Chapter 24. The Killing of the Divine King.
Section 1. The Mortality of the Gods.
MAN has created gods in his own likeness and being himself
mortal he has naturally supposed his creatures to be in the same
sad predicament. Thus the Greenlanders believed that a wind could
kill their most powerful god, and that he would certainly die if he
touched a dog. When they heard of the Christian God, they kept
asking if he never died, and being informed that he did not, they
were much surprised, and said that he must be a very great god
indeed. In answer to the enquiries of Colonel Dodge, a North
American Indian stated that the world was made by the Great Spirit.
Being asked which Great Spirit he meant, the good one or the bad
one, "Oh, neither of them," replied he, "the Great Spirit that made
the world is dead long ago. He could not possibly have lived as
long as this." A tribe in the Philippine Islands told the Spanish
conquerors that the grave of the Creator was upon the top of Mount
Cabunian. Heitsi-eibib, a god or divine hero of the Hottentots, died
several times and came to life again. His graves are generally to be
met with in narrow defiles between mountains. When the Hottentots
pass one of them, they throw a stone on it for good luck, sometimes
muttering, "Give us plenty of cattle." The grave of Zeus, the great
god of Greece, was shown to visitors in Crete as late as about the
beginning of our era. The body of Dionysus was buried at Delphi
beside the golden statue of Apollo, and his tomb bore the
inscription, "Here lies Dionysus dead, the son of Semele."
According to one account, Apollo himself was buried at Delphi; for
Pythagoras is said to have carved an inscription on his tomb,
setting forth how the god had been killed by the python and buried
under the tripod. 1
The great gods of Egypt themselves were not exempt from the
common lot. They too grew old and died. But when at a later time
the discovery of the art of embalming gave a new lease of life to
the souls of the dead by preserving their bodies for an indefinite
time from corruption, the deities were permitted to share the benefit
of an invention which held out to gods as well as to men a
reasonable hope of immortality. Every province then had the tomb
and mummy of its dead god. The mummy of Osiris was to be seen
at Mendes; Thinis boasted of the mummy of Anhouri; and Heliopolis
rejoiced in the possession of that of Toumou. The high gods of
Babylon also, though they appeared to their worshippers only in
dreams and visions, were conceived to be human in their bodily
shape, human in their passions, and human in their fate; for like
men they were born into the world, and like men they loved and
fought and died. 2
Section 2. Kings killed when their Strength
fails.
IF THE HIGH gods, who dwell remote from the fret and fever of this
earthly life, are yet believed to die at last, it is not to be expected
that a god who lodges in a frail tabernacle of flesh should escape
the same fate, though we hear of African kings who have imagined
themselves immortal by virtue of their sorceries. Now primitive
peoples, as we have seen, sometimes believe that their safety and
even that of the world is bound up with the life of one of these
god-men or human incarnations of the divinity. Naturally, therefore,
they take the utmost care of his life, out of a regard for their own.
But no amount of care and precaution will prevent the man-god
from growing old and feeble and at last dying. His worshippers
have to lay their account with this sad necessity and to meet it as
best they can. The danger is a formidable one; for if the course of
nature is dependent on the man-god's life, what catastrophes may
not be expected from the gradual enfeeblement of his powers and
their final extinction in death? There is only one way of averting
these dangers. The man-god must be killed as soon as he shows
symptoms that his powers are beginning to fail, and his soul must
be transferred to a vigorous successor before it has been seriously
impaired by the threatened decay. The advantages of thus putting
the man-god to death instead of allowing him to die of old age and
disease are, to the savage, obvious enough. For if the man-god
dies what we call a natural death, it means, according to the
savage, that his soul has either voluntarily departed from his body
and refuses to return, or more commonly that it has been extracted,
or at least detained in its wanderings, by a demon or sorcerer. In
any of these cases the soul of the man-god is lost to his
worshippers, and with it their prosperity is gone and their very
existence endangered. Even if they could arrange to catch the soul
of the dying god as it left his lips or his nostrils and so transfer it to
a successor, this would not effect their purpose; for, dying of
disease, his soul would necessarily leave his body in the last stage
of weakness and exhaustion, and so enfeebled it would continue to
drag out a languid, inert existence in any body to which it might be
transferred. Whereas by slaying him his worshippers could, in the
first place, make sure of catching his soul as it escaped and
transferring it to a suitable successor; and, in the second place, by
putting him to death before his natural force was abated, they
would secure that the world should not fall into decay with the
decay of the man-god. Every purpose, therefore, was answered,
and all dangers averted by thus killing the man-god and
transferring his soul, while yet at its prime, to a vigorous
successor. 1
The mystic kings of Fire and Water in Cambodia are not allowed
to die a natural death. Hence when one of them is seriously ill and
the elders think that he cannot recover, they stab him to death. The
people of Congo believed, as we have seen, that if their pontiff the
Chitomé were to die a natural death, the world would perish, and
the earth, which he alone sustained by his power and merit, would
immediately be annihilated. Accordingly when he fell ill and
seemed likely to die, the man who was destined to be his
successor entered the pontiff's house with a rope or a club and
strangled or clubbed him to death. The Ethiopian kings of Meroe
were worshipped as gods; but whenever the priests chose, they
sent a messenger to the king, ordering him to die, and alleging an
oracle of the gods as their authority for the command. This
command the kings always obeyed down to the reign of
Ergamenes, a contemporary of Ptolemy II., King of Egypt. Having
received a Greek education which emancipated him from the
superstitions of his countrymen, Ergamenes ventured to disregard
the command of the priests, and, entering the Golden Temple with a
body of soldiers, put the priests to the sword. 2
Customs of the same sort appear to have prevailed in this part of
Africa down to modern times. In some tribes of Fazoql the king had
to administer justice daily under a certain tree. If from sickness or
any other cause he was unable to discharge this duty for three
whole days, he was hanged on the tree in a noose, which
contained two razors so arranged that when the noose was drawn
tight by the weight of the king's body they cut his throat. 3
A custom of putting their divine kings to death at the first
symptoms of infirmity or old age prevailed until lately, if indeed it is
even now extinct and not merely dormant, among the Shilluk of the
White Nile, and in recent years it has been carefully investigated
by Dr. C. G. Seligman. The reverence which the Shilluk pay to their
king appears to arise chiefly from the conviction that he is a
reincarnation of the spirit of Nyakang, the semi-divine hero who
founded the dynasty and settled the tribe in their present territory. It
is a fundamental article of the Shilluk creed that the spirit of the
divine or semi-divine Nyakang is incarnate in the reigning king,
who is accordingly himself invested to some extent with the
character of a divinity. But while the Shilluk hold their kings in high,
indeed religious reverence and take every precaution against their
accidental death, nevertheless they cherish "the conviction that the
king must not be allowed to become ill or senile, lest with his
diminishing vigour the cattle should sicken and fail to bear their
increase, the crops should rot in the fields, and man, stricken with
disease, should die in ever-increasing numbers." To prevent these
calamities it used to be the regular custom with the Shilluk to put
the king to death whenever he showed signs of ill-health or failing
strength. One of the fatal symptoms of decay was taken to be an
incapacity to satisfy the sexual passions of his wives, of whom he
has very many, distributed in a large number of houses at Fashoda.
