Comparative Religion

by J. Estlin Carpenter

Offerings to the dead pass through a long series of stages, from the simple provision for the wants of the dead man in the grave up to his proper equipment with all that is due to his rank and state in the next life, or the maintenance of the ties of guardianship and protection over unborn generations. The earliest human remains imply some dim belief that the grave was the dead man's dwelling (p. [20]), and there he must be supplied with the requisites for some kind of continued existence. All over the world, food, weapons, ornaments, utensils, are found deposited in barrow and tomb; and this practice culminates in the complicated arrangements of an Egyptian sepulchre, where the wealthy landowner constructed an enduring home for his double, and filled it with representations and objects which could be magically converted to his entertainment after death. When the dead man passes into another world, and enters a land resembling that which he has left ([Chap. VIII]), he may need wives and slaves appropriate to his rank. From ancient Japan and still more ancient China all round the globe to Mexico are traces of such ritual murder. The widow's self-devotion was exalted in India to religious duty, and cases still occasionally occur when (in spite of the British Government) she seeks to mount the pyre and immolate herself beside her husband's corpse. In West Africa the ghastly tale of the Grand Customs of Dahomey in the last century is well known; and it is supposed that thousands of lives are still annually sacrificed in the Dark Continent to this belief. Other personal needs must be supplied, and on the Gold Coast in the last century an observer saw fine clothes and gold buried with the chief; and a flask of rum, his pipe and tobacco, were laid ready to his hand. Moreover, goods of all kinds can be made over by fire; and in the funeral rites of a Chinese family a paper house with paper furniture and large quantities of paper money may be burned for the endowment of a departed member in his next life.

Or the offering may be made for the cherishing of the dead in their former home. The simplest and the most common sacrificial act in Melanesia, Bishop Codrington tells us, is that of throwing a small portion of food to the dead. It may be nothing more than a bit of yam or a morsel of betel-nut; it is not for food, but for remembrance and affection. But sometimes it is for actual nourishment. The dead in ancient India who had none to render to them the needful sustenance, wandered as dismal ghosts round their former dwellings, or haunted the cross roads, compelled to feed themselves on the garbage of the streets. The funeral meals, continued at intervals, were celebrated for the purpose of providing the departed with new forms, and converting them into the higher rank of "Fathers." In many lands, from Europe to Japan and Central America, an annual feast for the dead has been maintained in various modes both in classic antiquity and in modern usage; and the ancient practice still survives in strangely altered fashion in the cakes and confectionery carried on All Souls' Day to the graves in the great Parisian cemetery of Père Lachaise.

Such acts of recognition and fellowship pass through very different stages. They begin with a desire for self-identification with the mysterious power which helps or hurts; as the power is conceived on a greater and more personal scale they turn into tribute and homage. The West African negro passing a big rock or an unusually large tree will add a stone or bit of wood or tuft of grass to the little heap of such trifles at its foot; it is for the Ombwiri, or spirit of the place. After the harvest on the plateau of Lake Tanganyika, pilgrimages are made to the mountain of Fwambo-Liamba; at the top is a sort of altar of small stones, and there scraps of calico, bits of wood, flowers, beads, are laid in honour of a vague "High God" called Lesa. The nature of such gifts may be traced through all gradations of economic advance, just as the mode of conveying it passes through various phases from the coarse to the refined. The pastoral nomad brings the firstling of his flocks; the more advanced agriculturist adds the produce of the ground. The immigrant Hebrew under Canaanite tuition adopted the festivals of harvest and vintage, and with firstlings and tithes wrought his husbandry into his religion when he went to the sanctuary "to see Yahweh's face." The daily sacrifice in the great temple of Marduk at Babylon under Nebuchadrezzar was an epitome of the whole tillage of the land; the choicest fruits, the finest produce of the meadow, honey, cream, oil, wine of different vintages, must be served. In the early ritual of an Egyptian temple, when the daily toilet of the god had been performed and he had been duly robed, painted, and oiled, his table was spread with bread, goose, beef, wine, and water, and decorated with the flowers needed to adorn a meal.

In many cases such offerings carried with them the additional purpose of actually increasing the vigour of the god. Dim notions of promoting the divine vitality hovered in the background. The physical effect might be reached by divers modes. Food was at first conveyed by actual contact; it might be smeared upon the idol's mouth. Offerings to earth spirits were buried in the ground. Water deities received them when they were thrown into the well, the river, or the lake. Even in Greece Poseidon's horses were driven into the sea, just as the horses of the defeated Mallius were offered by the Gallic victors to the Rhine. Indian realism provided the Fathers who assembled for the rice-ball sacrifice with water and tufts of wool to cleanse themselves after the meal. In more refined usage fire conveyed the essence of the food to the upper airs. At Noah's sacrifice on the subsidence of the flood Yahweh smelt the sweet savour, and in the corresponding Babylonian narrative the gods, drawn by the scent, gathered together around the offerer "like flies." The American Osages invited the Great Spirit, Fire, and Earth, to smoke with them at the beginning of a new enterprise. The Sioux lighted the pipe of peace and offered it to the sun, with the invocation, "Smoke, O Sun."

