Chapter 7 RELIGIOUS REGICIDE

Peoples who think that all the luck depends on their king-man-god (the second sort, the superior sorcerer, with no god in him) hold, we are to believe, that his luck and cosmic influence wane with his waning forces. Therefore they kill him, and get a more vigorous recipient of his soul (not of a god) and of his luck.[29] Of king-killing for this reason Mr. Eraser gives, I think, one adequate example. Of the transmission of the soul of the slain divinity to his successor he 'has no direct proof,' though souls of incarnating gods are transmitted after natural deaths.[30]

Now this is a very important part of the long-drawn argument which is to suggest that Christ died as a mock-king, who also represented a god. First, we have seen that there are two kinds of man-god. In one kind a real god, 'of an order different from and superior to man,' is supposed to become incarnate. The other kind of man-god is only a superior 'sensitive' and sorcerer.[31]

Now Jesus, by Mr. Frazer's theory, died as representative of a god, therefore as one of the first two kinds of man-gods. But Mr. Frazer does not here, as I said, produce one solitary example of a man-god proved to be of the first class-a king in whom an acknowledged god is incarnate-being slain to prevent his inspiring god from waning with the man's waning energies.[32] Many examples of that practice are needed by the argument. I repeat that not one example is produced in this place. Mr. Frazer's entire argument depends on his announced failure to 'insist on' the distinction between two sorts of man-gods which he himself has drawn.[33] So I keep on insisting.

Again, it can hardly be said that any examples are produced of a king of the second sort (a man-god who is really no god at all, but a 'sensitive,' sorcerer, or magic-man) being slain to preserve the vigour of his magic. The examples to be cited all but universally give no proof of the idea of preserving man's magical vigour from the decay of old age.

The cases given, as a rule, are mere instances of superannuation. It is possible (would that it were easy) to pension off aged professors in the Scottish Universities. But to pension off a king merely means a series of civil wars. The early middle ages 'tonsured' weak kings. How tempting to represent this dedication of them to God as a mitigation of sacrifice! Kings, in fact, among some barbaric races, are slain merely by way of superannuation. Nay, the practice is not confined to kings. It is usual among elderly subjects.[34]

Let us take Mr. Frazer's examples.[35]

1. A Congo people believe that the world would perish if their chitome, or pontiff, died a natural death. So he was clubbed or strangled by his successor. But what god is incarnate in the chitome? None is mentioned.[36] The king himself 'is regarded as a god in earth, and all powerful in heaven.'

2. The Ethiopian kings of Meroe were worshipped as gods, but were ordered to die by the priests, on the authority of an alleged oracle of the gods, 'whenever the priests chose.' That they first showed any signs of decay 'we may conjecture.'[37] We have no evidence except that the priests put an end to the king 'whenever they chose.' And, far from alleging the king's decay or bad crops as the regular recognised reason, they alleged a special oracle of the gods.

3. When the King of Unyoro, in Central Africa, is old, or very ill, his wives kill him (an obvious reason readily occurs: it is the wives, not a god, who need a more spirited person), alleging an old prophecy that the throne will pass from the dynasty if the king dies a natural death. But it is not here shown that this king is a man-god of either species; and the prophecy does not concern injury to a god, or to magical rapport.[38]

4. The King of Kibanga, on the upper Congo, is killed by sorcerers when he 'seems near his end.' So are old dogs and cats and horses in this country, and peasants are even thought to provide euthanasia for kinsfolk 'near their end.' If the King of Kibanga is a man-god, Mr. Frazer does not say so.

5. If wounded in war the King of Gingero is killed by his comrades or kinsfolk, even if he be reluctant. The reason alleged is 'that he may not die by the hands of his enemies.' Did Saul, Brutus, and many other warriors who refuse to survive wounds and defeat die as man-gods? Is the King of Gingero a man-god?

6. Chaka, King of the Zulus, used hair-dye, having a great aversion to grey hairs. The Zulus, a warlike people, would not elect, or accept, a greyhaired king, and, though I know no instance of slaying a Zulu king because he was old, Mr. Isaacs (1836) says that grey hair is 'always followed by the death of the monarch.' Even if an historical example were given, a warlike race merely superannuates a disabled war-leader in the only safe way.

