| OCR Text |
Show 32 quite literally -- on the proxy. In Cassange it was only a matter of days before the king, armed with a scimitar, out his stand-in's heart from the back, it, Spit it out, cut took a bite out of then gave the organ to be burned. During the proceedings, the king's councillors rubbed their breasts and hair with the blood of the victim while shouting "Great is the king and the rites of the state!" was cooked with the flesh of an ox, a dog, Later, a hen, the corpse and other animals, then served first to the king, next to his chiefs and councillors, and finally to the assembled public. Any- one refusing to partake was sold into slavery together with his family,9 Ultimately, primitive regicide was further softened so that even the proxy king was no longer actually put to death and the ritual of assassination took the form of a mock ceremony. In commenting on the actual regicides, Which Sir James Frazer termed "periodic assassinations,"lo Gaster remarks: . . . when the king is put to death or deposed at the end of the year or of a fixed term, it does not follow thathe is suffering this "passion" £25 his peOple; he may just as well be suffering it EEEE them, and exemplifying in his single eXper- ience that temporary eclipse or suSpension of their collective vitality which they in turn eXpress con- currently in such procedures as ritual fasts and 9F. T. Valdez, West Africa (London, Six Years of a Traveller's Life in 1861), as cited in The New Golden Bough. lQ'I‘he New Golden Bough, 22. cit., p. 33. |
