CHAPTER IV: ELDEST MALE DESCENDANTS AS QUASI-PRIESTS.

§ 597. Though in the earliest stages sacrifices to the ghost of the dead man are made by descendants in general, yet in conformity with the law of the instability of the homogeneous, an inequality soon arises: the propitiatory function falls into the hands of one member of the group. Of the Samoans we read that “the father of the family was the high-priest.” The like was true of the Tahitians: “in the family . . . the father was the priest.” Of Madagascar, Drury says—“Every man here . . . is a Priest for himself and Family.” Similarly in Asia. Among the Ostyaks “the father of a family was the sole priest, magician, and god maker;” and among the Gonds religious rites are “for the most part performed by some aged relative.” With higher races it is, or has been, the same. By existing Hindoos the daily offering to ancestors is made by the head of the family. While “every good Chinaman regularly, every day, burns incense before the tablet to his father’s memory,” on important occasions the rites are performed by the head of the brotherhood. That family-headship brought the like duties in respect of manes-worship among Greeks and Romans, needs no showing. Speaking of primitive Sabæans, Palgrave says—“presidence in worship was, it seems, the privilege merely of greater age or of family headship;” and even among the Jews, to whom propitiation of the dead had been forbidden, there long survived the usage which had resulted from it. Kuenen remarks that though, up to David’s time, “the competence of every Israelite to Edition: current; Page: [48] offer sacrifice was not doubted,” yet “it was the kings and the heads of the tribes and families especially who made use of this privilege.”

In the course of evolution under all its forms, differentiations tend ever to become more definite and fixed; and the differentiation above indicated is no exception. Eventually the usage so hardens, that the performance of sacrificial rites to ancestors is restricted to particular descendants. Speaking of the ancient Aryans, Sir Henry Maine says—“not only must the ancestor worshipped be a male ancestor, but the worshipper must be the male child or other male descendant.”

§ 598. Hence certain sequences which we must note before we can rightly understand the institutions which eventually become established. In ancient Egypt “it was most important that a man should have a son established in his seat after him who should perform the due rites [of sacrifice to his ka, or double] and see that they were performed by others.” Still more strongly was the need felt by the ancient Aryans. Says Duncker, “according to the law [of the Brahmans] every man ought to marry; he must have a son who may one day pour for him the libations for the dead.” And we further read concerning them:—

Among the Jews, too, though interdicted by their law from making material sacrifices to the dead, there survived the need for a son to utter the sacrificial prayer.

So is it too in China, where a chief anxiety during life is to make provision for proper sacrifices after death. Failure of a first wife to bear a male child who may perform them, is considered a legitimate reason for taking a second wife; and in the Corea, where the funeral ceremonies are so elaborate that the mourners have cues to weep or cease weeping, we are shown the quasi-priestly function of the son, and also get an indication of the descent of this function. After a death “a man must be at once appointed Shangjoo, or male Chief Mourner. The eldest son, if living, or, failing him, his son rather than his brother, is the proper Shangjoo. . . . When these friends arrive, they mourn altogether, with the Shangjoo at their head.” And among the Shangjoo’s duties is that of putting food into the deceased’s mouth: performing, at the same time, the reverential obeisance—baring his left shoulder.

§ 599. The primitive and long-surviving belief in a second life repeating the first in its needs—a belief which, as we see, prompted surprising usages for procuring an actual or nominal son who should minister to these needs—prompted, in other cases, a usage which, though infrequent among ourselves, has been and still is frequent in societies less divergent from early types: so frequent as to cause surprise until we understand its origin. Says Satow—“The practice of adoption, which supplies the childless with heirs, is common all over the East, but its justification in Japan is the necessity of keeping up the ancestral sacrifices.” Accounts Edition: current; Page: [50] of Greeks and Romans show us that a kindred custom had among them a kindred motive. Though, as indicated in §§ 319 and 452, the practice of adoption had, among these people, survived from the times when its chief purpose was that of strengthening the patriarchal group; yet it is clear that the more special form of adoption which grew up had another purpose. Such a ceremony as that of a mock birth, whereby a fictitious son was made to simulate as nearly as might be a real son, could not have had a political origin, but must have had a domestic origin; and this origin was the one above indicated. As is pointed out by Prof. Hunter, Gaius speaks of “the great desire of the ancients to have vacant inheritances filled up, in order that there might be some one to perform the sacred rites, which were specially called for at the time of death.” And since the context shows that this was the dominant reason for easy legalization of inheritance, it becomes clear that it was not primarily in the interest of the son, or the fictitious son, or the adopted son, that heirship was soon settled; but in the interest of the departed person. Just as, in ancient Egypt, men made bequests and endowed priests for the purpose of carrying on sacrifices in the private shrines erected to them; so did Roman fathers secure to themselves dutiful heirs, artificial when not natural, to minister to their ghosts out of the transmitted property.

