In the East, persons sometimes commit suicide in order to avenge themselves on their enemies. Law of retaliation in a robber caste of southern India.
In the East that indifference to human life which seems so strange to the Western mind often takes a peculiar form. A man will sometimes kill himself merely in order to be revenged on his foe, believing that his ghost will haunt and torment the survivor, or expecting that punishment of some sort will overtake the wretch who drove him to this extreme step.[392] Among some peoples etiquette requires that if a man commits suicide for this purpose, his enemy should at once follow his example. To take a single example. There is a caste of robbers in southern India among whom “the law of retaliation prevails in all its rigour. If a quarrel takes place, and somebody tears out his own eye or kills himself, his adversary must do the same either to himself or to one of his relations. The women carry this barbarity still further. For a slight affront put on them, a sharp word said to them, they will go and smash their head against the door of her who offended them, and the latter is obliged immediately to do the same. If a woman poisons herself by drinking the juice of a poisonous herb, the other woman who drove her to this violent death must poison herself likewise; else her house will be burned, her cattle carried off, and injuries of all kinds done her until satisfaction is given. They extend this cruelty even to their own children. Not long ago, a few steps from the church in which I have the honour to write to you, two of these barbarians having quarrelled, one of them ran to his house, took from it a child of about four years, and crushed its head between two stones in the presence of his enemy. The latter, without exhibiting any emotion, took his nine-years' old daughter, and, plunging a dagger into her breast, said, ‘Your child was only four years old, mine was nine years old. Give me a victim to equal her.’ ‘Certainly,’ replied the other, and seeing at his side his eldest son, who was ready to be married, he stabbed him four or five times with his dagger; [pg 142] and, not content with shedding the blood of his two sons, he killed his wife too, in order to oblige his enemy to murder his wife in like manner. Lastly, a little girl and a baby at the breast had also their throats cut, so that in a single day seven persons were sacrificed to the vengeance of two bloodthirsty men, more cruel than the most ferocious brutes. I have actually in my church a young man who sought refuge among us, wounded by a spear-thrust which his father inflicted on him in order to kill him and thus oblige his foe to slay his own son in like manner. The barbarian had already stabbed two of his children on other occasions for the same purpose. Such atrocious examples will seem to you to partake more of fable than of truth; but believe me that far from exaggerating, I could produce many others not less tragical.”[393]
Contempt of death exhibited in antiquity by the Thracians and the Gauls.
The same contempt of death which many races have exhibited in modern times was displayed in antiquity by the hardy natives of Europe before Christianity had painted the world beyond the grave in colours at which even their bold spirits quailed. Thus, for example, at their banquets the rude Thracians used to suspend a halter over a movable stone and cast lots among themselves. The man on whom the lot fell mounted the stone with a scimitar in his hand and thrust his head into the noose. A comrade then rolled the stone from under him, and while he did so the other attempted to sever the rope with his scimitar. If he succeeded he dropped to the ground and was saved; if he failed, he was hanged, and his dying struggles were greeted with peals of laughter by his fellows, who regarded the whole thing as a capital joke.[394] The Greek traveller Posidonius, who visited Gaul early in the first century before our era, records that among the Celts men were to be found who for a sum of money or a number of jars of wine, which they distributed among their kinsmen or friends, would allow themselves to be publicly slaughtered in a theatre. They [pg 143] lay down on their backs upon a shield and a man came and cut their throats with a sword.[395]
In ancient Rome there were men willing to be beheaded for a sum of five minae.
