50 CEREMONIAL INSTITUTIONS. 



awe which, on growing into a king with subordinate chiefs 

 and dependent tribes, he excites by accumulating the tro 

 phies others take on his behalf; rising into dread when he 

 exhibits in numbers the relics of slain rulers. As the prac 

 tice assumes this developed form, the receipt of such vicari 

 ously-taken trophies passes into a political ceremony. The 

 heap of hands laid before an ancient Egyptian king, served 

 to propitiate; as now serves the mass of jawbones sent by an 

 Ashantee captain to the court. When we read of Timour s 

 soldiers that &quot; their cruelty was enforced by the peremptory 

 command of producing an adequate number of heads,&quot; we 

 are conclusively shown that the presentation of trophies 

 hardens into a form expressing obedience. Xor is it thus 

 only that a political effect results. There is the govern 

 mental restraint produced by fixing up the bodies or heads 

 of the insubordinate and the felonious. 



Though offering part of a slain enemy to propitiate a 

 ghost, does not enter into what is commonly called religious 

 ceremonial, yet it obviously so enters when the aim is to 

 propitiate a god developed from an ancestral ghost. AVe 

 are shown the transition by such a fact as that in a battle 

 between two tribes of Khonds, the first man who &quot; slew his 

 opponent, struck off his right arm and rushed with it to the 

 priest in the rear, who bore it off as an offering to Laha 

 Pcnnoo in his grave: &quot; Laha Pennoo being their &quot; God of 

 Arms.&quot; Joining with this such other facts as that before the 

 Taliitian god Oro, human immolations were frequent, and 

 the preserved relics were built into walls &quot; formed entirely 

 of human skulls,&quot; which were &quot; principally, if not entirely 

 the skulls of those slain in battle; &quot; we are shown that gods 

 arc worshipped by bringing to them, and accumulat 

 ing round their shrines, these portions of enemies killed 

 killed, very often, in fulfilment of their supposed com 

 mands. This inference is verified on seeing similar 

 ly used other kinds of spoils. The Philistines, besides 

 otherwise displaying relics of the dead Saul, put &quot; his 



