CHAPTER XVII

7Robertson Smith,Marriage and Kinship in Early Arabia, p. 26.

8Lafitau,Mœurs des sauvages ameriquains, ii. 163.

9Casalis,Basutos, p. 224sq.

10Warner, in Maclean,Compendium of Kafir Laws, p. 60sq.

11Thomas Smith,Common-wealth of England, p. 194sq.

12Cf.Pollock and Maitland,History of English Law before the Time of Edward I.i. 48.

A manslayer not only causes a loss to the group which he deprives of a member, but he also may give trouble to his own people, who, in consequence, disapprove of his act. Among the Yahgans of Tierra del Fuego, says Mr. Bridges, “many things conspire to make the shedding of blood a fearful thing. A murderer imperils all his friends and connections more or less, and consequently estranges them from himself. This state of things is the greatest safeguard to human life we can conceive.”13Among the Káfirs of the Hindu-Kush, “the mere killing of anindividual is looked upon as a small affair, provided that he does not belong to the tribe, or to another near tribe with which it is at peace, for in the latter case it might result in war.”14

13Bridges, inSouth American Missionary Magazine, xiii. 153.

14Scott Robertson,Káfirs of the Hindu-Kush, p. 194.

We have still to notice the common idea that a manslayer is unclean. The ghost of the victim persecutes him, or actually cleaves to him like a miasma; and he must undergo rites of purification to get rid of the infection. Until this is done, he is among many peoples regarded as a source of danger, and is consequently cut off from free intercourse with his fellows.

Among the Ponka Indians Mr. Dorsey found the belief that a murderer is surrounded by the ghosts, who keep up a constant whistling; that he can never satisfy his hunger, though he eat much food; and that he must not be allowed to roam at large lest high winds arise.15Of the warriors among certain North American Indians Adair wrote that, “as they reckon they are become impure by shedding human blood,” they hasten to observe a fast of three days.16Among the Natchez, according to Charlevoix, “those who for the first time have made a prisoner or taken off a scalp, must, for a month, abstain from seeing their wives, and from eating flesh. They imagine, that if they should fail in this, the souls of those whom they have killed or burnt, would effect their death, or that the first wound they should receive would be mortal; or at least, that they should never gain any advantage over their enemies.”17The Kafirs and Bechuanas practise various ceremonies of purification after their fights.18The Basutos say, “Human blood is heavy, it prevents him who has shed it from running away.”19They consider it necessary that, on return from battle, “the warriors should rid themselves, as soon as possible, of the blood they have shed, or the shades of their victims would pursue them incessantly and disturb their slumbers”; hence they go in full armour to the nearest stream, and, as a rule, at the moment they enter the water a diviner, placedhigher up, throws some purifying substances into the current.20Among the Bantu Kavirondo, “when a man has killed an enemy in warfare he shaves his head on his return home, and his friends rub ‘medicine’ (generally the dung of goats) over his body to prevent the spirit of the deceased from worrying the man by whom he has been slain.”21Among the Ja-luo, a warrior who has slain an enemy not only shaves his hair, but, after entering the village, prepares a big feast to propitiate the man he has killed so that his ghost may not give trouble.22Among the Wagogo of German East Africa, the father of a young warrior who has shed blood gives to his son a goat “to clean his sword.”23After the slaughter of the Midianites, those Israelites who had killed any one, or touched the slain, had to remain outside the camp for seven days, purifying themselves and everything in their possession either by water, or fire, or both.24So, also, if a person had been slain in the land of Israel, and the perpetrator of the deed could not be detected, the elders of the city which was next unto the slain had to undergo a ceremony of purification in order to rid the city of “the guilt of innocent blood.25According to the Laws of Manu, a person who has unintentionally killed a Brâhmana shall make a hut in the forest and dwell in it during twelve years;26in order to remove the guilt he shall throw himself thrice headlong into a blazing fire,27or walk against the stream along the whole course of the river Sarasvatî,28or shave off all his hair.29The ancient Greeks believed that one who had suffered a violent end, when newly dead, was angry with the author of his death.30The blood-guilty individual, as though infected with a miasma, shunned all contact and conversation with other people, and avoided entering their dwellings.31Even the involuntary manslayer had to leave the country for some time; according to Plato’s ‘Laws,’ he “must go out of the way of his victim for the entire period of a year, and not let himself be found in any spot which was familiar to him throughout the country.”32Nor must he return to his land until sacrifice had been offered and ceremonies of purification performed.33

15Dorsey, ‘Siouan Cults,’ inAnn. Rep. Bur. Ethn.xi. 420.

