CHAPTER V: THE RULER AS PRIEST.

§ 602. In Chapters XIV and XV of Part I, we saw that according to the primitive Theory of Things, this life and this world stand in close relations with the other life and the other world. As implied at the end of the last chapter, one of the many results is that throughout early stages of social evolution, the secular and the sacred are but little distinguished.

Speaking of religion and politics, Huc remarks that “in the Eastern regions of Asia they were formerly one and the same thing, if we may judge from tradition. . . . The name of heaven was given to the Empire, the sovereign called himself God.” How intimately blended were conceived to be the affairs of the material and spiritual worlds by the ancient Ethiopians, is well shown in Maspero’s translation of a tablet describing the choice of a king by them.

Again of the ancient Peruvians we read that—

If from the primitive belief that the double of the dead man will presently return and resume his life, there results the conception that the son who holds his property and ministers to him from its proceeds is but a deputy, then this fusion of the sacred with the secular is a corollary. When we read of the New Caledonians that in Tokelau, while “the king, Tui Tokelau, is high priest as well,” “their great god is called Tui Tokelau, or king of Tokelau,” we have a typical instance of the union which results from this supposed vice-gerency.

§ 603. While the growth of the family into the cluster of families, ending in the formation of the village-community, which often includes affiliated strangers, involves that the patriarch ceases to have the three-fold character of domestic, political, and ecclesiastical head, his character remains twofold: he habitually retains, as in the case just named, the functions of ruler and priest. This connexion of offices we everywhere find in early stages of social evolution; and we observe it continuing through later stages.

In Tanna, “the chief acts as high-priest;” and the like is true in other islands of the group. The kings of Mangaia “were ‘te ara pia o Rongo’ i.e., ‘the mouth-pieces, or priests, of Rongo.’ ” Among the New Zealanders “the offices of chief and priest were generally united and hereditary.” “The king of Madagascar . . . is high-priest of the realm.” In the Sandwich Islands the king “uttered the responses of the oracle, from his concealment in a frame of wicker-work.” Of Humphrey’s Island we read that the king “was high priest as well.” Similarly with rude peoples in America. “The Pueblo chiefs seem to be at the same time priests,” says Bancroft; and we learn the like from Ross concerning the Chinooks, and from Hutchison Edition: current; Page: [56] concerning the Bolivian Indians. Of various semi-civilized peoples, past and present, we have similar accounts. The traditional “founders of the Maya civilization, united in their persons the qualities of high-priest and king.” In ancient Peru, the Ynca was high-priest: “as the representative of the Sun, he stood at the head of the priesthood, and presided at the most important of the religious festivals.” Of Siam, Thomson writes—“the King himself is High Priest.” We are told by Crawfurd that the Javanese king is “the first minister of religion.” In China the ritual laws give to the Emperor-Pontiff “the exclusive privilege of worshipping the Supreme, and prohibit subjects from offering the great sacrifices.” And in Japan, the Mikado was “chief of the national religion.” The early records of Old World peoples show us the same connexion. The Egyptian king, head of the priesthood, was everywhere represented in their monuments as sacrificing to a god. The Assyrian king was similarly represented; and the inscriptions show that Tiglath Pileser was “high-priest of Babylon.” So, too, in the Hebrew records we read of David officiating as priest. It was the same with Aryan peoples in ancient days. Among the Greeks, as described by Homer, acts of public devotion “are everywhere performed by the chiefs without the intervention of a priest.” The Spartan kings were priests of Zeus; and they received the perquisites due to priests. So “at Athens, the archon-king . . . embraced in his functions all that belonged to the State-religion. He was a real rex sacrorum.” And that the like was the case among the Romans, “we know from the fact that the ‘rex sacrificulus’ was appointed on the abolition of the monarchy to perform such sacrifices as could only be performed by a king.” Nor did the Aryans who spread northwards fail to furnish illustrations. Among the primitive Scandinavians the head man was “minister and magistrate in one:” in early days “each chief, as he settled, built his own hof or temple, and assumed the functions of priest himself.”

