widow or mount the horse thus devoted.[1] In China, legend preserves the memory of the ancient funeral human sacrifice. The brother of Chin Yang, a disciple of Confucius, died, and his widow and steward wished to bury some living persons with him, to serve him in the regions below. Thereupon the sage suggested that the proper victims would be the widow and steward themselves, but this not precisely meeting their views, the matter dropped, and the deceased was interred without attendants. This story at least shows the rite to have been not only known but understood in China long ago. In modern China, the suicide of widows to accompany their husbands is a recognized practice, sometimes even performed in public. Moreover, the ceremonies of providing sedan-bearers and an umbrella-bearer for the dead, and sending mounted horsemen to announce beforehand his arrival to the authorities of Hades, although these bearers and messengers are only made of paper and burnt, seem to represent survivals of a more murderous reality.[2]
The Aryan race gives striking examples of the rite of funeral human sacrifice in its sternest shape, whether in history or in myth, that records as truly as history the manners of old days.[3] The episodes of the Trojan captives laid with the horses and hounds on the funeral pile of Patroklos, and of Evadne throwing herself into the funeral pile of her husband, and Pausanias's narrative of the suicide of the three Messenian widows, are among its Greek representatives.[4] In Scandinavian myth, Baldr is burnt with his
- ↑ 'Journ. Ind. Archip.' new series, vol ii. p. 374.
- ↑ Legge, 'Confucius,' p. 119; Doolittle, 'Chinese,' vol. i. pp. 108, 174, 192. The practice of attacking or killing all persons met by a funeral procession is perhaps generally connected with funeral human sacrifice; any one met on the road by the funeral of a Mongol prince was slain and ordered to go as escort; in the Kimbunda country, any one who meets a royal funeral procession is put to death with the other victims at the grave (Magyar, 'Süd. Afrika,' p. 353); see also Mariner, 'Tonga Is.' vol. i. p. 403; Cook, 'First Voy.' vol. i. pp. 146, 236 (Tahiti).
- ↑ Jakob Grimm, 'Verbrennen der Leichen,' contains an instructive collection of references and citations.
- ↑ Homer, Il. xxiii. 175; Eurip. Suppl.; Pausanias, iv. 2.