When this ominous weakness manifested itself, the wives reported it
to the chiefs, who are popularly said to have intimated to the king
his doom by spreading a white cloth over his face and knees as he
lay slumbering in the heat of the sultry afternoon. Execution soon
followed the sentence of death. A hut was specially built for the
occasion: the king was led into it and lay down with his head
resting on the lap of a nubile virgin: the door of the hut was then
walled up; and the couple were left without food, water, or fire to
die of hunger and suffocation. This was the old custom, but it was
abolished some five generations ago on account of the excessive
sufferings of one of the kings who perished in this way. It is said
that the chiefs announce his fate to the king, and that afterwards he
is strangled in a hut which has been specially built for the
occasion. 4
From Dr. Seligman's enquiries it appears that not only was the
Shilluk king liable to be killed with due ceremony at the first
symptoms of incipient decay, but even while he was yet in the
prime of health and strength he might be attacked at any time by a
rival and have to defend his crown in a combat to the death.
According to the common Shilluk tradition any son of a king had
the right thus to fight the king in possession and, if he succeeded in
killing him, to reign in his stead. As every king had a large harem
and many sons, the number of possible candidates for the throne at
any time may well have been not inconsiderable, and the reigning
monarch must have carried his life in his hand. But the attack on
him could only take place with any prospect of success at night; for
during the day the king surrounded himself with his friends and
bodyguards, and an aspirant to the throne could hardly hope to cut
his way through them and strike home. It was otherwise at night. For
then the guards were dismissed and the king was alone in his
enclosure with his favourite wives, and there was no man near to
defend him except a few herdsmen, whose huts stood a little way
off. The hours of darkness were therefore the season of peril for the
king. It is said that he used to pass them in constant watchfulness,
prowling round his huts fully armed, peering into the blackest
shadows, or himself standing silent and alert, like a sentinel on
duty, in some dark corner. When at last his rival appeared, the fight
would take place in grim silence, broken only by the clash of
spears and shields, for it was a point of honour with the king not to
call the herdsmen to his assistance. 5
Like Nyakang himself, their founder, each of the Shilluk kings after
death is worshipped at a shrine, which is erected over his grave,
and the grave of a king is always in the village where he was born.
The tomb-shrine of a king resembles the shrine of Nyakang,
consisting of a few huts enclosed by a fence; one of the huts is
built over the king's grave, the others are occupied by the
guardians of the shrine. Indeed the shrines of Nyakang and the
shrines of the kings are scarcely to be distinguished from each
other, and the religious rituals observed at all of them are identical
in form and vary only in matters of detail, the variations being due
apparently to the far greater sanctity attributed to the shrines of
Nyakang. The grave-shrines of the kings are tended by certain old
men or women, who correspond to the guardians of the shrines of
Nyakang. They are usually widows or old men-servants of the
deceased king, and when they die they are succeeded in their
office by their descendants. Moreover, cattle are dedicated to the
grave-shrines of the kings and sacrifices are offered at them just as
at the shrines of Nyakang. 6
In general the principal element in the religion of the Shilluk would
seem to be the worship which they pay to their sacred or divine
kings, whether dead or alive. These are believed to be animated by
a single divine spirit, which has been transmitted from the
semi-mythical, but probably in substance historical, founder of the
dynasty through all his successors to the present day. Hence,
regarding their kings as incarnate divinities on whom the welfare of
men, of cattle, and of the corn implicitly depends, the Shilluk
naturally pay them the greatest respect and take every care of
them; and however strange it may seem to us, their custom of
putting the divine king to death as soon as he shows signs of
ill-health or failing strength springs directly from their profound
veneration for him and from their anxiety to preserve him, or rather
the divine spirit by which he is animated, in the most perfect state
of efficiency: nay, we may go further and say that their practice of
regicide is the best proof they can give of the high regard in which
they hold their kings. For they believe, as we have seen, that the
king's life or spirit is so sympathetically bound up with the
prosperity of the whole country, that if he fell ill or grew senile the
cattle would sicken and cease to multiply, the crops would rot in
the fields, and men would perish of widespread disease. Hence, in
their opinion, the only way of averting these calamities is to put the
king to death while he is still hale and hearty, in order that the
divine spirit which he has inherited from his predecessors may be
transmitted in turn by him to his successor while it is still in full
vigour and has not yet been impaired by the weakness of disease
and old age. In this connexion the particular symptom which is
commonly said to seal the king's death-warrant is highly
significant; when he can no longer satisfy the passions of his
numerous wives, in other words, when he has ceased, whether
partially or wholly, to be able to reproduce his kind, it is time for
him to die and to make room for a more vigorous successor. Taken
along with the other reasons which are alleged for putting the king
to death, this one suggests that the fertility of men, of cattle, and of
the crops is believed to depend sympathetically on the generative
power of the king, so that the complete failure of that power in him
would involve a corresponding failure in men, animals, and plants,
and would thereby entail at no distant date the entire extinction of
all life, whether human, animal, or vegetable. No wonder, that with
such a danger before their eyes the Shilluk should be most careful
not to let the king die what we should call a natural death of
sickness or old age. It is characteristic of their attitude towards the
death of the kings that they refrain from speaking of it as death: they
do not say that a king has died but simply that he has "gone away"
like his divine ancestors Nyakang and Dag, the two first kings of
the dynasty, both of whom are reported not to have died but to
have disappeared. The similar legends of the mysterious
disappearance of early kings in other lands, for example at Rome
and in Uganda, may well point to a similar custom of putting them to
death for the purpose of preserving their life. 7
On the whole the theory and practice of the divine kings of the
Shilluk correspond very nearly to the theory and practice of the
priests of Nemi, the Kings of the Wood, if my view of the latter is
correct. In both we see a series of divine kings on whose life the
fertility of men, of cattle, and of vegetation is believed to depend,
