CHAPTER XIX: SACRED PLACES, TEMPLES, AND ALTARS; SACRIFICE, FASTING, AND PROPITIATION; PRAISE, PRAYER, ETC.

§ 136. The inscriptions on grave-stones commonly begin with the words—“Sacred to the memory of.” The sacredness thus ascribed to the tomb, extends to whatever is, or has been, closely associated with the dead. The bedroom containing the corpse is entered with noiseless steps; words are uttered in low tones; and by the subdued manner is shown a feeling which, however variable in other elements, always includes the element of awe.

The sentiment excited in us by the dead, by the place of the dead, and by the immediate belongings of the dead, while doubtless partly unlike that of the primitive man, is in essence like it. When we read of savages in general, as of the Dakotahs, that “they stand in great awe of the spirits of the dead,” and that many tribes, like the Hottentots “leave the huts they died in standing,” with their contents untouched; we are shown that fear is a chief component of the sentiment. Shrinking from the chamber of death, often shown among ourselves, like aversion to going through a churchyard at night, arises partly from a vague dread. Common to uncivilized and civilized, this feeling colours all the ideas which the dead arouse.

Parallelisms apart, we have abundant proof that the place where the dead are, awakens in savages an emotion of fear; is approached with hesitating steps; and acquires the Edition: current; Page: [254] character of sanctity. In the Tonga Islands, the cemeteries containing the greatest chiefs are considered sacred. When a New Zealand chief is buried in a village, the whole village become tapu: no one, on pain of death, being permitted to go near it. The Tahitians never repair or live in the house of one who has died: that, and everything belonging to him, is tabooed. Food for the departed is left by New Zealanders in “sacred calabashes;” in Aneiteum, the groves in which they leave offerings of food for their dead ancestors, are “sacred groves;” and by Ashantis, the town of Bantama “is regarded as sacred because it contains the fetish-house, which is the mausoleum of the kings of Ashanti.”

The fact which here concerns us is, that this awe excited by the dead grows into a sentiment like that excited by the places and things used for religious purposes. The kinship is forced on our attention when Cook tells us of the Sandwich Islanders, that the morai seems to be their pantheon as well as their burial-place; and that the morais or burying-grounds of the Tahitians are also places of worship. But we shall see this relationship most clearly on tracing the genesis of temples and altars.

§ 137. By the cave-inhabiting Veddahs, until recently, the dead man was left where he died: the survivors sought some other cave, leaving that in which the death occurred to the spirit of the deceased. As already shown in connexion with another belief, the Bongo people could not be got to enter a certain cave which they said was haunted by the spirits of fugitives who had died in it. Further south “no one dared to enter the Lohaheng, or cave, for it was the common belief that it was the habitation of the Deity.” And in the Izdubar legends, Heabani, represented as living in a cave, is said, at death, to be taken by his “mother earth,” and his ghost is raised out of the earth. On being thus reminded that primitive men lived in caves and interred their dead in them; on adding that when they ceased to use caves Edition: current; Page: [255] as dwellings they continued to use them as cemeteries; and on remembering, further, the general custom of carrying offerings to the places where the departed lie; we see how there arises the sacred cave or cave-temple. That the cave-temples of Egypt thus originated is tolerably clear. In various parts of the world natural caverns are found with rude frescoes daubed on their sides; and these artificial caverns in which some Egyptian kings were buried, had their long passages and sepulchral chambers covered with paintings. If we assume that to the preserved bodies of these kings, as to those of Egyptians generally, offerings were made; we must infer that the sacred burial-cave had become a cave-temple. And on learning that elsewhere in Egypt there are cave-temples of a more developed kind that were not sepulchral, we may properly regard these as derivative; for it is not to be supposed that men begun cutting their places of worship out of the solid rock, without having a preceding habit to prompt them.

For another class of temples we have another origin caused by another mode of burial. The Arawâks place the corpse in a “small corial (boat) and bury it in the hut.” By the Guiana tribes, “a hole is dug in the hut and there the body is laid.” Among the Creeks, the habitation of the dead becomes his place of interment. Similarly in Africa. By the Fantees “the dead person is buried in his own house;” the Dahomans bury in the deceased’s “own house or in the abode of certain ancestors;” and there is house-burial among the Fulahs, the Bagos, and the Gold Coast people. Whether the house thus used tends to become a temple, depends on whether it is, or is not, abandoned. In cases like those cited in § 117, where the survivors continue to inhabit it after one or more interments, the acquirement of the sacred character is prevented. When Landa tells us of the Yucatanese, that, “as a rule, they abandoned the house and left it uninhabited after the burial, unless there were many people living in it who overcame the fear of Edition: current; Page: [256] death by company;” we are shown the rise of the sentiment and what results from it if not checked. Hence, when told of the Caribs that, “burying the corpse in the centre of his own dwelling” [if the master of the house] the relations “quitted the house altogether, and erected another in a distant situation;” and when told of the Brazilian Indians that a dead man “is buried in the hut which, if he was an adult, is abandoned, and another built in its stead;” and when told that “the ancient Peruvians frequently buried their dead in their dwellings and then removed;” we cannot but see that the abandoned house, thus left to the ghost of the deceased, becomes a place regarded with awe. Moreover, as repeated supplies of food are taken to it; and as along with making offerings there go other propitiatory acts; the deserted dwelling-house, turned into a mortuary-house, acquires the attributes of a temple.

Where house-burial is not practised, the sheltering structure raised above the grave, or above the stage bearing the corpse, becomes the germ of the sacred building. By some of the New Guinea people there is a “roof of atap erected over” the burial-place. In Cook’s time, the Tahitians placed the body of a dead person upon a kind of bier supported by sticks and under a roof. So, too, in Sumatra, where “a shed is built over” the grave; and so, too, in Tonga. Of course this shed admits of enlargement and finish. The Dyaks in some places build mausoleums like houses, 18 ft. high, ornamentally carved, containing the goods of the departed—sword, shield, paddle, etc. When we read that the Fijians deposit the bodies of their chiefs in small mbures or temples, we may fairly conclude that these so-called temples are simply more-developed sheltering structures. Describing the funeral rites of a Tahitian chief, placed under a protective shed, Ellis says the corpse was clothed “and placed in a sitting posture; a small altar was erected before it, and offerings of fruit, food, and flowers, daily presented by the relatives, or the priest appointed to attend the body.” Here Edition: current; Page: [257] the shed has become a place of worship. Still more clearly did the customs of the Peruvians show that the structure erected over the dead body develops into a temple. Acosta tells us that “every one of these kings Yncas left all his treasure and revenues to entertaine the place of worshippe where his body was layed, and there were many ministers with all his familie dedicated to his service.”

