing more to give." When they have
landed, all the people bathe together in the sea. In this ceremony
the reason for striking the people with the branches is clearly to
rid them of the disease-demons, which are then supposed to be
transferred to the branches. Hence the haste with which the branches
are deposited in the proa and towed away to sea. So in the inland
districts of Ceram, when smallpox or other sickness is raging, the
priest strikes all the houses with consecrated branches, which are
then thrown into the river, to be carried down to the sea; exactly
as amongst the Wotyaks of Russia the sticks which have been used for
expelling the devils from the village are thrown into the river,
that the current may sweep the baleful burden away. The plan of
putting puppets in the boat to represent sick persons, in order to
lure the demons after them, is not uncommon. For example, most of
the pagan tribes on the coast of Borneo seek to drive away epidemic
disease as follows. They carve one or more rough human images from
the pith of the sago palm and place them on a small raft or boat or
full-rigged Malay ship together with rice and other food. The boat
is decked with blossoms of the areca palm and with ribbons made from
its leaves, and thus adorned the little craft is allowed to float
out to sea with the ebb-tide, bearing, as the people fondly think or
hope, the sickness away with it.

Often the vehicle which carries away the collected demons or ills of
a whole community is an animal or scapegoat. In the Central
Provinces of India, when cholera breaks out in a village, every one
retires after sunset to his house. The priests then parade the
streets, taking from the roof of each house a straw, which is burnt
with an offering of rice, ghee, and turmeric, at some shrine to the
east of the village. Chickens daubed with vermilion are driven away
in the direction of the smoke, and are believed to carry the disease
with them. If they fail, goats are tried, and last of all pigs. When
cholera rages among the Bhars, Mallans, and Kurmis of India, they
take a goat or a buffalo--in either case the animal must be a
female, and as black as possible--then having tied some grain,
cloves, and red lead in a yellow cloth on its back they turn it out
of the village. The animal is conducted beyond the boundary and not
allowed to return. Sometimes the buffalo is marked with a red
pigment and driven to the next village, where he carries the plague
with him.

Amongst the Dinkas, a pastoral people of the White Nile, each family
possesses a sacred cow. When the country is threatened with war,
famine, or any other public calamity, the chiefs of the village
require a particular family to surrender their sacred cow to serve
as a scapegoat. The animal is driven by the women to the brink of
the river and across it to the other bank, there to wander in the
wilderness and fall a prey to ravening beasts. Then the women return
in silence and without looking behind them; were they to cast a
backward glance, they imagine that the ceremony would have no
effect. In 1857, when the Aymara Indians of Bolivia and Peru were
suffering from a plague, they loaded a black llama with the clothes
of the plague-stricken people, sprinkled brandy on the clothes, and
then turned the animal loose on the mountains, hoping that it would
carry the pest away with it.

Occasionally the scapegoat is a man. For example, from time to time
the gods used to warn the King of Uganda that his foes the Banyoro
were working magic against him and his people to make them die of
disease. To avert such a catastrophe the king would send a scapegoat
to the frontier of Bunyoro, the land of the enemy. The scapegoat
consisted of either a man and a boy or a woman and her child, chosen
because of some mark or bodily defect, which the gods had noted and
by which the victims were to be recognised. With the human victims
were sent a cow, a goat, a fowl, and a dog; and a strong guard
escorted them to the land which the god had indicated. There the
limbs of the victims were broken and they were left to die a
lingering death in the enemy's country, being too crippled to crawl
back to Uganda. The disease or plague was thought to have been thus
transferred to the victims and to have been conveyed back in their
persons to the land from which it came.

Some of the aboriginal tribes of China, as a protection against
pestilence, select a man of great muscular strength to act the part
of scapegoat. Having besmeared his face with paint, he performs many
antics with the view of enticing all pestilential and noxious
influences to attach themselves to him only. He is assisted by a
priest. Finally the scapegoat, hotly pursued by men and women
beating gongs and tom-toms, is driven with great haste out of the
town or village. In the Punjaub a cure for the murrain is to hire a
man of the Chamar caste, turn his face away from the village, brand
him with a red-hot sickle, and let him go out into the jungle taking
the murrain with him. He must not look back.



