Myth, Ritual and Religion, Vol. 1 (of 2)Lang, Andrew
Religion
Myth, Ritual and Religion, Vol. 1 (of 2)
Lang, Andrew
Myth; Mythology; Religion; Rites and ceremonies
The answer is less obvious than might be supposed. Sacrifice has two
origins. First, there are HONORIFIC sacrifices, in which the ghost or
god (or divine beast, if a divine beast be worshipped) is offered the
food he is believed to prefer. This does not occur among the lowest
savages. To carnivorous totems, Garcilasso says, the Indians of Peru
offered themselves. The feeding of sacred mice in the temples of Apollo
Smintheus is well known. Secondly, there are expiatory or PIACULAR
sacrifices, in which the worshipper, as it were, fines himself in a
child, an ox, or something else that he treasures. The latter kind of
sacrifice (most common in cases of crime done or suspected within the
circle of kindred) is not necessarily barbaric, except in its cruelty.
An example is the Attic Thargelia, in which two human scape-goats
annually bore "the sins of the congregation," and were flogged, driven
to the sea with figs tied round their necks, and burned.(1)
(1) Compare the Marseilles human sacrifice, Petron., 141; and for the
Thargelia, Tsetzes, Chiliads, v. 736; Hellad. in Photius, p. 1590 f. and
Harpoc. s. v.
The institution of human sacrifice, then, whether the offering be
regarded as food, or as a gift to the god of what is dearest to man (as
in the case of Jephtha's daughter), or whether the victim be supposed to
carry on his head the sins of the people, does not necessarily date from
the period of savagery. Indeed, sacrifice flourishes most, not among
savages, but among advancing barbarians. It would probably be impossible
to find any examples of human sacrifices of an expiatory or piacular
character, any sacrifices at all, among Australians, or Andamanese,
or Fuegians. The notion of presenting food to the supernatural powers,
whether ghosts or gods, is relatively rare among savages.(1) The
terrible Aztec banquets of which the gods were partakers are the most
noted examples of human sacrifices with a purely cannibal origin. Now
there is good reason to guess that human sacrifices with no other
origin than cannibalism survived even in ancient Greece. "It may be
conjectured," writes Professor Robertson Smith,(2) "that the human
sacrifices offered to the Wolf Zeus (Lycaeus) in Arcadia were originally
cannibal feasts of a Wolf tribe. The first participants in the rite
were, according to later legend, changed into wolves; and in later
times(3) at least one fragment of the human flesh was placed among the
sacrificial portions derived from other victims, and the man who ate it
was believed to become a were-wolf."(4) It is the almost universal rule
with cannibals not to eat members of their own stock, just as they do
not eat their own totem. Thus, as Professor Robertson Smith says, when
the human victim is a captive or other foreigner, the human sacrifice
may be regarded as a survival of cannibalism. Where, on the other
hand, the victim is a fellow tribesman, the sacrifice is expiatory or
piacular.
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