Nor is it among inferior races alone that we trace this genesis of the temple out of the specially-provided house for the dead. That which early Spanish travellers tell us about the Peruvians, ancient Greek travellers tell us about the Egyptians. Just as Cieza remarks “how little [the Collas] cared for having large and handsome houses for the living, while they bestowed so much care on the tombs where the dead were interred;” so Diodorus, giving a reason for the meanness of the Egyptians’ dwellings as contrasted with the splendour of their tombs, says—“they termed the houses of the living inns, because they stay in them but a little while, but the sepulchres of the dead they call everlasting habitations.” As these Egyptian tombs, like their houses in type though so superior in quality, were places in which offerings to the dead were made, they were essentially temples. Indeed, as it is doubtful whether that most ancient underground structure close to the great pyramid, is a tomb or a temple—as the Serapeum (also underground) where the god Osiris-Apis was buried after each incarnation, “resembled in appearance the other Egyptian temples, even those which were not of a funereal character;” we have reason for thinking that in earlier Egyptian times the temple, as distinguished from the tomb, did not exist. Not unfrequently in the East, these mortuary structures united the characters of the cave-temple and the dwelling-house temple. As at Petra, as at Cyrene, so in Etruria, the tombs were arranged along a cliff “like houses in a street,” and “were severally an imitation of a dwelling-chamber:” to which add that the Etruscans had also underground Edition: current; Page: [258] temples like underground burial places, which were like primitive underground houses. A temple at Mahavellipore in Dravidian style, suggests that in India the rock-temple was originally a tomb: there is a reclining (? dead) figure being worshipped. The tomb of Darius, too, cut in the rock, “is an exact reproduction” of his palace on the same scale. I may end with the remark of Mr. Fergusson, who, writing of the Chaldean temples, and indicating the likeness of the tomb of Cyrus to a temple, says “the most celebrated example of this form is as often called [by ancient writers] the tomb as the temple of Belus, and among a Turanian people the tomb and the temple may be considered as one and the same thing.”

Later times have seen manifest tendencies to such a genesis of the temple, de novo. In the oases of the Sahara, are chapels built over the remains of marabouts, or Mahometan saints; and to these chapels the pious make pilgrimages and take offerings. Obviously, too, a chapel covering the tomb of a saint within a Roman Catholic cathedral, is a small temple within a large one. And every detached mausoleum containing the bones of a distinguished man, is visited with feelings akin to the religious, and is an incipient place of worship.

§ 138. When, from tracing the origin of the sacred chamber, be it cave, or deserted house, or special mortuary-house, or temple, we proceed to trace the origin of the sacred structure within it—the altar—we come first to something intermediate. In India there are highly-developed sacred structures uniting the attributes of the two.

The grave-heap growing into the tumulus, which increases in size with the dignity of the deceased, sometimes develops from a mound of earth into a mound partly of stones and partly of earth, or otherwise wholly of stones, and finally into a stone structure, still solid like a mound, and still somewhat mound-shaped, but highly elaborated architecturally. Edition: current; Page: [259] Instead of a sacred edifice evolved from the sepulchral chamber, we have, in the Indian Tope, a sacred edifice evolved from the grave-heap itself. “The Tope is the lineal and direct descendant of the funereal tumulus,” says Mr. Fergusson; or, as defined by Gen. Cunningham in his elaborate work, it is “a regularly-built cairn,” as its name implies. Of these Indian Topes, some contain relics of Sakyá-muni; and others contain relics of his principal disciples, priests, and saints: relics only, because in the case of Sakyá-muni, parts of his remains were carried to different places, and because, in the other cases, burning of the dead having been adopted by the Indian Buddhists, the tomb became not the receptacle of a body but of a remnant. As nearly as this change of practice permits, therefore, the Tope is a tomb; and the prayers offered at Topes, the processions made round them, and the adorations paid to them (as shown in the sculptures on their own surfaces), prove that they are simply solid temples instead of hollow temples. Further evidence of this remains: the name given to certain of them, Chaitya, means, in Sanskrit, “an altar, a temple, as well as any monument raised on the site of a funeral pile.”

Returning to the grave-heap in its original form, we have first to recall the fact (§ 85) that among savages who bury, and who take supplies of food to the dead, the grave-heap is thereby made a heap on which offerings are placed. Here of earth or turf, there partly of stones, elsewhere of stones entirely, it has the same relation to offerings for the dead that an altar has to offerings for a deity.

Where corpses are supported on platforms, which also bear the refreshments provided, these platforms become practically altars; and we have evidence that in some cases the altars used in the worship of deities are derived from them. In Tahiti, when Cook was there, the altars on which the natives placed their offerings to the gods were similar to the biers on which they placed their dead: both were small stages, raised on wooden pillars, from five to seven feet high. Edition: current; Page: [260] A like structure was used in the Sandwich Islands to support the provisions taken to the grave of one of Cook’s sailors. Elsewhere, neither the grave-heap simply nor the raised stage, plays the part of a stand for offerings. Ximenez tells us of the Central Americans that “if, after the slaves had been laid in the sepulchre beside their master, any space was left, they filled it up with earth, and levelled it. They afterwards erected an altar upon the grave, a cubit high, of lime and rock, on which generally much incense was burnt, and sacrifices offered.” And then, among peoples who enlarge the grave-heap, this structure carrying food and drink is placed close to it; as even now before the vast tumulus of a Chinese Emperor.

