The taking of life for life may itself, in a way, serve as compensation. It seems that, in some cases, the blood of the slain homicide is supposed to restore, as it were, to the family of his victim the loss of life which he has caused them.[51] Such an idea probably underlies a custom which Burckhardt heard existed among the Hallenga, who draw their origin from Abyssinia. When the slayer has been seized by the relatives of the deceased, a family feast is proclaimed, at which the murderer is brought into their midst. While his throat is then slowly cut with a razor, the blood is caught in a bowl and handed round amongst the guests, “every one of whom is bound to drink of it at the moment the victim breathes his last.”[52] Among various Arabic-speaking tribes in Morocco I have met with a practice which also, possibly, involves a vague idea of restoration. On the perpetration of his deed the avenger licks off the blood from the blade of the dagger with which he killed his victim; and in one instance related to me, he bit off a piece of flesh from the dead body and sucked its blood.[53] Mr. Trumbull even goes so far as to believe that, among the Hebrews, the primal idea of the goel’s mission was not to wreak vengeance, but “to restore life for life, or to secure the adjusted equivalent of a lost life.”[54] But it is difficult to suppose that the exacting of blood-revenge ever could have been looked upon as an equivalent in the full sense of the term. If the loss of life is to be compensated some other practice must take its place.
[51] Cf. Trumbull, Blood Covenant, p. 126 sqq.
[52] Burckhardt, Travels in Nubia, p. 356.
[53] Cf. Goldziher, in Robertson Smith, Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia, p. 296 n. 1.
[54] Trumbull, Blood Covenant, pp. 260, 263.
Sometimes the manslayer, instead of being killed, is adopted as a member of the family of his victim.[55] Among the Kabyles of Algeria, for instance, a person who has killed another unintentionally, goes to the parents of the dead and says to them: “If you want to kill me, kill me, here is my winding-sheet. If not, pardon me, and I shall henceforth be one of your children.” And from this day the manslayer is considered to belong to the kharouba, or gens, of the deceased.[56] Among the Jbâla of Northern Morocco, again, a homicide sometimes induces the avenger to abstain from his persecutions by giving him his sister or daughter in marriage; and a similar custom has been noticed among the Beni Amer[57] and Bogos.[58] In other cases slaves are given to the relatives of the slain in order to atone for the guilt;[59] but most commonly the compensation consists of cattle, money, or other property.
[55] See Steinmetz, Studien, i. 410 sqq., 439 sqq.; Kovalewsky, in Revue Internationale de Sociologie, ii. 87 sq.
[56] Hanoteau and Letourneux, La Kabylie, iii. 68 sq.
[57] Munzinger, Ostafrikanische Studien, p. 322.
[58] Idem, Die Sitten und das Recht der Bogos, p. 83. Cf. Kohler, Nachwort zu Shakespeare vor dem Forum der Jurisprudenz, p. 15 sq.