CHAPTER VII INCARNATE HUMAN GODS

The conception of gods has been slowly evolved.

As religion grows, magic declines into a black art.

The instances which in the preceding chapters I have drawn from the beliefs and practices of rude peoples all over the world, may suffice to prove that the savage fails to recognise those limitations to his power over nature which seem so obvious to us. In a society where every man is supposed to be endowed more or less with powers which we should call supernatural, it is plain that the distinction between gods and men is somewhat blurred, or rather has scarcely emerged. The conception of gods as superhuman beings endowed with powers to which man possesses nothing comparable in degree and hardly even in kind, has been slowly evolved in the course of history.​[1315] By primitive peoples the supernatural agents are not regarded as greatly, if at all, superior to man; for they may be frightened and coerced by him into doing his will. At this stage of thought the world is viewed as a great democracy; all beings in it, whether natural or supernatural, are supposed to stand on a footing of tolerable equality. But with the growth of his knowledge man learns to realise more clearly the vastness of nature and his own littleness and feebleness in presence of it. The recognition of his helplessness does not, however, carry with it a corresponding belief in the impotence of those supernatural beings with which his imagination peoples the universe. On the contrary, it enhances his {p374} conception of their power. For the idea of the world as a system of impersonal forces acting in accordance with fixed and invariable laws has not yet fully dawned or darkened upon him. The germ of the idea he certainly has, and he acts upon it, not only in magic art, but in much of the business of daily life. But the idea remains undeveloped, and so far as he attempts to explain the world he lives in, he pictures it as the manifestation of conscious will and personal agency. If then he feels himself to be so frail and slight, how vast and powerful must he deem the beings who control the gigantic machinery of nature! Thus as his old sense of equality with the gods slowly vanishes, he resigns at the same time the hope of directing the course of nature by his own unaided resources, that is, by magic, and looks more and more to the gods as the sole repositories of those supernatural powers which he once claimed to share with them. With the advance of knowledge, therefore, prayer and sacrifice assume the leading place in religious ritual; and magic, which once ranked with them as a legitimate equal, is gradually relegated to the background and sinks to the level of a black art. It is now regarded as an encroachment, at once vain and impious, on the domain of the gods, and as such encounters the steady opposition of the priests, whose reputation and influence rise or fall with those of their gods. Hence, when at a late period the distinction between religion and superstition has emerged, we find that sacrifice and prayer are the resource of the pious and enlightened portion of the community, while magic is the refuge of the superstitious and ignorant. But when, still later, the conception of the elemental forces as personal agents is giving way to the recognition of natural law; then magic, based as it implicitly is on the idea of a necessary and invariable sequence of cause and effect, independent of personal will, reappears from the obscurity and discredit into which it had fallen, and by investigating the causal sequences in nature, directly prepares the way for science. Alchemy leads up to chemistry.

The conception of a man-god or deity incarnate in human form belongs to an early stage of religious history.

The notion of a man-god, or of a human being endowed with divine or supernatural powers, belongs essentially to that earlier period of religious history in which gods and {p375} men are still viewed as beings of much the same order, and before they are divided by the impassable gulf which, to later thought, opens out between them. Strange, therefore, as may seem to us the idea of a god incarnate in human form, it has nothing very startling for early man, who sees in a man-god or a god-man only a higher degree of the same supernatural powers which he arrogates in perfect good faith to himself. Nor does he draw any very sharp distinction between a god and a powerful sorcerer. His gods, as we have seen,​[1316] are often merely invisible magicians who behind the veil of nature work the same sort of charms and incantations which the human magician works in a visible and bodily form among his fellows. And as the gods are commonly believed to exhibit themselves in the likeness of men to their worshippers, it is easy for the magician, with his supposed miraculous powers, to acquire the reputation of being an incarnate deity. Thus beginning as little more than a simple conjurer, the medicine-man or magician tends to blossom out into a full-blown god and king in one. Only in speaking of him as a god we must beware of importing into the savage conception of deity those very abstract and complex ideas which we attach to the term. Our ideas on this profound subject are the fruit of a long intellectual and moral evolution, and they are so far from being shared by the savage that he cannot even understand them when they are explained to him. Much of the controversy which has raged as to the religion of the lower races has sprung merely from a mutual misunderstanding. The savage does not understand the thoughts of the civilised man, and few civilised men understand the thoughts of the savage. When the savage uses his word for god, he has in his mind a being of a certain sort: when the civilised man uses his word for god, he has in his mind a being of a very different sort; and if, as commonly happens, the two men are equally unable to place themselves at the other’s point of view, nothing but confusion and mistakes can result from their discussions. If we civilised men insist on limiting the name of God to that particular conception of the divine nature which we ourselves have formed, then we must confess that {p376} the savage has no god at all. But we shall adhere more closely to the facts of history if we allow most of the higher savages at least to possess a rudimentary notion of certain supernatural beings who may fittingly be called gods, though not in the full sense in which we use the word. That rudimentary notion represents in all probability the germ out of which the civilised peoples have gradually evolved their own high conceptions of deity; and if we could trace the whole course of religious development, we might find that the chain which links our idea of the Godhead with that of the savage is one and unbroken.

Examples of incarnate human deities.

The incarnation either temporary or permanent.

With these explanations and cautions I will now adduce some examples of gods who have been believed by their worshippers to be incarnate in living human beings, whether men or women. The persons in whom a deity is thought to reveal himself are by no means always kings or descendants of kings; the supposed incarnation may take place even in men of the humblest rank. In India, for example, one human god started in life as a cotton-bleacher and another as the son of a carpenter.​[1317] I shall therefore not draw my examples exclusively from royal personages, as I wish to illustrate the general principle of the deification of living men, in other words, the incarnation of a deity in human form. Such incarnate gods are common in rude society. The incarnation may be temporary or permanent. In the former case, the incarnation—commonly known as inspiration or possession—reveals itself in supernatural knowledge rather than in supernatural power. In other words, its usual manifestations are divination and prophecy rather than miracles. On the other hand, when the incarnation is not merely temporary, when the divine spirit has permanently taken up its abode in a human body, the god-man is usually expected to vindicate his character by working miracles. Only we have to remember that by men at this stage of thought miracles are not considered as breaches of natural law. Not conceiving the existence of natural law, primitive man cannot {p377} conceive a breach of it. A miracle is to him merely an unusually striking manifestation of a common power.

Temporary incarnation of gods in human form among the Polynesians.

The belief in temporary incarnation or inspiration is world-wide. Certain persons are supposed to be possessed from time to time by a spirit or deity; while the possession lasts, their own personality lies in abeyance, the presence of the spirit is revealed by convulsive shiverings and shakings of the man’s whole body, by wild gestures and excited looks, all of which are referred, not to the man himself, but to the spirit which has entered into him; and in this abnormal state all his utterances are accepted as the voice of the god or spirit dwelling in him and speaking through him. Thus, for example, in the Sandwich Islands, the king personating the god, uttered the responses of the oracle from his concealment in a frame of wicker-work. But in the southern islands of the Pacific the god “frequently entered the priest, who, inflated as it were with the divinity, ceased to act or speak as a voluntary agent, but moved and spoke as entirely under supernatural influence. In this respect there was a striking resemblance between the rude oracles of the Polynesians, and those of the celebrated nations of ancient Greece. As soon as the god was supposed to have entered the priest, the latter became violently agitated, and worked himself up to the highest pitch of apparent frenzy, the muscles of the limbs seemed convulsed, the body swelled, the countenance became terrific, the features distorted, and the eyes wild and strained. In this state he often rolled on the earth, foaming at the mouth, as if labouring under the influence of the divinity by whom he was possessed, and, in shrill cries, and violent and often indistinct sounds, revealed the will of the god. The priests, who were attending, and versed in the mysteries, received, and reported to the people, the declarations which had been thus received. When the priest had uttered the response of the oracle, the violent paroxysm gradually subsided, and comparative composure ensued. The god did not, however, always leave him as soon as the communication had been made. Sometimes the same taura, or priest, continued for two or three days possessed by the spirit or deity; a piece of a native cloth, of a peculiar kind, worn round one arm, was an indication {p378} of inspiration, or of the indwelling of the god with the individual who wore it. The acts of the man during this period were considered as those of the god, and hence the greatest attention was paid to his expressions, and the whole of his deportment. . . . When uruhia, (under the inspiration of the spirit,) the priest was always considered as sacred as the god, and was called, during this period, atua, god, though at other times only denominated taura or priest.”​[1318]

Temporary incarnation of gods in Mangaia, Fiji, Bali, and Celebes.

Temporary incarnation of gods in human form.

