GOD-KINGS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume LXXVI, Issue 9495, 18 August 1891, Page 3

GOD-KINGS.

(Conihill Magazine.) As the quean-bee must not go out of ths hive, so in many cases the god-king must not go a step outside his own palace. Within, he is safe from attack, or from accident, or from the evil eye; without, there’s no knowing what dangers on earth' may surround and encompass him. Thas,| in old Japan, the Mikado lived largely secluded from all the world, and protected by a minute and tedious ceremonial. 'So, too, the kings of Persia were shut up in their palaces, and hardly any of their subjecta were ever permitted to see them.' The hinge of Egypt were worshipped as gods;' but the divinity that hedged them round! must have been far more annoying than pleasing to its unhappy possessors; for, as Diodorus tells us “ everything was arranged for them by law, not only their royal duties, but also the details of their daily life. The hours of day and night were measured out, at which the king had to do, not what he liked, but what custom prescribed for him." His food and drink were all as accurately ordained as Sancho Panza’s on the island of Barataria; for might not a passing fit of indigestion upset for ever the realm of Nile, or a headache produced by too much wine overnight beget far-teaching effectsthrough all the Upper and Lower Kingdoms ? Tha King, in short, as Mr Andrew Lang has graphically put it, was “tabooed an inch deep," and dated never transgress the limits of these divine restrictions. Some of the taboos referred to his food and drink, which were always light and simple, in' order that the sacred body might remain sound and wholesome. But more still were magical in their nature, and bad reference rather to the vague misfortunes that might fall upon the King from tho wicked wiles of black art or witchcraft. Dread of the evil eye, ever strong among savages, is one of the chief reasons for secluding the King; and as strangers are particularly liable to exercise this malign influence, barbaric majesty is seldomallowed even to show, its divine face before tha face of foreigners. This is one of the many reasons, indeed, for the aversion felt to strangers in barbarous countries; they may' bring with them some evil power whioh will unfavourably' affect the luck of the tribesmen. In many Polynesian islands now, as 'in the Crimea of old, strangers who come ashore are immediately massacred, out of sheer funk. Tha ancient Egyptians were almost equally inhospitable; and the Chinese by no means love the “red-haired devils" who seek to charm them with a mixed diet of opium and moral pocket handkerchiefs. Even in our own Britain, the unsophisticated islanders of St JTilda believe to this day that a new-con if from the outer world always brings \some mysterious disease along with him; and the aborigines of the Black Country preserve the same primitive idea in the well - known ceremony of spying a stranger and 'saving ’art a brick at 'im. This horror of being seen, ail especially of being seen abroad, above all by strangers, is very widespread. Irom the day of his coronation—so Mr Frazer tells us—the King of Loango is not permitted to go outside hi* palace. His royal brother of Ibo may not step from his house unless a human sacrifice is offered in his stead to propitiate destiny. Th« kings of on the Upper Nile were treated as gods, but were never allowed for all that to leave their own precincts. If the kings of Sheba appeared in tte streets, their scandalised subjects inns.’idiately stoned them. ' To this day, tt« sovereigns of Corea, who receive divirw honours, are shut up hermetically in their own _ apartments, and never communicate directly with their people. In other cases, different precautions are taken to prevent the king being,seen. At Mandalay, palings six feet high were erected in all the streets where the great Theebaw of the moment was likely to pass; and whenever he went abroad in his capital, all the people had to stay behind these wooden barriers. The Sultan oj Wadai speaks from behind a curtain; the Sultan of Darfur wraps his face in s piece of white muslin. A last relic of mese curious isolating customs may be seen in the taboo which prevents mr;■ Eastern monarcha from ever quitting tioir own dominions. Several Indian princes may nob leave India; and it was with great difficulty that the Persians reconciled themselves to the idea of their Shah visiting Europe.