Among ancient orientals the altar had a like origin. A ceremony at one of the Egyptian festivals was crowning the tomb of Osiris with flowers; and in like manner they placed garlands on the sarcophagi of dead persons. On altars “outside the doors of the catacombs at Thebes” “are carved in bas-relief the various offerings they bore, which are the same as those represented in the paintings of tombs:” an illustration showing us that where it became a support for offerings placed in front of the dead, the altar still bore traces of having originally been the receptacle for the dead. One more case. Though, along with their advance from the earliest pastoral state, the Hebrews probably diverged somewhat from their original observances of burial and sacrifice, their primitive altars as described, suggest the origin here alleged. They were either of turf, and in so far like a grave-heap, or they were of undressed stones, and in so far also like a grave-heap. Bearing in mind that, as illustrated in the use of the flint-knife for circumcision, religious usages are those which remain longest unchanged, we may suspect the cause of the restriction to undressed stones for building an altar, was that the use of them had persisted from the time when they formed the primitive cairn. It is true that the earliest Hebrew legends imply cave-burials, and that Edition: current; Page: [261] later burials were in artificial caves or sepulchres; but pastoral tribes, wandering over wide plains, could not constantly have buried thus. The common mode was probably that still practised by such wild Semites as the Bedouins, whose dead have “stones piled over the grave,” and who “make sacrifices in which sheep or camels are devoutly slaughtered at the tombs of their dead kinsmen:” the piled stones being thus clearly made into an altar.

The usages of European races also yield evidence of this derivation. Here, partly from Blunt’s Dictionary of Theology, and partly from other sources, are some of the proofs. The most ancient altar known is “a hollow chest, on the lid or mensa of which the Eucharist was celebrated.” This form was associated with “the early Christian custom of placing the relics of martyred saints” under altars; and it is still a standing rule in the Catholic Church to enclose the relics of a saint in an altar. “Stone was ordered by councils of the fourth century, from an association of the altar with the sepulchre of Christ.” Moreover, “the primitive Christians chiefly held their meetings at the tombs of the martyrs, and celebrated the mysteries of religion upon them.” And to Mr. Fergusson’s statement, that in the middle ages “the stone coffin became an altar,” may be joined the fact that our churches still contain “altar-tombs.”

Thus what we are clearly shown by the practices of the uncivilized, is indicated also by the practices of the civilized. The original altar is that which supports offerings to the dead; and hence its various forms—a heap of turf, a pile of stones, a raised stage, a stone coffin.

§ 139. Altars imply sacrifices; and we pass naturally from the genesis of the one to the genesis of the other.

Already in § 84 I have exemplified at length the custom of providing the deceased with food; and I might, space permitting, double the number of examples. I might, too, dwell on the various motives avowed by various peoples—by Edition: current; Page: [262] the Lower Californians, among whom “the priest demands provisions for the spirit’s journey;” by the Coras of Mexico, who, after a man’s death, “placed some meat upon sticks about the fields, for fear he might come for the cattle he formerly owned;” by the Damaras, who, bringing food to the grave of a relation, request “him to eat and make merry,” and in return “invoke his blessing” and aid. A truth also before illustrated (§ 85), but which, as bearing directly on the argument, it will be well to re-illustrate here, is that these offerings are repeated at intervals: in some places for a short time; in other places for a long time. Of the Vancouver-Island people we are told that “for some days after the death relatives burn salmon or venison before the tomb;” and among the Mosquito Indians, “the widow was bound to supply the grave of her husband with provisions for a year.” When, with practices of this kind, we join such practices as those of the Karen, who thinks himself surrounded by the spirits of the departed dead, “whom he has to appease by varied and unceasing offerings;” we cannot fail to recognize the transition from funeral gifts to religious sacrifices.

The kinship becomes further manifest on observing that in both cases there are, besides offerings of the ordinary kind, festival offerings. The Karens just named as habitually making oblations, have also annual feasts for the dead, at which they ask the spirits to eat and drink. Of the Bodo and Dhimáls Hodgson tells us that “at harvest home, they offer fruits and a fowl to deceased parents.” Such yearly sacrifices, occurring in November among the natives of the Mexican Valley, who then lay live animals, edibles, and flowers on the graves of their dead relatives and friends, and occurring in August among the Pueblos, who then place corn, bread, meat, etc., in the “haunts frequented by the dead,” have prevailed widely: the modern Chinese still exemplifying them, as they were exemplified by the ancient Peruvians and Aztecs.

Moreover there are offerings on occasions specially suggesting them. “When passing a burial-ground they [the Sea Dyaks] throw on it something they consider acceptable to the departed;” and a Hottentot makes a gift on passing a burial-place, and ask for ghostly guardianship. In Samoa, where the spirits of the dead are supposed to roam the bush, “people in going far inland to work, would scatter food here and there as a peace-offering to them, and utter a word or two of prayer for protection.” Development of funeral offerings into habitual sacrifices is carried a stage further in the practice of reserving for the dead a part of each meal. In Fiji “often when the natives eat or drink anything, they throw portions of it away, stating them to be for their departed ancestors.” Always when liquor is given the Bhils, they pour a libation on the ground before drinking any; and as their forefathers are their gods, the meaning of this practice is unmistakable. So, too, the Araucanians spill a little of their drink, and scatter a little of their food, before eating and drinking; and the Virzimbers of Madagascar, when they sit down to meals, “take a bit of meat and throw it over their heads, saying—‘There’s a bit for the spirit.’ ” Ancient historic races had like ways.

The motives for these offerings are often avowed. We read in Livingstone that a Berotse having a headache said—“ ‘My father is scolding me because I do not give him any of the food I eat.’ I asked him where his father was. ‘Among the Barimo,’ [gods] was the reply.” The Kaffirs are described as attributing every untoward event to the spirit of a deceased person, and as “slaughtering a beast to propitiate its favour.” The Amazulu show us the same thing. “There, then, is your food,” they say: “all ye spirits of our tribe, summon one another. I am not going to say, ‘So-and-so, there is your food,’ for you are jealous. But thou, So-and-so, who art making this man ill, call all the spirits; come all of you to eat this food.”