and who are put to death, whether in single combat or otherwise, in
order that their divine spirit may be transmitted to their successors
in full vigour, uncontaminated by the weakness and decay of
sickness or old age, because any such degeneration on the part of
the king would, in the opinion of his worshippers, entail a
corresponding degeneration on manking, on cattle, and on the
crops. Some points in this explanation of the custom of putting
divine kings to death, particularly the method of transmitting their
divine souls to their successors, will be dealt with more fully in the
sequel. Meantime we pass to other examples of the general
practice. 8
The Dinka are a congeries of independent tribes in the valley of
the White Nile. They are essentially a pastoral people, passionately
devoted to the care of their numerous herds of oxen, though they
also keep sheep and goats, and the women cultivate small
quantities of millet and sesame. For their crops and above all for
their pastures they depend on the regularity of the rains: in seasons
of prolonged drought they are said to be reduced to great
extremities. Hence the rain-maker is a very important personage
among them to this day; indeed the men in authority whom
travellers dub chiefs or sheikhs are in fact the actual or potential
rain-makers of the tribe or community. Each of them is believed to
be animated by the spirit of a great rain-maker, which has come
down to him through a succession of rain-makers; and in virtue of
this inspiration a successful rain-maker enjoys very great power
and is consulted on all important matters. Yet in spite, or rather in
virtue, of the high honour in which he is held, no Dinka rain-maker
is allowed to die a natural death of sickness or old age; for the
Dinka believe that if such an untoward event were to happen, the
tribe would suffer from disease and famine, and the herds would not
yield their increase. So when a rain-maker feels that he is growing
old and infirm, he tells his children that he wishes to die. Among the
Agar Dinka a large grave is dug and the rain-maker lies down in it,
surrounded by his friends and relatives. From time to time he
speaks to the people, recalling the past history of the tribe,
reminding them how he has ruled and advised them, and instructing
them how they are to act in the future. Then, when he has
concluded his admonition, he bids them cover him up. So the earth
is thrown down on him as he lies in the grave, and he soon dies of
suffocation. Such, with minor variations, appears to be the regular
end of the honourable career of a rain-maker in all the Dinka
tribes. The Khor-Adar Dinka told Dr. Seligman that when they have
dug the grave for their rain-maker they strangle him in his house.
The father and paternal uncle of one of Dr. Seligman's informants
had both been rain-makers and both had been killed in the most
regular and orthodox fashion. Even if a rain-maker is quite young
he will be put to death should he seem likely to perish of disease.
Further, every precaution is taken to prevent a rain-maker from
dying an accidental death, for such an end, though not nearly so
serious a matter as death from illness or old age, would be sure to
entail sickness on the tribe. As soon as a rain-maker is killed, his
valuable spirit is supposed to pass to a suitable successor, whether
a son or other near blood relation. 9
In the Central African kingdom of Bunyoro down to recent years
custom required that as soon as the king fell seriously ill or began
to break up from age, he should die by his own hand; for,
according to an old prophecy, the throne would pass away from
the dynasty if ever the king were to die a natural death. He killed
himself by draining a poisoned cup. If he faltered or were too ill to
ask for the cup, it was his wife's duty to administer the poison.
When the king of Kibanga, on the Upper Congo, seems near his
end, the sorcerers put a rope round his neck, which they draw
gradually tighter till he dies. If the king of Gingiro happens to be
wounded in war, he is put to death by his comrades, or, if they fail
to kill him, by his kinsfolk, however hard he may beg for mercy.
They say they do it that he may not die by the hands of his
enemies. The Jukos are a heathen tribe of the Benue River, a great
tributary of the Niger. In their country "the town of Gatri is ruled by
a king who is elected by the big men of the town as follows. When
in the opinion of the big men the king has reigned long enough,
they give out that `the king is sick'-a formula understood by all to
mean that they are going to kill him, though the intention is never
put more plainly. They then decide who is to be the next king. How
long he is to reign is settled by the influential men at a meeting; the
question is put and answered by each man throwing on the ground
a little piece of stick for each year he thinks the new king should
rule. The king is then told, and a great feast prepared, at which the
king gets drunk on guinea-corn beer. After that he is speared, and
the man who was chosen becomes king. Thus each Juko king
knows that he cannot have very many more years to live, and that
he is certain of his predecessor's fate. This, however, does not
seem to frighten candidates. The same custom of king-killing is said
to prevail at Quonde and Wukari as well as at Gatri." In the three
Hausa kingdoms of Gobir, Katsina, and Daura, in Northern Nigeria,
as soon as a king showed signs of failing health or growing
infirmity, an official who bore the title of Killer of the Elephant
appeared and throttled him. 10
The Matiamvo is a great king or emperor in the interior of Angola.
One of the inferior kings of the country, by name Challa, gave to a
Portuguese expedition the following account of the manner in which
the Matiamvo comes by his end. "It has been customary," he said,
"for our Matiamvos to die either in war or by a violent death, and
the present Matiamvo must meet this last fate, as, in consequence
of his great exactions, he has lived long enough. When we come to
this understanding, and decide that he should be killed, we invite
him to make war with our enemies, on which occasion we all
accompany him and his family to the war, when we lose some of
our people. If he escapes unhurt, we return to the war again and
fight for three or four days. We then suddenly abandon him and his
family to their fate, leaving him in the enemy's hands. Seeing
himself thus deserted, he causes his throne to be erected, and,
sitting down, calls his family around him. He then orders his mother
to approach; she kneels at his feet; he first cuts off her head, then
decapitates his sons in succession, next his wives and relatives,
and, last of all, his most beloved wife, called Anacullo. This
slaughter being accomplished, the Matiamvo, dressed in all his
pomp, awaits his own death, which immediately follows, by an
officer sent by the powerful neighbouring chiefs, Caniquinha and
Canica. This officer first cuts off his legs and arms at the joints, and
lastly he cuts off his head; after which the head of the officer is
struck off. All the potentates retire from the encampment, in order
not to witness his death. It is my duty to remain and witness his
death, and to mark the place where the head and arms have been
deposited by the two great chiefs, the enemies of the Matiamvo.