In Mangaia, an island of the South Pacific, the priests in whom the gods took up their abode from time to time were called “god-boxes” or, for shortness, “gods.” Before giving oracles as gods, they drank an intoxicating liquor, and in the frenzy thus produced their wild whirling words were received as the voice of the deity.​[1319] In Fiji there is in every tribe a certain family who alone are liable to be thus temporarily inspired or possessed by a divine spirit. “Their qualification is hereditary, and any one of the ancestral gods may choose his vehicle from among them. I have seen this possession, and a horrible sight it is. In one case, after the fit was over, for some time the man’s muscles and nerves twitched and quivered in an extraordinary way. He was naked except for his breech-clout, and on his naked breast little snakes seemed to be wriggling for a moment or two beneath his skin, disappearing and then suddenly reappearing in another part of his chest. When the mbete (which we may translate ‘priest’ for want of a better word) is seized by the possession, the god within him calls out his own name in a stridulous tone, ‘It is I! Katouivere!’ or some other name. At the next possession some other ancestor may declare himself.”​[1320] In Bali there are certain persons called pĕrmas, who are predestined or fitted by nature to become the temporary abode of the invisible deities. When a god is to be consulted, the villagers go and compel some of these mediums to lend their services. Sometimes the medium leaves his consciousness at home, and is then conducted with marks of honour to the temple, ready to {p379} receive the godhead into his person. Generally, however, some time passes before he can be brought into the requisite frame of body and mind; but the desired result may be hastened by making him inhale the smoke of incense or surrounding him with a band of singing men or women. The soul of the medium quits for a time his body, which is thus placed at the disposal of the deity, and up to the moment when his consciousness returns all his words and acts are regarded as proceeding not from himself but from the god. So long as the possession lasts he is a dewa kapiragan, that is, a god who has become man, and in that character he answers the questions put to him. During this time his body is believed to be immaterial and hence invulnerable. A dance with swords and pikes follows the consultation of the oracle; but these weapons could make no impression on the ethereal body of the inspired medium.​[1321] In Poso, a district of Central Celebes, sickness is often supposed to be caused by an alien substance, such as a piece of tobacco, a stick, or even a chopping-knife, which has been introduced unseen into the body of the sufferer by the magic art of an insidious foe. To discover and eject this foreign matter is a task for a god, who for this purpose enters into the body of a priestess, speaks through her mouth, and performs the necessary surgical operation with her hands. An eye-witness of the ceremony has told how, when the priestess sat beside the sick man, with her head covered by a cloth, she began to quiver and shake and to sing in a strident tone, at which some one observed to the writer, “Now her own spirit is leaving her body and a god is taking its place.” On removing the cloth from her head she was no longer a woman but a heavenly spirit, and gazed about her with an astonished air as if to ask how she came from her own celestial region to this humble abode. Yet the divine spirit condescended to chew betel and to drink palm-wine like any poor mortal of earthly mould. After she had pretended to extract the cause of the disease by laying the cloth from her head on the patient’s stomach and pinching it, she veiled her face once more, sobbed, {p380} quivered, and shook violently, at which the people said, “The human spirit is returning into her.”​[1322]

Deification of the sacrificer in Brahman ritual.

The new birth.

A Brahman householder who performs the regular half-monthly sacrifices is supposed thereby to become himself a deity for a time. In the words of the Satapatha-Brâhmana, “He who is consecrated draws nigh to the gods and becomes one of the deities.”​[1323] “All formulas of the consecration are audgrabhana (elevatory), since he who is consecrated elevates himself (ud-grabh) from this world to the world of the gods. He elevates himself by means of these same formulas.”​[1324] “He who is consecrated indeed becomes both Vishnu and a sacrificer; for when he is consecrated, he is Vishnu, and when he sacrifices, he is the sacrificer.”​[1325] After he has completed the sacrifice he becomes man again, divesting himself of his sacred character with the words, “Now I am he who I really am,” which are thus explained in the Satapatha-Brâhmana: “In entering upon the vow, he becomes, as it were, non-human; and as it would not be becoming for him to say, ‘I enter from truth into untruth’; and as, in fact, he now again becomes man, let him therefore divest himself (of the vow) with the text: ‘Now I am he who I really am.’”​[1326] The means by which the sacrificer passed from untruth to truth, from the human to the divine, was a simulation of a new birth. He was sprinkled with water as a symbol of seed. He feigned to be an embryo, and shut himself up in a special hut, which represented the womb. Under his robe he wore a belt, and over it the skin of a black antelope; the belt stood for the navel-string, and the robe and the black antelope skin represented the inner and outer membranes (the amnion and the chorion) in which an embryo is wrapt. He might not scratch himself with his nails or a stick because he was an embryo, and were an embryo scratched with nails or a stick it would die. If he moved about in {p381} the hut, it was because the child moves about in the womb. If he kept his fists doubled up, it was because an unborn babe does the same. If in bathing he put off the black antelope skin but retained his robe, it was because the child is born with the amnion but not with the chorion. By these practices he acquired, in addition to his old natural and mortal body, a new body that was sacramental and immortal, invested with superhuman powers, encircled with an aureole of fire. Thus, by a new birth, a regeneration of his carnal nature, the man became a god. At his natural birth, the Brahmans said, man is born but in part; it is by sacrifice that he is truly born into the world. The funeral rites, which ensured the final passage from earth to heaven, might be considered as a phase of the new birth. “In truth,” they said, “man is born thrice. At first he is born of his father and mother; then when he sacrifices he is born again; and lastly, when he dies and is laid on the fire, he is born again from it, and that is his third birth. That is why they say that man is born thrice.”​[1327]

Temporary incarnation or inspiration produced by drinking blood.

But examples of such temporary inspiration are so common in every part of the world and are now so familiar through books on ethnology that it is needless to multiply illustrations of the general principle.​[1328] It may be well, however, to refer to two particular modes of producing temporary inspiration, because they are perhaps less known than some others, and because we shall have occasion to refer to them later on. One of these modes of producing inspiration is by sucking the fresh blood of a sacrificed victim. In the temple of Apollo Diradiotes at Argos, a lamb was sacrificed by night once a month; a woman, who had to observe a rule of chastity, tasted the blood of the lamb, and thus being inspired by the god she prophesied or divined.​[1329] At Aegira in Achaia the priestess of Earth drank the fresh blood of a {p382} bull before she descended into the cave to prophesy.​[1330] In southern India a devil-dancer “cuts and lacerates his flesh till the blood flows, lashes himself with a huge whip, presses a burning torch to his breast, drinks the blood which flows from his own wounds, or drinks the blood of the sacrifice, putting the throat of the decapitated goat to his mouth. Then, as if he had acquired new life, he begins to brandish his staff of bells, and to dance with a quick but wild unsteady step. Suddenly the afflatus descends. There is no mistaking that glare, or those frantic leaps. He snorts, he stares, he gyrates. The demon has now taken bodily possession of him; and, though he retains the power of utterance and of motion, both are under the demon’s control, and his separate consciousness is in abeyance. The bystanders signalize the event by raising a long shout, attended with a peculiar vibratory noise, which is caused by the motion of the hand and tongue, or of the tongue alone. The devil-dancer is now worshipped as a present deity, and every bystander consults him respecting his disease, his wants, the welfare of his absent relatives, the offerings to be made for the accomplishment of his wishes, and, in short, respecting everything for which superhuman knowledge is supposed to be available.”​[1331] Similarly among the Kuruvikkarans, a class of bird-catchers and beggars in Southern India, the goddess Kali is believed to descend upon the priest, and he gives oracular replies after sucking the blood which streams from the cut throat of a goat.​[1332] At a festival of the Alfoors of Minahassa, in northern Celebes, after a pig has been killed, the priest rushes furiously at it, thrusts his head into the carcase, and drinks of the blood. Then he is dragged away from it by force and set on a chair, whereupon he begins to prophesy how the rice-crop will turn out that year. A second time he runs at the carcase and drinks of the blood; a second time {p383} he is forced into the chair and continues his predictions. It is thought that there is a spirit in him which possesses the power of prophecy.​[1333] At Rhetra, a great religious capital of the Western Slavs, the priest tasted the blood of the sacrificed oxen and sheep in order the better to prophesy.​[1334] The true test of a Dainyal or diviner among some of the Hindoo Koosh tribes is to suck the blood from the neck of a decapitated goat.​[1335] The Takhas on the border of Cashmeer have prophets who act as inspired mediums between the deity and his worshippers. At the sacrifices the prophet inhales the smoke of the sacred cedar in order to keep off evil spirits, and sometimes he drinks the warm blood as it spouts from the neck of the decapitated victim before he utters his oracle.​[1336] The heathen of Harran regarded blood as unclean, but nevertheless drank it because they believed it to be the food of demons, and thought that by imbibing it they entered into communion with the demons, who would thus visit them and lift the veil that hides the future from mortal vision.​[1337]

Temporary incarnation or inspiration produced by means of a sacred tree or plant.

The other mode of producing temporary inspiration, to which I shall here refer, consists in the use of a sacred tree or plant. Thus in the Hindoo Koosh a fire is kindled with twigs of the sacred cedar; and the Dainyal or sibyl, with a cloth over her head, inhales the thick pungent smoke till she is seized with convulsions and falls senseless to the ground. Soon she rises and raises a shrill chant, which is {p384} caught up and loudly repeated by her audience.​[1338] So Apollo’s prophetess ate the sacred laurel and was fumigated with it before she prophesied.​[1339] The Bacchanals ate ivy, and their inspired fury was by some believed to be due to the exciting and intoxicating properties of the plant.​[1340] In Uganda the priest, in order to be inspired by his god, smokes a pipe of tobacco fiercely till he works himself into a frenzy; the loud excited tones in which he then talks are recognised as the voice of the god speaking through him.​[1341] In Madura, an island off the north coast of Java, each spirit has its regular medium, who is oftener a woman than a man. To prepare herself for the reception of the spirit she inhales the fumes of incense, sitting with her head over a smoking censer. Gradually she falls into a sort of trance accompanied by shrieks, grimaces, and violent spasms. The spirit is now supposed to have entered into her, and when she grows calmer her words are regarded as oracular, being the utterances of the indwelling spirit, while her own soul is temporarily absent.​[1342]

Inspired victims.

