among the Milanau Dayaks, at the erection of the largest house a deep hole was dug to receive the first post, which was then suspended over it; a slave girl was placed in the excavation; at a signal the lashings were cut, and the enormous timber descended, crushing the girl to death, a sacrifice to the spirits. St. John saw a milder form of the rite performed, when the chief of the Quop Dayaks set up a flagstaff near his house, a chicken being thrown in to be crushed by the descending pole.[1] More cultured nations of Southern Asia have carried on into modern ages the rite of the foundation-sacrifice. A 17th century account of Japan mentions the belief there that a wall laid on the body of a willing human victim would be secure from accident; accordingly, when a great wall was to be built, some wretched slave would offer himself as foundation, lying down in the trench to be crushed by the heavy stones lowered upon him.[2] When the gates of the new city of Tavoy, in Tenasserim, were built about 1780, as Mason relates on the evidence of an eye-witness, a criminal was put in each post-hole to become a protecting demon. Thus it appears that such stories as that of the human victims buried for spirit watchers under the gates of Mandalay, of the queen who was drowned in a Burmese reservoir to make the dyke safe, of the hero whose divided body was buried under the fortress of Thatung to make it impregnable, are the records, whether in historical or mythical form, of the actual customs of the
- ↑ St. John, 'Far East,' vol. i. p. 46; see Bastian, vol. ii. p. 407. I am indebted to Mr. R. K. Douglas for a perfect example of one meaning of the foundation-sacrifice, from the Chinese book, 'Yŭh hea ke' ('Jewelled Casket of Divination'): 'Before beginning to build, the workmen should sacrifice to the gods of the neighbourhood, of the earth and wood. Should the carpenters be very apprehensive of the building falling, they, when fixing a post, should take something living and put it beneath, and lower the post on it, and to liberate [the evil influences] they should strike the post with an axe and repeat—
"It is well, it is well,
May those who live within
Be ever warm and well fed."' - ↑ Caron, 'Japan,' in Pinkerton, vol. vii. p. 623.
