168 VISITS TO MADAGASCAR. chap. vi. 



there is any change in the purpose of the supreme authorities, 

 as the following message or order is said to be read every 

 fortnight to the troops when assembled on parade at the 

 capital. 



" If any baptize (viz. administer or receive baptism) I will 

 put them to death, saith Eanavalomanjaka ; for they change 

 the prayers of the twelve kings. Therefore search and spy, 

 and if ye find any doing that, man or woman, take them, 

 that we may kill them ; for I and you will kill them that do 

 that, though they be half the people. For to change what 

 the ancestors have ordered and done, and to pray to the 

 ancestors of the foreigners, not to Andrianampoinemerina, 

 and Lehidama, and the idols that sanctified the twelve kings, 

 and the twelve mountains that are worshipped ; whoever 

 changes these observances, I make known to all people, I 

 will kill, saith Eanavalomanjaka." 



The reference made to the usages ordained by their an- 

 cestors, and to the praying to the ancestors of the foreigners, 

 explains to a great extent the grounds on which the abandon- 

 ment of the religion of the country, and adopting the Christian 

 faith, are regarded by the Malagasy as crimes of the greatest 

 magnitude. Their own religious creeds teach them to regard 

 the spirits of the earliest ancestors of their rulers as among 

 the chief objects of religious homage, and hence also a sort 

 of sacredness is supposed to belong to the reigning monarch 

 as descended from their gods. In most of the public speeches 

 to which I listened the sacredness of the queen's person was 

 declared, and she was represented as exercising power over 

 life and property by virtue of such descent and supposed 

 sacredness. Thus their ideas of religion add a sort of sanctity 

 to their loyalty. And as they infer that the religion of 

 Christian nations rests upon a basis similar to their own, it 

 is asserted, and probably believed by many, that the su- 

 preme objects of Christian worship were the ancestors of the 