It is worth observing that many peoples expect the victim as well as the priest or prophet to give signs of inspiration by convulsive movements of the body; and if the animal remains obstinately steady, they esteem it unfit for sacrifice. Thus when the Yakuts sacrifice to an evil spirit, the beast must bellow and roll about, which is considered a token that the evil spirit has entered into it.​[1343] Apollo’s prophetess could give no oracles unless the sacrificial victim trembled in every limb when the wine was poured on its head. But for ordinary Greek sacrifices it was enough that the victim should shake its head; to make it do so, water was poured on it.​[1344] Many other peoples (Tonquinese, {p385} Hindoos, Chuwash, and so forth) have adopted the same test of a suitable victim; they pour water or wine on its head; if the animal shakes its head it is accepted for sacrifice; if it does not, it is rejected.​[1345] Among the Kafirs of the Hindoo Koosh the priest or his substitute pours water into the ear and all down the spine of the intended victim, whether it be a sheep or a goat. It is not enough that the animal should merely shake its head to get the water out of its ear; it must shake its whole body as a wet dog shakes himself. When it does so, a kissing sound is made by all present, and the victim is forthwith slaughtered.​[1346]

Divine power acquired by temporary inspiration.

The person temporarily inspired is believed to acquire, not merely divine knowledge, but also, at least occasionally, divine power. In Cambodia, when an epidemic breaks out, the inhabitants of several villages unite and go with a band of music at their head to look for the man whom the local god is supposed to have chosen for his temporary incarnation. {p386} When found, the man is conducted to the altar of the god where the mystery of incarnation takes place. Then the man becomes an object of veneration to his fellows, who implore him to protect the village against the plague.​[1347] A certain image of Apollo, which stood in a sacred cave at Hylae near Magnesia, was thought to impart superhuman strength. Sacred men, inspired by it, leaped down precipices, tore up huge trees by the roots, and carried them on their backs along the narrowest defiles.​[1348] The feats performed by inspired dervishes belong to the same class.

Human gods, or men permanently possessed by a deity.

Human gods in the Pacific.

Thus far we have seen that the savage, failing to discern the limits of his ability to control nature, ascribes to himself and to all men certain powers which we should now call supernatural. Further, we have seen that, over and above this general supernaturalism, some persons are supposed to be inspired for short periods by a divine spirit, and thus temporarily to enjoy the knowledge and power of the indwelling deity. From beliefs like these it is an easy step to the conviction that certain men are permanently possessed by a deity, or in some other undefined way are endued with so high a degree of supernatural power as to be ranked as gods and to receive the homage of prayer and sacrifice. Sometimes these human gods are restricted to purely supernatural or spiritual functions. Sometimes they exercise supreme political power in addition. In the latter case they are kings as well as gods, and the government is a theocracy. Thus in the Marquesas or Washington Islands there was a class of men who were deified in their lifetime. They were supposed to wield a supernatural power over the elements; they could give abundant harvests or smite the ground with barrenness; and they could inflict disease or death. Human sacrifices were offered to them to avert their wrath. There were not many of them, at the most one or two in each island. They lived in mystic seclusion. {p387} Their powers were sometimes, but not always, hereditary. A missionary has described one of these human gods from personal observation. The god was a very old man who lived in a large house within an enclosure. In the house was a kind of altar, and on the beams of the house and on the trees round it were hung human skeletons, head down. No one entered the enclosure except the persons dedicated to the service of the god; only on days when human victims were sacrificed might ordinary people penetrate into the precinct. This human god received more sacrifices than all the other gods; often he would sit on a sort of scaffold in front of his house and call for two or three human victims at a time. They were always brought, for the terror he inspired was extreme. He was invoked all over the island, and offerings were sent to him from every side.​[1349] Again, of the South Sea Islands in general we are told that each island had a man who represented or personified the divinity. Such men were called gods, and their substance was confounded with that of the deity. The man-god was sometimes the king himself; oftener he was a priest or subordinate chief.​[1350] Tanatoa, king of Raiatea, was {p388} deified by a certain ceremony performed at the chief temple. “As one of the divinities of his subjects, therefore, the king was worshipped, consulted as an oracle and had sacrifices and prayers offered to him.”​[1351] This was not an exceptional case. The kings of the island regularly enjoyed divine honours, being deified at the time of their accession.​[1352] At his inauguration the king of Tahiti received a sacred girdle of red and yellow feathers, “which not only raised him to the highest earthly station, but identified him with their gods.”​[1353] A new piece, about eighteen inches long, was added to the belt at the inauguration of every king, and three human victims were sacrificed in the process.​[1354] The king’s houses were called the clouds of heaven; the rainbow was the name of the canoe in which he voyaged; his voice was spoken of as thunder, and the glare of the torches in his dwelling as lightning; and when the people saw them in the evening, as they passed near his house, instead of saying the torches were burning in the palace, they would remark that the lightning was flashing in the clouds of heaven. When he moved from one district to another on the shoulders of his bearers, he was said to be flying.​[1355] The natives of Futuna, an island in the South Pacific, “are not content with deifying the evils that afflict them; they place gods everywhere, and even go so far as to suppose that the greatest of all the spirits resides in the person of their prince as in a living sanctuary. From this belief springs a strange mode of regarding their king, and of behaving under his authority. In their eyes the sovereign is not responsible for his acts; they deem him inspired by the divine spirit whose tabernacle he is; hence his will is sacred; even his whims and rages are revered; and if it pleases him to play the tyrant, his subjects submit from conscientious motives to {p389} the vexations he inflicts on them.”​[1356] The gods of Samoa generally appeared in animal form, but sometimes they were permanently incarnate in men, who gave oracles, received offerings (occasionally of human flesh), healed the sick, answered prayers, and so on.​[1357] In regard to the old religion of the Fijians, and especially of the inhabitants of Somosomo, it is said that “there appears to be no certain line of demarcation between departed spirits and gods, nor between gods and living men, for many of the priests and old chiefs are considered as sacred persons, and not a few of them will also claim to themselves the right of divinity. ‘I am a god,’ Tuikilakila would say; and he believed it too.”​[1358] In the Pelew Islands it is thought that every god can take possession of a man and speak through him. The possession may be either temporary or permanent; in the latter case the chosen person is called a korong. The god is free in his choice, so the position of korong is not hereditary. After the death of a korong the god is for some time unrepresented, until he suddenly makes his appearance in a new Avatar. The person thus chosen gives signs of the divine presence by behaving in a strange way; he gapes, runs about, and performs a number of senseless acts. At first people laugh at him, but his sacred mission is in time recognised, and he is invited to assume his proper position in the state. Generally this position is a distinguished one and confers on him a powerful influence over the whole community. In some of the islands the god is political sovereign of the land; and hence his new incarnation, however humble his origin, is raised to the same high rank, and rules, as god and king, over all the other chiefs.​[1359]

Human gods in ancient Egypt.

Human gods in ancient Greece.

The ancient Egyptians, far from restricting their {p390} adoration to cats and dogs and such small deer, very liberally extended it to men. One of these human deities resided at the village of Anabis, and burnt sacrifices were offered to him on the altars; after which, says Porphyry, he would eat his dinner just as if he were an ordinary mortal.​[1360] In classical antiquity the Sicilian philosopher Empedocles gave himself out to be not merely a wizard but a god. Addressing his fellow-citizens in verse he said:—

“O friends, in this great city that climbs the yellow slope

Of Agrigentum’s citadel, who make good works your scope,

Who offer to the stranger a haven quiet and fair,

All hail! Among you honoured I walk with lofty air.

With garlands, blooming garlands you crown my noble brow,

A mortal man no longer, a deathless godhead now.

Where e’er I go, the people crowd round and worship pay,

And thousands follow seeking to learn the better way.

Some crave prophetic visions, some smit with anguish sore

Would fain hear words of comfort and suffer pain no more.”

He asserted that he could teach his disciples how to make the wind to blow or be still, the rain to fall and the sun to shine, how to banish sickness and old age and to raise the dead.​[1361] When Demetrius Poliorcetes restored the Athenian democracy in 307 B.C., the Athenians decreed divine honours to him and his father Antigonus, both of them being then alive, under the title of the Saviour Gods. Altars were set up to the Saviours, and a priest appointed to attend to their worship. The people went forth to meet their deliverer with hymns and dances, with garlands and incense and libations; they lined the streets and sang that he was the only true god, for the other gods slept, or dwelt far away, or were not. In the words of a contemporary poet, which were chanted in public and sung in private:— {p391}

“Of all the gods the greatest and the dearest

To the city are come.

For Demeter and Demetrius

Together time has brought.

She comes to hold the Maiden’s awful rites,

And he joyous and fair and laughing,

As befits a god.

A glorious sight, with all his friends about him,

He in their midst,

They like to stars, and he the sun.

Son of Poseidon the mighty, Aphrodite’s son,

All hail!

The other gods dwell far away,

Or have no ears,

Or are not, or pay us no heed.

But thee we present see,

No god of wood or stone, but godhead true.

Therefore to thee we pray.”​[1362]

Human goddesses among the ancient Germans.