So that alike in motive and in method, this offering of Edition: current; Page: [264] food and drink to the dead man parallels the offering of food and drink to a deity. Observe the points of community. The giving of portions of meals is common to the two. In the Sandwich Islands, before the priests begin a meal, says Cook, they utter a sort of prayer, and then offer some of the provisions to the deity. As with these Polynesians, so with the Homeric Greeks: “the share which is given to the gods of the wine that flows, and the flesh that smokes on the festal board,” corresponds with the share cast aside by various peoples for the ancestral spirits. The like is true of the larger oblations on special occasions. When told that a Kaffir chief kills a bullock, that he may thereby get help in war from a dead ancestor, we are reminded that “Agamemnon, king of men, slew a fat bull of five years to most mighty Kronion.” When among the Amazulu, after “an abundant harvest sometimes the head of the village dreams that it is said to him—‘How is it, when you have been given so much food, that you do not give thanks?’ ” and when he thereupon makes a feast to the Amatongo (ghosts of the dead), his act differs in no way from that of presenting first-fruits to deities. And when at another time “he tells his dream, and says—‘Let a sin-offering be sacrificed, lest the Itongo be angry and kill us;’ ” we are reminded of sin-offerings made among various peoples to avert divine vengeance. There is a no less complete correspondence between the sacrifices made at fixed periods. As above shown, we find in addition to other feasts to the dead, annual feasts; and these answer to the annual festivals in honour of deities. Moreover, the times are alike fixed by astronomical events. The parallel holds also in respect of the things offered. In both cases we have oxen, goats, etc.; in both cases bread and cakes occur; in both cases the local drink is given—wine where it exists, chicha by American races, beer by various tribes in Africa; in both cases, too, we find incense used; in both cases flowers; and, in short, whatever consumable commodities Edition: current; Page: [265] are most valued, down even to tobacco. As we saw above, an African chief expected to get aid by emptying his snuff-box to the gods; and among the Kaffirs, when the spirits “are invited to eat, beer and snuff are usually added.” Nor is there any difference in the mode of preparation. Both to spirits and to deities we find uncooked offerings and also burnt offerings. Yet another likeness must be named. Gods are supposed to profit by the sacrifices as ghosts do, and to be similarly pleased. As given in the Iliad, Zeus’ reason for favouring Troy is that there “never did mine altar lack the seemly feast, even drink-offering and burnt-offering, the worship that is our due.” In the Odyssey, Athene is described as coming in person to receive the roasted heifer presented to her, and as rewarding the giver. Lastly, we have the fact that in sundry cases the sacrifices to ghosts and gods coexist in undistinguishable forms. By the Sandwich Islanders provisions are placed before the dead and before images of the deities. Among the Egyptians “the offerings made to the dead were similar to the ordinary oblations in honour of the gods.” The mummies were kept in closets, “out of which they were taken . . . to a small altar, before which the priest officiated;” and on this altar were made “offerings of incense and libations, with cakes, flowers, and fruits.”

§ 140. Little as we should look for such an origin, we meet with evidence that fasting, as a religious rite, is a sequence of funeral rites. Probably the practice arises in more ways than one. Involuntary as abstinence from food often is with the primitive man, and causing as it then does vivid dreams, it becomes a deliberately-adopted method of obtaining interviews with the spirits. Among numerous savage races fasting has now, as it had among the Jews of Talmudic times, this as one of its motives. In other cases it has the allied motive of bringing on that preternatural excitement regarded as inspiration. But besides fastings thus Edition: current; Page: [266] originating, there is the fasting which results from making excessive provision for the dead. By implication this grows into an accepted mark of reverence; and finally becomes a religious act.

In § 103, it was shown how extensive is in many cases the destruction of property, of cattle, of food, at the tomb. I have quoted the statements that, as a consequence, among the Dyaks burial-rites frequently reduce survivors to poverty; and that, on the Gold Coast, “a funeral is usually absolute ruin to a poor family.” If, as in some extinct American societies, everything a man had except his land went into the grave with him—if on the death of a Toda “his entire herd” of oxen was sacrificed; the implication is that his widow and children had to suffer great want. Such want is, indeed, alleged. We read that “the Indians of the Rocky Mountains burn with the deceased all his effects, and even those of his nearest relatives, so that it not unfrequently happens that a family is reduced to absolute starvation;” and that in Africa, among the Bagos, “the family of the deceased, who are ruined by this act of superstition [burning his property, including stores of food], are supported through the next harvest by the inhabitants of the village.” Now when along with these facts, obviously related as cause and consequence, we join the fact that the Gold Coast people, to their other mourning observances, add fasting; as well as the fact that among the Dahomans “the weeping relatives must fast;” we can scarcely avoid the conclusion that what is at first a natural result of great sacrifice to the dead, becomes eventually a usage signifying such sacrifice; and continues as a usage when no longer made needful by impoverishment. We shall see the more reason for concluding this on finding that fasting was a funeral rite among sundry extinct peoples whose attentions to the dead were elaborate. The Yucatanese “fasted for the sake of the dead.” The like was a usage with the Egyptians: during the mourning for a king “a solemn fast was established.” Edition: current; Page: [267] Even by the Hebrews fasting was associated with mourning dresses; and after the burial of Saul the people of Jabesh-Gilead fasted for seven days.

This connexion of practices and ideas is strengthened by a kindred connexion, arising from daily offerings to the dead. Throwing aside a part of his meal to the ancestral ghosts, by diminishing the little which the improvident savage has, often entails hunger; and voluntarily-borne hunger thus becomes an expression of duty to the dead. How it passes into an expression of duty to the gods, is well shown by the Polynesian legend concerning Maui and his brothers. Having had a great success in fishing, Maui says to them—“After I am gone, be courageous and patient; do not eat food until I return, and do not let our fish be cut up, but rather leave it until I have carried an offering to the gods for this great haul of fish. . . . I will then return, and we can cut up this fish in safety.” And the story goes on to describe the catastrophe resulting from the anger of the gods, because the brothers proceeded to eat before the offering had been made.

Of course the fasting thus entailed, giving occasions for self-discipline, comes to be used for self-discipline after the original purpose is forgotten. There still clings to it, however, the notion that approval of a supernatural being is gained; and the clinging of this notion supports the inference drawn.

§ 141. From this incidental result, introduced parenthetically, let us return to our study of the way in which the offerings at burials develop into religious offerings.