A Greek author, Euphorion of Chalcis, who lived in the age when the eyes of all the world were turned on the great conflict between Rome and Carthage for the mastery of the Mediterranean, tells us that at Rome it was customary to advertise for men who would consent to be beheaded with an axe in consideration of receiving a sum of five minae, or about twenty pounds of our money, to be paid after their death to their heirs. Apparently there was no lack of applicants for this hard-earned bounty; for we are informed that several candidates would often compete for the privilege, each of them arguing that he had the best right to be cudgelled to death.[396] Why were these men invited to be beheaded for twenty pounds a piece? and why in response to the invitation did they gratuitously, as it would seem, express their readiness to suffer a much more painful death than simple decapitation? The reasons are not stated by Euphorion in the brief extract quoted from his work by Athenaeus, the Greek writer who has also preserved for us the testimony of Posidonius to the Gallic recklessness of life. But the connexion in which Athenaeus cites both these passages suggests that the intention of the Roman as of the Gallic practice was merely to minister to the brutal pleasure of the spectators; for he inserts his account of the customs in a dissertation on banquets, and he had just before described how hired ruffians fought and butchered each other at Roman dinner-parties for the amusement of the tipsy guests.[397] Or perhaps the men were wanted to be slaughtered at funerals, for we know that at Rome a custom formerly prevailed of sacrificing human beings at the tomb: the victims were commonly captives or slaves,[398] but they may sometimes have [pg 144] been obtained by advertisement from among the class of needy freemen. Such wretches in bidding against each other may have pleaded as a reason for giving them the preference that they really deserved for their crimes to die a slow and painful death under the cudgel of the executioner. This explanation of the custom, which I owe to my friend Mr. W. Wyse, is perhaps the most probable. But it is also possible, though the language of Euphorion does not lend itself so well to this interpretation, that a cudgelling preceded decapitation as part of the bargain. If that was so, it would seem that the men were wanted to die as substitutes for condemned criminals; for in old Rome capital punishment was regularly inflicted in this fashion, the malefactors being tied up to a post and scourged with rods before they were beheaded with an axe.[399] There is nothing improbable in the view that persons could be hired to suffer the extreme penalty of the law instead of the real culprits. We shall see that a voluntary substitution of the same sort is reported on apparently good authority to be still occasionally practised in China. However, it is immaterial to our purpose whether these men perished to save others, to adorn a funeral, or merely to gratify the Roman lust for blood. The one thing that concerns us is that in the great age of Rome there were to be found Romans willing, nay, eager to barter their lives for a paltry sum of money of which they were not even to have the enjoyment. No wonder that men made of that stuff founded a great empire, and spread the terror of the Roman arms from the Grampians to the tropics.[400]
Chinese indifference to death.
The comparative indifference with which the Chinese regard their lives is attested by the readiness with which they commit suicide on grounds which often seem to the European extremely trifling.[401] A still more striking proof [pg 145] of their apathy in this respect is furnished by the readiness with which in China a man can be induced to suffer death for a sum of money to be paid to his relatives. Thus, for example, “one of the most wealthy of the aboriginal tribes, called Shurii-Kia-Miau, is remarkable for the practice of a singular and revolting religious ceremony. The people possess a large temple, in which is an idol in the form of a dog. They resort to this shrine on a certain day every year to worship. At this annual religious festival it is, I believe, customary for the wealthy members of the tribe to entertain their poorer brethren at a banquet given in honour of one who has agreed, for a sum of money paid to his family, to allow himself to be offered as a sacrifice on the altar of the dog idol. At the end of the banquet the victim, having drunk wine freely, is put to death before the idol. This people believe that, were they to neglect this rite, they would be visited with pestilence, famine, or the sword.”[402] Further, it is said that in China a man condemned to death can procure a substitute, who, for a small sum, will voluntarily consent to be executed in his stead. The money goes to the substitute's kinsfolk, and since to increase the family prosperity at the expense of personal suffering is regarded by the Chinese as an act of the highest virtue, there is reported to be, just as there used to be in ancient Rome, quite a competition among the candidates for death. Such a substitution is even recognised by the Chinese authorities, except in the case of certain grave crimes, as for instance parricide. The local mandarin is probably not averse to the arrangement, for he is said to make a pecuniary profit by the transaction, [pg 146] engaging a substitute for a less sum than he received from the condemned man, and pocketing the difference.[403]
We must not judge of all men's love of life by our own.
The foregoing evidence may suffice to convince us that we should commit a grievous error were we to judge all men's love of life by our own, and to assume that others cannot hold cheap what we count so dear. We shall never understand the long course of human history if we persist in measuring mankind in all ages and in all countries by the standard, perhaps excellent but certainly narrow, of the modern English middle class with their love of material comfort and “their passionate, absorbing, almost bloodthirsty clinging to life.” That class, of which I may say, in the words of Matthew Arnold, that I am myself a feeble unit, doubtless possesses many estimable qualities, but among them can hardly be reckoned the rare and delicate gift of historical imagination, the power of entering into the thoughts and feelings of men of other ages and other countries, of conceiving that they may regulate their life by principles which do not square with ours, and may throw it away for objects which to us might seem ridiculously inadequate.[404]