16Adair,History of the American Indians, p. 388.

17Charlevoix,Voyage to North America, ii. 203.

18Arbousset and Daumas,Exploratory Tour to the Colony of the Cape of Good Hope, p. 394sqq.Alberti,De Kaffers aan de Zuidkust van Afrika, p. 104.

19Casalis,op. cit.p. 309.

20Ibid.p. 258.

21Johnston,Uganda Protectorate, ii. 743sq.

22Ibid.ii. 794.

23Cole, ‘Notes on the Wagogo of German East Africa,’ inJour. Anthr. Inst.xxxii. 321.

24Numbers, xxxi. 19sqq.

25Deuteronomy, xxi. 1sq.

26Laws of Manu, xi. 73.

27Ibid.xi. 74.

28Ibid.xi. 78.

29Ibid.xi. 79.

30Plato,Leges, ix. 865.

31Müller,Dissertations on the Eumenides of Æschylus, p. 103. Aeschylus says (Eumenides, 448sqq.) it is the custom that a murderer should not speak anything until he has been sprinkled with the spurted blood of a slain sucking-pig.Cf.Apollonius Rhodius,Argonautica, iv. 700sqq.; Aristotle,De republica Atheniensium, 57.

32Plato,Leges, ix. 865.

33Demosthenes,Contra Aristocratem, 71sqq., p. 643sq.Müller,Dissertations, p. 106sq.Frazer,Golden Bough, i. 341. On the uncleanness of manslayers see also Tylor,Primitive Culture, ii. 433sq.; Frazer,op. cit.i. 331sqq.