3. The Periodic Expulsion of Evils in a Material Vehicle

THE MEDIATE expulsion of evils by means of a scapegoat or other
material vehicle, like the immediate expulsion of them in invisible
form, tends to become periodic, and for a like reason. Thus every
year, generally in March, the people of Leti, Moa, and Lakor,
islands of the Indian Archipelago, send away all their diseases to
sea. They make a proa about six feet long, rig it with sails, oars,
rudder, and other gear, and every family deposits in its some rice,
fruit, a fowl, two eggs, insects that ravage the fields, and so on.
Then they let it drift away to sea, saying, "Take away from here all
kinds of sickness, take them to other islands, to other lands,
distribute them in places that lie eastward, where the sun rises."
The Biajas of Borneo annually send to sea a little bark laden with
the sins and misfortunes of the people. The crew of any ship that
falls in with the ill-omened bark at sea will suffer all the sorrows
with which it is laden. A like custom is annually observed by the
Dusuns of the Tuaran district in British North Borneo. The ceremony
is the most important of the whole year. Its aim is to bring good
luck to the village during the ensuing year by solemnly expelling
all the evil spirits that may have collected in or about the houses
throughout the last twelve months. The task of routing out the
demons and banishing them devolves chiefly on women. Dressed in
their finest array, they go in procession through the village. One
of them carries a small sucking pig in a basket on her back; and all
of them bear wands, with which they belabour the little pig at the
appropriate moment; its squeals help to attract the vagrant spirits.
At every house the women dance and sing, clashing castanets or
cymbals of brass and jingling bunches of little brass bells in both
hands. When the performance has been repeated at every house in the
village, the procession defiles down to the river, and all the evil
spirits, which the performers have chased from the houses, follow
them to the edge of the water. There a raft has been made ready and
moored to the bank. It contains offerings of food, cloth,
cooking-pots, and swords; and the deck is crowded with figures of
men, women, animals, and birds, all made out of the leaves of the
sago palm. The evil spirits now embark on the raft, and when they
are all aboard, it is pushed off and allowed to float down with the
current, carrying the demons with it. Should the raft run aground
near the village, it is shoved off with all speed, lest the
invisible passengers should seize the opportunity of landing and
returning to the village. Finally, the sufferings of the little pig,
whose squeals served to decoy the demons from their lurking-places,
are terminated by death, for it is killed and its carcase thrown
away.

Every year, at the beginning of the dry season, the Nicobar
Islanders carry the model of a ship through their villages. The
devils are chased out of the huts, and driven on board the little
ship, which is then launched and suffered to sail away with the
wind. The ceremony has been described by a catechist, who witnessed
it at Car Nicobar in July 1897. For three days the people were busy
preparing two very large floating cars, shaped like canoes, fitted
with sails, and loaded with certain leaves, which possessed the
valuable property of expelling devils. While the young people were
thus engaged, the exorcists and the elders sat in a house singing
songs by turns; but often they would come forth, pace the beach
armed with rods, and forbid the devil to enter the village. The
fourth day of the solemnity bore a name which means "Expelling the
Devil by Sails." In the evening all the villagers assembled, the
women bringing baskets of ashes and bunches of devil-expelling
leaves. These leaves were then distributed to everybody, old and
young. When all was ready, a band of robust men, attended by a guard
of exorcists, carried one of the cars down to the sea on the right
side of the village graveyard, and set it floating in the water. As
soon as they had returned, another band of men carried the other car
to the beach and floated it similarly in the sea to the left of the
graveyard. The demon-laden barks being now launched, the women threw
ashes from the shore, and the whole crowd shouted, saying, "Fly
away, devil, fly away, never come again!" The wind and the tide
being favourable, the canoes sailed quickly away; and that night all
the people feasted together with great joy, because the devil had
departed in the direction of Chowra. A similar expulsion of devils
takes place once a year in other Nicobar villages; but the
ceremonies are held at different times in different places.

Amongst many of the aboriginal tribes of China, a great festival is
celebrated in the third month of every year. It is held by way of a
general rejoicing over what the people believe to be a total
annihilation of the ills of the past twelve months. The destruction
is supposed to be effected in the following way. A large earthenware
jar filled with gunpowder, stones, and bits of iron is buried in the
earth. A train of gunpowder, communicating with the jar, is then
laid; and a match being applied, the jar and its contents are blown
up. The stones and bits of iron represent the ills and disasters of
the past year, and the dispersion of them by the explosion is
believed to remove the ills and disasters themselves. The festival
is attended with much revelling and drunkenness.