We have seen that for the immolation of human victims at funerals, there are two motives: one of them being the supply of food for the dead; and the other being the supply of attendants for service in the future life. We will glance at the two in this order. Remembering that a man’s ghost is supposed to retain the likings of the living Edition: current; Page: [268] man, we shall see that among cannibals the offering of human flesh to the dead is inevitable. The growth of the usage is well shown by a passage in Turner’s Samoa. He says that Sama was “the name of the cannibal god of a village in Savaii. He was incarnate as a man, who had human flesh laid before him when he chose to call for it. This man’s power extended to several villages, and his descendants are traced to this day.” Again, those ferocious anthropophagi the Fijians, who have victims buried with them, and whose apotheosized chiefs join other gods to whom “human flesh is still the most valued offering;” show us the entire series of sequences—cannibalism during life, cannibal ghosts, cannibal deities, and human sacrifices made as religious rites. So, too, was it with the ancient Mexicans. The man-eating habits of their ruling race were accompanied by slayings of slaves, etc., at burials, as well as by slayings of prisoners before their gods; and though the immolations at graves were not, during their later times, avowedly food-offerings, yet we may suspect that they were so in earlier times, on seeing how literally a victim immolated to the god was made a food-offering—the heart being torn out, put into the mouth of the idol, and its lips anointed with the blood. When, too, we read that the Chibchas offered men to the Spaniards as food; and when Acosta, remarking that the Chibchas were not cannibals, asks “can they have believed that the Spaniards, as sons of the Sun (as they were styled by them), must take delight in the barbarous holocausts they offered to that star?” we may suspect that their immolations at funerals, like their immolations to the Sun, were the remains of an extinct cannibalism. Having before us such facts as that some Khonds believe the god eats the person killed for him; that the Tahitians, thinking their gods fed on the spirits of the dead, provided them with such spirits by frequent slaughterings; and that the Tongans made offerings of children to their gods, who were deified chiefs; we cannot doubt that human sacrifices Edition: current; Page: [269] at graves had originally the purpose of supplying human flesh, along with other food, for the soul of the deceased; and that the slaughter of victims as a religious rite was a sequence. The like holds of slaying men as attendants. We have seen (§ 104) how common, in uncivilized and semi-civilized societies, is the killing of prisoners, slaves, wives, friends, to follow the departed; and in some cases there is a repetition of the observance. By the Mexicans additional slaves were slain on the fifth day after the burial, on the twentieth, on the fortieth, on the sixtieth, and on the eightieth days. In Dahomey there are frequent beheadings that the victims, going to the other world to serve the dead king, may carry messages from his living descendant. Human sacrifices thus repeated to propitiate the ghosts of the dead, evidently pass without break into the periodic human sacrifices which have commonly been elements in primitive religions.

In § 89 were brought together, from peoples in all parts of the world, examples of blood-offerings to the dead. Meaningless as such offerings otherwise are, they have meanings when made by primitive cannibals. That any men, in common with most ferocious brutes, should delight in drinking blood—especially the blood of their own species—is almost incredible to us. But on reading that in Australia human flesh “is eaten raw” by “the blood-revengers;” that the Fijian chief Tanoa, cut off a cousin’s arm, drank the blood, cooked the arm, and ate it in presence of the owner; and that the cannibal Vateans will exhume, cook, and eat, bodies that have been buried even more than three days; that among the Haidahs of the Pacific States, the taamish, or inspired medicine-man, “springs on the first person he meets, bites out and swallows one or more mouthfuls of the man’s living flesh wherever he can fix his teeth, then rushes to another and another;” and that among the neighbouring Nootkas the medicine-man, instead of doing this, “is satisfied with what his teeth can tear from the Edition: current; Page: [270] corpses in the burial-places;” we see that horrors beyond our imaginations of possibility are committed by primitive men, and, among them, the drinking of warm human blood. We may infer, indeed, that the vampire-legends of European folk-lore, grew out of such facts concerning primitive cannibals: the original vampire being the supposed other-self of a ferocious savage, still seeking to satisfy his bloodsucking propensities. And we shall not doubt that those blood-offerings to the dead described in § 89, were originally, as they are now in Dahomey, “drink for the deceased.” Indeed, as there is no greater difference between drinking animal blood and drinking human blood, than there is between eating animal flesh and eating human flesh, hesitation disappears on reading that even now, the Samoiedes delight in the warm blood of animals, and on remembering that Ulysses describes the ghosts in the Greek Hades as flocking to drink the sacrificial blood he provides for them, and as being refreshed by it. If, then, blood, shed at a funeral was at first meant for the refreshment of the ghost—if when shed on subsequent occasions, as by the sanguinary Dahomans to get the aid of a dead king’s ghost in war, it became a blood-offering to a supernatural being for special propitiation; we can scarcely doubt that the offering of human blood to a deity with a like motive, is but a further development of the practice. The case of the Mexicans is typical. Their ruling races descended from conquering cannibals; they had cannibal-gods, whose idols were fed with human hearts; the priests, when there had not been recent sacrifices, reminded the kings that the idols “were starving with hunger;” war was made, to take prisoners, “because their gods demanded something to eat;” and thousands were for this reason sacrificed annually. When we add the facts that the blood of victims was separately offered; that “the Indians gave the idols, to drink, their own blood, drawn from their ears;” “that the priests and dignified persons also drew blood from their legs, and daubed Edition: current; Page: [271] their temples;” and that “the effusion of blood was frequent and daily with some of the priests;” we shall see an obvious filiation. Even the records of ancient Eastern nations describe blood-offerings as parts of the two sets of rites. That self-bleeding at funerals occurred among the Hebrews, is implied by the passage in Deuteronomy which forbids them to cut themselves for the dead. And that self-bleeding was a religious ceremony among their neighbours, there is direct proof. In propitiation of their god the prophets of Baal cut themselves “till the blood gushed out upon them.”

The only question is how far this kind of offering has passed into the kind we have now to glance at—the sacrificing a part of the body as a mark of subordination. In § 89 were given many cases of mutilation as a funeral rite, and many more might be added. Among the Nateotetains of North America, a woman “cuts off one joint of a finger upon the death of a near relative. In consequence of this practice, some old women may be seen with two joints off every finger on both hands.” On the death of a Salish chief, it is the custom for the bravest woman and the man who is to be the succeeding chief, to cut off portions of one another’s flesh, and throw them into the fire along with meat and a root. Paralleling these funeral mutilations, we elsewhere in America find mutilations as religious observances. Some Mexicans practised circumcision (or something like it), and self-injuries much more serious than circumcision, in propitiation of their deities. The Guancavilcas, a Peruvian people, pulled out three teeth from each jaw of their young children, which they thought “very acceptable to their gods;” while, as we before saw, knocking out one of the front teeth is a rite at the funeral of a chief in the Sandwich Islands.

