Note 95.3 — Chapter IX · WITCHCRAFT: SYMPATHETIC MAGIC.

In the Mahábhárata an ascetic who is enraged with king Dhritaráshtra accepts from the king the carcases of some cattle which had died. Then he lighted a sacrificial fire and cut up the animals; and “observant of rigid vows the great Dálvya-vaka poured Dhritaráshtra’s kingdom as a libation on the fire with the aid of those pieces of meat. Upon the commencement of that fierce sacrifice, according to due rites, the kingdom of Dhritaráshtra began to waste away, even as a large forest begins to disappear when men proceed to cut it down.” The monarch, it need hardly be added, was soon reduced to submission.95.3 Here the foe is affected by rites performed upon his cattle; and perhaps the same belief is the origin of the resentment felt by a Samoan when he finds marks of a knife or hatchet inflicted by another upon anything belonging to him, such as his canoe, his breadfruit-tree, or even on a few taro-plants. We are told that “he considers it is like cutting himself, and rages like a bear to find out who has done it.”95.4 The close connection held in cases like these to subsist between property and its owner is further exemplified by the practice of the Pipiles of Central America, who had special regulations for indulgence in marital embraces at the moment of sowing.96.1 So also when the Ynca Mayta Capac ordered certain prisoners in one of the provinces he had conquered to be burnt alive, the zealous people not only carried out the command but included in the punishment all that the criminals had in their houses, destroying the houses and strewing their sites with stones as accursed places. “They also destroyed their flocks, and even pulled up the trees they had planted. It was ordered that their land should never be given to any one, but that it should remain desolate, that no man might inherit with it the evil deeds of its former owners.”96.2 Among the Alfours of Posso in Celebes, when a man dies he is solemnly tried, and every one is entitled to express an opinion upon his life. If the decision be unfavourable he is buried without ceremony, provided his debts be paid, and his goods are destroyed, for nobody can, and nobody wishes to, inherit from him.96.3 The spirit and intention evinced in this destruction of a great offender’s property dictated the extermination (or at least the story of the extermination) of Achan, the son of Zerah, with the goods he had appropriated at the sack of Jericho, his sons, and his daughters, “his oxen, and his asses, and his sheep, and his tent, and all that he had.” It was only when they had been burnt and covered with a great heap of stones, as in the case of the Peruvian prisoners, that “the Lord turned from the fierceness of his anger.”96.4 Hardly an extension is it of the belief here indicated which leads the Chinese to identify the produce of labour with the labourer himself. In the Middle Kingdom grave-clothes are procured long beforehand and kept in store for years. Professor De Groot says: “Old age being a benefit the Chinese prefer above all things, most people have the clothes in question cut out and sewed by an unmarried girl or a very young woman, wisely calculating that, whereas such a person is likely to live still a great number of years, a part of her capacity to live still long must surely pass into the clothes, and thus put off for many years the moment when they shall be required for use.”97.1 Traces of the same thought are found in the German requirement that in making vinegar, to make it good, one must look sour and be savage, and in the high value placed upon yarn spun by a girl under seven years of age.97.2