They also take possession of all the property belonging to the
deceased monarch and his family, which they convey to their own
residence. I then provide for the funeral of the mutilated remains of
the late Matiamvo, after which I retire to his capital and proclaim
the new government. I then return to where the head, legs, and
arms have been deposited, and, for forty slaves, I ransom them,
together with the merchandise and other property belonging to the
deceased, which I give up to the new Matiamvo, who has been
proclaimed. This is what has happened to many Matiamvos, and
what must happen to the present one." 11
It appears to have been a Zulu custom to put the king to death as
soon as he began to have wrinkles or grey hairs. At least this
seems implied in the following passage written by one who resided
for some time at the court of the notorious Zulu tyrant Chaka, in the
early part of the nineteenth century: "The extraordinary violence of
the king's rage with me was mainly occasioned by that absurd
nostrum, the hair oil, with the notion of which Mr. Farewell had
impressed him as being a specific for removing all indications of
age. From the first moment of his having heard that such a
preparation was attainable, he evinced a solicitude to procure it,
and on every occasion never forgot to remind us of his anxiety
respecting it; more especially on our departure on the mission his
injunctions were particularly directed to this object. It will be seen
that it is one of the barbarous customs of the Zoolas in their choice
or election of their kings that he must neither have wrinkles nor
grey hairs, as they are both distinguishing marks of disqualification
for becoming a monarch of a warlike people. It is also equally
indispensable that their king should never exhibit those proofs of
having become unfit and incompetent to reign; it is therefore
important that they should conceal these indications so long as
they possibly can. Chaka had become greatly apprehensive of the
approach of grey hairs; which would at once be the signal for him
to prepare to make his exit from this sublunary world, it being
always followed by the death of the monarch." The writer to whom
we are indebted for this instructive anecdote of the hair oil omits to
specify the mode in which a grey-haired and wrinkled Zulu chief
used "to make his exit from this sublunary world"; but on analogy
we may conjecture that he was killed. 12
The custom of putting kings to death as soon as they suffered from
any personal defect prevailed two centuries ago in the Caffre
kingdom of Sofala. We have seen that these kings of Sofala were
regarded as gods by their people, being entreated to give rain or
sunshine, according as each might be wanted. Nevertheless a
slight bodily blemish, such as the loss of a tooth, was considered a
sufficient cause for putting one of these god-men to death, as we
learn from the following passage of an old Portuguese historian: "It
was formerly the custom of the kings of this land to commit suicide
by taking poison when any disaster or natural physical defect fell
upon them, such as impotence, infectious disease, the loss of their
front teeth, by which they were disfigured, or any other deformity or
affliction. To put an end to such defects they killed themselves,
saying that the king should be free from any blemish, and if not, it
was better for his honour that he should die and seek another life
where he would be made whole, for there everything was perfect.
But the Quiteve (king) who reigned when I was in those parts would
not imitate his predecessors in this, being discreet and dreaded as
he was; for having lost a front tooth he caused it to be proclaimed
throughout the kingdom that all should be aware that he had lost a
tooth and should recognise him when they saw him without it, and
if his predecessors killed themselves for such things they were very
foolish, and he would not do so; on the contrary, he would be very
sorry when the time came for him to die a natural death, for his life
was very necessary to preserve his kingdom and defend it from his
enemies; and he recommended his successors to follow his
example." 13
The king of Sofala who dared to survive the loss of his front tooth
was thus a bold reformer like Ergamenes, king of Ethiopia. We may
conjecture that the ground for putting the Ethiopian kings to death
was, as in the case of the Zulu and Sofala kings, the appearance
on their person of any bodily defect or sign of decay; and that the
oracle which the priests alleged as the authority for the royal
execution was to the effect that great calamities would result from
the reign of a king who had any blemish on his body; just as an
oracle warned Sparta against a "lame reign," that is, the reign of a
lame king. It is some confirmation of this conjecture that the kings of
Ethiopia were chosen for their size, strength, and beauty long
before the custom of killing them was abolished. To this day the
Sultan of Wadai must have no obvious bodily defect, and the king
of Angoy cannot be crowned if he has a single blemish, such as a
broken or a filed tooth or the scar of an old wound. According to
the Book of Acaill and many other authorities no king who was
afflicted with a personal blemish might reign over Ireland at Tara.
Hence, when the great King Cormac Mac Art lost one eye by an
accident, he at once abdicated. 14
Many days' journey to the north-east of Abomey, the old capital
of Dahomey, lies the kingdom of Eyeo. "The Eyeos are governed
by a king, no less absolute than the king of Dahomey, yet subject
to a regulation of state, at once humiliating and extraordinary. When
the people have conceived an opinion of his ill-government, which
is sometimes insidiously infused into them by the artifice of his
discontented ministers, they send a deputation to him with a present
of parrots' eggs, as a mark of its authenticity, to represent to him
that the burden of government must have so far fatigued him that
they consider it full time for him to repose from his cares and
indulge himself with a little sleep. He thanks his subjects for their
attention to his ease, retires to his own apartment as if to sleep, and
there gives directions to his women to strangle him. This is
immediately executed, and his son quietly ascends the throne upon
the usual terms of holding the reins of government no longer than
whilst he merits the approbation of the people." About the year
1774, a king of Eyeo, whom his ministers attempted to remove in
the customary manner, positively refused to accept the proffered
parrots' eggs at their hands, telling them that he had no mind to
take a nap, but on the contrary was resolved to watch for the
benefit of his subjects. The ministers, surprised and indignant at his
recalcitrancy, raised a rebellion, but were defeated with great
slaughter, and thus by his spirited conduct the king freed himself
from the tyranny of his councillors and established a new
precedent for the guidance of his successors. However, the old
custom seems to have revived and persisted until late in the
nineteenth century, for a Catholic missionary, writing in 1884,
speaks of the practice as if it were still in vogue. Another
missionary, writing in 1881, thus describes the usage of the Egbas
and the Yorubas of West Africa: "Among the customs of the country
one of the most curious is unquestionably that of judging, and
punishing the king. Should he have earned the hatred of his people
by exceeding his rights, one of his councillors, on whom the heavy
duty is laid, requires of the prince that he shall `go to sleep,' which
means simply `take poison and die.' If his courage fails him at the
supreme moment, a friend renders him this last service, and quietly,
without betraying the secret, they prepare the people for the news
of the king's death. In Yoruba the thing is managed a little
differently. When a son is born to the king of Oyo, they make a
model of the infant's right foot in clay and keep it in the house of
the elders (ogboni). If the king fails to observe the customs of the
country, a messenger, without speaking a word, shows him his
child's foot. The king knows what that means. He takes poison and
goes to sleep." The old Prussians acknowledged as their supreme
lord a ruler who governed them in the name of the gods, and was
known as "God's Mouth." When he felt himself weak and ill, if he
wished to leave a good name behind him, he had a great heap
made of thorn-bushes and straw, on which he mounted and
delivered a long sermon to the people, exhorting them to serve the
gods and promising to go to the gods and speak for the people.
