Page:Frazer (1890) The Golden Bough (IA goldenboughstudy01fraz).djvu/71

I Thus, for example, as children of the Sun the Incas of Peru were revered like gods; they could do no wrong, and no one dreamed of offending against the person, honour, or property of the monarch or of any of the royal race. Hence, too, the Incas did not, like most people, look on sickness as an evil. They considered it a messenger sent from their father the Sun to call his son to come and rest with him in heaven. Therefore the usual words in which an Inca announced his approaching end were these: “My father calls me to come and rest with him.” They would not oppose their father’s will by offering sacrifice for recovery, but openly declared that he had called them to his rest. The Mexican kings at their accession took an oath that they would make the sun to shine, the clouds to give rain, the rivers to flow, and the earth to bring forth fruits in abundance. By Chinese custom the emperor is deemed responsible if the drought be at all severe, and many are the self-condemnatory edicts on this subject published in the pages of the Peking Gazette. However it is rather as a high priest than as a god that the Chinese emperor bears the blame; for in extreme cases he seeks to remedy the evil by personally offering prayers and sacrifices to heaven. The Parthian monarchs of the Arsacid house styled themselves brothers of the sun and moon and were worshipped as deities. It was esteemed sacrilege to strike even a private member of the Arsacid family in a brawl. The kings of Egypt were deified in their lifetime, and their worship was celebrated in special temples and by VOL. I