Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 09.pdf/80

 Oaths.

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OATHS. BY R. VASHON ROGERS. A STORY is told of a Highlander who had been swearing to all sorts of lies; the judge suddenly required him to take the Highlander's oath which invokes the souls of his ancestors to witness his veracity, whereupon the witness recanted and told a very different story and the true one; when asked why he had perjured himself at first he replied that " there was a muckle difference between blowing on a book and damning his soul." The moral is that every one should be required to take that form of oath, or affirmation, which he considers binding upon his conscience. And many and divers and strange have the forms been : nations have had their ven erable and venerated oaths, and kings and great personages have had quaint and curi ous ones which they deemed binding on their souls. Let us recount some of these in an unphilosophic manner. In sundry lands and in divers ages ani mals have died to make the oaths of the semi-civilized effective. In ancient Rome, one form was slaying a swine and praying that in case of falsehood the curse of heaven might fall upon the perjurers' heads as surely as the victim died. Among the Nagas of Assam two men lay hold of a dog by head and feet, quickly the poor brute is chopped in twain with a single blow, this being emblematic of the fate in store for the false swearer. Slicing off a cock's head seems to be the most solemn and sacred way of getting a Chinaman to swear truly, even nowadays (36 A. L. J. 142). On very sol emn occasions in India a sheep was killed in the name of Tari Pennu (the dreadful earth-goddess), rice is then moistened with the blood, and the deponent swallows this, in the full conviction that Tari will slay him if he insults her power by perjury.

Sometimes the animal need not die that truth may be spoken. Sir James Mackin tosh once, in India, had a cow brought into court that a witness might swear with its tail in his hands. In Siberia, when swearing an Ostyak, a bear's head is brought into court, the Os tyak makes the gesture of eating, and calls upon the bear to devour him in like manner if he swerves from the truth. The neigh boring Samoides have the same custom. Many of the jungle tribes of India have to be sworn upon a tiger's skin, as they believe a false witness is sure to become food for tigers. Some Hindus think it better to stand upon a lizard's skin and invite the scaliness of that reptile to come upon them if they foreswear themselves; others take the oath over an ant-hill, with an impreca tion that if they swear falsely they may be reduced to powder. A Galla of Abyssinia sits down over a pit covered by a hide, implicating that he may fall into the pit if he breaks his word. Menu said, " Let the judge cause a sol dier to be sworn by his horse or elephant, a merchant by his kine." Omichaund's case settled that a Gentoo might be sworn by touching the feet of one of his priests, (i Atk. 2i.) The oaths administered in the courts of Burmah and Siam are awe-inspiring: calam ities upon calamities are invoked on the perjurer's head; penalties in this life and in the next, and those after the next are freely called down; and punishments ab omnibus rebus ct quibnsdam aliis. Here is the one in vogue in the land of the White Elephant: "I will speak the truth. If I speak not the truth may it be through the influence of the laws of demerit, namely, passion, anger, folly, pride, false opinion, immodesty, hard