At Old Calabar on the coast of Guinea, the devils and ghosts are, or
used to be, publicly expelled once in two years. Among the spirits
thus driven from their haunts are the souls of all the people who
died since the last lustration of the town. About three weeks or a
month before the expulsion, which according to one account takes
place in the month of November, rude effigies representing men and
animals, such as crocodiles, leopards, elephants, bullocks, and
birds, are made of wicker-work or wood, and being hung with strips
of cloth and bedizened with gew-gaws, are set before the door of
every house. About three o'clock in the morning of the day appointed
for the ceremony the whole population turns out into the streets,
and proceeds with a deafening uproar and in a state of the wildest
excitement to drive all lurking devils and ghosts into the effigies,
in order that they may be banished with them from the abodes of men.
For this purpose bands of people roam through the streets knocking
on doors, firing guns, beating drums, blowing on horns, ringing
bells, clattering pots and pans, shouting and hallooing with might
and main, in short making all the noise it is possible for them to
raise. The hubbub goes on till the approach of dawn, when it
gradually subsides and ceases altogether at sunrise. By this time
the houses have been thoroughly swept, and all the frightened
spirits are supposed to have huddled into the effigies or their
fluttering drapery. In these wicker figures are also deposited the
sweepings of the houses and the ashes of yesterday's fires. Then the
demon-laden images are hastily snatched up, carried in tumultuous
procession down to the brink of the river, and thrown into the water
to the tuck of drums. The ebb-tide bears them away seaward, and thus
the town is swept clean of ghosts and devils for another two years.

Similar annual expulsions of embodied evils are not unknown in
Europe. On the evening of Easter Sunday the gypsies of Southern
Europe take a wooden vessel like a band-box, which rests cradle-wise
on two cross pieces of wood. In this they place herbs and simples,
together with the dried carcase of a snake, or lizard, which every
person present must first have touched with his fingers. The vessel
is then wrapt in white and red wool, carried by the oldest man from
tent to tent, and finally thrown into running water, not, however,
before every member of the band has spat into it once, and the
sorceress has uttered some spells over it. They believe that by
performing this ceremony they dispel all the illnesses that would
otherwise have afflicted them in the course of the year; and that if
any one finds the vessel and opens it out of curiosity, he and his
will be visited by all the maladies which the others have escaped.

The scapegoat by means of which the accumulated ills of a whole year
are publicly expelled is sometimes an animal. For example, among the
Garos of Assam, "besides the sacrifices for individual cases of
illness, there are certain ceremonies which are observed once a year
by a whole community or village, and are intended to safeguard its
members from dangers of the forest, and from sickness and mishap
during the coming twelve months. The principal of these is the
Asongtata ceremony. Close to the outskirts of every big village a
number of stones may be noticed stuck into the ground, apparently
without order or method. These are known by the name of _asong,_ and
on them is offered the sacrifice which the Asongtata demands. The
sacrifice of a goat takes place, and a month later, that of a
_langur_ (_Entellus_ monkey) or a bamboo-rat is considered
necessary. The animal chosen has a rope fastened round its neck and
is led by two men, one on each side of it, to every house in the
village. It is taken inside each house in turn, the assembled
villagers, meanwhile, beating the walls from the outside, to
frighten and drive out any evil spirits which may have taken up
their residence within. The round of the village having been made in
this manner, the monkey or rat is led to the outskirts of the
village, killed by a blow of a _dao,_ which disembowels it, and then
crucified on bamboos set up in the ground. Round the crucified
animal long, sharp bamboo stakes are placed, which form _chevaux de
frise_ round about it. These commemorate the days when such defences
surrounded the villages on all sides to keep off human enemies, and
they are now a symbol to ward off sickness and dangers to life from
the wild animals of the forest. The _langur_ required for the
purpose is hunted down some days before, but should it be found
impossible to catch one, a brown monkey may take its place; a hulock
may not be used." Here the crucified ape or rat is the public
scapegoat, which by its vicarious sufferings and death relieves the
people from all sickness and mishap in the coming year.

