[13] Pollock and Maitland, op. cit. ii. 471.
Among the Kandhs “similar compensation is made in all cases both of excusable homicide and of manslaughter.”[14] And the same is said to be the case among various other savages or barbarians.[15]
[14] Macpherson, Memorials of Service in India, p. 82.
[15] Crawfurd, History of the Indian Archipelago, iii. 123. Ellis, Ew̔e-speaking Peoples of the Slave Coast, p. 223. Munzinger, Ostafrikanische Studien, p. 502 (Barea and Kunáma).
However, this want of discrimination between intentional and accidental injuries is not restricted to cases of revenge or compensation. Early punishment is sometimes equally indiscriminate.
Among the Káfirs of the Hindu-Kush, “murder, justifiable homicide, and killing by inadvertence in a quarrel, are all classed as one crime, and punished in the same way. Extenuating circumstances are never considered. The single question asked is, Did the man kill the other? The penalty is an extremely heavy blood-ransom to the family of the slain man, or perpetual exile combined with spoliation of the criminal’s property.”[16] Parkyns tells us the following story from Abyssinia:—A boy who had climbed a tree, happened to fall down right on the head of his little comrade standing below. The comrade died immediately, and the unlucky climber was in consequence sentenced to be killed in the same way as he had killed the other boy, that is, the dead boy’s brother should climb the tree in his turn, and tumble down on the other’s head till he killed him.[17] The Cameroon tribes do not recognise the circumstance of accidental death:—“He who kills another accidentally must die. Then, they say, the friends of each are equal mourners.”[18] Among the negroes of Accra, according to Monrad, accidental homicide is punished as severely as intentional.[19]
[16] Scott Robertson, Káfirs of the Hindu-Kush, p. 440.
[17] Parkyns, Life in Abyssinia, ii. 236 sqq.
[18] Richardson, ‘Observations among the Cameroon Tribes of West Central Africa,’ in Memoirs of the International Congress of Anthropology, Chicago, p. 203. See also Leuschner, in Steinmetz, Rechtsverhältnisse, p. 24 (Bakwiri); ibid. p. 51 (Banaka and Bapuku).
[19] Monrad, Guinea-Kysten og dens Indbyggere, p. 88.