Further significant evidence is supplied by the fact that heirship involved sacrifice. It was thus with the Eastern Aryans. Sir Henry Maine, speaking of the “elaborate liturgy and ritual” for ancestor-worship among the Hindus, says—“In the eye of the ancient Hindu sacerdotal lawyer, the whole law of Inheritance is dependent on its accurate observance.” Or as Prof. Hunter remarks of these people—“The earliest notions of succession to deceased persons are connected with duties rather than with rights, with sacrifices rather than with property.” And it was so with the Western Aryans. Sir Henry Maine quotes the appeal of a Greek orator on behalf of a litigant—“Decide between us, which Edition: current; Page: [51] of us should have the succession and make the sacrifices at the tomb.” And he points out that “the number, costliness, and importance of these ceremonies and oblations [to the dead] among the Romans,” were such that even when they came to be less regarded, “the charges for them were still a heavy burden on Inheritances.” Nay, even in mediæval Christendom there survived the same general conception in a modified form. Personal property was held to be “primarily a fund for the celebration of masses to deliver the soul of the owner from purgatory.”

That these obligations to the dead had a religious character, is shown by the fact that where they have survived down to our own day, they take precedence of all other obligations. In India “a man may be pardoned for neglecting all his social duties, but he is for ever cursed if he fails to perform the funeral obsequies of his parents, and to present them with the offerings due to them.”

§ 600. That we may the better comprehend early ideas of the claim supposed to be made by the double of the dead man on his property and his heir, it will be well to give some ancient examples of the way in which a son, or one who by a fiction stands in the position of a son, speaks of, or speaks to, his actual or nominal father who has died.

In Egypt, at Beni-hassan, an inscription by Chnumhotep says—“I made to flourish the name of my father, and I built the chapels for his ka. I caused my statues to be conveyed to the holy dwelling, and distributed to them their offerings in pure gifts. I instituted the officiating priest, to whom I gave donations in lands and peasants.” Similarly at Abydos, Rameses II says concerning the worship of his father, Seti I:—

Both which extracts exhibit the successor as being, in some sort, a steward for the deceased, administering on his behalf.

So was it in an adjacent empire. Assyria’s “first rulers were called Patesi or ‘Viceroys’ of Assur;” and an inscription of Tiglath-Pileser says:—

If now we remember that in Egypt the ka, or double of the dead man, was expected to return after a long period to re-animate his mummy and resume his original life—if we recall, too, the case of the Peruvians, who, similarly providing elaborately for the welfare of departed persons, similarly believed that they would eventually return—if we find ourselves thus carried back to the primitive notion that death is simply a long-suspended animation; we may suspect the original conception to be that when he revives, a man will reclaim whatever he originally had; and that therefore whoever holds his property, holds it subject to his prior claim—holds it as a kind of tenant who may be dispossessed by the owner, and whose sacred duty meanwhile is to administer it primarily for the owner’s benefit.

§ 601. Be this so or not, however, the facts grouped as above, clearly show how, among the progenitors of the civilized peoples of the Old World, as well as among peoples who still retain early institutions, there arose those arrangements of the family-cult which existed, or still exist.

What has happened where descent in the female line obtains, is not clear. I have met with no statements showing that in societies characterized by this usage, the duty of ministering to the double of the dead man devolved on one of his children rather than on others. But the above facts show that, where the system of counting kinship through males has been established, the descent of the priestly function Edition: current; Page: [53] follows the same law as the descent of property; and there are other facts showing it more directly.

At the present time the connexion between the two is well displayed in China, where “it is regarded as indispensable that there should be some one to burn incense to the manes of the dead, from the eldest son down to posterity in the direct line of the eldest son, either by an own child or an adopted child;” and where the eldest son, who inherits more than other sons, has to bear the cost of the offerings. So, too, is it in the Corea, where, as already pointed out, the Shangjoo, or chief mourner, is either the eldest son or the eldest son of the eldest. When the corpse is buried, “if there are graves of ancestors in that place already, the Shangjoo sacrifices before them also, informing them of the new arrival.”

These facts, along with foregoing ones, show that devolution of the sacrificial office accompanies devolution of property, because the property has to bear the costs of the sacrifices. We see that in societies characterized by the patriarchal form of organization, a son, who alone was capable of inheriting, could alone have due means of ministering to the deceased, and therefore could alone be priest. Whence obviously resulted the necessity for having a male descendant, as indicated above.

At the same time we are shown how, under the patriarchal type of society in its first stages, the domestic, the political, and the ecclesiastical, are undistinguished. These sacrifices made to the departed head of a family-group are primarily domestic. As the family-group develops into the compound group, the patriarch at its head acquires a quasi-political character; and these offerings made to him after death are in the nature of tribute, while fulfilment of the commands he left, disobedience to which may bring punishment when he returns, implies civil subordination. At the same time, in so far as these actions are performed to propitiate a being distinguished as supernatural, those who perform them acquire a quasi-ecclesiastical character.