Chapter 27. Succession to the Soul.
TO THE VIEW that in early times, and among barbarous races,
kings have frequently been put to death at the end of a short reign,
it may be objected that such a custom would tend to the extinction
of the royal family. The objection may be met by observing, first,
that the kingship is often not confined to one family, but may be
shared in turn by several; second, that the office is frequently not
hereditary, but is open to men of any family, even to foreigners,
who may fulfil the requisite conditions, such as marrying a princess
or vanquishing the king in battle; and, third, that even if the custom
did tend to the extinction of a dynasty, that is not a consideration
which would prevent its observance among people less provident
of the future and less heedful of human life than ourselves. Many
races, like many individuals, have indulged in practices which
must in the end destroy them. The Polynesians seem regularly to
have killed two-thirds of their children. In some parts of East Africa
the proportion of infants massacred at birth is said to be the same.
Only children born in certain presentations are allowed to live. The
Jagas, a conquering tribe in Angola, are reported to have put to
death all their children, without exception, in order that the women
might not be cumbered with babies on the march. They recruited
their numbers by adopting boys and girls of thirteen or fourteen
years of age, whose parents they had killed and eaten. Among the
Mbaya Indians of South America the women used to murder all
their children except the last, or the one they believed to be the
last. If one of them had another child afterwards, she killed it. We
need not wonder that this practice entirely destroyed a branch of
the Mbaya nation, who had been for many years the most
formidable enemies of the Spaniards. Among the Lengua Indians of
the Gran Chaco, the missionaries discovered what they describe
as "a carefully planned system of racial suicide, by the practice of
infanticide by abortion, and other methods." Nor is infanticide the
only mode in which a savage tribe commits suicide. A lavish use of
the poison ordeal may be equally effective. Some time ago a small
tribe named Uwet came down from the hill country, and settled on
the left branch of the Calabar River in West Africa. When the
missionaries first visited the place, they found the population
considerable, distributed into three villages. Since then the
constant use of the poison ordeal has almost extinguished the tribe.
On one occasion the whole population took poison to prove their
innocence. About half perished on the spot, and the remnant, we
are told, still continuing their superstitious practice, must soon
become extinct. With such examples before us we need not hesitate
to believe that many tribes have felt no scruple or delicacy in
observing a custom which tends to wipe out a single family. To
attribute such scruples to them is to commit the common, the
perpetually repeated mistake of judging the savage by the standard
of European civilisation. If any of my readers set out with the notion
that all races of men think and act much in the same way as
educated Englishmen, the evidence of superstitious belief and
custom collected in this work should suffice to disabuse him of so
erroneous a prepossession. 1
The explanation here given of the custom of killing divine persons
assumes, or at least is readily combined with, the idea that the soul
of the slain divinity is transmitted to his successor. Of this
transmission I have no direct proof except in the case of the
Shilluk, among whom the practice of killing the divine king prevails
in a typical form, and with whom it is a fundamental article of faith
that the soul of the divine founder of the dynasty is immanent in
every one of his slain successors. But if this is the only actual
example of such a belief which I can adduce, analogy seems to
render it probable that a similar succession to the soul of the slain
god has been supposed to take place in other instances, though
direct evidence of it is wanting. For it has been already shown that
the soul of the incarnate deity is often supposed to transmigrate at
death into another incarnation; and if this takes place when the
death is a natural one, there seems no reason why it should not
take place when the death has been brought about by violence.
Certainly the idea that the soul of a dying person may be
transmitted to his successor is perfectly familiar to primitive peoples.
In Nias the eldest son usually succeeds his father in the
chieftainship. But if from any bodily or mental defect the eldest son
is disqualified for ruling, the father determines in his lifetime which
of his sons shall succeed him. In order, however, to establish his
right of succession, it is necessary that the son upon whom his
father's choice falls shall catch in his mouth or in a bag the last
breath, and with it the soul, of the dying chief. For whoever
catches his last breath is chief equally with the appointed
successor. Hence the other brothers, and sometimes also
strangers, crowd round the dying man to catch his soul as it
passes. The houses in Nias are raised above the ground on posts,
and it has happened that when the dying man lay with his face on
the floor, one of the candidates has bored a hole in the floor and
sucked in the chief's last breath through a bamboo tube. When the
chief has no son, his soul is caught in a bag, which is fastened to
an image made to represent the deceased; the soul is then
believed to pass into the image. 2
Sometimes it would appear that the spiritual link between a king
and the souls of his predecessors is formed by the possession of
some part of their persons. In southern Celebes the regalia often
consist of corporeal portions of deceased rajahs, which are
treasured as sacred relics and confer the right to the throne.
Similarly among the Sakalavas of southern Madagascar a vertebra
of the neck, a nail, and a lock of hair of a deceased king are
placed in a crocodile's tooth and carefully kept along with the
similar relics of his predecessors in a house set apart for the
purpose. The possession of these relics constitutes the right to the
throne. A legitimate heir who should be deprived of them would
lose all his authority over the people, and on the contrary a
usurper who should make himself master of the relics would be
acknowledged king without dispute. When the Alake or king of
Abeokuta in West Africa dies, the principal men decapitate his
body, and placing the head in a large earthen vessel deliver it to
the new sovereign; it becomes his fetish and he is bound to pay it
honours. Sometimes, in order apparently that the new sovereign
may inherit more surely the magical and other virtues of the royal
line, he is required to eat a piece of his dead predecessor. Thus at
Abeokuta not only was the head of the late king presented to his
successor, but the tongue was cut out and given him to eat.
Hence, when the natives wish to signify that the sovereign reigns,
they say, "He has eaten the king." A custom of the same sort is still
practised at Ibadan, a large town in the interior of Lagos, West
Africa. When the king dies his head is cut off and sent to his
nominal suzerain, the Alafin of Oyo, the paramount king of Yoruba
land; but his heart is eaten by his successor. This ceremony was
performed not very many years ago at the accession of a new king
of Ibadan. 3
Taking the whole of the preceding evidence into account, we may
fairly suppose that when the divine king or priest is put to death his
spirit is believed to pass into his successor. In point of fact, among
the Shilluk of the White Nile, who regularly kill their divine kings,
every king on his accession has to perform a ceremony which
appears designed to convey to him the same sacred and worshipful
spirit which animated all his predecessors, one after the other, on
the throne. 4