Finally, as an ordinary curse, so an oath is made efficacious by bringing in the name of a supernatural being, to whom an appeal is made. When the Comanches of Texas make a sacred pledge or promise, “they call upon the great spirit as their father, and the earth as their mother, to testify to the truth of their asseverations.”[68] Of the Chukchi we are told that “as often as they would certify the truth of any thing by oath or solemn protestations they take the sun for their guarantee and security.”[69] Among the Tunguses an accused person takes a knife in his hand, brandishes it towards the sun, and says, “If I am guilty, may the sun send diseases into my bowels as mortal as a stab with this knife would be!”[70] An Arab from the province of Dukkâla in Morocco presses a dagger against his chest, saying, “By this poison, may God thrust it into my heart if I did so or so!” If a Masai is accused of having done something wrong, he drinks some blood, which is given him by the spokesman, and says, “If I have done this deed may God kill me”; and it is believed that if he has committed the crime he dies, whereas no harm befalls him if he is innocent.[71] Among the Tshi-speaking peoples of the Gold Coast, “to make an oath binding on the person who takes it, it is usual to give him something to eat or to drink which in some way appertains to a deity, who is then invoked to visit a breach of faith with punishment.”[72] Among the Shekani and Bakele people of Southern Guinea, when a covenant between different tribes is about to be formed, their great spirit, Mwetyi, “is always invoked as a witness, and is commissioned with the duty of visiting vengeance upon the party who shall violate the engagement.”[73] It seems to be a common practice in certain parts of Africa to swear by some fetish.[74] The Efatese, of the New Hebrides, invoked punishment from the gods in their oaths.[75] In Florida, of the Solomon Group, a man will deny an accusation by some tindalo (that is, the disembodied spirit of some man who already in his lifetime was supposed to be endowed with supernatural power), or by the ghostly frigate-bird, or by the ghostly shark.[76] When an ancient Egyptian wished to give assurance of his honesty and good faith, he called Thoth to witness, the advocate in the heavenly court of justice, without whose justification no soul could stand in the day of judgment.[77] The Eranians swore by Mithra,[78] the Greeks by Zeus,[79] the Romans by Jupiter and Dius Fidius.[80] A god is more able than ordinary mortals to master the processes of nature, and he may also better know whether the sworn word be true or false.[81] It is undoubtedly on account of their superior knowledge that sun or moon or light gods are so frequently appealed to in oaths. The Egyptian god Ra is a solar,[82] and Thoth a lunar[83] deity. The Zoroastrian Mithra, who “has a thousand senses, and sees every man that tells a lie,”[84] is closely connected with the sun;[85] and Rashnu Razista, according to M. Darmesteter, is an offshoot either of Mithra or Ahura Mazda himself.[86] Dius Fidius seems originally to have been a spirit of the heaven, and a wielder of the lightning, closely allied to the great Jupiter.[87] Zeus is all-seeing, the infallible spy of both gods and men.[88] Now, even though the oath has the form of an appeal to a god, it may nevertheless be of a chiefly magic character, being an imprecation rather than a prayer. The oaths which the Moors swear by Allah are otherwise exactly similar in nature to those in which he is not mentioned at all. But the more the belief in magic was shaken, the more the spoken word was divested of that mysterious power which had been attributed to it by minds too apt to confound words with facts, the more prominent became the religious element in the oath. The fulfilment of the self-imprecation was made dependent upon the free will of the deity appealed to, and was regarded as the punishment for an offence committed by the perjurer against the god himself.[89]
[68] Neighbors, in Schoolcraft, Indian Tribes of the United States, i. 132.
[69] Georgi, op. cit. iii. 183.
[70] Georgi, op. cit. iii. 85 sq.
[71] Hollis, Masai, p. 345.
[72] Ellis, Tshi-speaking Peoples of the Gold Coast, p. 196.
[73] Wilson, Western Africa, p. 392.
[74] Schultze, Der Fetischismus, p. 111.
[75] Turner, Samoa, p. 334.
[76] Codrington, op. cit. p. 217.