The state of uncleanness incurred by the shedding of human blood does not intrinsically involve moral guilt. As appears from many of the instances just referred to, it results not only from the murder of a tribesman, but from so meritorious a deed as the slaying of a foe. In Nukahiva, for instance, a man who has killed the highest person, or one of the highest, among the enemy, is tabooed for ten days, during which he is not allowed to hold intercourse with his wife nor to meddle with fire; but, at the same time, he is treated with distinction, and presents of pigs are brought to him.34On the other hand, there can be no doubt that in various cases the polluting effect attributed to manslaughter has exercised some influence upon the moral judgment of the act. Whenever the commission of an act of homicide has any tendency at all to call forth moral blame, the disapproval of the deed will easily be enhanced by the spiritual danger attending on it, as also by the inconvenient restrictions laid on the tabooed manslayer and the ceremonies of purification to which he is subject. The deprivations which he has to undergo come to be looked upon in the light of a punishment, and the rights of cleansing as a means of removing guilt. The taboo rules which, among the Omahas, a murderer whose life was spared had to observe for a period varying from two to four years are spoken of by Mr. Dorsey as his “punishment,” and this seems also partly to have been the native point of view. The murderer sometimes wandered at night, crying, and lamenting his offence, until, at the end of the designated period, the kindred of his victim heard his crying, and said:—“It is enough. Begone, and walk among the crowd.Put on moccasins and wear a good robe.”35Moreover, the notion of a persecuting ghost may be replaced by the notion of an avenging god. Confusions are common in the world of mystery; doings or functions attributed to one being are afterwards transferred to another—this is a rule of which many important examples will be given in following chapters. The Jbâla of Northern Morocco do not nowadays believe in ghosts, yet they regard a person who has shed human blood to be in some degree unclean for the rest of his life. Poison oozes out from underneath his nails; hence anybody who drinks the water in which he has washed his hands will fall dangerously ill. The meat of an animal which he has killed is difficult to digest, and so is any food eaten in his company. If he comes to a place where people are digging a well, the water will at once run away. He is said to bemejnûn, haunted byjnûn(jinn), a race of beings entirely distinct from men, living or dead. The Greenlanders believed that an abortion or a child born under concealment was transformed into an evil spirit calledángiaq, for the purpose of avenging the crime.36In Eastern Central Africa, “after killing a slave, the master is afraid ofChilope. This means that he will become emaciated, lose his eye-sight, and ultimately die a miserable death. He therefore goes to his chief and gives him a certain fee (in cloth, or slaves, or such legal tenders), and says, ‘Get me a charm (luasi), because I have slain a man.’ When he has used this charm, which may be either drunk or administered in a bath, the danger passes away.”37Among the Omahas the ghost of the murdered man was not lost sight of; the murderer “was obliged to pitch his tent about a quarter of a mile from the rest of the tribe when they were going on the hunt lest the ghost of his victim should raise a high wind, which might cause damage.” But at the same time his deed was considered offensive toWakanda; no one wished to eat with him, for they said, “If we eat with whom Wakanda hates, for his crime, Wakanda will hate us.”38In the Chinese books there are numerous instances of persons haunted by the souls of their victims on their death-bed, and in most of these cases the ghosts state expressly that they are avenging themselves with the special authorisation of Heaven.39The Greek belief in the Erinys of a murdered man no doubt originated in the earlier notion of a persecuting ghost, whose anger or curses in later times were personified as an independent spirit.40And the transformation went further still: the Erinyes were represented as the ministers of Zeus, who by punishing the murderer carried out his divine will. Zeus was considered the originator of the rites of purification; when visited with madness by the Erinyes, Ixion appealed to Zeus Hikesios, and at the altar of Zeus Meilichios Theseus underwent purification for the shedding of kindred blood.41Originally, as it seems, only the murder of a kinsman was an offence against Zeus and under the ban of the Erinyes, but later on their sphere of action was expanded, and all bloodshed, if the victim had any rights at all within the city, became a sin which needed purification.42Uncleanness was thus transformed into spiritual impurity. When the pollution with which a manslayer is tainted is regarded as merely the work of a ghost or of some spirit-substitute who, like the Moorishjnûn, has nothing to do with the administration of justice, it may be devoid of all moral significance in spite of the dread it inspires; but the case is different when it comes to be conceived of as a divine punishment, or as a sin-pollution in the eyes of the supreme god. Such a transformation of ideas could hardly take placeunless the act, considered polluting, were by itself apt to evoke moral disapproval. But it is obvious that the gravity of the offence is increased by the religious aspect it assumes.

34von Langsdorf,Voyages and Travels, i. 133.

35Dorsey, ‘Omaha Sociology,’ inAnn. Rep. Bur. Ethn.iii. 369.

36Rink,Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo, pp. 45, 439sq.

37Macdonald,Africana, i. 168.

38Dorsey, ‘Omaha Sociology,’ inAnn. Rep. Bur. Ethn.iii. 369.

39de Groot,Religious System of China, (vol. iv. book) ii. 441.

40See Müller,Dissertations, p. 155sqq.; Rohde,Psyche, p. 247;Idem, ‘Paralipomena,’ inRheinisches Museum für Philologie, 1895, p. 6sqq.

41Farnell,Cults of the Greek States, i. 66sqq.Rohde,Psyche, p. 249.Idem, inRheinisches Museum, 1895, p. 18. Stengel,Die griechischen Kultusaltertümer, p. 140.

42Farnell,op. cit.i. 68, 71. Rohde,Psyche, p. 247.