Proofs that at funerals the cutting-off of hair is usual among savages have been given in abundance; and it occurs also as a religious sacrifice. In the Sandwich Islands, on the Edition: current; Page: [272] occasion of the volcanic eruption of 1803, when, to appease the gods, many offerings were made in vain, we are told that at length the king Tamehameha cut off part of his own hair, which was considered sacred, and threw it into the torrent, as the most valuable offering. By the Peruvians, too, hair was given as an act of worship. “In making an offering they pulled a hair out of their eyebrows,” says Garcilasso; and Arriaga and Jos. de Acosta similarly describe the presentation of eyelashes or eyebrows to the deities. In ancient Central America part of the marriage ceremony was a sacrifice of hair. Even among the Greeks there was a kindred observance: on a marriage the bride sacrificed a lock of her hair to Aphrodite.

Alike, then, in the immolation of human victims, in the offering of blood that flows from the living as well as the dying, in the offering of portions of the body, and even in the offering of hair, we see that funeral rites are paralleled by religious rites.

§ 142. Is there no further way in which the goodwill of these invisible beings may be secured? If savages in general think, as the Aleutian Islanders do, that the shades of the departed must be propitiated “as being able to give good and evil,” will they not ask this question and find an affirmative answer? When alive their relatives were pleased by applause; and now that, though invisible, they are often within hearing, praise will still be pleasing to them. Hence another group of observances.

Bancroft quotes from an eye-witness the account of a funeral in which an American Indian, carrying on his back the corpse of his wife to the burial cave, expresses his sense of loss by chanting her various virtues, and is followed by others of the tribe repeating his utterances. This practice, which is in large measure the natural expression of bereavement, is a prevalent practice into which there enters also the idea of propitiation. By the Tupis, at a funeral feast, Edition: current; Page: [273] “songs were sung in praise of the dead.” Among the Lower Californians, one of the honours paid to the departed is that “a quama, or priest, sings his praises;” and the Chippewas make praises permanent by placing at a man’s grave a post bearing “devices denoting the number of times he has been in battle, and the number of scalps he has taken.” By partially-civilized American peoples, funeral laudations were much more elaborated. In San Salvador “they chanted the lineage and deeds of the dead” for four days and nights; the Chibchas “sang dirges and the great achievements of the deceased;” and during ancient Peruvian obsequies, they traversed the village, “declaring in their songs the deeds of the dead chief.” Like observances occur in Polynesia. On the occasion of a death in Tahiti, there are “elegiac ballads, prepared by the bards, and recited for the consolation of the family.” We trace the same practice in Africa. The Mandingoes, at a burial, deliver a eulogium on the departed; and by the ancient Egyptians, the like usage was developed in a degree proportionate to the elaboration of their social life. Not only did they sing commemorative hymns when a king died, but kindred praises were general at deaths. There were hired mourners to enumerate the deceased’s virtues; and when a man of rank was deposited in his tomb, the priest read from a papyrus an account of his good deeds, and the multitude joined in praising him—uttered something like responses.

Frequently eulogies do not end with the funeral. The Brazilian Indians, “sing in honour of their dead as often as they pass near their graves.” We read in Bancroft that “for a long time after a death, relatives repair daily at sunrise and sunset to the vicinity of the grave to sing songs of mourning and praise.” In Peru, for a month after death, “they loudly shouted out the deeds of the late Ynca in war, and the good he had done to the provinces. . . . After the first month they did the same every fortnight, at each phase of the moon, and this went on the whole year.” Moreover, Edition: current; Page: [274] “bards and minstrels were appointed to chronicle his achievements, and their songs continued to be rehearsed at high festivals.”

The motive parallels the religious motive. By the Amazulu these praises of the dead are repeated for the avowed purpose of gaining favours or escaping punishments. Answering the reproaches of his brother’s angry ghost, a Zulu says—“I do call on you, and laud you by your laud-giving names.” Again, “if there is illness in the village, the eldest son lauds him [the father] with the laud-giving names which he gained when fighting with the enemy, and at the same time lauds all the other Amatongo” [ancestral ghosts]. Further, we have proof that in their desire for praise, these ancestral ghosts are jealous ghosts. When by a diviner, it has been determined which ancestral ghost has inflicted disease, this ghost is singled out for eulogy. Here is the statement of a Zulu named Umpengula Mbanda:—

So that, beginning with eulogy of the dead as a funeral rite, passing to praises repeated for a time, then to praises both occasional and periodic that are established, we rise to the characteristics of religious praises. Moreover, the two are alike in the ascribed demand for them by supernatural beings; in the nature of them as narrating great deeds; and in the motive for them as a means of obtaining benefits or avoiding evils.

§ 143. Yet another parallelism. Along with praises of the dead there go prayers to them. The Bambiri “pray to departed chiefs and relatives;” and in Equatorial Africa, in times of distress the people go to the forest and cry to the Edition: current; Page: [275] spirits of those who have passed away. The Amazulu join prayers with their sacrifices. One of Callaway’s informants says:—

The Veddahs, again, think themselves guarded by the spirits of “their ancestors and their children;” and “in every calamity, in every want, they call on them for aid.” They “call on their deceased ancestors by name. ‘Come, and partake of this! Give us maintenance, as you did when living!’ ” A Dakotah, when going hunting, utters the prayer—“Spirits or ghosts, have mercy on me, and show me where I can find a deer.” By the Banks’ Islanders, “prayers, as a rule, are made to dead men and not to spirits.” Turner, describing the Vateans, who “worship the spirits of their ancestors,” says “they pray to them over the kava-bowl, for health and prosperity;” and, describing the adjacent Tannese, he says that, sacrificing first-fruits to their dead and deified chiefs, the living chief prays aloud thus—“Compassionate father, here is some food for you; eat it; be kind to us on account of it.”

Only in the supposed origin or nature of the supernatural being prayed to, do prayers like these differ from the prayers of more civilized races to their divinities. In the Iliad, Chryses, Apollo’s priest, is represented as saying—“O Smintheus! if ever I built a temple gracious in thine eyes, or if ever I burnt to thee fat flesh of thighs of bulls or goats, fulfil now this my desire; let the Danauns pay by their arrows for my tears.” So, too, Rameses, calling on Ammon for aid in battle, reminds him of the 30,000 bulls he has sacrificed to him.* Between the Trojan or Egyptian, Edition: current; Page: [276] and the Zulu or New Caledonian, there is no difference in feeling or idea.