Again, on one day of the year the Bhotiyas of Juhar, in the Western
Himalayas, take a dog, intoxicate him with spirits and bhang or
hemp, and having fed him with sweetmeats, lead him round the village
and let him loose. They then chase and kill him with sticks and
stones, and believe that, when they have done so, no disease or
misfortune will visit the village during the year. In some parts of
Breadalbane it was formerly the custom on New Year's Day to take a
dog to the door, give him a bit of bread, and drive him out, saying,
"Get away, you dog! Whatever death of men or loss of cattle would
happen in this house to the end of the present year, may it all
light on your head!" On the Day of Atonement, which was the tenth
day of the seventh month, the Jewish high-priest laid both his hands
on the head of a live goat, confessed over it all the iniquities of
the Children of Israel, and, having thereby transferred the sins of
the people to the beast, sent it away into the wilderness.

The scapegoat upon whom the sins of the people are periodically
laid, may also be a human being. At Onitsha, on the Niger, two human
beings used to be annually sacrificed to take away the sins of the
land. The victims were purchased by public subscription. All persons
who, during the past year, had fallen into gross sins, such as
incendiarism, theft, adultery, witchcraft, and so forth, were
expected to contribute 28 _ngugas,_ or a little over 2. The money
thus collected was taken into the interior of the country and
expended in the purchase of two sickly persons "to be offered as a
sacrifice for all these abominable crimes--one for the land and one
for the river." A man from a neighbouring town was hired to put them
to death. On the twenty-seventh of February 1858 the Rev. J. C.
Taylor witnessed the sacrifice of one of these victims. The sufferer
was a woman, about nineteen or twenty years of age. They dragged her
alive along the ground, face downwards, from the king's house to the
river, a distance of two miles, the crowds who accompanied her
crying, "Wickedness! wickedness!" The intention was "to take away
the iniquities of the land. The body was dragged along in a
merciless manner, as if the weight of all their wickedness was thus
carried away." Similar customs are said to be still secretly
practised every year by many tribes in the delta of the Niger in
spite of the vigilance of the British Government. Among the Yoruba
negroes of West Africa "the human victim chosen for sacrifice, and
who may be either a freeborn or a slave, a person of noble or
wealthy parentage, or one of humble birth, is, after he has been
chosen and marked out for the purpose, called an _Oluwo._ He is
always well fed and nourished and supplied with whatever he should
desire during the period of his confinement. When the occasion
arrives for him to be sacrificed and offered up, he is commonly led
about and paraded through the streets of the town or city of the
Sovereign who would sacrifice him for the well-being of his
government and of every family and individual under it, in order
that he might carry off the sin, guilt, misfortune and death of all
without exception. Ashes and chalk would be employed to hide his
identity by the one being freely thrown over his head, and his face
painted with the latter, whilst individuals would often rush out of
their houses to lay their hands upon him that they might thus
transfer to him their sin, guilt, trouble, and death." This parade
over, he is taken to an inner sanctuary and beheaded. His last words
or dying groans are the signal for an outburst of joy among the
people assembled outside, who believe that the sacrifice has been
accepted and the divine wrath appeased.

In Siam it used to be the custom on one day of the year to single
out a woman broken down by debauchery, and carry her on a litter
through all the streets to the music of drums and hautboys. The mob
insulted her and pelted her with dirt; and after having carried her
through the whole city, they threw her on a dunghill or a hedge of
thorns outside the ramparts, forbidding her ever to enter the walls
again. They believed that the woman thus drew upon herself all the
malign influences of the air and of evil spirits. The Bataks of
Sumatra offer either a red horse or a buffalo as a public sacrifice
to purify the land and obtain the favour of the gods. Formerly, it
is said, a man was bound to the same stake as the buffalo, and when
they killed the animal, the man was driven away; no one might
receive him, converse with him, or give him food. Doubtless he was
supposed to carry away the sins and misfortunes of the people.

