I 'i' Manes al R e,or a heifer never yoked to Minen a.
In Egypt, notwithstanding that the number of sacred animals was very considerable, other victims were se- lected tor offerings. I bus a pig was prest nted to the god answering to Hercules and iEsculapius, bul not to
i 8h( .ii to the mother of the gods, hut not to Isis; a .at to II., in-; a cockroach, or some kind of lilatta
the -odd.- identified with Thetis.
ih- minute observances of their re- Ii tiulaa of words had a certain independent
ii pra; i i and sacrifice was
»sed io ih- divinitit - of
thatth h mid leave th.ir oldabodes
I ■ harm: .and they ii he known what god was th<
hi ir enemies should practice the
' them. In India. ;i,
ing a magical po vi r. The old Gayatri.ifi ol such po- in <au obtain happiness hy il whether he performs otl i rvices or
not. The repeating ..t it in the morning dawn until the -'in appears removes ever) unpcrccivcd fault of tin- night, and a -imilar repetition in the evening twi-
POLYTHEISM
381
POLYTHEISM
Throughout a large part of the world human heings were offered as sacrifices to the gods of the heathen, and the farther hack we penetrate into antiquity the more common is this horrid practice. There are two forms of it, the sacrifice of children, especially of the first-horn, and that of grown-up men. The first appears in countries where the worship of Moloch — perhaps of Baal and other kindred gods — prevailed, as in Phoeni- cia, the land of Canaan, Moah, perhaps, and Carthage, and traces of the same may he found in the island of Crete. Also in some parts of this continent the same practice seems to have gained some footing. To this the prophet Micah (vi, 7), the law of Moses (Lev. xx, 2-5), the historical books (2 Kings xvi, 3 ; comp. Dent, xii, 31), and other parts of the Scriptures refer, unless in some of these passages simple lustration by fire with- out burning may be intended. But far more common was the sacrifice of grown-up men. As nations grew more humane, this practice was softened down; either men condemned to death, who had to die at any rate, were selected as the victims, or a person was scourged or cut only until the blood ran, or the rite was per- formed upon an image substituted for a human being. Such substitution can be traced in Egypt, Greece, and Borne. In India human sacrifices were introduced, when the obscene and cruel Siva religion spread among the people, into his worship and that of his wife Durga, or Kali. The Kalika-Purana is cited by Ward and others as saying that Kali " felt a pleasure for a month in the blood of fish offered to her; for nine months in that of wild animals; for a hundred years in that of a tiger ; and in that of a lion, a stag, or a man, for a thou- sand years. Three men's blood appease her for a hun- dred thousand years. The offering of blood is like the drink of the gods (the Soma) ; Brahma and all the gods assemble at the offering" (Ward, iii, 174; Wuttke, ii, 355; Asiat. Res. v, 371). In other countries, as in Gaul, in Mexico, in Peru, above all in Mexico, this practice as- sumed frightful proportions, showing how man can be debased and made savage by his religion. There is ground for believing that cannibalism may have grown out of the sacrificial feasts after battle, when an enemy was slaughtered to the gods who gave the victory.
We ask at this stage of the subject, what was the meaning of pagan offerings'? As they understood their religious rites, the unbloody were expressions of grati- tude and acknowledgment for protection. Whatever the form of offering was, the god was conceived of as being pleased with them. How did they account for this pleasure? There are traces of the conception that the gods enjoyed offerings as we enjoy food. The faith of the Aryan race in regard to the Soma offering, and the idea that the smoke of burning sacrifices was agree- able to the divinities, show the grosser forms of anthro- pomorphism. Sacrifices of a public nature may be re- garded as feasts to which a god or gods were invited ; the altar was the public hearth ; the victim was par- taken of by all the worshippers after due purgations, libations, and other preparations; the god had his share of the meal, which went up to him in the skies. At the bottom of all this, however, the feeling no doubt was that the worshipper gave up something of value, and thus showed his devotion to his protector. But this explanation does not exhaust the entire meaning of animal sacrifices. Thus certain animals not used for food, as dogs, horses, wolves, bears, and even asses, were in some Greek rites the appropriate victims, the prob- able reason for which is given by K. Ottfried Miiller (Dorier, i, 279) that animals hated by a particular god he would be pleased to see bleeding at his altar. The sacrifice of a dog to Hecate may be accounted for from the dog's baying at the moon, and of a stag to Artemis because she was a huntress.