Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 28, 1917.djvu/439

 The Killing of the Khazar Kings. 405

themselves the humble servants, of the feeble dotards on the throne. Yet in the most stringent of the limitations imposed on the nominal sovereigns we may detect a survival from a time when their ancestors were men of a stronger mould and a more masculine temper. We have seen that when a Khazar king reigned more than forty years, even by a single day, he was ruthlessly put to death, because his mental powers were supposed to be decayed and his wisdom impaired. The analogy of similar customs observed by many barbarous tribes suggests that the reason thus assigned by the Khazars for executing their kings after a fixed term of years was the true original motive. In ages of ignorance men have often believed, that the welfare of the state, and even the course of nature, are wholly depen- dent on the personal qualities of the king or chief who reigns over them, and that the decay of his bodily or mental powers must necessarily be accompanied or followed by a corresponding decay, not only in the commonwealth, but also in those natural resources on which mankind is depen- dent for their very existence. Accordingly subjects in those days took a very short way with superannuated sovereigns ; they put them to death, and raised up in their stead men who were yet in the prime of life and the full possession of all their faculties. A tightening or a relaxa- tion, as the case might be, of the rope thus tied round the king's neck was introduced by the provision, that he might reign till some public calamity, such as dearth, drought, or defeat in war, was thought to indicate that the dreaded enfeeblement of his majesty's powers had really set in ; whereupon the constitutional remedy was at once resorted to, and the king was put to death. ^ Clearly the substitution of this rule might tend either to lengthen or to abridge the king's term of office according to his own natural abilities,

1 Klapioth, " Mcmoire sur I'identite des Thou khiu et des Hioung nou avec les Turcs," Journal Asiatiqne, viii. (Paris, 1S25), p. 267. Compare W. Radloff, Aus Sibirien (Leipsic, 1884), i. 129.