Then he took some of the perpetual fire which burned in front of the
holy oak-tree, and lighting the pile with it burned himself to
death. 15
Section 3. Kings killed at the End of a Fixed Term.
IN THE CASES hitherto described, the divine king or priest is
suffered by his people to retain office until some outward defect,
some visible symptom of failing health or advancing age, warns
them that he is no longer equal to the discharge of his divine
duties; but not until such symptoms have made their appearance is
he put to death. Some peoples, however, appear to have thought it
unsafe to wait for even the slightest symptom of decay and have
preferred to kill the king while he was still in the full vigour of life.
Accordingly, they have fixed a term beyond which he might not
reign, and at the close of which he must die, the term fixed upon
being short enough to exclude the probability of his degenerating
physically in the interval. In some parts of Southern India the period
fixed was twelve years. Thus, according to an old traveller, in the
province of Quilacare, "there is a Gentile house of prayer, in which
there is an idol which they hold in great account, and every twelve
years they celebrate a great feast to it, whither all the Gentiles go
as to a jubilee. This temple possesses many lands and much
revenue: it is a very great affair. This province has a king over it,
who has not more than twelve years to reign from jubilee to jubilee.
His manner of living is in this wise, that is to say: when the twelve
years are completed, on the day of this feast there assemble
together innumerable people, and much money is spent in giving
food to Bramans. The king has a wooden scaffolding made, spread
over with silken hangings: and on that day he goes to bathe at a
tank with great ceremonies and sound of music, after that he comes
to the idol and prays to it, and mounts on to the scaffolding, and
there before all the people he takes some very sharp knives, and
begins to cut off his nose, and then his ears, and his lips, and all
his members, and as much flesh off himself as he can; and he
throws it away very hurriedly until so much of his blood is spilled
that he begins to faint, and then he cuts his throat himself. And he
performs this sacrifice to the idol, and whoever desires to reign
another twelve years and undertake this martyrdom for love of the
idol, has to be present looking on at this: and from that place they
raise him up as king." 1
The king of Calicut, on the Malabar coast, bears the title of
Samorin or Samory. He "pretends to be of a higher rank than the
Brahmans, and to be inferior only to the invisible gods; a pretention
that was acknowledged by his subjects, but which is held as
absurd and abominable by the Brahmans, by whom he is only
treated as a Sudra." Formerly the Samorin had to cut his throat in
public at the end of a twelve years' reign. But towards the end of
the seventeenth century the rule had been modified as follows:
"Many strange customs were observed in this country in former
times, and some very odd ones are still continued. It was an
ancient custom for the Samorin to reign but twelve years, and no
longer. If he died before his term was expired, it saved him a
troublesome ceremony of cutting his own throat, on a publick
scaffold erected for the purpose. He first made a feast for all his
nobility and gentry, who are very numerous. After the feast he
saluted his guests, and went on the scaffold, and very decently cut
his own throat in the view of the assembly, and his body was, a
little while after, burned with great pomp and ceremony, and the
grandees elected a new Samorin. Whether that custom was a
religious or a civil ceremony, I know not, but it is now laid aside.
And a new custom is followed by the modern Samorins, that jubilee
is proclaimed throughout his dominions, at the end of twelve years,
and a tent is pitched for him in a spacious plain, and a great feast
is celebrated for ten or twelve days, with mirth and jollity, guns
firing night and day, so at the end of the feast any four of the
guests that have a mind to gain a crown by a desperate action, in
fighting their way through 30 or 40,000 of his guards, and kill the
Samorin in his tent, he that kills him succeeds him in his empire. In
anno 1695, one of those jubilees happened, and the tent pitched
near Pennany, a seaport of his, about fifteen leagues to the
southward of Calicut. There were but three men that would venture
on that desperate action, who fell in, with sword and target, among
the guard, and, after they had killed and wounded many, were
themselves killed. One of the desperados had a nephew of fifteen
or sixteen years of age, that kept close by his uncle in the attack
on the guards, and, when he saw him fall, the youth got through
the guards into the tent, and made a stroke at his Majesty's head,
and had certainly despatched him if a large brass lamp which was
burning over his head had not marred the blow; but, before he
could make another, he was killed by the guards; and, I believe,
the same Samorin reigns yet. I chanced to come that time along the
coast and heard the guns for two or three days and nights
successively." 2
The English traveller, whose account I have quoted, did not
himself witness the festival he describes, though he heard the
sound of the firing in the distance. Fortunately, exact records of
these festivals and of the number of men who perished at them
have been preserved in the archives of the royal family at Calicut.