Sometimes the scapegoat is a divine animal. The people of Malabar
share the Hindoo reverence for the cow, to kill and eat which "they
esteem to be a crime as heinous as homicide or wilful murder."
Nevertheless the "Bramans transfer the sins of the people into one
or more Cows, which are then carry'd away, both the Cows and the
Sins wherewith these Beasts are charged, to what place the Braman
shall appoint." When the ancient Egyptians sacrificed a bull, they
invoked upon its head all the evils that might otherwise befall
themselves and the land of Egypt, and thereupon they either sold the
bull's head to the Greeks or cast it into the river. Now, it cannot
be said that in the times known to us the Egyptians worshipped bulls
in general, for they seem to have commonly killed and eaten them.
But a good many circumstances point to the conclusion that
originally all cattle, bulls as well as cows, were held sacred by
the Egyptians. For not only were all cows esteemed holy by them and
never sacrificed, but even bulls might not be sacrificed unless they
had certain natural marks; a priest examined every bull before it
was sacrificed; if it had the proper marks, he put his seal on the
animal in token that it might be sacrificed; and if a man sacrificed
a bull which had not been sealed, he was put to death. Moreover, the
worship of the black bulls Apis and Mnevis, especially the former,
played an important part in Egyptian religion; all bulls that died a
natural death were carefully buried in the suburbs of the cities,
and their bones were afterwards collected from all parts of Egypt
and interred in a single spot; and at the sacrifice of a bull in the
great rites of Isis all the worshippers beat their breasts and
mourned. On the whole, then, we are perhaps entitled to infer that
bulls were originally, as cows were always, esteemed sacred by the
Egyptians, and that the slain bull upon whose head they laid the
misfortunes of the people was once a divine scapegoat. It seems not
improbable that the lamb annually slain by the Madis of Central
Africa is a divine scapegoat, and the same supposition may partly
explain the Zuni sacrifice of the turtle.

Lastly, the scapegoat may be a divine man. Thus, in November the
Gonds of India worship Ghansyam Deo, the protector of the crops, and
at the festival the god himself is said to descend on the head of
one of the worshippers, who is suddenly seized with a kind of fit
and, after staggering about, rushes off into the jungle, where it is
believed that, if left to himself, he would die mad. However, they
bring him back, but he does not recover his senses for one or two
days. The people think that one man is thus singled out as a
scapegoat for the sins of the rest of the village. In the temple of
the Moon the Albanians of the Eastern Caucasus kept a number of
sacred slaves, of whom many were inspired and prophesied. When one
of these men exhibited more than usual symptoms of inspiration or
insanity, and wandered solitary up and down the woods, like the Gond
in the jungle, the high priest had him bound with a sacred chain and
maintained him in luxury for a year. At the end of the year he was
anointed with unguents and led forth to be sacrificed. A man whose
business it was to slay these human victims and to whom practice had
given dexterity, advanced from the crowd and thrust a sacred spear
into the victim's side, piercing his heart. From the manner in which
the slain man fell, omens were drawn as to the welfare of the
commonwealth. Then the body was carried to a certain spot where all
the people stood upon it as a purificatory ceremony. This last
circumstance clearly indicates that the sins of the people were
transferred to the victim, just as the Jewish priest transferred the
sins of the people to the scapegoat by laying his hands on the
animal's head; and since the man was believed to be possessed by the
divine spirit, we have here an undoubted example of a man-god slain
to take away the sins and misfortunes of the people.

In Tibet the ceremony of the scapegoat presents some remarkable
features. The Tibetan new year begins with the new moon which
appears about the fifteenth of February. For twenty-three days
afterwards the government of Lhasa, the capital, is taken out of the
hands of the ordinary rulers and entrusted to the monk of the Debang
monastery who offers to pay the highest sum for the privilege. The
successful bidder is called the Jalno, and he announces his
accession to power in person, going through the streets of Lhasa
with a silver stick in his hand. Monks from all the neighbouring
monasteries and temples assemble to pay him homage. The Jalno
exercises his authority in the most arbitrary manner for his own
benefit, as all the fines which he exacts are his by purchase. The
profit he makes is about ten times the amount of the purchase money.
His men go about the streets in order to discover any conduct on the
part of the inhabitants that can be found fault with. Every house in
Lhasa is taxed at this time, and the slightest offence is punished
with unsparing rigour by fines. This severity of the Jalno drives
all working classes out of the city till the twenty-three days are
over. But if the laity go out, the clergy come in. All the Buddhist
monasteries of the country for miles round about open their gates
and disgorge their inmates. All the roads that lead down into Lhasa
from the neighbouring mountains are full of monks hurrying to the
capital, some on foot, some on horseback, some riding asses or
lowing oxen, all carrying their prayer-books and culinary utensils.
In such multitudes do they come that the streets and squares of the
city are encumbered with their swarms, and incarnadined with their
red cloaks. The disorder and confusion are indescribable. Bands of
the holy men traverse the streets chanting prayers, or uttering wild
cries. They meet, they jostle, they quarrel, they fight; bloody
noses, black eyes, and broken heads are freely given and received.
All day long, too, from before the peep of dawn till after darkness
has fallen, these red-cloaked monks hold services in the dim
incense-laden air of the great Machindranath temple, the cathedral
of Lhasa; and thither they crowd thrice a day to receive their doles
of tea and soup and money. The cathedral is a vast building,
standing in the centre of the city, and surrounded by bazaars and
shops. The idols in it are richly inlaid with gold and precious
stones.