Of course, along with mental evolution there go modifications in the prayers, as in the conceptions associated with them. The Hebrew prophets, who in later times represent the Hebrew God as not delighting in the odour of offerings, have evidently advanced far enough to abandon that gross kind of religious bribery which asks material benefits proportionate to material sacrifices; though it is manifest from the denunciations these prophets uttered, that the Hebrew people at large had not dropped the primitive beliefs and practices. But while the notion of the partially civilized is not the same in form as the notion of the uncivilized, it is the same in essence. The mediæval knight who, praying for aid to the Virgin or to a saint, promises a chapel if he is delivered, adopts the same policy as does the savage who bargains with the ancestral ghost to exchange protection for provision.

§ 144. There are sundry other parallelisms which I cannot spare space to exhibit in full. A paragraph only can be devoted to each.

The East Africans believe “the spirits of the departed know what those they have left behind them are doing, and are pleased or not, according as their deeds are good or evil;” and during a death-lament the North American Indians address the spirit of the departed, promising to behave well. Here reprobation of the ancestral ghost is feared, just as Edition: current; Page: [277] among civilized races, divine reprobation is feared; and approval is sought with kindred motives.

There is evidence, too, of repentance caused by supposed ghostly reprobation. Of the Turkomans, Vámbéry tells us that “no greater punishment can befall a living man, than to be accused before the shade of his departed father or ancestor. This is done by planting a lance upon the top of the grave. . . . No sooner did Oraz perceive the lance fixed upon the high Yoska of his grandfather, when in the silence of the following night he led the horse back to the tent of the Mollah and tied it to its former place. This act of restitution, as he himself told me, will pain him for a long time to come. But it is better to lie in the black earth than to have disturbed the repose of one’s ancestors.”

Among the Iroquois “a prominent part of the ceremonial [mourning for Sachems] consisted in the repetition of their ancient laws.” In this we trace an analogy to the repetition of divine injunctions as a religious observance.

Lighting a fire at the grave for the benefit of the deceased, we found to be a not infrequent funeral rite; and in some cases the fire was kept alight, or re-lighted, for a long period. On adding the facts that lamps were kept burning in Egyptian tombs, as also in the sepulchres of the Romans, we see that maintenance of a sacred fire in a temple again exemplifies the development of funeral rites into religious rites.

Expressions of grief naturally characterize funerals, and grow into funeral rites: sometimes, in advanced societies, being swollen by the cries of hired mourners. It was thus with the ancient Egyptians; and with the ancient Egyptians wailing was also a religious rite. Once a year, they offered first-fruits on the altar of Isis with “doleful lamentations.” During an annual festival at Busiris, which was the alleged burial-place of Osiris, the votaries having fasted and put on mourning dresses, uttered a lament round a burnt-offering: the death of Osiris being the subject of the lament. Adherents Edition: current; Page: [278] to the theory of nature-myths of course find a symbolic meaning for this observance; but to others it will appear significant that this further likeness between funeral rites and religious rites, occurred among people who sacrificed so elaborately to their ordinary dead, and who were characterized by the unparalleled persistence of their customs.

Along with dislike to tell his name, which the savage thinks will put him in the power of one who learns it, there goes dislike to name the dead: the exercise of the implied power over them, being supposed to excite their anger. So strong is this feeling among the Malagasy, that “they account it a crime to mention them [the dead] by the names they had when living.” Similarly, among some peoples, the calling of deities by their true names has been interdicted or considered improper. The Chinese say “it is not lawful to use his [the supreme ruler’s] name lightly, we name him by his residence, which is in Tien” [heaven]. Again, Exod. III, 13-15, proves that the Hebrew God was not to be referred to by name. And Herodotus carefully avoids naming Osiris.*

In Kaffir-land the grave of a chief is an asylum; and in the Tonga Islands the cemeteries where the great chiefs are buried, have such sacredness that enemies meeting there Edition: current; Page: [279] must regard each other as friends. Beecham says that on the Gold Coast the fetich-house forms a sort of sanctuary to run-away slaves. Here we see arising the right of sanctuary, attaching to the temples of deities among higher peoples.

Speaking of oaths among the Nasamonians, Herodotus says “the man, as he swears, lays his hand upon the tomb of some one considered to have been pre-eminently just and good, and so doing swears by his name.” In Sumatra, “the place of greatest solemnity for administering an oath, is the . . . burying-ground of their ancestors.” In mediæval Europe “oaths over the tombs and relics of saints were of frequent occurrence;” and a capitulary required them “to be administered in a church and over relics, invoking the name of God, and those saints whose remains were below.” The transition from the original to the developed form is clear.

Visiting the grave to take food, to repeat praises, to ask aid, implies a journey; and this journey, short if the grave is near, becomes, if the grave is far off, a pilgrimage. That this is its origin, proof is given by Vámbéry in describing certain predatory tribes of Turkomans, who, regarding as a martyr one of their number who is killed, adorn his grave and “make pilgrimages to the holy place, where they implore with tears of contrition the intercession of the canonized robber.” Filial piety, taking a more expanded form as the ancestral ghost comes to be dominated by the ghost of the distinguished man, the pilgrimage to a relation’s burial-place passes into the religious pilgrimage. Habitually a grave is the terminus: the city where Mahomet was buried as well as that in which he was born; the tomb of Baha-ed-din, regarded as a second Mahomet; the tope containing relics of Buddha; the sepulchre of Christ. Moreover, Chaucer’s poem reminds us that the tombs of saints have been, and still continue to be on the Continent, the goals of pilgrimages among Christians.