The ancient Germans believed that there was something holy in women, and accordingly consulted them as oracles. Their sacred women, we are told, looked on the eddying rivers and listened to the murmur or the roar of the water, and from the sight and sound foretold what would come to pass.​[1363] But often the veneration of the men went further, and they worshipped women as true and living goddesses. For example, in the reign of Vespasian a certain Veleda, of the tribe of the Bructeri, was commonly held to be a deity, and in that character reigned over her people, her sway being acknowledged far and wide. She lived in a tower on the river Lippe, a tributary of the Rhine. When the people of Cologne sent to make a treaty with her, the ambassadors were not admitted to her presence; the negotiations were conducted through a minister, who acted as the mouthpiece of her divinity and reported her oracular utterances.​[1364] The {p392} example shews how easily among our rude forefathers the ideas of divinity and royalty coalesced. It is said that among the Getae down to the beginning of our era there was always a man who personified a god and was called God by the people. He dwelt on a sacred mountain and acted as adviser to the king.​[1365]

Human gods in South-East Africa.

An early Portuguese historian informs us that the Quiteve or king of Sofala, in south-eastern Africa, “is a woolly-haired Kaffir, a heathen who adores nothing whatever, and has no knowledge of God; on the contrary he esteems himself the god of all his lands, and is so looked upon and reverenced by his subjects.” “When they suffer necessity or scarcity they have recourse to the king, firmly believing that he can give them all that they desire or have need of, and can obtain anything from his dead predecessors, with whom they believe that he holds converse. For this reason they ask the king to give them rain when it is required, and other favourable weather for their harvest, and in coming to ask for any of these things they bring him valuable presents, which the king accepts, bidding them return to their homes and he will be careful to grant their petitions. They are such barbarians that though they see how often the king does not give them what they ask for, they are not undeceived, but make him still greater offerings, and many days are spent in these comings and goings, until the weather turns to rain, and the Kaffirs are satisfied, believing that the king did not grant their request until he had been well bribed and importuned, as he himself affirms, in order to maintain them in their error.”​[1366] The Zimbas, or Muzimbas, another people of south-eastern Africa, “do not adore idols or recognise any god, but instead they venerate and honour their king, whom they regard as a divinity, and they say he is the greatest and best in the world. And the said king says of himself that he alone is god of the earth, for which reason if it rains when he does not wish it to do so, or is too hot, he shoots arrows at the sky for not obeying him.”​[1367] Amongst the Barotse, a tribe on the upper Zambesi, “there is an old but waning {p393} belief that a chief is a demigod, and in heavy thunderstorms the Barotse flock to the chief’s yard for protection from the lightning. I have been greatly distressed at seeing them fall on their knees before the chief, entreating him to open the water-pots of heaven and send rain upon their gardens.” “The king’s servants declare themselves to be invincible, because they are the servants of God (meaning the king).”​[1368]

Human gods in South Africa.

The Maraves of South Africa “have a spiritual head to whom they ascribe supernatural powers, revering him as a prophet and designating him by the name of Chissumpe. Besides a considerable territory, which he owns and rules, he receives tribute from all, even from the king (unde). They believe that this being is invisible and immortal, and they consult him as an oracle, in which case he makes himself heard. He is personified by a Fumo-a-Chissumpe, that is, by an intimate of the Chissumpe, whose dignity is hereditary and who is revered exactly like the supposed Chissumpe, with whom he is naturally identical. As he names his own successor, disputes as to the succession do not arise. His oracles are as unintelligible and ambiguous as can well be imagined. He derives great profit from impostors of both sexes, who purchase the gift of soothsaying from him. In the settlement (Muzinda) of the Chissumpe there are women whom the people regard as his wives, but who, according to the universal belief, cannot bear children. If these women are convicted of an offence with a man, they are burnt along with the partner of their guilt.”​[1369] The Mashona of southern Africa informed their bishop that they had once had a god, but that the Matabeles had driven him away. “This last was in reference to a curious custom in some villages of keeping a man they called their god. He seemed to be consulted by the people and had presents given to him. There was one at a village belonging to a chief {p394} Magondi, in the old days. We were asked not to fire off any guns near the village, or we should frighten him away.”​[1370] This Mashona god was formerly bound to render an annual tribute to the king of the Matabeles in the shape of four black oxen and one dance. A missionary has seen and described the deity discharging the latter part of his duty in front of the royal hut. For three mortal hours, without a break, to the banging of a tambourine, the click of castanettes, and the drone of a monotonous song, the swarthy god engaged in a frenzied dance, crouching on his hams like a tailor, sweating like a pig, and bounding about with an agility which testified to the strength and elasticity of his divine legs.​[1371]

Human god of the Makalakas.

“In the Makalaka hills, to the west of Matabeleland, the natives all acknowledge there dwells a god whom they name Ngwali, much worshipped by the bushmen and Makalakas, and feared even by the Matabele: even Lo Bengula paid tribute and sent presents to him often. This individual has only been seen by a few of those who live close by, and who doubtless profit by the numberless offerings made to this strange being; but the god never dies; and the position is supposed to be hereditary in the one family who are the intermediaries for and connexion between Ngwali and the outer world.”​[1372] This Makalaka god “resides in the depth of a cave, in the midst of a labyrinth. Nobody has ever seen him, but he has sons and daughters, who are priests and priestesses and dwell in the neighbourhood of the grotto. It is rather odd that not long ago three sons of this god were put to death like common mortals for having stolen wheat from the king. Lo Bengula probably thought that they should practise justice even more strictly than other folk. . . . In the middle of the cavern, they say, there is a shaft, very deep and very black. From this gulf there issue from time to time terrible noises like the crash of thunder. On the edge of the abyss the worshippers tremblingly lay flesh and {p395} wheat, fowls, cakes, and other presents to appease the hunger of the dreadful god and secure his favour. After making this offering the poor suppliants declare aloud their wishes and the object of their application. They ask to know hidden things, future events, the names of those who have cast a spell on them, the issue of such and such an enterprise. After some moments of profound silence there are heard, amid the crash of subterranean thunder, inarticulate sounds, strange broken words, of which it is hard to make out the sense, and which the medicine-men (amazizis), who are hand in glove with the makers of thunder, explain to these credulous devotees.”​[1373]

Human gods in Central and East Africa.

The Baganda of Central Africa believed in a god of Lake Nyanza, who sometimes took up his abode in a man or woman. The incarnate god was much feared by all the people, including the king and the chiefs. When the mystery of incarnation had taken place, the man, or rather the god, removed about a mile and a half from the margin of the lake, and there awaited the appearance of the new moon before he engaged in his sacred duties. From the moment that the crescent moon appeared faintly in the sky, the king and all his subjects were at the command of the divine man, or Lubare (god), as he was called, who reigned supreme not only in matters of faith and ritual, but also in questions of war and state policy. He was consulted as an oracle; by his word he could inflict or heal sickness, withhold rain, and cause famine. Large presents were made him when his advice was sought.​[1374] The chief of Urua, a large region to the west of Lake Tanganyika, “arrogates to himself divine honours and power and pretends to abstain from food for days without feeling its necessity; and, indeed, declares that as a god he is altogether above requiring food and only eats, drinks, and smokes for the pleasure it affords him.”​[1375] Among the Gallas, when a woman grows tired of the cares of housekeeping, she {p396} begins to talk incoherently and to demean herself extravagantly. This is a sign of the descent of the holy spirit Callo upon her. Immediately her husband prostrates himself and adores her; she ceases to bear the humble title of wife and is called “Lord”; domestic duties have no further claim on her, and her will is a divine law.​[1376]

Human gods in West Africa.

The king of Loango is honoured by his people “as though he were a god; and he is called Sambee and Pango, which mean god. They believe that he can let them have rain when he likes; and once a year, in December, which is the time they want rain, the people come to beg of him to grant it to them.” On this occasion the king, standing on his throne, shoots an arrow into the air, which is supposed to bring on rain.​[1377] Much the same is said of the king of Mombasa.​[1378] Down to a few years ago, when his spiritual reign on earth was brought to an abrupt end by the carnal weapons of English marines and bluejackets, the king of Benin was the chief object of worship in his dominions. “He occupies a higher post here than the Pope does in Catholic Europe; for he is not only God’s vicegerent upon earth, but a god himself, whose subjects both obey and adore him as such, although I believe their adoration to arise rather from fear than love.”​[1379] The king of Iddah told the English officers of the Niger Expedition, “God made me after his own image; I am all the same as God; and he appointed me a king.”​[1380] In the language of the Hos, a Ewe tribe of Togoland, the word for god is Mawu and the Great God is Mawu gã. They personify the blessing of god and say that the Great God dwells {p397} with a rich man. “From the personification of the divine blessing to the deification of the man himself the step is not a long one, and as a matter of fact it is taken. The Hos know men in whose life are to be seen so many resemblances to the Great God that they call them simply Mawu. In the neighbourhood of Ho there lived a good many years ago a man who enjoyed an extraordinary reputation in the whole of the neighbourhood, and who accordingly named himself Wuwo, that is, ‘more than the others.’ The people actually paid him divine honours, not indeed in the sense that they sacrificed to him, but in the sense that they followed his words absolutely. They worked on his fields and brought him rich presents. On the coast there lived a respected old chief, who called himself Mawu. He was richer than all the other chiefs, and the inhabitants of twenty-seven towns rendered him unconditional obedience. In the circumstance that he was richer and more honoured than all the other chiefs he saw his resemblance to the deity.”​[1381]

Divinity of kings and chiefs in Madagascar.