Twenty-four days after the Jalno has ceased to have authority, he
assumes it again, and for ten days acts in the same arbitrary manner
as before. On the first of the ten days the priests again assemble
at the cathedral, pray to the gods to prevent sickness and other
evils among the people, "and, as a peace-offering, sacrifice one
man. The man is not killed purposely, but the ceremony he undergoes
often proves fatal. Grain is thrown against his head, and his face
is painted half white, half black." Thus grotesquely disguised, and
carrying a coat of skin on his arm, he is called the King of the
Years, and sits daily in the market-place, where he helps himself to
whatever he likes and goes about shaking a black yak's tail over the
people, who thus transfer their bad luck to him. On the tenth day,
all the troops in Lhasa march to the great temple and form in line
before it. The King of the Years is brought forth from the temple
and receives small donations from the assembled multitude. He then
ridicules the Jalno, saying to him, "What we perceive through the
five senses is no illusion. All you teach is untrue," and the like.
The Jalno, who represents the Grand Lama for the time being,
contests these heretical opinions; the dispute waxes warm, and at
last both agree to decide the questions at issue by a cast of the
dice, the Jalno offering to change places with the scapegoat should
the throw be against him. If the King of the Years wins, much evil
is prognosticated; but if the Jalno wins, there is great rejoicing,
for it proves that his adversary has been accepted by the gods as a
victim to bear all the sins of the people of Lhasa. Fortune,
however, always favours the Jalno, who throws sixes with unvarying
success, while his opponent turns up only ones. Nor is this so
extraordinary as at first sight it might appear; for the Jalno's
dice are marked with nothing but sixes and his adversary's with
nothing but ones. When he sees the finger of Providence thus plainly
pointed against him, the King of the Years is terrified and flees
away upon a white horse, with a white dog, a white bird, salt, and
so forth, which have all been provided for him by the government.
His face is still painted half white and half black, and he still
wears his leathern coat. The whole populace pursues him, hooting,
yelling, and firing blank shots in volleys after him. Thus driven
out of the city, he is detained for seven days in the great chamber
of horrors at the Samyas monastery, surrounded by monstrous and
terrific images of devils and skins of huge serpents and wild
beasts. Thence he goes away into the mountains of Chetang, where he
has to remain an outcast for several months or a year in a narrow
den. If he dies before the time is out, the people say it is an
auspicious omen; but if he survives, he may return to Lhasa and play
the part of scapegoat over again the following year.