In the latter part of the nineteenth century they were examined by
Mr. W. Logan, with the personal assistance of the reigning king,
and from his work it is possible to gain an accurate conception both
of the tragedy and of the scene where it was periodically enacted
down to 1743, when the ceremony took place for the last time. 3
The festival at which the king of Calicut staked his crown and his
life on the issue of battle was known as the "Great Sacrifice." It fell
every twelfth year, when the planet Jupiter was in retrograde
motion in the sign of the Crab, and it lasted twenty-eight days,
culminating at the time of the eighth lunar asterism in the month of
Makaram. As the date of the festival was determined by the position
of Jupiter in the sky, and the interval between two festivals was
twelve years, which is roughly Jupiter's period of revolution round
the sun, we may conjecture that the splendid planet was supposed
to be in a special sense the king's star and to rule his destiny, the
period of its revolution in heaven corresponding to the period of his
reign on earth. However that may be, the ceremony was observed
with great pomp at the Tirunavayi temple, on the north bank of the
Ponnani River. The spot is close to the present railway line. As the
train rushes by, you can just catch a glimpse of the temple, almost
hidden behind a clump of trees on the river bank. From the western
gateway of the temple a perfectly straight road, hardly raised above
the level of the surrounding rice-fields and shaded by a fine
avenue, runs for half a mile to a high ridge with a precipitous bank,
on which the outlines of three or four terraces can still be traced.
On the topmost of these terraces the king took his stand on the
eventful day. The view which it commands is a fine one. Across the
flat expanse of the rice-fields, with the broad placid river winding
through them, the eye ranges eastward to high tablelands, their
lower slopes embowered in woods, while afar off looms the great
chain of the western Ghauts, and in the furthest distance the
Neilgherries or Blue Mountains, hardly distinguishable from the
azure of the sky above. 4
But it was not to the distant prospect that the king's eyes naturally
turned at this crisis of his fate. His attention was arrested by a
spectacle nearer at hand. For all the plain below was alive with
troops, their banners waving gaily in the sun, the white tents of
their many camps standing sharply out against the green and gold
of the ricefields. Forty thousand fighting men or more were gathered
there to defend the king. But if the plain swarmed with soldiers, the
road that cuts across it from the temple to the king's stand was clear
of them. Not a soul was stirring on it. Each side of the way was
barred by palisades, and from the palisades on either hand a long
hedge of spears, held by strong arms, projected into the empty
road, their blades meeting in the middle and forming a glittering
arch of steel. All was now ready. The king waved his sword. At the
same moment a great chain of massy gold, enriched with bosses,
was placed on an elephant at his side. That was the signal. On the
instant a stir might be seen half a mile away at the gate of the
temple. A group of swordsmen, decked with flowers and smeared
with ashes, has stepped out from the crowd. They have just
partaken of their last meal on earth, and they now receive the last
blessings and farewells of their friends. A moment more and they
are coming down the lane of spears, hewing and stabbing right and
left at the spearmen, winding and turning and writhing among the
blades as if they had no bones in their bodies. It is all in vain. One
after the other they fall, some nearer the king, some farther off,
content to die, not for the shadow of a crown, but for the mere sake
of approving their dauntless valour and swordsmanship to the
world. On the last days of the festival the same magnificent display
of gallantry, the same useless sacrifice of life was repeated again
and again. Yet perhaps no sacrifice is wholly useless which proves
that there are men who prefer honour to life. 5
"It is a singular custom in Bengal," says an old native historian of
India, "that there is little of hereditary descent in succession to the
sovereignty... . Whoever kills the king, and succeeds in placing
himself on that throne, is immediately acknowledged as king; all the
amirs, wazirs, soldiers, and peasants instantly obey and submit to
him, and consider him as being as much their sovereign as they
did their former prince, and obey his orders implicitly. The people
of Bengal say, `We are faithful to the throne; whoever fills the
throne we are obedient and true to it.'" A custom of the same sort
formerly prevailed in the little kingdom of Passier, on the northern
coast of Sumatra. The old Portuguese historian De Barros, who
informs us of it, remarks with surprise that no wise man would wish
to be king of Passier, since the monarch was not allowed by his
subjects to live long. From time to time a sort of fury seized the
people, and they marched through the streets of the city chanting
with loud voices the fatal words, "The king must die!" When the
king heard that song of death he knew that his hour had come. The
man who struck the fatal blow was of the royal lineage, and as
soon as he had done the deed of blood and seated himself on the
throne he was regarded as the legitimate king, provided that he
contrived to maintain his seat peaceably for a single day. This,
however, the regicide did not always succeed in doing. When
Fernão Peres d'Andrade, on a voyage to China, put in at Passier
for a cargo of spices, two kings were massacred, and that in the
most peaceable and orderly manner, without the smallest sign of
tumult or sedition in the city, where everything went on in its usual
course, as if the murder or execution of a king were a matter of
everyday occurrence. Indeed, on one occasion three kings were
raised to the dangerous elevation and followed each other in the
dusty road of death in a single day. The people defended the
custom, which they esteemed very laudable and even of divine
institution, by saying that God would never allow so high and
mighty a being as a king, who reigned as his vicegerent on earth,
to perish by violence unless for his sins he thoroughly deserved it.
Far away from the tropical island of Sumatra a rule of the same sort
appears to have obtained among the old Slavs. When the captives
Gunn and Jarmerik contrived to slay the king and queen of the
Slavs and made their escape, they were pursued by the
barbarians, who shouted after them that if they would only come
back they would reign instead of the murdered monarch, since by a
public statute of the ancients the succession to the throne fell to the
king's assassin. But the flying regicides turned a deaf ear to
promises which they regarded as mere baits to lure them back to
destruction; they continued their flight, and the shouts and clamour
of the barbarians gradually died away in the distance. 6
When kings were bound to suffer death, whether at their own
hands or at the hands of others, on the expiration of a fixed term of
years, it was natural that they should seek to delegate the painful
duty, along with some of the privileges of sovereignty, to a
substitute who should suffer vicariously in their stead. This
expedient appears to have been resorted to by some of the princes
of Malabar. Thus we are informed by a native authority on that
country that "in some places all powers both executive and judicial
were delegated for a fixed period to natives by the sovereign. This
institution was styled Thalavettiparothiam or authority obtained by
decapitation.... It was an office tenable for five years during which
its bearer was invested with supreme despotic powers within his
jurisdiction. On the expiry of the five years the man's head was cut
off and thrown up in the air amongst a large concourse of villagers,
each of whom vied with the other in trying to catch it in its course
down. He who succeeded was nominated to the post for the next
five years." 7
When once kings, who had hitherto been bound to die a violent
death at the end of a term of years, conceived the happy thought
of dying by deputy in the persons of others, they would very
naturally put it in practice; and accordingly we need not wonder at
finding so popular an expedient, or traces of it, in many lands.
