[297] Dithmar of Merseburg, Chronicon, viii. 2 (Pertz, Monumenta Germaniæ historica, v. 861). Zimmer, op. cit. p. 330.
[298] Ralston, Songs of the Russian People, p. 327 sq.
[299] Grimm, op. cit. p. 344.
[300] Cæsar, De bello gallico, vi. 19. In the ancient annals of the Irish there is one trace of human sacrifice being offered as a funeral rite (Cusack, History of the Irish Nation, p. 115 n.*).
[301] Iliad, xxiii. 175.
According to early notions, men require wives and servants not only during their life-time, but after their death. The surviving relatives want to satisfy their needs, out of affection or from fear of withholding from the dead what belongs to them—their wives and their slaves. The destruction of innocent life seems justified by the low social standing of the victims and their subjection to their husbands or masters. However, with advancing civilisation this sacrifice has a tendency to disappear, partly, perhaps, on account of a change of ideas as regards the state after death, but chiefly, I presume, because it becomes revolting to public feelings. It then dwindles into a survival. As a probable instance of this may be mentioned a custom prevalent among the Tacullies of North America: the widow is compelled by the kinsfolk of the deceased to lie on the funeral pile where the body of her husband is placed, whilst the fire is lighting, until the heat becomes intolerable.[302] In ancient Egypt little images of clay, or wood, or stone, or bronze, made in human likeness and inscribed with a certain formula, were placed within the tomb, presumably in the hopes that they would there attain to life and become the useful servants of the dead.[303] So also the Japanese[304] and Chinese, already in early times, placed images in, or at, the tombs of their dead as substitutes for human victims; and these images have always been considered to have no less virtual existence in the next world than living servitors, wives, or concubines. In China the original immolations were, moreover, replaced by the custom of allowing the nearest relatives and slaves of the deceased simply to settle on the tomb, instead of entering it, there to sacrifice to the manes, and by prohibiting widows from remarrying.[305]
[302] Wilkes, U.S. Exploring Expedition, iv. 453.
[303] Wiedemann, Ancient Egyptian Doctrine of the Immortality of the Soul, p. 63.
[304] Tylor, Primitive Culture, i. 463.
[305] de Groot, op. cit. (vol. ii. book) i. 794 sqq.