In yet another way the defiling effect attributed to the taking of human life has had an influence on religious and moral ideas. Such defilement is shunned not only by men, but, in a still higher degree, by gods. The shedding of human blood is commonly prohibited in sacred places. “In almost every Indian nation,” says Adair, “there are several peaceable towns, which are called ‘old-beloved,’ ‘ancient, holy, or white towns’; they seem to have been formerly ‘towns of refuge,’ for it is not in the memory of their oldest people, that ever human blood was shed in them; although they often force persons from thence, and put them to death elsewhere.”43The Aricaras of the Missouri, according to Bradbury, have in the centre of the largest village a sacred lodge called the “medicine lodge,” which, “in one particular corresponds with the sanctuary of the Jews, as no blood is on any account whatsoever to be spilled within it, not even that of an enemy.”44At Athens the prosecution for homicide began with debarring the criminal from all sanctuaries and assemblies consecrated by religious observances.45According to Greek ideas, purification was an essential preliminary to an acceptable sacrifice.46Hector said, “I shrink from offering a libation of gleaming wine to Zeus with hands unwashed; nor can it be in any way wise that one should pray to the son of Kronos, god of the storm-cloud, all defiled with bloodand filth.”47In many parts of Morocco, a man who has slain another person is never afterwards allowed to kill the sacrificial sheep at the “Great Feast.”48When David had in his heart to build a temple, God said to him, “Thou shalt not build a house for my name, because thou hast been a man of war, andhastshed blood.”49A decree of the penitential discipline of the Christian Church, which was enforced even against emperors and generals, forbade anyone whose hands had been imbrued in blood to approach the altar without a preparatory period of penance.50

43Adair,History of the American Indians, p. 159.

44Bradbury,Travels in the Interior of America, p. 165sq.Our informer adds, “Nor is any one, having taken refuge there, to be forced from it”; but with facts of this kind we are not concerned at present. They belong to the right of sanctuary, in the strict sense of the term, and, as will be seen, this right is based on a different principle, which prevents even the polluted manslayer, tainted with newly shed blood, from being dragged out of the sanctuary to which he has fled in the capacity of a suppliant.

45Aristotle,De republica Atheniensium, 57. Müller,Dissertations, p. 103.

46Donaldson, ‘Expiatory and Substitutionary Sacrifices of the Greeks,’ inTransactions Roy. Soc. Edinburgh, xxvii. 433. Farnell,op. cit.i. 72.

47Iliad, vi. 266sqq.Cf.Vergil,Æneis, ii. 717sqq.

48I found this custom prevalent both among Arab and Berber tribes in different parts of the country; see my article, “The Popular Ritual of the Great Feast in Morocco,” inFolk-Lore, xxii. 144.

491 Chronicles, xxviii. 2sq.

50Lecky,History of European Morals, ii. 39.

Whilst, from fear of contaminating anything holy, casual restrictions have thus been imposed on all kinds of manslayers, whether murderers or those who have killed an enemy in righteous warfare, more stringent rules have been laid down for persons permanently connected with the religious cult. Adair states that the “holy men” of the North American Indians, like the Jewish priests, were by their function absolutely forbidden to shed human blood, “notwithstanding their propensity thereto, even for small injuries.”51Herodotus says of the Persian Magi that they “kill animals of all kinds with their own hands, excepting dogs and men.”52The Druids of Gaul never went to war,53probably in order to keep themselves free from blood-pollution;54it is true, they sacrificed human victims to their gods, but those they burnt.55To the same class of facts belong those decrees of the Christian Church which forbade clergymen taking part in a battle. Moreover, if a Christian priest passed a sentence of deathhe was punished with degradation and imprisonment for life;56nor was he allowed to write or dictate anything with a view to bringing about such a sentence.57He must not perform a surgical operation by help of fire or iron.58And if he killed a robber in order to save his life, he had to do penance till his death.59The hands which had to distribute the blood of the Lamb of God were not to be polluted with the blood of those for whose salvation it was shed.60

51Adair,op. cit.p. 152.

52Herodotus, i. 40. The Shluh of Southern Morocco and some other Berber tribes, in the central parts of the same country, consider that not only homicide, but the killing of a dog for ever after prevents a person from performing sacrifice at the “Great Feast”; seeFolk-Lore, xxii, 144.

53Cæsar,De bello gallico, vi. 14.

54d’Arbois de Jubainville,Civilisation des Celtes, p. 254.

55Cæsar,De bello gallico, vi. 16.

56Gratian,Decretum, ii. 23. 8. 30.

57Concilium Lateranense IV.,A.D.1215, ch. 18 (Labbe-Mansi,Sacrorum Conciliorum collectio, xxii. 1007).

58Concilium Lateranense IV.,A.D.1215, ch. 18 (Labbe-Mansi,op. cit.xxii. 1007).

59Thomassin,Dictionnaire de discipline ecclésiastique, ii. 1074.