Scandinavian traditions contain some hints that of old the Swedish
kings reigned only for periods of nine years, after which they were
put to death or had to find a substitute to die in their stead. Thus
Aun or On, king of Sweden, is said to have sacrificed to Odin for
length of days and to have been answered by the god that he
should live so long as he sacrificed one of his sons every ninth
year. He sacrificed nine of them in this manner, and would have
sacrificed the tenth and last, but the Swedes would not allow him.
So he died and was buried in a mound at Upsala. Another
indication of a similar tenure of the crown occurs in a curious
legend of the deposition and banishment of Odin. Offended at his
misdeeds, the other gods outlawed and exiled him, but set up in his
place a substitute, Oller by name, a cunning wizard, to whom they
accorded the symbols both of royalty and of godhead. The deputy
bore the name of Odin, and reigned for nearly ten years, when he
was driven from the throne, while the real Odin came to his own
again. His discomfited rival retired to Sweden and was afterwards
slain in an attempt to repair his shattered fortunes. As gods are
often merely men who loom large through the mists of tradition, we
may conjecture that this Norse legend preserves a confused
reminiscence of ancient Swedish kings who reigned for nine or ten
years together, then abdicated, delegating to others the privilege of
dying for their country. The great festival which was held at Upsala
every nine years may have been the occasion on which the king
or his deputy was put to death. We know that human sacrifices
formed part of the rites. 8
There are some grounds for believing that the reign of many
ancient Greek kings was limited to eight years, or at least that at the
end of every period of eight years a new consecration, a fresh
outpouring of the divine grace, was regarded as necessary in order
to enable them to discharge their civil and religious duties. Thus it
was a rule of the Spartan constitution that every eighth year the
ephors should choose a clear and moonless night and sitting down
observe the sky in silence. If during their vigil they saw a meteor or
shooting star, they inferred that the king had sinned against the
deity, and they suspended him from his functions until the Delphic
or Olympic oracle should reinstate him in them. This custom, which
has all the air of great antiquity, was not suffered to remain a dead
letter even in the last period of the Spartan monarchy; for in the
third century before our era a king, who had rendered himself
obnoxious to the reforming party, was actually deposed on various
trumped-up charges, among which the allegation that the ominous
sign had been seen in the sky took a prominent place. 9
If the tenure of the regal office was formerly limited among the
Spartans to eight years, we may naturally ask, why was that
precise period selected as the measure of a king's reign? The
reason is probably to be found in those astronomical considerations
which determined the early Greek calendar. The difficulty of
reconciling lunar with solar time is one of the standing puzzles
which has taxed the ingenuity of men who are emerging from
barbarism. Now an octennial cycle is the shortest period at the end
of which sun and moon really mark time together after overlapping,
so to say, throughout the whole of the interval. Thus, for example, it
is only once in every eight years that the full moon coincides with
the longest or shortest day; and as this coincidence can be
observed with the aid of a simple dial, the observation is naturally
one of the first to furnish a base for a calendar which shall bring
lunar and solar times into tolerable, though not exact, harmony. But
in early days the proper adjustment of the calendar is a matter of
religious concern, since on it depends a knowledge of the right
seasons for propitiating the deities whose favour is indispensable to
the welfare of the community. No wonder, therefore, that the king,
as the chief priest of the state, or as himself a god, should be liable
to deposition or death at the end of an astronomical period. When
the great luminaries had run their course on high, and were about
to renew the heavenly race, it might well be thought that the king
should renew his divine energies, or prove them unabated, under
pain of making room for a more vigorous successor. In Southern
India, as we have seen, the king's reign and life terminated with the
revolution of the planet Jupiter round the sun. In Greece, on the
other hand, the king's fate seems to have hung in the balance at
the end of every eight years, ready to fly up and kick the beam as
soon as the opposite scale was loaded with a falling star. 10
Whatever its origin may have been, the cycle of eight years
appears to have coincided with the normal length of the king's
reign in other parts of Greece besides Sparta. Thus Minos, king of
Cnossus in Crete, whose great palace has been unearthed in
recent years, is said to have held office for periods of eight years
together. At the end of each period he retired for a season to the
oracular cave on Mount Ida, and there communed with his divine
father Zeus, giving him an account of his kingship in the years that
were past, and receiving from him instructions for his guidance in
those which were to come. The tradition plainly implies that at the
end of every eight years the king's sacred powers needed to be
renewed by intercourse with the godhead, and that without such a
renewal he would have forfeited his right to the throne. 11
Without being unduly rash we may surmise that the tribute of
seven youths and seven maidens whom the Athenians were bound
to send to Minos every eight years had some connexion with the
renewal of the king's power for another octennial cycle. Traditions
varied as to the fate which awaited the lads and damsels on their
arrival in Crete; but the common view appears to have been that
they were shut up in the labyrinth, there to be devoured by the
Minotaur, or at least to be imprisoned for life. Perhaps they were
sacrificed by being roasted alive in a bronze image of a bull, or of
a bull-headed man, in order to renew the strength of the king and
of the sun, whom he personated. This at all events is suggested by
the legend of Talos, a bronze man who clutched people to his
breast and leaped with them into the fire, so that they were roasted
alive. He is said to have been given by Zeus to Europa, or by
Hephaestus to Minos, to guard the island of Crete, which he
patrolled thrice daily. According to one account he was a bull,
according to another he was the sun. Probably he was identical
with the Minotaur, and stripped of his mythical features was nothing
but a bronze image of the sun represented as a man with a bull's
head. In order to renew the solar fires, human victims may have
been sacrificed to the idol by being roasted in its hollow body or
placed on its sloping hands and allowed to roll into a pit of fire. It
was in the latter fashion that the Carthaginians sacrificed their
offspring to Moloch. The children were laid on the hands of a
calf-headed image of bronze, from which they slid into a fiery
oven, while the people danced to the music of flutes and timbrels to
drown the shrieks of the burning victims. The resemblance which
the Cretan traditions bear to the Carthaginian practice suggests that
the worship associated with the names of Minos and the Minotaur
may have been powerfully influenced by that of a Semitic Baal. In
the tradition of Phalaris, tyrant of Agrigentum, and his brazen bull
we may have an echo of similar rites in Sicily, where the
