94. The status of impurity.
It has been seen that the Sūdras as well as the plebeians were regarded as impure, and the reason was perhaps that they were considered to belong to a hostile god. By their participation in the sacrifice and partaking of the sacrificial food, the Indian Aryans and other races considered that they were not only in fellowship with, but actually a part of the god. And similarly their enemies were part of the substance of a hostile god, whose very existence and contact were abhorrent to their own. Hence their enemies should as far as possible be completely exterminated, but when this was impossible they must dwell apart and not pollute by contact of their persons, or in any other way, the sacred soil on which the gods dwelt, nor the persons of those who became part of the substance of the god by participation in the sacrificial meal. For this reason the plebeians had to live outside the Roman city, which was all sacred ground, and the Sūdras and modern impure castes have to live outside the village, which is similarly sacred as the abode of the earth-goddess in her form of the goddess of the land of that village. For the same reason their contact had to be avoided by those who belonged to the village and were united to the goddess by partaking of the crops which she brought forth on her land. As already seen, the belief existed that the life and qualities could be communicated by contact, and in this case the worshippers would assimilate by contact the life of a god hostile to their own. In the same manner, as shown by M. Salomon Reinach in Cults, Myths and Religions, all the weapons, clothes and material possessions of the enemy were considered as impure, perhaps because they also contained part of the life of a hostile god. As already seen,[238] a man’s clothing and weapons were considered to contain part of his life by contact, and since the man was united to the god by partaking of the sacrificial feast, all the possessions of the enemy might be held to participate in the life of the hostile god, and hence they could not be preserved, nor taken by the victors into their own houses or dwellings. This was the offence which Achan committed when he hid in his tent part of the spoils of Jericho; and in consequence Jehovah ceased to be with the children of Israel when they went up against Ai, that is ceased to be in them, and they could not stand before the enemy. Achan and his family were stoned and his property destroyed by fire and the impurity was removed. For the same reason the ancient Gauls and Germans destroyed all the spoils of war or burned them, or buried them in lakes where they are still found. At a later stage the Romans, instead of destroying the spoils of war, dedicated them to their own gods, perhaps as a visible sign of the conquest and subjection of the enemy’s gods; and they were hung in temples or on oak-trees, where they could not be touched except in the very direst need, as when Rome was left without arms after Cannae. Subsequently the spoils were permitted to decorate the houses of the victorious generals, where they remained sacred and inviolable heirlooms.[239]