60Ibid.ii. 1069.

It cannot be doubted that this horror of blood-pollution had a share in that regard for human life which from the beginning, and especially in early times, was a characteristic of Christianity. But in other respects also, Christian feelings and beliefs had an inherent tendency to evoke such a sentiment. The cosmopolitan spirit of the Christian religion could not allow, in theory at least, that the life of a man was less sacred because he was a foreigner. The extraordinary importance it attached to this earthly life as a preparation for a life to come naturally increased the guilt of any one who, by cutting it short, not only killed the body, but probably to all eternity injured the soul.61In a still higher degree than most other crimes, homicide was regarded as an offence against God, because man had been made in His image.62Gratian says that even the slayer of a Jew or a heathen has to undergo a severe penance, “quia imaginem Dei et spem futuræ conversionis exterminat.”63

61Concilium Lugdumense I.,A.D.1245, Additio, de Homicidio (Labbe-Mansi,op. cit.xxiii. 670).

62von Eicken,Geschichte und System der Mittelalterlichen Weltanschauung, p. 568.

63Gratian,Decretum, i. 50. 40.

WEhave found that among mankind at large there is a moral rule which forbids people to kill members of their own society. We shall now see that the stringency of this rule is subject to variations, depending on the special relationship in which persons stand to one another or on their socialstatus, and that there are cases to which it does not apply at all.

Owing to the regard which children are expected to feel for their parents, parricide is considered the most aggravated form of murder. Nowhere have parents been more venerated by their children than among the nations of archaic culture, and nowhere has parricide been regarded with greater horror. In China it is punished with the most ignominious of all capital punishments, the so-called “cutting into small pieces”; and in some instances, when the crime has occurred in a district, in addition to all punishments inflicted on persons, the wall of the city where the deed was committed is pulled down in parts, or modified in shape, a round corner is substituted for a square one, or a gate removed to a new situation, or even closed up altogether.1In Corea the parricide is burned to death.2Among the ancient Egyptians, we are told, he was sentenced to be lacerated with sharpened reeds, and after being thrown on thorns he was burned.3In Exodus we read of the “smiting” of parents, but parricide is not expressly mentioned, perhaps because the Hebrew legislator, like Solon at Athens,4did not think it possible that any one could be guilty of so unnatural a barbarity.5Herodotus states that the same notion was held by the ancient Persians, who said that no one ever yet killed his own father or mother, and that all cases of so-called parricide if carefully examined, would be found to have been committed by supposititious children or those born in adultery, it being beyond the bounds of probability that a true father should be murdered by his own son.6Plato says in his ‘Laws’:—“If a man could be slain more than once, most justly would he who in a fit of passion has slain father or mother undergo many deaths. How can he whom, alone of all men, even in defence of his life, and when about to suffer death at the hands of his parents, no law will allow to kill his father or his mother who are the authors of his being, and whom the legislator will command to endure any extremity rather than do this—how can he, I say, lawfully receive any other punishment?”7At Athens parricides were the only persons accused of murder who were not allowed the chance of escaping before sentence was passed, but were instantly arrested.8According to Roman Law, a committer ofparricidiumwas not subjected to any of the regular modes of capital punishment, but for “the most execrable of crimes” was provided “the most strange of punishments.” The criminal was sewn up in a leathern sack with a cur, a cock, a viper, and an ape, and, when cooped up in this fearful prison, was hurled into the sea, or intosome neighbouring river.9But by the termparricidiumwas not understood the murder of a parent only. According to the ‘Lex Pompeia de parricidiis,’ it included the murder of any of the following persons: an ascendant or descendant in any degree,10a brother or sister, an uncle or aunt, a cousin, a husband or wife, a bridegroom or bride, a father- or mother-in-law, a son- or daughter-in-law, a step-parent or step-child, a patron; and Mommsen suggests that in earlier times it had a still wider significance, being applied to intentional homicide in general.11But whilst the punishment just referred to was in other cases ofparricidiumreplaced by banishment, it was, during the Empire at least, actually inflicted upon him who murdered an ascendant.12

1Doolittle,Social Life of the Chinese, i. 338sq.Smith,Chinese Characteristics, p. 229.

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