A.D. 1. 30th year, Spring, 1st month, 6th day. The Emperor commanded Inishiki no Mikoto and Oho-tarashi-hiko no
men was set up round a tumulus. But the "Nihongi's" statement that it was an old custom must be correct.
This custom is too much in accordance with what we know of other races in the barbaric stage of culture to allow us to doubt that we have here a genuine bit of history, though perhaps the details may be inaccurate, and the chronology is certainly wrong. In an ancient Chinese notice of Japan we read that "at this time (A.D. 247) Queen Himeko died. A great mound was raised over her, and more than a hundred of her male and female attendants followed her in death."
Funeral human sacrifice for the service of the dead is described by Dr. Tylor ("Primitive Culture," i. 458) as "one of the most wide-spread, distinct, and intelligible rites of animistic religion. Arising in the lower barbaric stage, it develops itself in the higher, and thenceforth continues or dwindles in survival." He proceeds to quote numerous examples of it from all parts of the world, and from many ages of history.
It is well known to have existed among the Manchu Tartars and other races of North-Eastern Asia until modern times. The Jesuit missionary Du Halde relates that the Emperor Shunchi, of the T'sing dynasty (died 1662), inconsolable for the loss of his wife and infant child, "signified by his will that thirty men should kill themselves to appease her manes, which ceremony the Chinese look upon with horror, and was abolished by the care of his successor"—the famous Kanghi.
Another missionary, Alvarez Semedo, in his history of the Tartar invasion, says:—"The Tartarian King vowed to celebrate his Father's Funerals with the lives of two hundred thousand of the inhabitants of China. For it is the custome of the Tartars, when any man of quality dieth, to cast into that fire which consumes the dead corpse as many Servants, Women and Horses with Bows and Arrows as may be fit to atend and serve them in the next life."
This custom was also practised in China in the most ancient times, though long condemned as barbarous. Confucius disapproved of it. An ode in the "Sheking" (Legge, iv. i. 198) laments the death of three brothers who were sacrificed at the funeral of Duke Muh, B.C. 621. When the Emperor She Hwang-ti died, B.C. 209, his son Urh said, "My father's palace ladies who have no children must not leave the tomb," and compelled them all to follow him in death. Their number was very great. For other cases see a paper by Mayers in the Journal of the North China Branch of the Asiatic Society, new Series, xii.
A King of Kokuryö in Corea died A.D. 248. He was beloved for his virtues, and many of his household wished to die with him. His successor forbade them to do so, saying that it was not a proper custom. Many of them, however, committed suicide at the tomb. "Tongkam," iii. 20.
In A.D. 502, Silla prohibited the custom of burying people alive at the