Among the Hovas and other tribes of Madagascar there is said to be a deep sense of the divinity of kings; and down to the acceptance of Christianity by the late queen, the Hova sovereigns were regularly termed “the visible God” (Andriamánitra híta màso) and other terms of similar import were also applied to them.​[1382] The chiefs of the Betsileo in Madagascar “are considered as far above the common people and are looked upon almost as if they were gods.” “For the chiefs are supposed to have power as regards the words they utter, not, however, merely the power which a king possesses, but power like that of God; a power which works of itself on account of its inherent virtue, and not power exerted through soldiers and strong servants.”​[1383] “The Ampandzaka-mandzaka or sovereign whom the Sakkalava of the north often call {p398} also Zanahari ântani, God on earth, is surrounded by them with a veneration which resembles idolatry, and the vulgar are simple enough to attribute the creation of the world to his ancestors. The different parts of his body and his least actions are described by nouns and verbs which are foreign to the ordinary language, forming a separate vocabulary called Voûla fâli, sacred words, or Voûla n’ ampandzâka, princely words. The person and the goods of the Ampandzaka-mandzaka are fali, sacred.”​[1384]

Divine kings in the Malay region.

Miraculous powers attributed to regalia.

The theory of the real divinity of a king is said to be held strongly in the Malay region. Not only is the king’s person considered sacred, but the sanctity of his body is supposed to communicate itself to his regalia and to slay those who break the royal taboos. Thus it is firmly believed that any one who seriously offends the royal person, who imitates or touches even for a moment the chief objects of the regalia, or who wrongfully makes use of the insignia or privileges of royalty, will be kĕna daulat, that is, struck dead by a sort of electric discharge of that divine power which the Malays suppose to reside in the king’s person and to which they give the name of daulat or sanctity.​[1385] The regalia of every petty Malay state are believed to be endowed with supernatural powers;​[1386] and we are told that “the extraordinary strength of the Malay belief in the supernatural powers of the regalia of their sovereigns can only be thoroughly realised after a study of their romances, in which their kings are credited with all the attributes of inferior gods, whose birth, as indeed every subsequent act of their after-life, is attended by the most amazing prodigies.”​[1387]

Divine kings and men in the East Indies.

Among the Battas of Central Sumatra there is a prince who bears the hereditary title of Singa Mangaradja and is worshipped as a deity. He reigns over Bakara, a village on the south-western shore of Lake Toba; but his worship is diffused among the tribes both near and far. All sorts of strange stories are told of him. It is said that {p399} he was seven years in his mother’s womb, and thus came into the world a seven-year-old child; that he has a black hairy tongue, the sight of which is fatal, so that in speaking he keeps his mouth as nearly shut as possible and gives all his orders in writing. Sometimes he remains seven months without eating, or sleeps for three months together. He can make the sun to shine or the rain to fall at his pleasure; hence the people pray to him for a good harvest, and worshippers hasten to Bakara from all sides with offerings in the hope of thereby securing his miraculous aid. Wherever he goes, the gongs are solemnly beaten and the public peace may not be broken. He is said to eat neither pork nor dog’s flesh.​[1388] The Battas used to cherish a superstitious veneration for the Sultan of Minangkabau, and shewed a blind submission to his relations and emissaries, real or pretended, when these persons appeared among them for the purpose of levying contributions. Even when insulted and put in fear of their lives they made no attempt at resistance; for they believed that their affairs would never prosper, that their rice would be blighted and their buffaloes die, and that they would remain under a sort of spell if they offended these sacred messengers.​[1389] In the kingdom of Loowoo the great majority of the people have never seen the king, and they believe that were they to see him their belly would swell up and they would die on the spot. The farther you go from the capital, the more firmly rooted is this belief.​[1390] In time of public calamity, as during war or pestilence, some of the Molucca Islanders used to celebrate a festival of heaven. If no good result followed, they bought a slave, took him at the next festival to the place of sacrifice, and set him on a raised place under a certain bamboo-tree. This tree represented heaven, and had been honoured as its image {p400} at former festivals. The portion of the sacrifice which had previously been offered to heaven was now given to the slave, who ate and drank it in the name and stead of heaven. Henceforth he was well treated, kept for the festivals of heaven, and employed to represent heaven and receive the offerings in its name.​[1391] Every Alfoor village of northern Ceram has usually six priests, of whom the most intelligent discharges the duties of high priest. This man is the most powerful person in the village; all the inhabitants, even the regent, are subject to him and must do his bidding. The common herd regard him as a higher being, a sort of demi-god. He aims at surrounding himself with an atmosphere of mystery, and for this purpose lives in great seclusion, generally in the council-house of the village, where he conceals himself from vulgar eyes behind a screen or partition.​[1392] However, in this case the god seems to be in process of incubation rather than full-fledged.

Divine kings in Burma and Siam.

Divine men in Tonquin.

Divine head of the Babites.

A peculiarly bloodthirsty monarch of Burma, by name Badonsachen, whose very countenance reflected the inbred ferocity of his nature, and under whose reign more victims perished by the executioner than by the common enemy, conceived the notion that he was something more than mortal, and that this high distinction had been granted him as a reward for his numerous good works. Accordingly he laid aside the title of king and aimed at making himself a god. With this view, and in imitation of Buddha, who, before being advanced to the rank of a divinity, had quitted his royal palace and seraglio and retired from the world, Badonsachen withdrew from his palace to an immense pagoda, the largest in the empire, which he had been engaged in constructing for many years. Here he held conferences with the most learned monks, in which he sought to persuade them that the five thousand years assigned for the observance of the law of Buddha were now elapsed, and that he himself was the god who was destined to appear after that period, and to abolish the old law by {p401} substituting his own. But to his great mortification many of the monks undertook to demonstrate the contrary; and this disappointment, combined with his love of power and his impatience under the restraints of an ascetic life, quickly disabused him of his imaginary godhead, and drove him back to his palace and his harem.​[1393] The king of Siam “is venerated equally with a divinity. His subjects ought not to look him in the face; they prostrate themselves before him when he passes, and appear before him on their knees, their elbows resting on the ground.”​[1394] There is a special language devoted to his sacred person and attributes, and it must be used by all who speak to or of him. Even the natives have difficulty in mastering this peculiar vocabulary. The hairs of the monarch’s head, the soles of his feet, the breath of his body, indeed every single detail of his person, both outward and inward, have particular names. When he eats or drinks, sleeps or walks, a special word indicates that these acts are being performed by the sovereign, and such words cannot possibly be applied to the acts of any other person whatever. There is no word in the Siamese language by which any creature of higher rank or greater dignity than a monarch can be described; and the missionaries, when they speak of God, are forced to use the native word for king.​[1395] In Tonquin every village chooses its guardian {p402} spirit, often in the form of an animal, as a dog, tiger, cat, or serpent. Sometimes a living person is selected as patron-divinity. Thus a beggar persuaded the people of a village that he was their guardian spirit; so they loaded him with honours and entertained him with their best.​[1396] At the present day the head of the great Persian sect of the Babites, Abbas Effendi by name, resides at Acre in Syria, and is held by Frenchmen, Russians, and Americans, especially by rich American ladies, to be an incarnation of God himself. The late Professor S. I. Curtiss of Chicago had the honour of dining with “the master,” as he is invariably called by his followers, when the incarnation expressed a kindly hope that he might have the pleasure of drinking tea with the professor in the kingdom of heaven.​[1397]

Human gods in India.

Divine dairymen among the Todas.

But perhaps no country in the world has been so prolific of human gods as India; nowhere has the divine grace been poured out in a more liberal measure on all classes of society from kings down to milkmen. Thus amongst the Todas, a pastoral people of the Neilgherry Hills of southern India, the dairy is a sanctuary, and the milkman who attends to it has been described as a god. On being asked whether the Todas salute the sun, one of these divine milkmen replied, “Those poor fellows do so, but I,” tapping his chest, “I, a god! why should I salute the sun?” Every one, even his own father, prostrates himself before the milkman, and no one would dare to refuse him anything. No human being, except another milkman, {p403} may touch him; and he gives oracles to all who consult him, speaking with the voice of a god.​[1398]

Kings and Brahmans considered as gods in India.

Other human gods in India.

Further, in India “every king is regarded as little short of a present god.”​[1399] The Hindoo law-book of Manu goes farther and says that “even an infant king must not be despised from an idea that he is a mere mortal; for he is a great deity in human form.”​[1400] As to the Brahmans it is laid down in the same treatise that a Brahman, “be he ignorant or learned, is a great divinity, just as the fire, whether carried forth (for the performance of a burnt-oblation) or not carried forth, is a great divinity.” Further, it is said that though Brahmans “employ themselves in all sorts of mean occupations, they must be honoured in every way; for each of them is a very great deity.”​[1401] In another ancient Hindoo book we read that “verily, there are two kinds of gods; for, indeed, the gods are the gods; and the Brahmans who have studied and teach sacred lore are the human gods. The sacrifice of these is divided into two kinds: oblations constitute the sacrifice to the gods; and gifts to the priests that to the human gods, the Brahmans who have studied and teach sacred lore.”​[1402] The spiritual power of a Brahman priest is described as unbounded. “His anger is as terrible as that of the gods. His blessing makes rich, his curse withers. Nay, more, he is himself actually worshipped as a god. No marvel, no prodigy in nature is believed to be beyond the limits of his power to accomplish. If the priest were to threaten to bring down the sun from the sky or arrest it in its daily course in the heavens, no villager would for a moment doubt his ability to do so.”​[1403] As to the mantras, or sacred texts by means of which the Brahmans exercise {p404} their miraculous powers, there is a saying everywhere current in India: “The whole universe is subject to the gods; the gods are subject to the Mantras; the Mantras to the Brahmans; therefore the Brahmans are our gods.”​[1404] There is said to have been a sect in Orissa some years ago who worshipped the late Queen Victoria in her lifetime as their chief divinity. And to this day in India all living persons remarkable for great strength or valour or for supposed miraculous powers run the risk of being worshipped as gods. Thus, a sect in the Punjaub worshipped a deity whom they called Nikkal Sen. This Nikkal Sen was no other than the redoubted General Nicholson, and nothing that the general could do or say damped the ardour of his adorers. The more he punished them, the greater grew the religious awe with which they worshipped him.​[1405] At Benares a few years ago a celebrated deity was incarnate in the person of a Hindoo gentleman who rejoiced in the euphonious name of Swami Bhaskaranandaji Saraswati, and looked uncommonly like the late Cardinal Manning, only more ingenuous. His eyes beamed with kindly human interest, and he took what is described as an innocent pleasure in the divine honours paid him by his confiding worshippers.​[1406]

Lingayat priests worshipped as gods.