7. At last we reach a king-man-god in Sofala, who, according to Dos Santos, was the only god of the Caffres, and was implored to give good weather.[39] A modern Zulu told Dr. Callaway that 'when people say the heaven is the chief's they do not believe what they say.'[40] The Sofalese, or rather their neighbours, were perhaps more credulous; and it appears to have been a custom or law among them that a blemished king should kill himself, though a reforming prince denounced this as insanity, and altered the law. We are told that the king-god of the Sofalese was under this law, and a neighbouring king (who is nowhere said to have been a man-god) was. But what god, if any, was incarnate in this man-god, if he was a man-god, like his neighbour?[41]

8. The Spartans were warned by an oracle against a lame king, as the Mackenzies were warned by the Brahan seer against a set of physically blemished lairds. The seer's prophecy was fulfilled.[42] We do not hear that the Spartans Killed any lame king.

9. The King of the Eyeos is warned to kill himself, warned by a gift of parrot's eggs, 'when the people have conceived an opinion of his ill-government.' His wives strangle him, and his son succeeds, or did so before 1774, when the King refused to die at the request of his ministers. To make a case, it must be shown that the king was a man-god of one or other variety. He is, in fact, merely king while popular, 'holding the reins of government no longer than whilst he merits the approval of his people.'

10. The old Prussians were governed by a king called God's Mouth. 'If he wanted to leave a good name behind,' when weak and ill he burned himself to death, in front of a holy oak.

11. In Quilacare, in Southern India, the king cut himself to pieces, before an idol, after a twelve years' reign. We are not told that he was an incarnation of the god, if any, incorporated in, or represented by, the idol.

12. The King of Calicut, on the Malabar coast, used to cut his throat in public after a twelve years' reign. About 1680-1700 this was commuted. If any man could cut his way through 30,000 or 40,000 guardsmen, to kill the king, he succeeded. Three men tried, but numbers over-powered them. Other examples are given in which every regicide might become king, if he could, like Macbeth. It was held, at Passier, that God would not allow the king to be killed if he did not richly deserve it. These kings are not said to incarnate gods.

13. Ibn Batuta once saw a man throw a rope into the air, and climb up it. Another man followed and cut the first to pieces, which fell on the ground, were reunited, and no harm done. This veracious traveller also saw a man, at Java, kill himself for love of the Sultan, thereby securing liberal pensions for his family, as his father and grandfather had done before him. 'We may conjecture that formerly the Sultans of Java, like the Kings of Quilacare and Calicut, were bound to cut their own throats at the end of a fixed term of years,'[43] but that they deputed the duty to one certain family. We may conjecture, but, considering the lack of evidence, and the stories that Ibn Batuta freely tells, I doubt! Ibn, at the Court of Delhi, saw cups and dishes I at a wish appear, and at a wish retire.' Did the Sultan of Java incarnate a god?

14. This case is so extremely involved and hypothetical (it concerns Sparta, where I never heard that the king was a man-god) that the reader must be referred to the original.[44]

Meanwhile the list of instances is numerically respectable. But are the instances to the point? Do they prove a practice of killing a royal man-god, for the purpose of helping a god incarnate in him, or even of preventing his magical power (or mana, in New Zealand) from waning? They rather prove regicide as a form of superannuation, or as the result of the machinations of priests, or of public discontent. Above all, they do not demonstrate that the king is ever killed as an incarnation of a deity who needs a sturdier person to be incarnate in.

So recalcitrant is the evidence, that of all Mr. Frazer's kings who are here said to be gods, or to incarnate gods, not one is here said to be put to death by his worshippers.[45] And of all his kings who are here said to be put to death, not one is here said to incarnate a god.[46] Such are the initial difficulties of the theory: to which we may add that elderly men are notoriously killed by many savages just because they are elderly, whether they are kings or commoners.

Mr. Frazer's point is that Christ died in 'a halo of divinity,' visible 'wherever men had heard the old, old story of the dying and rising god.'[47] But, apart from other objections already urged, Mr. Frazer's present instances do not contain one example of a 'dying and rising god,' stated to be represented by a living man who is therefore killed; even if there are one or two cases of a slain king who is a medicine-man, sorcerer, or cosmic sensitive. Thus the argument fails from the first. Christ is to be reckoned divine as representing a king who was killed as an incarnation of a god. But of regicide for this reason no proof is afforded, as far as I can see.