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SACRIFICIAL SUBSTITUTION.
401

children of five years old quarrelling for the honour of having it done to them.[1] In the Mandan ceremonies of initiation into manhood, when the youth at last hung senseless and (as they called it) lifeless by the cords made fast to splints through his flesh, he was let down, and coming to himself crawled on hands and feet round the medicine-lodge to where an old Indian sat with hatchet in his hand and a buffalo skull before him ; then the youth, holding up the little finger of his left hand to the Great Spirit, offered it as a sacrifice, and it was chopped off, and sometimes the forefinger afterwards, upon the skull.[2] In India, probably as a Dravidian rather than Aryan rite, the practice with full meaning comes into view; as Siva cut off his finger to appease the wrath of Kali, so in the southern provinces mothers will cut off their own fingers as sacrifices lest they lose their children, and one hears of a golden finger being allowed instead, the substitute of a substitute.[3] The New Zealanders hang locks of hair on branches of trees in the burying-ground, a recognised place for offerings.[4] That hair may be a substitute for its owner is well shown in Malabar, where we read of the demon being expelled from the possessed patient and flogged by the exorcist to a tree; there the sick man's hair is nailed fast, cut away, and left for a propitiation to the demon.[5] Thus there is some ground for interpreting the consecration of the boy's cut hair in Europe as a representative sacrifice.[6] As for the formal shedding of blood, it may represent fatal bloodshed, as when

  1. ↑ Mariner's 'Tonga Is.' vol. i. p. 454; vol. ii. p. 222. Cook's '3rd Voy.' vol. i. p. 403. Details from S. Africa in Bastian, 'Mensch,' vol. iii. pp. 4, 24; Scherzer, 'Voy. of Novara,' vol. i. p. 212.
  2. ↑ Catlin, 'N. A. Ind.' vol. i. p. 172; Klemm, 'Cultur-Gesch.' vol. ii. p. 170. See also Venegas, 'Noticia de la California,' vol. i. p. 117; Garcilaso de la Vega, lib. ii. c. 8 (Peru).
  3. ↑ Buchanan, 'Mysore,' &c., in Pinkerton, vol. viii. p. 661; Meiners, vol. ii. p. 472; Bastian, l.c. See also Dubois, 'India,' vol. i. p. 5.
  4. ↑ Polack, 'New Zealand,' vol. i. p. 264.
  5. ↑ Bastian, 'Psychologie,' p. 184.
  6. ↑ Theodoret. in Levit. xix.; Hanusch, 'Slaw. Myth.' Details in Bastian, 'Mensch,' vol. ii. p. 229, &c.
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