that the virtue lies in the worshipper depriving himself of something prized. These ideas may be broadly distinguished as the gift-theory, the homage-theory, and the abnegation-theory. Along all three the usual ritualistic change may be traced, from practical reality to formal ceremony. The originally valuable offering is compromised for a smaller tribute or a cheaper substitute, dwindling at last to a mere trifling token or symbol.

The gift-theory, as standing on its own independent basis, properly takes the first place. That most childlike kind of offering, the giving of a gift with as yet no definite thought how the receiver can take and use it, may be the most primitive as it is the most rudimentary sacrifice. Moreover, in tracing the history of the rite from level to level of culture, the same simple unshaped intention may still largely prevail, and much of the reason why it is often found difficult to ascertain what savages and barbarians suppose to become of the food and valuables they offer to the gods, may be simply due to ancient sacrificers knowing as little about it as modern ethnologists do, and caring less. Yet rude races begin and civilized races continue to furnish with the details of their sacrificial ceremonies the key also to their meaning, the explanation of the manner in which the offering is supposed to pass into the possession of the deity.

Beginning with cases in which this transmission is performed bodily, it appears that when the deity is the personal Water, Earth, Fire, Air, or a fetish-spirit animating or inhabiting such element, he can receive and sometimes actually consume the offerings given over to this material medium. How such notions may take shape is not ill shown in the quaintly rational thought noticed in old Peru, that the Sun drinks the libations poured out before him; and in modern Madagascar, that the Angatra drinks the arrack left for him in the leaf-cup. Do not they see the liquids diminish from day to day ?1 The sacrifice to Water 1 Garcilaso de la Vega, Commentarios Reales,' v. 19. Ellis, 'Madagascar," vol. i. p. 421.

is exemplified by Indians caught in a storm on the North American lakes, who would appease the angry tempestraising deity by tying the feet of a dog and throwing it overboard. The following case from Guinea well shows the principle of such offerings. Once in 1693, the sea being unusually rough, the headmen complained to the king, who desired them to be easy, and he would make the sea quiet next day. Accordingly he sent his fetishman with a jar of palm oil, a bag of rice and corn, a jar of pitto, a bottle of brandy, a piece of painted calico, and several other things to present to the sea. Being come to the seaside, he made a speech to it, assuring it that his king was its friend, and loved the white men; that they were honest fellows and came to trade with him for what he wanted; and that he requested the sea not to be angry, nor hinder them to land their goods; he told it, that if it wanted palm oil, his king had sent it some; and so threw the jar with the oil into the sea, as he did, with the same compliment, Among the North

the rice, corn, pitto, brandy, calico, &c. American Indians the Earth also receives offerings buried in it. The distinctness of idea with which such objects. may be given is well shown in a Sioux legend. The Spirit of the Earth, it seems, requires an offering from those who perform extraordinary achievements, and accordingly the prairie gapes open with an earthquake before the victorious. hero of the tale; he casts a partridge into the crevice, and springs over. One of the most explicit recorded instances of the offering to the Earth, is the hideous sacrifice to the Earth-goddess among the Khonds of Orissa, tearing the flesh of the human victim from the bones, the priest burying half of it in a hole in the earth behind his back without

Charlevoix, 'Nouv. Fr.' vol. i. p. 394. See also Smith, 'Virginia,' in 'Pinkerton,' vol. xiii. p. 41.

2 Phillips in Astley's 'Voyages,' vol. ii. p. 411; Lubbock, 'Origin of Civilization,' p. 216. Bosman, 'Guinea,' in 'Pinkerton,' vol. xvi. p. 500. Bastian in 'Ztschr. für Ethnologie,' 1869, p. 315.

3 Schoolcraft, Algic Res.' vol. ii. p. 75. See also Tanner, Narr.' p. 193, and above, p. 270.

looking round, and each householder carrying off a particle to bury in like manner in his favourite field. For offerings to the Fire, we may take for an example the Yakuts, who not only give him the first spoonful of food, but instead of washing their earthen pots allow him to clean out the remains. Here is a New Zealand charm called Wangaihau, i.c., feeding the Wind:

"Lift up his offering,

To Uenga a te Rangi his offering,

Eat, O invisible one, listen to me,

Let that food bring you down from the sky.":

Beside this may be set the quaint description of the Fanti negroes assisting at the sacrifice of men and cattle to the local fetish; the victims were considered to be carried up in a whirlwind out of the midst of the small inner ring of priests and priestesses; this whirlwind was, however, not perceptible to the senses of the surrounding worshippers. These series of details collected from the lower civilization throw light on curious problems as to sacrificial ideas in the religions of the classic world; such questions as what Xerxes meant when he threw the golden goblet and the sword into the Hellespont, which he had before chained and scourged; why Hannibal cast animals into the sea as victims to Poseidon; what religious significance underlay the patriotic Roman legend of the leap of Marcus Curtius.5

Sacred animals, in their various characters of divine beings, incarnations, representatives, agents, symbols, naturally receive meat and drink offerings, and sometimes other gifts. For examples, may be mentioned the sun-birds (tonatzuli), for which the Apalaches of Florida set out 1 Macpherson, 'India,' p. 129.

