thing of the past among the Barotse, as among the Zulus, who yet have not forgotten the days when the chief's servants and attendant warriors were cast into the fire which had consumed his body, that they might go with him, and prepare things beforehand, and get food for him.[1]
If now we turn to the records of Asia and Europe, we shall find the sacrifice of attendants for the dead widely prevalent in both continents in old times, while in the east its course may be traced continuing onward to our own day. The two Mohammedans who travelled in Southern Asia in the ninth century relate that on the accession of certain kings a quantity of rice is prepared, which is eaten by some three or four hundred men, who present themselves voluntarily to share it, thereby undertaking to burn themselves at the monarch's death. With this corresponds Marco Polo's thirteenth-century account in Southern India of the king of Maabar's guard of horsemen, who, when he dies and his body is burnt, throw themselves into the fire to do him service in the next world.[2] In the seventeenth century the practice is described as still prevailing in Japan, where, on the death of a nobleman, from ten to thirty of his servants put themselves to death by the 'hara kari,' or ripping-up, having indeed engaged during his lifetime, by the solemn compact of drinking wine together, to give their bodies to their lord at his death. Yet already in ancient times such funeral sacrifices were passing into survival, when the servants who followed their master in death were replaced by clay images set up at the tomb.[3] Among the Ossetes of the Caucasus, an interesting relic of widow-sacrifice is still kept up: the dead man's widow and his saddle-horse are led thrice round the grave, and no man may marry the
- ↑ Cavazzi, 'Ist. Descr. de' tre Regni Congo, Matamba, et Angola,' Bologna, 1687, lib. i. 264; Waitz, vol. ii. pp. 419-21; Callaway, 'Religion of Amazulu,' p. 212.
- ↑ Renaudot, 'Acc. by two Mohammedan Travellers,' London, 1733, p. 81; and in Pinkerton, vol. vii. p. 215; Marco Polo, book iii. chap. xx.; and in Pinkerton, vol. vii. p. 162.
- ↑ Caron, 'Japan,' ibid., p. 622; Siebold, 'Nippon,' v. p. 22.