Many and various are the ideals which have gathered round the offering, as magic and religion have strangely blended. The sacred tree, whether among the Celts of the West or the Syrians of the East, is hung with rags of clothing, sometimes doubtless with the same motive which prompts similar gifts at the tomb of a Mohammedan saint, for the transference of diseases from the sick. The highest value was reached among the ancient Irish, as among the Semites, in the sacrifice of the first-born; and the long tale of human victims indicates man's passionate desire to secure in divers forms supernatural aid. They have been slain in crises of national danger by plague or war, in atonement for sin,[[1]] or in thanksgiving for victory. They have been immured in the foundations of houses or cities that their spirits might remain as guardians of the gates. They have been done to death in the seasons of the agricultural year that their lives might fertilise the soil and quicken the grain. They have been forced to yield their entrails to the diviner that the secrets of the future might be unveiled.

[[1]] The sacrifices of purification and atonement are briefly considered in Chapter VII.

Brahmanical speculation carried the ideas of sympathetic magic in association with sacrifice to their highest pitch. The Vedic hymns early formulated the idea of reciprocal obligation in the crudest terms: Dehi me, dadāmi te—"Give to me, I give to thee." But this simple relation was superseded in the priestly ceremonial by elaborate parallels between the daily order of the ritual and the daily order of the skies. The earthly sacrifices were the counterparts of those offered by celestial priests. The "Fathers" accomplished the rising of the sun; and when the heavenly process was imitated in the world below, the kindling of the sacred fire came to be regarded as the actual instrument for stimulating and maintaining the activities above. From a yet higher point of view the whole world had issued from the mysterious sacrifice of a cosmic Man (described in one of the latest hymns of the Rig-Veda), out of whose person the visible universe, the Veda, and the human race in four castes, had been created. In the Brahmanical theology his place was taken by Prajāpati, the "Lord of Creatures," who underwent repeated offering in every sacrifice. And just as the primeval sacrifice effected the generation of the world, so every fresh oblation was a miniature reproduction of the cosmic event. The Lord who had been dismembered must be reconstituted that he might offer himself anew; and thus sacrifice was blended with the course of Time and the period of the Year, and the perpetual dissolution and renewal of the life that animated the mighty frame of earth and heaven. In that upper world, moreover, the sacrificer, through mystical identification with Prajāpati, was enabled to prepare a new body for the celestial abode, and out of the altar-ground below to generate his future divine self in the world above.

Along other lines the conception of fellowship with Deity may be realised through a common act. Above the personal fetish of a Gold Coast negro to which he made offerings of rum and palm-wine, oil, corn, sheep, goats, stood the patron god of the family. Before a separation which would prevent them from ever again worshipping together, they engaged in a strange kind of communion. The fetish-priest pounded up some sacred substance and mixed it with water, which was then drunk by the whole family in turn. During the rite the priest enjoined all present in the name of the deity to abstain from some particular kind of food, fish, beef, fowl, milk, or other article of diet. None of the company tasted it again. They were united by the deity within them; and obedience to his command bound them, however far apart, in common worship.

Sometimes the worshipper sat at the table of the god, who was in some sense present at the meal celebrated in his honour. In the usage of ancient Israel the householder shared with his family, kinsmen, neighbours, and guests, in the sacred feast "before Yahweh." How far the belief in Yahweh's presence was actually cherished by the participants cannot be definitely affirmed; it does not appear, for instance, in the Babylonian ritual. But a corresponding idea may certainly be traced in Greece and Rome. From the early cult of the sacred stone or pillar as the abode of deity, some kind of divine power inhered in the altar and the image; and when the members of the clan feasted together on solemn occasions, the clan-god was present with his worshippers. The Greek ritual sometimes provided a place for the table-companions or "parasites," at sacred banquets, such as were held in the temples of Apollo at Acharnæ or Delos.

An inscription at Magnesia describes a festival of twelve gods, whose images, adorned with festal array, were carried into the marketplace, and arranged on three cushions under a canopy. When sacrifices had been offered, the priests and people partook of a common meal with the gods. The old Latins and other Italians believed the deities of the house to be present at their meals. The Penates, Mr. Warde Fowler tells us, were the spirits of the foods. Rome celebrated its solemn feast of Jove in the Capitoline temple every September on full-moon day, when Jupiter, with his face painted red, Juno, and Minerva, were present in their statues to share the meal with the magistrates and Senate of the city. To "lay a couch for the god" (as we might say "to lay a table") was a common phrase. Recently discovered papyri, illustrating so many aspects of daily life in the Eastern Mediterranean, show that such hospitalities were of frequent occurrence, alike in temples and in private houses. Among the precious remains from Oxyrhynchus are such notes as this: "Antonius son of Ptolemæus invites you to dine with him at the table of our Lord Sarapis in the house of Claudius Sarapion on the 16th at 9 o'clock."