2

་

Billings, Exp. to Northern Russia,' p. 125. Chinese sacrifices buried for earth spirits, see ante, vol. i. p. 107; Plath, part ii. p. 50.

3 Taylor, 'New Zealand,' p. 182.

Römer, 'Guinea,' p. 67.

Herod. vii. 35, 54. Liv. vii. 6. Grote, 'Hist. of Greece,' vol. 1, p. 589, see 715.

3

crushed maize and seed; the Polynesian deities coming incarnate in the bodies of birds to feed on the meat-offerings and carcases of human victims set out upon the altarscaffolds; the well-fed sacred snakes of West Africa, and local fetish animals like the alligator at Dix Cove which will come up at a whistle, and follow a man half a mile if he carries a white fowl in his hands, or the shark at Bonny that comes to the river bank every day to see if a human victim has been provided for his repast; in modern India the cows reverently fed with fresh grass, Durga's meatofferings laid out on stones for the jackals, the famous alligators in their temple-tanks. The definition of sacred animal from this point of view distinctly includes man. Such in Mexico was the captive youth adored as living representative of Tezcatlipoca, and to whom banquets were made during the luxurious twelvemonth which preceded his sacrifice at the festival of the deity whom he personated: such still more definitely was Cortes himself, when Montezuma supposed him to be the incarnate Quetzalcoatl come back into the land, and sent human victims accordingly to be slaughtered before him, should he seem to lust for blood." Such in modern India is the woman who as representative of Radha eats and drinks the offerings at the shameless orgies of the Saktas. More usually it is the priest who as minister of the deities has the lion's share of the offerings or the sole privilege of consuming them, from the Fijian priest who watches for the turtle and puddings apportioned to his god, and the West African priest who carries the allowances of food sent to the local spirits of mountain, or

Rochefort, 'Iles Antilles,' p. 367.

2 Ellis, 'Polyn. Res.' vol. i. pp. 336, 358. Williams, ‘Fiji,' vol. i. p.

220.

3 Bosman, 'Guinea,' in Pinkerton, vol. xvi. p. 494; J. L. Wilson, 'W. Afr. p. 218; Burton, W. & W. fr. W. Afr.' p. 331.

Ward, 'Hindoos,' vol. ii. p. 195, etc.

5 Clavigero, 'Messico,' vol. ii. p. 69. J. G. Müller, p. 631.

Ward, vol. ii. p. 194; Mem. Anthrop. Soc.' vol. i. p. 332. 7 Williams, Fiji,' vol. i. p. 226.

river, or grove, which food he eats himself as the spirit's proxy,1 to the Brahmans who receive for the divine ancestors. the oblation of a worshipper who has no sacred fire to consume it, "for there is no difference between the Fire and a Brahman, such is the judgment declared by them who know the Veda." It is needless to collect details of a practice so usual in the great systematic religions of the world, where priests have become professional ministers and agents of deity, as for them to partake of the sacrificial meats. It by no means follows from this usage that the priest is necessarily supposed to consume the food as representative of his divinity; in the absence of express statement to such effect, the matter can only be treated as one of ceremonial ordinance. Indeed, the case shows the caution needed in interpreting religious rites, which in particular districts may have meanings attached to them quite foreign to their general intent.

3

The feeding of an idol, as when Ostyaks would pour daily broth into the dish at the image's mouth, or when the Aztecs would pour the blood and put the heart of the slaughtered human victim into the monstrous idol's mouth,* seems ceremonial make-believe, but shows that in each case the deity was somehow considered to devour the meal. The conception among the lower races of deity, as in disembodied spiritual form, is even less compatible with the notion that such a being should consume solid matter. It is true that the notion does occur. In old times it appears in the legend of Bel and the Dragon, where the footprints in the strewn ashes betray the knavish priests who come by secret doors to eat up the banquet set before Bel's image. In modern centuries, it may be exemplified by the negroes of Labode, who could hear the noise of their god Jimawong emptying one after another the bottles of brandy handed in

1 J. L. Wilson, W. Afr.' p. 218.

2 Manu, iii. 212. See also 'Avesta,' tr. by Spiegel and Bleek, vol. ii. p. 2.

3 Ysbrants Ides, Reize naar China,' p. 38. Meiners, vol. i. p. 162.

4 Clavigero, vol. ii. p. 46. J. G. Müller, p. 631.

Bel and the Dragon.