I would venture to suggest, as a conclusion, that people indulge in
these lawless excesses not so much to improve the prospects of farming
as because they are 'full of devilry,' and that often they are full
of devilry because they have ended their labours and are full of meat
and drink. _Sine Bacche et Cerere friget Venus._ They therefore permit
themselves a regular debauch; ranks are reversed, slaves lord it over
their masters, laws are in abeyance; in Tonquin reviving law only takes
notice of treason and murder. In Borne, at the Saturnalia, and at Purim
among the Jews, however, a kind of Dickensite Christianicy prevailed
at the period of licence; also in Persia, at the period called
Purdaghân, which Hyde compares to the Sacæa and Purim: as does Lagarde,
in writing on Purim.[11]
The reader will have observed that at not one of these many periods
of licence, in widely severed regions and grades of civilisation, is
a mock-king put to death. Indeed, nobody is put to death, except in
Ashanti, and nobody is scourged. Thus, as I remarked before, the case
of the mock-king at the Babylonian Sacæa is isolated, as far as our
knowledge goes.
II. THE DIVINE SCAPEGOAT
In many cases, however, at expulsion of the devils, the part of devil
is played by a man who is driven away, often he is beaten away. Now I
have already said that, by Mr. Frazer's theory (as I understand it),
the mock-king at the Sacæa was 'sacrificed' in a double _rôle_; namely
both as the king's proxy (the king being a god) and also as Tammuz, not
to speak of Marduk and Humman. To this, of course, I replied (1) that
no case seemed to be given of killing a king yearly to benefit a god;
(2) that I could find no case of a king being killed by proxy; (3) that
when kings really were killed, it was not annually nor by the infamous
death of a malefactor (hanging); (4) that there was no proof of a man
being killed as Tammuz; (5) that Tammuz is nowhere said to have been
hanged, or crucified, or scourged; (6) that in no case known to me is
sacrifice performed by hanging, still less (if possible) by hanging
after a whipping. These arguments convince me that Mr. Frazer's theory
(if it _is_ his theory) is unconvincing.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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