Human incarnations of the elephant-headed god Gunputty.

The Lingayats are the Unitarians of Hindooism, for they believe in only one god, Siva, rejecting the other two persons of the Hindoo Trinity. Yet “they esteem the Jangam or priest as superior even to the deity. They pay homage to the Jangam first and to Siva afterwards. The Jangam is regarded as an incarnation of the deity. . . . In practice the Jangam is placed first and, as stated above, is worshipped as {p405} god upon earth.”​[1407] In 1900 a hill-man in Vizagapatam gave out that he was an incarnate god, and his claims to divinity were accepted by a following of five thousand people, who, when a sceptical government sent an armed force to suppress the movement, which threatened political trouble, testified to the faith that was in them by resisting even to the shedding of their blood. Two policemen who refused to bow the knee to the new god were knocked on the head. However, in the scuffle the deity himself was arrested and laid by the heels in gaol, where he died just like a common mortal.​[1408] At Chinchvad, a small town about ten miles from Poona in western India, there lives a family of whom one in each generation is believed by a large proportion of the Mahrattas to be an incarnation of the elephant-headed god Gunputty. That celebrated deity was first made flesh about the year 1640 in the person of a Brahman of Poona, by name Mooraba Gosseyn, who sought to work out his salvation by abstinence, mortification, and prayer. His piety had its reward. The god himself appeared to him in a vision of the night and promised that a portion of his, that is, of Gunputty’s holy spirit should abide with him and with his seed after him even to the seventh generation. The divine promise was fulfilled. Seven successive incarnations, transmitted from father to son, manifested the light of Gunputty to a dark world. The last of the direct line, a heavy-looking god with very weak eyes, died in the year 1810. But the cause of truth was too sacred, and the value of the church property too considerable, to allow the Brahmans to contemplate with equanimity the unspeakable loss that would be sustained by a world which knew not Gunputty. Accordingly they sought and found a holy vessel in whom the divine spirit of the master had revealed itself anew, and the revelation has been happily continued in an unbroken succession of vessels from that time to this. But a mysterious law of spiritual economy, whose operation in the history of religion we may deplore though we cannot alter, has decreed that the miracles {p406} wrought by the god-man in these degenerate days cannot compare with those which were wrought by his predecessors in days gone by; and it is even reported that the only sign vouchsafed by him to the present generation of vipers is the miracle of feeding the multitude whom he annually entertains to dinner at Chinchvad.​[1409]

Worship of the Maharajas as incarnations of Krishna.

A Hindoo sect, which has many representatives in Bombay and Central India, holds that its spiritual chiefs or Maharajas, as they are called, are representatives or even actual incarnations on earth of the god Krishna. Hence in the temples where the Maharajas do homage to the idols, men and women do homage to the Maharajas, prostrating themselves at their feet, offering them incense, fruits, and flowers, and waving lights before them, as the Maharajas themselves do before the images of the gods. One mode of worshipping Krishna is by swinging his images in swings. Hence, in every district presided over by a Maharaja, the women are wont to worship not Krishna but the Maharaja by swinging him in pendulous seats. The leavings of his food, the dust on which he treads, the water in which his dirty linen is washed, are all eagerly swallowed by his devotees, who worship his wooden shoes, and prostrate themselves before his seat and his painted portraits. And as Krishna looks down from heaven with most favour on such as minister to the wants of his successors and vicars on earth, a peculiar rite called Self-devotion has been instituted, whereby his faithful worshippers make over their bodies, their souls, and, what is perhaps still more important, their worldly substance to his adorable incarnations; and women are taught to believe that the highest bliss for themselves and their families is to be attained by yielding themselves to the embraces of those beings in whom the divine nature {p407} mysteriously coexists with the form and even the appetites of true humanity.​[1410]

Pretenders to divinity among Christians.

Christianity itself has not uniformly escaped the taint of these unhappy delusions; indeed it has often been sullied by the extravagances of vain pretenders to a divinity equal to or even surpassing that of its great Founder. In the second century Montanus the Phrygian claimed to be the incarnate Trinity, uniting in his single person God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost.​[1411] Nor is this an isolated case, the exorbitant pretension of a single ill-balanced mind. From the earliest times down to the present day many sects have believed that Christ, nay God himself, is incarnate in every fully initiated Christian, and they have carried this belief to its logical conclusion by adoring each other. Tertullian records that this was done by his fellow-Christians at Carthage in the second century; the disciples of St. Columba worshipped him as an embodiment of Christ; and in the eighth century Elipandus of Toledo spoke of Christ as “a god among gods,” meaning that all believers were gods just as truly as Jesus himself. The adoration of each other was customary among the Albigenses, and is noticed hundreds of times in the records of the Inquisition at Toulouse in the early part of the fourteenth century. It is still practised by the Paulicians of Armenia and the Bogomiles about Moscow. The Paulicians, indeed, presume to justify their faith, if not their practice, by the authority of St. Paul, who said, “It is not I that speak, but Christ that dwelleth in me.”​[1412] Hence the members of this Russian sect are known as the Christs. “Among them men and women alike take upon themselves the calling of teachers and prophets, and in this character they lead a strict, ascetic life, refrain from the most ordinary and innocent pleasures, exhaust themselves by long fasting {p408} and wild ecstatic religious exercises, and abhor marriage. Under the excitement caused by their supposed holiness and inspiration, they call themselves not only teachers and prophets, but also ‘Saviours,’ ‘Redeemers,’ ‘Christs,’ ‘Mothers of God.’ Generally speaking, they call themselves simply Gods, and pray to each other as to real gods and living Christs or Madonnas.”​[1413]

Brethren and Sisters of the Free Spirit.

Incarnation of the Holy Ghost.

In the thirteenth century there arose a sect called the Brethren and Sisters of the Free Spirit, who held that by long and assiduous contemplation any man might be united to the deity in an ineffable manner and become one with the source and parent of all things, and that he who had thus ascended to God and been absorbed in his beatific essence, actually formed part of the Godhead, was the Son of God in the same sense and manner with Christ himself, and enjoyed thereby a glorious immunity from the trammels of all laws human and divine. Inwardly transported by this blissful persuasion, though outwardly presenting in their aspect and manners a shocking air of lunacy and distraction, the sectaries roamed from place to place, attired in the most fantastic apparel and begging their bread with wild shouts and clamour, spurning indignantly every kind of honest labour and industry as an obstacle to divine contemplation and to the ascent of the soul towards the Father of spirits. In all their excursions they were followed by women with whom they lived on terms of the closest familiarity. Those of them who conceived they had made the greatest proficiency in the higher spiritual life dispensed with the use of clothes altogether in their assemblies, looking upon decency and modesty as marks of inward corruption, characteristics of a soul that still grovelled under the dominion of the flesh and had not yet been elevated into communion with the divine spirit, its centre and source. Sometimes their progress towards this mystic communion was accelerated by the Inquisition, {p409} and they expired in the flames, not merely with unclouded serenity, but with the most triumphant feelings of cheerfulness and joy.​[1414] In the same century a Bohemian woman named Wilhelmina, whose head had been turned by brooding over some crazy predictions about a coming age of the Holy Ghost, persuaded herself and many people besides that the Holy Ghost had actually become incarnate in her person for the salvation of a great part of mankind. She died at Milan in the year 1281 in the most fragrant odour of sanctity, and her memory was held in the highest veneration by a numerous following, and even honoured with religious worship both public and private.​[1415]

Modern incarnations of Jesus Christ.

About the year 1830 there appeared, in one of the states of the American Union bordering on Kentucky, an impostor who declared that he was the Son of God, the Saviour of mankind, and that he had reappeared on earth to recall the impious, the unbelieving, and sinners to their duty. He protested that if they did not mend their ways within a certain time, he would give the signal, and in a moment the world would crumble to ruins. These extravagant pretensions were received with favour even by persons of wealth and position in society. At last a German humbly besought the new Messiah to announce the dreadful catastrophe to his fellow-countrymen in the German language, as they did not understand English, and it seemed a pity that they should be damned merely on that account. The would-be Saviour in reply confessed with great candour that he did not know German. “What!” retorted the German, “you the Son of God, and don’t speak all languages, and don’t even know German? Come, come, you are a knave, a hypocrite, and a madman. Bedlam is the place for you.” The spectators laughed, and went away ashamed of their credulity.​[1416] About thirty years ago a new sect was founded at Patiala in the Punjaub by a wretched creature named Hakim Singh, who lived in extreme poverty and filth, gave himself out to be a {p410} reincarnation of Jesus Christ, and offered to baptize the missionaries who attempted to argue with him. He proposed shortly to destroy the British Government, and to convert and conquer the world. His gospel was accepted by four thousand believers in his immediate neighbourhood.​[1417] Cases like these verge on, if they do not cross, the wavering and uncertain line which divides the raptures of religion from insanity.