This connexion long continued in a modified form throughout mediæval Europe. King Gontran was “like a priest among priests.” Charlemagne, too, had a kind of high-priestly character: on solemn occasions he bore relics on his shoulders and danced before relics. Nor indeed is the connexion entirely broken even now.*

§ 604. In illustrating this primitive identity of ruler and priest, and in tracing out the long-continued connexion between the two, I have been unavoidably led away from the consideration of this double function as seen at the outset. Fully to understand the genesis of the priest properly so called, we must return for a moment to early stages.

At first the priestly actions of the chief differ in nothing from the priestly actions of other heads of families. The heads of all families forming the tribe, severally sacrifice to their departed ancestors; and the chief does the like to his departed ancestors. How, then, does his priestly character become more decided than theirs?

Elsewhere I suggested that besides propitiating the ghosts of dead relatives, the members of a primitive community will naturally, in some cases, think it prudent to propitiate the ghost of a dead chief, regarded as more powerful than other ghosts, and as not unlikely to do them mischief if friendly Edition: current; Page: [58] relations are not maintained by occasional offerings. I had not, when making the suggestion, any evidence; but conclusive evidence has since been furnished by the Rev. Duff MacDonald’s Africana. The following three extracts show the transition from priestly actions of a private character to those of a public character, among the Blantyre negroes.

Here, then, we see very clearly the first stage in the differentiation of the chief into the priest proper—the man who intercedes with the supernatural being not on his own behalf simply, nor on behalf only of members of his family, but on behalf of unrelated persons. This is, indeed, a stage in which, as shown by the disagreement among the people themselves, the differentiation is incomplete. In another part of Africa, we find it more definitely established. At Onitsha on the Niger, “the people reverence him [the king] as the mediator between the gods and themselves, and salute him with the title of Igue, which in Ebo means supreme being.” A kindred state of things is illustrated among remote and unallied peoples. In Samoa, where the chiefs were priests, “every village had its god, and everyone born in that village was regarded as the property of that god.” And among the ancient Peruvians, more advanced though they were in their social organization, a like primitive arrangement Edition: current; Page: [59] was traceable. The huacas were adored by the entire village; the canopas by particular families, and only the priests spoke to, and brought offerings to, the huacas.

These few out of many cases, while they sufficiently exemplify the incipient parting of the sacred function from the secular function, also illustrate the truth which everywhere meets us, that the political and religious obligations are originally both obligations of allegiance, very little distinguished from one another—the one being allegiance to the living chief and the other allegiance to the ghost of the dead chief.

To prevent misapprehension a parenthetic remark must be made. This growth of a distinction between the public worship of his ancestor by a chief, and the private worship of their ancestors by other men, which makes the chief’s priestly character relatively decided, is apt to be modified by circumstances. Where allegiance to the ghost of a deceased patriarch or founder of the tribe, has become so well established through generations that he assumes the character of a god; and where, by war or migration, the growing society is so broken up that its members are separated from their chief and priest; it naturally results that while continuing to sacrifice to the doubles of their dead relatives, these separated members of the society begin to sacrifice on their own account to the traditional god. Among the ancient Scandinavians “every father of a family was a priest in his own house,” where he sacrificed to Odin. Similarly among the Homeric Greeks. While chiefs made public sacrifices to the gods, sacrifices and prayers were made to them by private persons, in addition to the sacrifices made to their own ancestors. The like was the case with the Romans. And even among the Hebrews, prohibited from worshipping ancestors, the existence of public propitiators of Jahveh did not exclude “the competence of every Israelite” to perform propitiatory rites: the nomadic habits preventing concentration of the priestly function.

Phenomena of this kind, however, manifestly belong to a Edition: current; Page: [60] more advanced stage and not to that first stage in which, as we see, the genesis of the god and the priest are concurrent.

§ 605. Thus, then, the ghost-theory, which explains the multitudinous phenomena of religion in general, explains also the genesis of the priestly function, and the original union of it with the governing function.

Propitiations of the doubles of dead men, made at first by all their relatives and afterwards by heads of families, come to be somewhat distinguished when made by the head of the most powerful family. With increased predominance of the powerful family, and conception of the ghost of its deceased head as superior to other ghosts, there arises the wish, at first in some, then in more, and then in all, to propitiate him. And this wish eventually generates the habit of making offerings and prayers to him through his ruling descendant, whose priestly character thus becomes decided.

We have now to observe how, with the progress of social evolution, the sacerdotal function, though for a long time retained and occasionally exercised by the political head, comes to be performed more and more by proxy.