[39] Polack, Manners and Customs of the New Zealanders, i. 244.
[40] Williams and Calvert, Fiji, pp. 184, 195.
[41] Oldenberg, Religion des Veda, pp. 304, 366 sqq. Barth, Religions of India, p. 36, n. 2.
[42] Rig-Veda, ii. 11. 11; viii. 4. 10; viii. 17. 4; viii. 78. 7; x. 86. 13 sqq.
[43] Erman, op. cit. pp. 273, 275, 279. Maspero, op. cit. p. 110.
[44] Ball, ‘Glimpses of Babylonian Religion,’ in Proceed. Soc. Biblical Archæology, xiv. 153 sqq. Maspero, op. cit. p. 679.
The idea that supernatural beings have human appetites and human wants leads to the practice of sacrifice. Whatever means they may have of earning their livelihood, they are certainly not indifferent to gifts offered by men. If such offerings fail them they may even suffer want and become feeble and powerless. The Egyptian gods, says M. Maspero, “were dependent upon the gifts of mortals, and the resources of each individual deity, and consequently his power, depended on the wealth and number of his worshippers.”[45] We meet with the same idea at every step in the Vedic hymns.[46] Should sacrifices cease for an instant to be offered, the gods would cease to send rain, to bring back at the appointed hour Aurora and the sun, to raise and ripen harvests—not only because they would be unwilling, but because they would be unable to do so.[47] It was by sacrifice that the gods delivered the world from chaos, and it is by sacrifice that man prevents it from lapsing back into the same state;[48] in the ‘Laws of Manu’ it is said that sacrifices support “both the movable and the immovable creation.”[49] The Zoroastrian books likewise represent the sacrifice as an act of assistance to the gods, by which they become victorious in their combats with the demons.[50] When not strengthened by offerings they fly helpless before their foes. Overcome by the demon Apaosha, the bright and glorious Tistrya cries out in distress:—“Woe is me, O Ahura Mazda!… Men do not worship me with a sacrifice in which I am invoked by my own name…. If men had worshipped me with a sacrifice in which I had been invoked by my own name, as they worship the other Yazatas with sacrifices in which they are invoked by their own names, I should have taken to me the strength of ten horses, the strength of ten camels, the strength of ten bulls, the strength of ten mountains, the strength of ten rivers.”[51]
[45] Maspero, op. cit. p. 302. Cf. Wiedemann, Ancient Egyptian Doctrine of the Immortality of the Soul, p. 19.
[46] Rig-Veda, ii. 15. 2; x. 52. 5 sq.; x. 121. 7. Cf. Atharva-Veda, xi. 7. 14 sq.; Hopkins, Religions of India, p. 149; Kaegi, Rigveda, p. 31; Darmesteter, Ormazd et Ahriman, p. 329.
[47] Barth, op. cit. p. 36.