[228] See Nyrop, Romanske Mosaiker, p. 73 sqq.; also infra, [p. 465 sq.]
[229] Nyrop, op. cit. p. 73.
[230] Crooke, Popular Religion of Northern India, ii. 174.
[231] See Trumbull, Threshold Covenant, passim.
Whilst the man who is sacrificed is in some cases described as a guardian, he is in other cases regarded as a messenger. The Mayas of Yucatan maintained that the human victims whom they offered in times of distress were sent as messengers to the spirit-world to make known the wants of the people.[232] The same idea prevailed in Great Benin. When the head jujuman had said the prayer in which he asked Ogiwo to let no sickness come for Benin, he thus addressed the slaves who were going to be clubbed to death and tied in the sacrifice-trees:—“So you shall tell Ogiwo. Salute him proper.”[233] A message was likewise sent to the head juju with the slave who was sacrificed to it;[234] and a message saluting the rain-god was put in the mouth of the woman who was sacrificed when there was too much rain.[235] Mr. Ling Roth suggests that the main object of the human sacrifices which were offered in Benin “was the sending of prayers, by means of the special messengers, for the welfare of the community, to the spirits of the departed, or to other spirits, such as the spirits of the beads, the Rain-God, Sun-God, the God-Ogiwo”; and he thinks that this explains “a cult of world-wide prevalence.”[236] But considering that in Yucatan and Benin, as elsewhere, the human victim was sacrificed for the avowed purpose of averting some mortal danger from the community or the king, I conclude that there, also, the primary object of the rite was to offer a substitute, though this substitute came to be used as a messenger.
[232] Dorman, op. cit. p. 213.
[233] Moor and Roupell, quoted by Read and Dalton, op. cit. p. 7; also by Ling Roth, Great Benin, p. 72.
[236] Ling Roth, op. cit. p. 72.