A few other points must be noticed about this essential case, which is one of the most typical instances of manufactured godhead. The Meriah was only satisfactory if he had been purchased--“bought with a price,” like the children who were built as foundation-gods into walls; or else was the child of a previous Meriah--in other words, was of divine stock by descent and inheritance. Khonds in distress often sold their children as Meriahs, “considering the beatification” (apotheosis, I would rather say) “of their souls certain, and _their death, for the benefit of mankind, the most honourable possible_.” This sense of the sacrifice as a case of “one man dying for the people” is most {285}marked in our accounts, and is especially interesting from its analogy to Christian reasoning. A man of the Panua tribe was once known to upbraid a Khond because he had sold for a Meriah his daughter whom the Panuâ wished to marry; the Khonds around at once comforted the insulted father, exclaiming, “Your child died that all the world may live.” Here and elsewhere we have the additional idea of a piacular value attached to the sacrifice, about which more must be said in a subsequent chapter. The death of the Meriah was supposed to ensure not only good crops, but also “immunity from all disease and accident.” The Khonds shouted in his dying ear, “We bought you with a price; no sin rests with us.” It is also worthy of notice that the victim was anointed with oil, a point which recalls the very name of Christus. Once more, the victim might not be bound or make any show of resistance; but the bones of his arms and his legs were often broken to render struggling impossible. Sometimes, however, he was stupefied with opium, one of the ordinary features in the manufacture of gods, as we have already seen, being such preliminary stupefaction. Among the various ways in which the Meriah was slain I would particularly specify the mode of execution by squeezing him to death in the cleft of a tree. I mention these points here, though they somewhat interrupt the general course of our argument, because of their great importance as antecedents of the Christian theory. In fact, _I believe the Christian legend to have been mainly constructed out of the details of such early god-making sacrifices; I hold that Christ is essentially one such artificial god; and I trust the reader will carefully observe for himself as we proceed how many small details (such as the breaking of the bones) recall in many ways the incidents of the passion and the crucifixion_.