This quaint ceremonial, still annually observed in the secluded
capital of Buddhism--the Rome of Asia--is interesting because it
exhibits, in a clearly marked religious stratification, a series of
divine redeemers themselves redeemed, of vicarious sacrifices
vicariously atoned for, of gods undergoing a process of
fossilisation, who, while they retain the privileges, have
disburdened themselves of the pains and penalties of divinity. In
the Jalno we may without undue straining discern a successor of
those temporary kings, those mortal gods, who purchase a short lease
of power and glory at the price of their lives. That he is the
temporary substitute of the Grand Lama is certain; that he is, or
was once, liable to act as scapegoat for the people is made nearly
certain by his offer to change places with the real scapegoat--the
King of the Years--if the arbitrament of the dice should go against
him. It is true that the conditions under which the question is now
put to the hazard have reduced the offer to an idle form. But such
forms are no mere mushroom growths, springing up of themselves in a
night. If they are now lifeless formalities, empty husks devoid of
significance, we may be sure that they once had a life and a
meaning; if at the present day they are blind alleys leading
nowhere, we may be certain that in former days they were paths that
led somewhere, if only to death. That death was the goal to which of
old the Tibetan scapegoat passed after his brief period of licence
in the market-place, is a conjecture that has much to commend it.
Analogy suggests it; the blank shots fired after him, the statement
that the ceremony often proves fatal, the belief that his death is a
happy omen, all confirm it. We need not wonder then that the Jalno,
after paying so dear to act as deputy-deity for a few weeks, should
have preferred to die by deputy rather than in his own person when
his time was up. The painful but necessary duty was accordingly laid
on some poor devil, some social outcast, some wretch with whom the
world had gone hard, who readily agreed to throw away his life at
the end of a few days if only he might have his fling in the
meantime. For observe that while the time allowed to the original
deputy--the Jalno--was measured by weeks, the time allowed to the
deputy's deputy was cut down to days, ten days according to one
authority, seven days according to another. So short a rope was
doubtless thought a long enough tether for so black or sickly a
sheep; so few sands in the hour-glass, slipping so fast away,
sufficed for one who had wasted so many precious years. Hence in the
jack-pudding who now masquerades with motley countenance in the
market-place of Lhasa, sweeping up misfortune with a black yak's
tail, we may fairly see the substitute of a substitute, the vicar of
a vicar, the proxy on whose back the heavy burden was laid when it
had been lifted from nobler shoulders. But the clue, if we have
followed it aright, does not stop at the Jalno; it leads straight
back to the pope of Lhasa himself, the Grand Lama, of whom the Jalno
is merely the temporary vicar. The analogy of many customs in many
lands points to the conclusion that, if this human divinity stoops
to resign his ghostly power for a time into the hands of a
substitute, it is, or rather was once, for no other reason than that
the substitute might die in his stead. Thus through the mist of ages
unillumined by the lamp of history, the tragic figure of the pope of
Buddhism--God's vicar on earth for Asia--looms dim and sad as the
man-god who bore his people's sorrows, the Good Shepherd who laid
down his life for the sheep.



4. On Scapegoats in General

THE FOREGOING survey of the custom of publicly expelling the
accumulated evils of a village or town or country suggests a few
general observations.

In the first place, it will not be disputed that what I have called
the immediate and the mediate expulsions of evil are identical in
intention; in other words, that whether the evils are conceived of
as invisible or as embodied in a material form, is a circumstance
entirely subordinate to the main object of the ceremony, which is
simply to effect a total clearance of all the ills that have been
infesting a people. If any link were wanting to connect the two
kinds of expulsion, it would be furnished by such a practice as that
of sending the evils away in a litter or a boat. For here, on the
one hand, the evils are invisible and intangible; and, on the other
hand, there is a visible and tangible vehicle to convey them away.
And a scapegoat is nothing more than such a vehicle.

In the second place, when a general clearance of evils is resorted
to periodically, the interval between the celebrations of the
ceremony is commonly a year, and the time of year when the ceremony
takes place usually coincides with some well-marked change of
season, such as the beginning or end of winter in the arctic and
temperate zones, and the beginning or end of the rainy season in the
tropics. The increased mortality which such climatic changes are apt
to produce, especially amongst ill-fed, ill-clothed, and ill-housed
savages, is set down by primitive man to the agency of demons, who
must accordingly be expelled. Hence, in the tropical regions of New
Britain and Peru, the devils are or were driven out at the beginning
of the rainy season; hence, on the dreary coasts of Baffin Land,
they are banished at the approach of the bitter Arctic winter. When
a tribe has taken to husbandry, the time for the general expulsion
of devils is naturally made to agree with one of the great epochs of
the agricultural year, as sowing, or harvest; but, as these epochs
themselves naturally coincide with changes of season, it does not
follow that the transition from the hunting or pastoral to the
agricultural life involves any alteration in the time of celebrating
this great annual rite. Some of the agricultural communities of
India and the Hindoo Koosh, as we have seen, hold their general
clearance of demons at harvest, others at sowing-time. But, at
whatever season of the year it is held, the general expulsion of
devils commonly marks the beginning of the new year. For, before
entering on a new year, people are anxious to rid themselves of the
troubles that have harassed them in the past; hence it comes about
that in so many communities the beginning of the new year is
inaugurated with a solemn and public banishment of evil spirits.

