[7] Robertson Smith, Marriage and Kinship in Early Arabia, p. 26.
[8] Lafitau, Mœurs des sauvages ameriquains, ii. 163.
[9] Casalis, Basutos, p. 224 sq.
[10] Warner, in Maclean, Compendium of Kafir Laws, p. 60 sq.
[11] Thomas Smith, Common-wealth of England, p. 194 sq.
[12] Cf. 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.”[13] Among the Káfirs of the Hindu-Kush, “the mere killing of an individual 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]
[13] Bridges, in South American Missionary Magazine, xiii. 153.
[14] Scott 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.