Yet one more analogy. In some cases parts of the dead are swallowed by the living, who seek thus to inspire themselves Edition: current; Page: [280] with the good qualities of the dead; and we saw (§ 133) that the dead are supposed to be thereby honoured. The implied notion was shown to be associated with the notion that the nature of another being, inhering in all fragments of his body, inheres, too, in the unconsumed part of anything incorporated with his body; and with the further notion that between those who swallow different parts of the same food some community of nature is established. Hence such beliefs as that ascribed by Bastian to certain negroes, who think that on eating and drinking consecrated food they eat and drink the god himself—such god being an ancestor, who has taken his share. Various ceremonies which savages adopt are prompted by this conception; as, for instance, the choosing a totem. Among the Mosquito Indians, “the manner of obtaining this guardian was to proceed to some secluded spot and offer up a sacrifice: with the beast or bird which thereupon appeared, in dream or in reality, a compact for life was made, by drawing blood from various parts of the body.” This blood, supposed to be taken by the chosen animal, connected the two; and the animal’s “life became so bound up with their own that the death of one involved that of the other.”* And now mark that in these same regions this idea originated a religious observance. Mendieta, describing a ceremony used by the Aztecs, says—“they had also a sort of communion. . . . They made a sort of small idols of seeds . . . and ate them as the body or memory of their gods.” As the seeds were cemented partly by the blood of sacrificed boys; as their Edition: current; Page: [281] gods were cannibal gods; as Huitzilopochtli, whose worship included this rite, was the god to whom human sacrifices were most extensive; it is clear that the aim was to establish community with him by taking blood in common. So that what, among certain of these allied American races, was a funeral rite, by which survivors sought to inspire themselves with the virtues of the dead, and to bind themselves to the ghost, became, among the more civilized, modified into an observance implying inspiration by, and fealty to, one of their deities.

§ 145. Thus, evidence abundant in amount and varied in kind, justifies the statement made at the close of the last chapter. It was pointed out that the souls of the dead, conceived by savages sometimes as beneficent agents, but chiefly as the causers of evils, might be variously dealt with—might be deceived, resisted, expelled, or might be treated in ways likely to secure goodwill and mitigate anger. It was asserted that from this last policy all religious observances take their rise. We have seen how they do so.

The original sacred place is the place where the dead are, and which their ghosts are supposed to frequent; the sheltering cave, or house, or other chamber for the dead, becomes the sacred chamber or temple; and that on which offerings for the dead are put becomes the sacred support for offerings—the altar. Food and drink and other things laid for the dead, grow into sacrifices and libations to the gods; while immolations of victims, blood-offerings, mutilations, cuttings-off of hair, originally occurring at the grave, occur afterwards before idols, and as marks of fealty to a deity. Fasting as a funeral rite, passes into fasting as a religious rite; and lamentations, too, occur under both forms. Praises of the dead, chanted at the burial and afterwards, and recurring at festivals, pass into praises forming parts of religious worship; and prayers made to the dead for aid, for blessing, for protection, become prayers made Edition: current; Page: [282] to divinities for like advantages. Ancestral ghosts supposed to cause diseases, as gods send pestilences, are similarly propitiated by special sacrifices: the ascribed motives of ghosts and gods being the same in kind, and the modes of appealing to those motives the same. The parallelism runs out into various details. There is oversight of conduct by ghosts as there is by deities; there are promises of good behaviour to both; there is penitence before the one as before the other. There is repetition of injunctions given by the dead, as there is repetition of divine injunctions. There is a maintenance of fires at graves and in sepulchral chambers, as there is in temples. Burial-places are sometimes, like temples, used as places of refuge. A distinguished dead man is invoked to witness an oath, as God is invoked. Secrecy is maintained respecting the name of the dead, as in some cases respecting the name of a god. There are pilgrimages to the graves of relatives and martyrs, as well as pilgrimages to the graves of supposed divine persons. And in America, certain less-civilized races adopted a method of binding the living with the dead by seeking to participate in the qualities of the ghost, which a more civilized American race paralleled by a method of binding to a deity through a kindred ceremony for establishing communion.

Can so many and such varied similarities have arisen in the absence of genetic relationship? Suppose the two sets of phenomena unconnected—suppose primitive men had, as some think, the consciousness of a Universal Power whence they and all other things proceeded. What probability would there be that to such a Power they would perform an act like that performed to the dead body of a fellow savage? And if one such community would not be probable, what would be the probability of two such communities? What the probability of four? What the probability of the score above specified? In the absence of causal relation the chances against such a correspondence would be almost infinity to one.

Again, if the two sets of rites have a common root, we may see how they come to coexist under forms differing only in their degrees of elaboration. But otherwise, how does it happen that in sundry societies the two sets of rites have been, or are, simultaneously observed in like ways? In Egypt at funerals, and afterwards in tombs, the dead were lauded and sacrificed to as their deities were lauded and sacrificed to. Every day in Mexico there were burial-oblations of food and drink, slayings of servants, offerings of flowers, just as there were daily ceremonies of like kinds before their gods; and images of the dead were preserved and worshipped as were images of the gods. Peruvians poured out human blood on sepulchres, and gave it to idols; sacrificed victims to the deceased chief and victims to the deity; cut off their hair for the dead and presented their hair to the Sun; praised and prayed to embalmed bodies, as they praised and prayed to divinities; and made obeisances to the one as to the other. If between the father regarded as ancestor and the father regarded as divinity there is no connexion, the likenesses between these coexisting observances are inexplicable.

Nor is this all. Were there no such origination of religious rites out of funeral rites, it would be impossible to understand the genesis of ceremonies apparently so absurd. How could men possibly have come to think, as did the Mexicans, that a stone-bowl full of human blood would please the Sun? or that the Sun would be pleased by burning incense, as the Egyptians thought? In what imaginable way were the Peruvians led to believe that the Sun was propitiated by blowing towards it hairs from their eye-brows; or why did they suppose that by doing the like towards the sea they would mitigate its violence? From what antecedent did there result such strange ideas as those of the Santals, who, worshipping “the Great Mountain,” sacrifice to it beasts, flowers, and fruit? Or why should the Hebrews think to please Jahveh by placing on an altar flesh, bread, Edition: current; Page: [284] wine, and incense; which were the things placed by the Egyptians on altars before their mummies? The assumption that men gratuitously act in irrational ways is inadmissible. But if these propitiations of deities were developed from propitiations of the dead, their seeming irrationality is accounted for.

We have, then, numerous lines of evidence which, converging to a focus, are by themselves enough to dissipate any doubt respecting this natural genesis of religious observances. Traceable as it is in so many ways, the development of funeral rites into worship of the dead, and eventually into worship of deities, becomes clear. We shall find that it becomes clearer still on contemplating other facts under other aspects.