| Sir James George Frazer (1854–1941). The Golden
Bough. 1922. |
XXVII. Succession to the Soul |
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| 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 |
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