In the third place, it is to be observed that this public and
periodic expulsion of devils is commonly preceded or followed by a
period of general license, during which the ordinary restraints of
society are thrown aside, and all offences, short of the gravest,
are allowed to pass unpunished. In Guinea and Tonquin the period of
license precedes the public expulsion of demons; and the suspension
of the ordinary government in Lhasa previous to the expulsion of the
scapegoat is perhaps a relic of a similar period of universal
license. Amongst the Hos of India the period of license follows the
expulsion of the devil. Amongst the Iroquois it hardly appears
whether it preceded or followed the banishment of evils. In any
case, the extraordinary relaxation of all ordinary rules of conduct
on such occasions is doubtless to be explained by the general
clearance of evils which precedes or follows it. On the one hand,
when a general riddance of evil and absolution from all sin is in
immediate prospect, men are encouraged to give the rein to their
passions, trusting that the coming ceremony will wipe out the score
which they are running up so fast. On the other hand, when the
ceremony has just taken place, men's minds are freed from the
oppressive sense, under which they generally labour, of an
atmosphere surcharged with devils; and in the first revulsion of joy
they overleap the limits commonly imposed by custom and morality.
When the ceremony takes place at harvest-time, the elation of
feeling which it excites is further stimulated by the state of
physical wellbeing produced by an abundant supply of food.

Fourthly, the employment of a divine man or animal as a scapegoat is
especially to be noted; indeed, we are here directly concerned with
the custom of banishing evils only in so far as these evils are
believed to be transferred to a god who is afterwards slain. It may
be suspected that the custom of employing a divine man or animal as
a public scapegoat is much more widely diffused than appears from
the examples cited. For, as has already been pointed out, the custom
of killing a god dates from so early a period of human history that
in later ages, even when the custom continues to be practised, it is
liable to be misinterpreted. The divine character of the animal or
man is forgotten, and he comes to be regarded merely as an ordinary
victim. This is especially likely to be the case when it is a divine
man who is killed. For when a nation becomes civilised, if it does
not drop human sacrifices altogether, it at least selects as victims
only such wretches as would be put to death at any rate. Thus the
killing of a god may sometimes come to be confounded with the
execution of a criminal.

If we ask why a dying god should be chosen to take upon himself and
carry away the sins and sorrows of the people, it may be suggested
that in the practice of using the divinity as a scapegoat we have a
combination of two customs which were at one time distinct and
independent. On the one hand we have seen that it has been customary
to kill the human or animal god in order to save his divine life
from being weakened by the inroads of age. On the other hand we have
seen that it has been customary to have a general expulsion of evils
and sins once a year. Now, if it occurred to people to combine these
two customs, the result would be the employment of the dying god as
a scapegoat. He was killed, not originally to take away sin, but to
save the divine life from the degeneracy of old age; but, since he
had to be killed at any rate, people may have thought that they
might as well seize the opportunity to lay upon him the burden of
their sufferings and sins, in order that he might bear it away with
him to the unknown world beyond the grave.

The use of the divinity as a scapegoat clears up the ambiguity
which, as we saw, appears to hang about the European folk-custom of
"carrying out Death." Grounds have been shown for believing that in
this ceremony the so-called Death was originally the spirit of
vegetation, who was annually slain in spring, in order that he might
come to life again with all the vigour of youth. But, as I pointed
out, there are certain features in the ceremony which are not
explicable on this hypothesis alone. Such are the marks of joy with
which the effigy of Death is carried out to be buried or burnt, and
the fear and abhorrence of it manifested by the bearers. But these
features become at once intelligible if we suppose that the Death
was not merely the dying god of vegetation, but also a public
scapegoat, upon whom were laid all the evils that had afflicted the
people during the past year. Joy on such an occasion is natural and
appropriate; and if the dying god appears to be the object of that
fear and abhorrence which are properly due not to himself, but to
the sins and misfortunes with which he is laden, this arises merely
from the difficulty of distinguishing, or at least of marking the
distinction, between the bearer and the burden. When the burden is
of a baleful character, the bearer of it will be feared and shunned
just as much as if he were himself instinct with those dangerous
properties of which, as it happens, he is only the vehicle.
Similarly we have seen that disease-laden and sin-laden boats are
dreaded and shunned by East Indian peoples. Again, the view that in
these popular customs the Death is a scapegoat as well as a
representative of the divine spirit of vegetation derives some
support from the circumstance that its expulsion is always
celebrated in spring and chiefly by Slavonic peoples. For the
Slavonic year began in spring; and thus, in one of its aspects, the
ceremony of "carrying out Death" would be an example of the
widespread custom of expelling the accumulated evils of the old year
before entering on a new one.






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