Carthaginian power struck deep roots. 12
In the province of Lagos, the Ijebu tribe of the Yoruba race is
divided into two branches, which are known respectively as the
Ijebu Ode and the Ijebu Remon. The Ode branch of the tribe is
ruled by a chief who bears the title of Awujale and is surrounded
by a great deal of mystery. Down to recent times his face might not
be seen even by his own subjects, and if circumstances obliged
him to communicate with them he did so through a screen which
hid him from view. The other or Remon branch of the Ijebu tribe is
governed by a chief, who ranks below the Awujale. Mr. John
Parkinson was informed that in former times this subordinate chief
used to be killed with ceremony after a rule of three years. As the
country is now under British protection the custom of putting the
chief to death at the end of a three years' reign has long been
abolished, and Mr. Parkinson was unable to ascertain any
particulars on the subject. 13
At Babylon, within historical times, the tenure of the kingly office
was in practice lifelong, yet in theory it would seem to have been
merely annual. For every year at the festival of Zagmuk the king
had to renew his power by seizing the hands of the image of
Marduk in his great temple of Esagil at Babylon. Even when
Babylon passed under the power of Assyria, the monarchs of that
country were expected to legalise their claim to the throne every
year by coming to Babylon and performing the ancient ceremony at
the New Year festival, and some of them found the obligation so
burdensome that rather than discharge it they renounced the title of
king altogether and contented themselves with the humbler one of
Governor. Further, it would appear that in remote times, though not
within the historical period, the kings of Babylon or their barbarous
predecessors forfeited not merely their crown but their life at the
end of a year's tenure of office. At least this is the conclusion to
which the following evidence seems to point. According to the
historian Berosus, who as a Babylonian priest spoke with ample
knowledge, there was annually celebrated in Babylon a festival
called the Sacaea. It began on the sixteenth day of the month Lous,
and lasted for five days, during which masters and servants
changed places, the servants giving orders and the masters
obeying them. A prisoner condemned to death was dressed in the
king's robes, seated on the king's throne, allowed to issue
whatever commands he pleased, to eat, drink, and enjoy himself,
and to lie with the king's concubines. But at the end of the five
days he was stripped of his royal robes, scourged, and hanged or
impaled. During his brief term of office he bore the title of Zoganes.
This custom might perhaps have been explained as merely a grim
jest perpetrated in a season of jollity at the expense of an unhappy
criminal. But one circumstance-the leave given to the mock king to
enjoy the king's concubines-is decisive against this interpretation.
Considering the jealous seclusion of an oriental despot's harem we
may be quite certain that permission to invade it would never have
been granted by the despot, least of all to a condemned criminal,
except for the very gravest cause. This cause could hardly be
other than that the condemned man was about to die in the king's
stead, and that to make the substitution perfect it was necessary he
should enjoy the full rights of royalty during his brief reign. There is
nothing surprising in this substitution. The rule that the king must be
put to death either on the appearance of any symptom of bodily
decay or at the end of a fixed period is certainly one which, sooner
or later, the kings would seek to abolish or modify. We have seen
that in Ethiopia, Sofala, and Eyeo the rule was boldly set aside by
enlightened monarchs; and that in Calicut the old custom of killing
the king at the end of twelve years was changed into a permission
granted to any one at the end of the twelve years' period to attack
the king, and, in the event of killing him, to reign in his stead;
though, as the king took care at these times to be surrounded by
his guards, the permission was little more than a form. Another way
of modifying the stern old rule is seen in the Babylonian custom just
described. When the time drew near for the king to be put to death
(in Babylon this appears to have been at the end of a single year's
reign) he abdicated for a few days, during which a temporary king
reigned and suffered in his stead. At first the temporary king may
have been an innocent person, possibly a member of the king's
own family; but with the growth of civilisation the sacrifice of an
innocent person would be revolting to the public sentiment, and
accordingly a condemned criminal would be invested with the brief
and fatal sovereignty. In the sequel we shall find other examples of
a dying criminal representing a dying god. For we must not forget
that, as the case of the Shilluk kings clearly shows, the king is slain
in his character of a god or a demigod, his death and resurrection,
as the only means of perpetuating the divine life unimpaired, being
deemed necessary for the salvation of his people and the
world. 14
A vestige of a practice of putting the king to death at the end of a
year's reign appears to have survived in the festival called
Macahity, which used to be celebrated in Hawaii during the last
month of the year. About a hundred years ago a Russian voyager
described the custom as follows: "The taboo Macahity is not unlike
to our festival of Christmas. It continues a whole month, during
which the people amuse themselves with dances, plays, and
sham-fights of every kind. The king must open this festival
wherever he is. On this occasion his majesty dresses himself in his
richest cloak and helmet, and is paddled in a canoe along the
shore, followed sometimes by many of his subjects. He embarks
early, and must finish his excursion at sunrise. The strongest and
most expert of the warriors is chosen to receive him on his landing.
This warrior watches the canoe along the beach; and as soon as
the king lands, and has thrown off his cloak, he darts his spear at
him, from a distance of about thirty paces, and the king must either
catch the spear in his hand, or suffer from it: there is no jesting in
the business. Having caught it, he carries it under his arm, with the
sharp end downwards, into the temple or heavoo. On his entrance,
the assembled multitude begin their sham-fights, and immediately
the air is obscured by clouds of spears, made for the occasion with
blunted ends. Hamamea [the king] has been frequently advised to
abolish this ridiculous ceremony, in which he risks his life every
year; but to no effect. His answer always is, that he is as able to
catch a spear as any one on the island is to throw it at him. During
the Macahity, all punishments are remitted throughout the country;
and no person can leave the place in which he commences these
holidays, let the affair be ever so important." 15
That a king should regularly have been put to death at the close
of a year's reign will hardly appear improbable when we learn that
to this day there is still a kingdom in which the reign and the life of
the sovereign are limited to a single day. In Ngoio, a province of
the ancient kingdom of Congo, the rule obtains that the chief who
assumes the cap of sovereignty is always killed on the night after
his coronation. The right of succession lies with the chief of the
Musurongo; but we need not wonder that he does not exercise it,
and that the throne stands vacant. "No one likes to lose his life for
a few hours' glory on the Ngoio throne." 16