Transmigrations of human deities.

Sometimes, at the death of the human incarnation, the divine spirit transmigrates into another man. In the kingdom of Kaffa, in eastern Africa, the heathen part of the people worship a spirit called Deòce, to whom they offer prayer and sacrifice, and whom they invoke on all important occasions. This spirit is incarnate in the grand magician or pope, a person of great wealth and influence, ranking almost with the king, and wielding the spiritual, as the king wields the temporal power. It happened that, shortly before the arrival of a Christian missionary in the kingdom, this African pope died, and the priests, fearing lest the missionary might assume the position vacated by the deceased prelate, declared that the Deòce had passed into the king, who henceforth, uniting the spiritual with the temporal power, reigned as god and king.​[1418] Before beginning to work at the salt-pans in a Laosian village, the workmen offer sacrifice to the divinity of the salt-pans. This divinity is incarnate in a woman and transmigrates at her death into another woman.​[1419] In Bhotan the spiritual head of the government is a dignitary called the Dhurma Rajah, who is supposed to be a perpetual incarnation of the deity. At his death the new incarnate god shews himself in an infant by the refusal of his mother’s milk and a preference for that of a cow.​[1420]

Transmigrations of the divine Lamas.

Divinity of the Grand Lama of Lhasa.

The Buddhist Tartars believe in a great number of living Buddhas, who officiate as Grand Lamas at the {p411} head of the most important monasteries. When one of these Grand Lamas dies his disciples do not sorrow, for they know that he will soon reappear, being born in the form of an infant. Their only anxiety is to discover the place of his birth. If at this time they see a rainbow they take it as a sign sent them by the departed Lama to guide them to his cradle. Sometimes the divine infant himself reveals his identity. “I am the Grand Lama,” he says, “the living Buddha of such and such a temple. Take me to my old monastery. I am its immortal head.” In whatever way the birthplace of the Buddha is revealed, whether by the Buddha’s own avowal or by the sign in the sky, tents are struck, and the joyful pilgrims, often headed by the king or one of the most illustrious of the royal family, set forth to find and bring home the infant god. Generally he is born in Tibet, the holy land, and to reach him the caravan has often to traverse the most frightful deserts. When at last they find the child they fall down and worship him. Before, however, he is acknowledged as the Grand Lama whom they seek he must satisfy them of his identity. He is asked the name of the monastery of which he claims to be the head, how far off it is, and how many monks live in it; he must also describe the habits of the deceased Grand Lama and the manner of his death. Then various articles, as prayer-books, tea-pots, and cups, are placed before him, and he has to point out those used by himself in his previous life. If he does so without a mistake his claims are admitted, and he is conducted in triumph to the monastery.​[1421] At the head of all the Lamas is the Dalai Lama of Lhasa, {p412} the Rome of Tibet. He is regarded as a living god, and at death his divine and immortal spirit is born again in a child. According to some accounts the mode of discovering the Dalai Lama is similar to the method, already described, of discovering an ordinary Grand Lama. Other accounts speak of an election by drawing lots from a golden jar. Wherever he is born, the trees and plants put forth green leaves; at his bidding flowers bloom and springs of water rise; and his presence diffuses heavenly blessings. His palace stands on a commanding height; its gilded cupolas are seen sparkling in the sunlight for miles.​[1422] In 1661 or 1662 Fathers Grueber and d’Orville, on their return from Peking to Europe, spent two months at Lhasa waiting for a caravan, and they report that the Grand Lama was worshipped as a true and living god, that he received the title of the Eternal and Heavenly Father, and that he was believed to have risen from the dead no less than seven times. He lived withdrawn from the business of this passing world in the recesses of his palace, where, seated aloft on a cushion and precious carpets, he received the homage of his adorers in a chamber screened from the garish eye of day, but glittering with gold and silver, and lit up by the blaze of a multitude of torches. His worshippers, with heads bowed to the earth, attested their veneration by kissing his feet, and even bribed the attendant Lamas with great sums to give them a little of the natural secretions of his divine person, which they either swallowed with their food or wore about their necks as an amulet that fortified them against the assaults of every ailment.​[1423]

Incarnate human gods in the Chinese empire.

But he is by no means the only man who poses as a god in these regions. A register of all the incarnate gods in the Chinese empire is kept in the Li fan yüan or Colonial {p413} Office at Peking. The number of gods who have thus taken out a license is one hundred and sixty. Tibet is blessed with thirty of them, northern Mongolia rejoices in nineteen, and southern Mongolia basks in the sunshine of no less than fifty-seven. The Chinese government, with a paternal solicitude for the welfare of its subjects, forbids the gods on the register to be reborn anywhere but in Tibet. They fear lest the birth of a god in Mongolia should have serious political consequences by stirring the dormant patriotism and warlike spirit of the Mongols, who might rally round an ambitious native deity of royal lineage and seek to win for him, at the point of the sword, a temporal as well as a spiritual kingdom. But besides these public or licensed gods there are a great many little private gods, or unlicensed practitioners of divinity, who work miracles and bless their people in holes and corners; and of late years the Chinese government has winked at the rebirth of these pettifogging deities outside of Tibet. However, once they are born, the government keeps its eye on them as well as on the regular practitioners, and if any of them misbehaves he is promptly degraded, banished to a distant monastery, and strictly forbidden ever to be born again in the flesh.​[1424]

Divine head of the Taoist religion in China.

At the head of Taoism, the most numerous religious sect of China, is a pope who goes by the name of the Heavenly Master and is believed to be an incarnation and representative on earth of the god of heaven. His official title is Chên-yen, or “the True Man.” When one of these pontiffs or incarnate deities departs this life, his soul passes into a male member of his family, the ancient house of Chang. In order to determine the chosen vessel, all the male members of the clan assemble at the palace, their names are engraved on tablets of lead, the tablets are thrown into a vase full of water, and the one which bears the name of the new incarnation floats on the surface. The reputation and power of the pope are very great. He lives in princely style at his palace on the Dragon and Tiger {p414} mountains in the province of Kiang-si, about twenty-five miles to the south-west of Kuei-Ki. The road, which is kept in good repair, partly flagged, and provided at regular intervals with stone halls for the repose of weary pilgrims, leads gradually upward through a bleak and barren district, treeless and thinly peopled, to the summit of a pass, from which a beautiful prospect suddenly opens up of a wide and fertile valley watered by a little stream. The scene charms the traveller all the more by contrast with the desert country which he has just traversed. This is the beginning of the pope’s patrimony, which he holds from the emperor free of taxes. The palace stands in the middle of a little town. It is new and of no special interest, having been rebuilt after the Taiping rebellion. For in their march northward the rebels devastated the papal domains with great fury. About a mile to the east of the palace lie the ruins of stately temples, which also perished in the great rising and have only in part been rebuilt. However, the principal temple is well preserved. It is dedicated to the god of heaven and contains a colossal image of that deity. The papal residence naturally swarms with monks and priests of all ranks. But the courts and gardens of the monasteries, littered with heaps of broken bricks and stones and mouldering wood, present a melancholy spectacle of decay. And the ruinous state of the religious capital reflects the decline of the papacy. The number of pilgrims has fallen off and with them the revenues of the holy see. Of old the pope ranked with viceroys and the highest dignitaries of the empire; now he is reduced to the level of a mandarin of the third class, and wears a blue button instead of a red. Formerly he repaired every year to the imperial court at Peking or elsewhere in order to procure peace and prosperity for the whole kingdom by means of his ceremonies; and on his journey the gods and spirits were bound to come from every quarter to pay him homage, unless he considerately hung out on his palanquin a board with the notice, “You need not trouble to salute.” The people, too, gathered up the dust or mud from under his feet to preserve it as a priceless talisman. Nowadays, if he goes to court at all, it seems to be not oftener than once in three years; and his {p415} services are seldom wanted except to ban the demons of plague. But he still exercises the right of elevating deceased mandarins to the rank of local deities, and as he receives a fee for every deification, the ranks of the celestial hierarchy naturally receive many recruits. He also draws a considerable revenue from the manufacture and sale of red and green papers inscribed with cabalistic characters, which are infallible safeguards against demons, disease, and calamities of every sort.​[1425]

Divine kings of Peru.

Divine rulers among the Chibchas.

Divine kings of Mexico.

