Note 218 — Introductory Essay on Caste (continued 2)

When the community reached the national or agricultural stage some central executive authority became necessary for its preservation. This authority usually fell into the hands of the priest who performed the sacrifice, and he became a king. Since the priest killed the sacrificial animal in which the common life of the community was held to be centred, it was thought that the life passed to him and centred in his person. For the idea of the extinction of life was not properly understood, and the life of a human being or animal might pass by contact, according to primitive ideas, to the person or even the weapon which killed it, just as it could pass by assimilation to those who ate the flesh. In most of the city-states of Greece and Italy the primary function of the kings was the performance of the communal or national sacrifices. Through this act they obtained political power as representing the common life of the people, and its performance was sometimes left to them after their political power had been taken away.218 After the expulsion of the kings from Rome the duty of performing the city sacrifices devolved on the consuls. In India also the kings performed sacrifices. When a king desired to be paramount over his neighbours he sent a horse to march through their territories. If it passed through them without being captured they became subordinate to the king who owned the horse. Finally the horse was sacrificed at the Ashva-medha, the king paramount making the sacrifice, while the other kings performed subordinate parts at it.219 Similarly the Rāja of Nāgpur killed the sacrificial buffalo at the Dasahra festival. But the common life of the people was sometimes conveyed from the domestic animal to the king by other methods than the performance of a sacrifice. The king of Unyoro in Africa might never eat vegetable food but must subsist on milk and beef. Mutton he might not touch, though he could drink beer after partaking of meat. A sacred herd was kept for the king’s use, and nine cows, neither more nor less, were daily brought to the royal enclosure to be milked for his majesty. The boy who brought the cows from the pasture to the royal enclosure must be a member of a particular clan and under the age of puberty, and was subject to other restrictions. The milk for the king was drawn into a sacred pot which neither the milkman nor anybody else might touch. The king drank the milk, sitting on a sacred stool, three times a day, and any which was left over must be drunk by the boy who brought the cows from pasture. Numerous other rules and restrictions are detailed by Sir J.G. Frazer, and it may be suggested that their object was to ensure that the life of the domestic animal and with it the life of the people should be conveyed pure and undefiled to the king through the milk. The kings of Unyoro had to take their own lives while their bodily vigour was still unimpaired. When the period for his death arrived the king asked his wife for a cup of poison and drank it. “The public announcement of the death was made by the chief milkman. Taking a pot of the sacred milk in his hands he mounted the house-top and cried, ‘Who will drink the milk?’ With these words he dashed the pot on the roof; it rolled off and falling to the ground was broken in pieces. That was the signal for war to the death between the princes who aspired to the throne. They fought till only one was left alive. He was the king.”220 After completing the above account, of which only the principal points have been stated, Sir J.G. Frazer remarks: “The rule which obliged the kings of Unyoro to kill themselves or be killed before their strength of mind and body began to fail through disease or age is only a particular example of a custom which appears to have prevailed widely among barbarous tribes in Africa and to some extent elsewhere. Apparently this curious practice rests on a belief that the welfare of the people is sympathetically bound up with the welfare of their king, and that to suffer him to fall into bodily or mental decay would be to involve the whole kingdom in ruin.”221 Other instances connecting the life of the king with the ox or other domestic animal are given in Totemism and Exogamy and The Golden Bough222 Among the Hereros the body of a dead chief was wrapped up in the hide of an ox before being buried.223 In the Vedic horse-sacrifice in India the horse was stifled in robes. The chief queen approached him; a cloak having been thrown over them both, she performed a repulsively obscene act symbolising the transmission to her of his fructifying powers.224 In other cases the king was identified with the corn-spirit, and in this manner he also, it may be suggested, represented the common life of the people.