Griffis, Corea, p. 227.
50 Spiegel, Erânische Alterthumskunde, iii. 687. Polak, Persien, ii. 96.
51 Dubois, Description of the Character, Manners, and Customs of the People of India, p. 195.
52 Leist, Alt-arisches Jus Gentium, p. 424.
53 Gotlands-Lagen, 13.
54 Walter, Das alte Wales, p. 138.
55 Mackintosh, History of Civilisation in Scotland, ii. 279.
56 Gregorovius, Wanderings in Corsica, i. 179.
57 Gopčević, Oberalbanien und seine Liga, p. 324 sqq.
58 Miklosich, ‘Die Blutrache bei den Slaven,’ in Denkschriften der kaiserl. Akademie d. Wissensch. Philos.-histor. Classe, Vienna, xxxvi. 131, 146 sq. Krauss, Sitte und Brauch der Südslaven, p. 39.
59 Lago, Memorie sulla Dalmazia, ii. 90.
60 Gopčević, op. cit. p. 325.
There is no difficulty in explaining these facts. The following statement made by Mr. Romilly with reference to the Solomon Islanders has, undoubtedly, a much wider application:—“In the cases which call for punishment, the difficulties in the way of capturing the actual culprits are greater than any one, who has not been engaged in this disagreeable work, can imagine.”61 Though it may happen that a manslayer is abandoned by his own people,62 the system of blood-revenge more often seems to imply, not only that all the members of a group are engaged, more or less effectually, in the act of revenge, but that they mutually protect each other against the avengers. A homicide frequently provokes a war,63 in which family stands against family, clan against clan, or tribe against tribe. In such cases the whole group take upon themselves the deed of the perpetrator, and any of his fellows, because standing up for him, becomes a proper object of revenge. The guilt extends itself, as it were, in the eyes of the offended party. So, also, any person who lives on friendly terms with the offender, or is supposed to sympathise with him, is liable to arouse a feeling of resentment, and may consequently, in extreme cases, have to expiate his crime. Moreover, because of the close relationship which exists between the members of the same group, the actual culprit will be mortified by any successful attack that the avengers make on his people, and, if he be dead, its painful and humiliating effects may still be supposed to reach his spirit. “When the offender himself is beyond the reach of direct attack,” says Mr. Wilkins, “it is not beneath a Bengali’s view to try to wound him through his children or other members of his family.”64 Among the South Slavonians, in a similar case, the avengers of blood first attempt to kill the father, brother, or grown-up son of the murderer, “so as to inflict upon him a very heavy and painful loss”; and only when this has been tried in vain, are more distant relatives attacked.65 The Bedouins of the Euphrates even prefer killing the chief man among the murderer’s relations within the second degree to taking his own life, on the principle, “You have killed my cousin, I will kill yours.”66 And the Californian Nishinam “consider that the keenest and most bitter revenge which a man can take is, not to slay the murderer himself, but his dearest friend.”67 In these instances vengeance is exacted with reference rather to the loss suffered by the survivors than to the injury committed against the murdered man, the culprit being subjected to a deprivation similar to that which he has inflicted himself. So, also, among the Marea, if a commoner is slain by a nobleman, his death is not avenged directly on the slayer, but on some commoner who is subservient to him.68 If, again, among the Quianganes of Luzon, a noble is killed by a plebeian, another nobleman, of the kin of the murderer, must be killed, while the murderer himself is ignored.69 If, among the Igorrotes, a man slays a woman of another house, her nearest kinsman endeavours to slay a woman belonging to the household of the homicide, but to the guilty man himself he does nothing.70 In all these cases the culprit is not lost sight of; vengeance is invariably wreaked upon somebody connected with him. But any consideration of guilt or innocence is overshadowed by the blind subordination to that powerful rule which requires strict equivalence between injury and punishment—an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth—and which, when strained to the utmost, cannot allow the life of a man to be sacrificed for that of a woman, or the life of a nobleman to be sacrificed for that of a commoner, or the life of a commoner to expiate the death of a noble. This rule, as we shall see later on, is not suggested by revenge itself, but is due to the influence of other factors which intermingle with this feeling, and help, with it, to determine the action.
61 Romilly, Western Pacific and New Guinea, p. 81. Cf. Friedrichs, ‘Mensch und Person,’ in Das Ausland, 1891, p. 299.
62 See, e.g., Scott Robertson, The Káfirs of the Hindu-Kush, p. 440.
63 Dr. Post’s statement (Die Geschlechtsgenossenschaft der Urzeit, p. 156) that the blood-revenge “characterisirt sich … ganz und gar als ein Privatkrieg zwischen zwei Geschlechtsgenossenschaften,” however, is not quite correct in this unqualified form, as may be seen, e.g., from von Martius’s description of the blood-revenge of the Brazilian Indians, op. cit. i. 127 sqq.
64 Wilkins, Modern Hinduism, p. 411.
65 Krauss, op. cit. p. 39.
66 Blunt, Bedouin Tribes of the Euphrates, ii. 206 sq.
67 Powers, Tribes of California, p. 320.
68 Munzinger, Ostafrikanische Studien, p. 243.
69 Blumentritt, quoted by Spencer, Principles of Ethics, i. 370 sq.
70 Jagor, Travels