From our survey of the religious position occupied by the king in rude societies we may infer that the claim to divine and supernatural powers put forward by the monarchs of great historical empires like those of Egypt, China, Mexico, and Peru, was not the simple outcome of inflated vanity or the empty expression of a grovelling adulation; it was merely a survival and extension of the old savage apotheosis of living kings. Thus, for example, as children of the Sun the Incas of Peru were revered like gods; they could do no wrong, and no one dreamed of offending against the person, honour, or property of the monarch or of any of the royal race. Hence, too, the Incas did not, like most people, look on sickness as an evil. They considered it a messenger sent from their father the Sun to call them to come and rest with him in heaven. Therefore the usual words in which an Inca announced his approaching end were these: “My father calls me to come and rest with him.” They would not oppose their father’s will by offering sacrifice for recovery, but openly declared that he had called them to his rest.​[1426] Issuing from the sultry valleys upon the lofty {p416} table-land of the Colombian Andes, the Spanish conquerors were astonished to find, in contrast to the savage hordes they had left in the sweltering jungles below, a people enjoying a fair degree of civilisation, practising agriculture, and living under a government which Humboldt has compared to the theocracies of Tibet and Japan. These were the Chibchas, Muyscas, or Mozcas, divided into two kingdoms, with capitals at Bogota and Tunja, but united apparently in spiritual allegiance to the high pontiff of Sogamozo or Iraca. By a long and ascetic novitiate, this ghostly ruler was reputed to have acquired such sanctity that the waters and the rain obeyed him, and the weather depended on his will.​[1427] The Mexican kings at their accession, as we have seen,​[1428] took an oath that they would make the sun to shine, the clouds to give rain, the rivers to flow, and the earth to bring forth fruits in abundance.​[1429] We are told that Montezuma, the last king of Mexico, was worshipped by his people as a god.​[1430]

Divinity of the Chinese emperors.

Divinity of the Mikado.

In China, if the emperor is not himself worshipped as a deity, he is supposed by his subjects to be the lord and master of all the gods. On this subject a leading authority on Chinese religion observes: “To no son of China would it ever occur to question the supreme authority wielded by the emperor and his proxies, the mandarins, not only over mankind, but also over the gods. For the gods or shen are souls of intrinsically the same nature as those existing in human beings; why then, simply because they have no human bodies, should they be placed above the emperor, who is no less than a son of Heaven, that is to say, a magnitude second to none but Heaven or the Power above {p417} whom there is none—who governs the universe and all that moves and exists therein? Such absurdity could not possibly be entertained by Chinese reason. So it is a first article of China’s political creed that the emperor, as well as Heaven, is lord and master of all the gods, and delegates this dignity to his mandarins, each in his jurisdiction. With them then rests the decision which of the gods are entitled to receive the people’s worship, and which are not. It is the imperial government which deifies disembodied souls of men, and also divests them of their divine rank. Their worship, if established against its will or without its consent, can be exterminated at its pleasure, without revenge having to be feared from the side of the god for any such radical measure; for the power of even the mightiest and strongest god is as naught compared with that of the august Celestial Being with whose will and under whose protection the Son reigns supreme over everything existing below the empyrean, unless he forfeits this omnipotent support through neglect of his imperial duties.”​[1431] As the emperor of China is believed to be a Son of Heaven, so the Emperor of Japan, the Mikado, is supposed to be an incarnation of the sun goddess, the deity who rules the universe, gods and men included. Once a year all the gods wait upon him, and spend a month at his court. During that month, the name of which means “without gods,” no one frequents the temples, for they are believed to be deserted.​[1432]

Divinity of early Babylonian kings.

The early Babylonian kings, from the time of Sargon I. till the fourth dynasty of Ur or later, claimed to be gods in their lifetime. The monarchs of the fourth dynasty of Ur in particular had temples built in their honour; they set up their statues in various sanctuaries and commanded the people to sacrifice to them; the eighth month was especially dedicated to the kings, and sacrifices were offered to them at the new moon and on the fifteenth of each month.​[1433] Again, the Parthian monarchs of the Arsacid house {p418} styled themselves brothers of the sun and moon and were worshipped as deities. It was esteemed sacrilege to strike even a private member of the Arsacid family in a brawl.​[1434]

Divinity of Egyptian kings.

The kings of Egypt were deified in their lifetime, sacrifices were offered to them, and their worship was celebrated in special temples and by special priests. Indeed the worship of the kings sometimes cast that of the gods into the shade. Thus in the reign of Merenra a high official declared that he had built many holy places in order that the spirits of the king, the ever-living Merenra, might be invoked “more than all the gods.”​[1435] “It has never been doubted that the king claimed actual divinity; he was the ‘great god,’ the ‘golden Horus,’ and son of Ra. He claimed authority not only over Egypt, but over ‘all lands and nations,’ ‘the whole world in its length and its breadth, the east and the west,’ ‘the entire compass of the great circuit of the sun,’ ‘the sky and what is in it, the earth and all that is upon it,’ ‘every creature that walks upon two or upon four legs, all that fly or flutter, the whole world offers her productions to him.’ Whatever in fact might be asserted of the Sun-god, was dogmatically predicable of the king of Egypt. His titles were directly derived from those of the sun-god.”​[1436] “In the course of his existence,” we are told, “the king of Egypt exhausted all the possible conceptions of divinity which the Egyptians had framed for themselves. A superhuman god by his birth and by his royal office, he became the deified man after his death. {p419} Thus all that was known of the divine was summed up in him.”​[1437] “The divinity of the king was recognised in all the circumstances of the public life of the sovereign. It was not enough to worship Pharaoh in the temple; beyond the limits of the sanctuary he remained the ‘good god’ to whom all men owed a perpetual adoration. The very name of the sovereign was sacred like his person; people swore by his name as by that of the gods, and he who took the oath in vain was punished.”​[1438] In particular the king of Egypt was identified with the great sun-god Ra. “Son of the sun, decked with the solar crowns, armed with the solar weapons, gods and men adored him as Ra, defended him as Ra from the attacks which menaced in him the divine being who, in his human existence, knew the glory and the dangers of being ‘an incarnate sun’ and ‘the living image on earth of his father Tum of Heliopolis.’”​[1439] Even the life of the gods depended on the divine life of the king. Gods and men, it is said, “live by the words of his mouth.”​[1440] “O gods,” said the king before celebrating divine worship, “you are safe, if I am safe. Your doubles are safe if my double is safe at the head of all living doubles. All live, if I live.”​[1441] The king was addressed as “Lord of heaven, lord of earth, sun, life of the whole world, lord of time, measurer of the sun’s course, Tum for men, lord of well-being, creator of the harvest, maker and fashioner of mortals, bestower of breath upon all men, giver of life to all the host of gods, pillar of heaven, threshold of the earth, weigher of the equipoise of both worlds, lord of rich gifts, increaser of the corn,” and so forth.​[1442] Yet, as we should expect, the exalted powers thus ascribed to the king differ in degree rather than in kind from those which every Egyptian claimed for himself. Professor Tiele observes that “as every good man at his death became Osiris, as every one in danger or need could by the use of magic sentences assume the form of a deity, it is quite comprehensible how the king, not only after {p420} death, but already during his life, was placed on a level with the deity.”​[1443]

Evolution of sacred kings out of magicians.

Magicians or medicine-men the oldest professional class.

We have now completed our sketch, for it is no more than a sketch, of the evolution of that sacred kingship which attained its highest form, its most absolute expression, in the monarchies of Peru and Egypt, of China and Japan. Historically, the institution appears to have originated in the order of public magicians or medicine-men; logically it rests on a mistaken deduction from the association of ideas. Men mistook the order of their ideas for the order of nature, and hence imagined that the control which they have, or seem to have, over their thoughts, permitted them to exercise a corresponding control over things. The men who for one reason or another, because of the strength or the weakness of their natural parts, were supposed to possess these magical powers in the highest degree, were gradually marked off from their fellows and became a separate class, who were destined to exercise a most far-reaching influence on the political, religious, and intellectual evolution of mankind. Social progress, as we know, consists mainly in a successive differentiation of functions, or, in simpler language, a division of labour. The work which in primitive society is done by all alike and by all equally ill, or nearly so, is gradually distributed among different classes of workers and executed more and more perfectly; and so far as the products, material or immaterial, of this specialised labour are shared by all, the whole community benefits by the increasing specialisation. Now magicians or medicine-men appear to constitute the oldest artificial or professional class in the evolution of society.​[1444] For sorcerers are found in every savage tribe known to us; and among the lowest savages, such as the Australian aborigines, they are the only professional class that exists. As time goes on, and the process of differentiation continues, {p421} the order of medicine-men is itself subdivided into such classes as the healers of disease, the makers of rain, and so forth;​[1445] while the most powerful member of the order wins for himself a position as chief and gradually develops into a sacred king, his old magical functions falling more and more into the background and being exchanged for priestly or even divine duties, in proportion as magic is slowly ousted by religion. Still later, a partition is effected between the civil and the religious aspect of the kingship, the temporal power being committed to one man and the spiritual to another. Meanwhile the magicians, who may be repressed but cannot be extirpated by the predominance of religion, still addict themselves to their old occult arts in preference to the newer ritual of sacrifice and prayer; and in time the more sagacious of their number perceive the fallacy of magic and hit upon a more effectual mode of manipulating the forces of nature for the good of man; in short, they abandon sorcery for science. I am far from affirming that the course of development has everywhere rigidly followed these lines: it has doubtless varied greatly in different societies. I merely mean to indicate in the broadest outline what I conceive to have been its general trend. Regarded from the industrial point of view the evolution has been from uniformity to diversity of function: regarded from the political point of view, it has been from democracy to despotism. With the later history of monarchy, especially with the decay of despotism and its displacement by forms of government better adapted to the higher needs of humanity, we are not concerned in this enquiry: our theme is the growth, not the decay, of a great and, in its time, beneficent institution.