In the earlier society with which we are dealing, the king, as responsible for the weather and crops, is sometimes punished in bad times. The Banjars 'beat the king till the weather changes,' elsewhere the king is imprisoned, or, in a more constitutional manner, merely deposed.[5] There are traces of actually killing the unlucky and responsible monarch. In Sweden he is said, in a time of public distress, to have been not only killed, but sacrificed to Odin. This is not, however, an historical statement.
II. THE ALLEGED MORTALITY OF GODS
There were other magico-religious reasons for killing kings. Mr. Frazer writes:[6] 'Lacking the idea of eternal duration, primitive man naturally supposes the gods to be mortal like himself.'
Here is, I venture to think, a notable fault in the argument. Early men, contrary to Mr. Frazer's account, suppose themselves to be naturally immortal. The myths of perhaps all races tell of a time when death had not yet entered the world. Man was born deathless. Death came in by an accident, or in consequence of an error, or an infraction of a divine command. To this effect we have Zulu, Australian, Maori, Melanesian, Central African, Vedic Aryan, Kamschadal, and countless other myths; not to speak of the first chapters of Genesis.[7] 'In the thought of immortality' early man is cradled. His divine beings are usually regarded as prior to and unaffected by the coming of death, which invades men, but not these beings, or not most of them.
Indeed, some low savages have not yet persuaded themselves that death is natural. 'Amongst the Central Australian natives,' say Spencer and Gillen, 'there is no such thing as belief in natural death; however old or decrepit a man or woman may be when this takes place, it is at once supposed that it has been brought about by the magic influence of some enemy,' and it is avenged on the enemy, as in the blood-feud.[8] These Australians in Mr. Frazer's opinion (though not in mine) are 'primitive.'
Thus, far from lacking the idea of eternal duration of life, 'primitive man' has no other idea. Not that he formulates his idea in such a term as 'eternal.' Mariner says, indeed, concerning the Tongan supreme being Ta-li-y-Tooboo, 'Of his origin they had no idea, rather supposing him to be eternal.' But, in Tongan, the metaphysical idea of eternity is only expressed in the meaning of the god's name, 'wait-there-Tooboo.' This god occasionally inspires the How, or elective king, but the How was never sacrificed to provide the god with a sturdier incarnation, a process which Mr. Frazer's theory of the Divinity of Christ demands as customary. Being 'eternal' Tá-li-y-Tooboo was independent of a human vehicle.[9]
These facts must be remembered, for it is indispensable to Mr. Frazer's theory to prove that the immortals are believed, to a sufficient extent, to be mortal. Hence the supposed need of killing divine kings, their vehicles. Primitive man, according to Mr. Frazer, thinks his gods mortal. But primitive man by his initial hypothesis had no gods at all. Mr. Frazer clearly means that when man was no longer primitive, he conceived the gods to be mortal like himself. I have elsewhere given many examples of the opposite belief among races of many grades of culture, from the Australian blacks to the immortal gods of Homer.[10] The point will be found to be important later, and I must firmly express my opinion that, so long as people believe their gods to be alive, and testify that belief by prayers, hymns, and sacrifices, it is impossible to argue from a few local, and contradictory, and easily explicable myths, that these peoples believe their gods to be dead, or in danger of dying. Here, I think, the common sense of students will agree with me.
However, as this general and pervading belief in the mortality of the gods is absolutely essential to Mr. Frazer's argument, perhaps the point had better be settled. As examples of belief in the fact that the god is dead, we have the Greenlanders.[11]
The Greenlanders believed that a wind could kill their most powerful god, and that he would certainly die if he touched a dog. Mr. Tylor, on the other hand, tells us that to I the summerland' of the Greenland deity, 'beneath the sea, Greenland souls hope to descend at death.' Let us trust that 'No Dogs are Admitted.' This Greenland divine being, Torngarsuk, I so clearly held his place as supreme deity in the native mind that,' as Cranz the missionary relates, 'many Greenlanders hearing of God and His almighty power were apt to fall on the idea that it was their Torngarsuk who was meant.' The Greenland deity was unborrowed; he 'seems no figure derived from the religion of Scandinavian colonists, ancient or modern.'[12]
From Cranz's evidence (and much more might be cited) the most powerful god of the Greenlanders was not dead, nor likely to die, in spite of the apprehensions of certain Greenlanders, communicated to a person not named by Mr. Frazer, but quoted in a work of 1806.[13] At the best the Greenland evidence is contradictory; all Greenlanders did not agree with Mr. Frazer's Greenland authority. Nor was the Accuser of the Brethren currently believed to be deceased, when the ancient folk-song assures us that