[Aztlan] Insights into "sacrifice" & "offering"

[ECOLING at aol.com]

Both Michael Smith and John Hoopes's comments recently are
good contributions to our understanding in greater depth
the taking of lives.   I see no conflict at all in their views, 
they complement each other, they are looking in part at different
aspects of these questions.

The examples of "suicide bombers" in the MidEast today,
and of Japanese seppuku or harikiri are good.
Neither is a full match for our "suicide", because they do not recognize 
the social functions distinct from the personal acts.

At the same time, it is well to remember that a strong motivation
for official killings in (many or most?) cultures is a perverted lust for 
power 
among some who desire the thrill(?) of having so much power over others 
that they can take lives simply because they want to, whether this is at
an individual level, or a societal level.   A related motivation
at a larger scale is to justify conquest and killing and oppression.

John's comment on how different the connotations are between
the terms "gift" and "sacrifice" is on target.   Even closer are
"offering" and "sacrifice".   I have recently become aware of one
very capable Mayanist who has written that the so-called "scattering"
glyph (hand somewhat open downwards, from which powder or
other small granules are being released) should be read as "sacrifice".
Here rather clearly, "offering" is closer to the usages we find in the
texts.   And I would estimate that the archetype used in the glyphic image
was most often powder or granules not specifically liquids. 
The English word "offering" is compatible with either, and has
a social meaning rather than a purely physical meaning.   Decipherments
of unknown texts usually have erroneous biases towards physical 
meanings because of misguided beliefs that those are easier to justify
or provide data to support.   Actually, they are not.   The exclusion of
more sophisticated meanings is the means by which the physical
interpretations are made to seem more plausible.   
Mayan examples of more abstract meanings include 
"offering" instead of "killing";   "defeat someone's military forces" 
instead of "throw down someone's spear and shield"
"defeat" instead of "decapitate", and many others.
There may be some cases where the "scattering" glyph is used with a 
bowl of papers spotted with liquid. I'd like to see a full compilation of 
all the instances and co-occurrences or lack of overlap of usages, to
find out whether this verb is fully general, or has preferred contexts
of use.   Does such a compilation exist?

A couple of years ago, I noticed in Washington Mathews
_The Mountain Chant. A Navajo Ceremony_
(Univ. of Utah Press, 1997 reprint) that the word "sacrifice" was
used where it did not make sense or even was ungrammatical.
"Offering" would have been appropriate.   At least in modern English
or in our culture today.   I did not mark the specific locations in the text,
must find them again.   But on p.38 of that edition, there are multiple
references to "sacrifices" which are entirely inanimate, feathers being
the closest things to a live component.   There was not even any 
self-scarification involved at least in the paragraphs I just scanned.
Here is one sentence, in which I have replaced the Navajo terms 
for ease in reading:
<<When the [sacrifical sticks] and cigarettes were ready, the [officiant]
distributed them along with the bunches of plumes, on the five pieces
of cotton cloth, which were then rolled up around their contents,
making five bundles of sacrifices.>>   
Today this usage feels odd.
Today we would have to say "offerings", because the word "sacrifices"
has come in more and more contexts to evoke "human sacrifices" and
violence.   Think what the word originally meant: sacri-ficare,
"to make sacred or pure or holy" (sacer).   
This is why many sacrificial rites involve 
ceremonies of purification or of abstinence.   
The Indo-European root is *sak-, with a related *sa-n-k- as in "sanctify".
So the meaning of the word "sacrifice" may possibly have changed quite
radically even in recent times.   I cannot assert that is the case, 
because I have not done any full survey as the makers of dictionaries do, 
but there do exist clues of the kind I mention above, where older
contexts of use no longer seem appropriate.

The word "sacrifice" is on many occasions simply a wrong choice of 
words, an incorrect translation.   Why is that particular error so common?
Why do people so often make this kind of mistake, why do academics?   
I believe it is in part that a supposedly "dead" people are felt not to be 
harmed by sensationalizing or in other ways distorting the facts of their 
history, and individuals (whether political leaders or academics or editors 
in media outlets) can advance their careers by sensationalizing.   
I am more concerned about the morality of this kind of misrepresentation
(lies, if you are willing to call it by a proper name, since people are
advancing their selfish interests in these ways at great social cost,
and doing so by propagating factual falsehoods) 
than I am about some ultimate judgement of the
morality of sacrifice among the Aztecs, whose behavior is after all
no longer subject to modification.   
The behavior of our cultures today is, at least in theory, 
still subject to modification.

*

I brought up a part of this thread recently because the talk by Joanne Baron
offered us another opportunity to find some middle ground, 
to focus on the *factual question* of how we scientifically determine 
how many human beings were in fact sacrificed by the Aztecs.   
I still would like to see that, and perhaps some of it is 
available in the readings recently suggested.

I am not a "new Mexican" apologist, so not trying for emotional reasons 
to deny that people were killed in some numbers.
(Caroline mentioned that as a counterfoil to some lines of reasoning.)

But I also cannot *scientifically* accept the obviously exaggerated
numbers, numbers exaggerated in part in order to rationalize barbaric
slaughter (as Bartolome de las Casas recognized from the beginning)
of peoples simply in order to grab their land and resources,
or more recently perhaps simply because it sells.

I think people are not aware of the degree to which their uses of
language embody false assumptions, or of the degree to which
a seemingly small matter, a desire for an "exciting program title" 
can lead them to misrepresent facts, to tell very harmful lies.

The harm is partly to living peoples who are in this way slandered,
or on other topics treated as primitive where they may in fact have 
demonstrated great intelligence and cleverness in materials technology
or agricultural management or administrative design or astronomy.
And slander is what it often is.   This is why modern peoples object to the
misrepresentation of their ancestors.   Those in power censor much
which would reflect poorly on their own culture, but eagerly
denigrate other cultures to flatter themselves. Inequality in control
of information is one of the most damaging inequalities affecting
minorities and anyone with less control.

Even greater harm is done to those who are doing the misrepresentation,
because flattering our own sense of superiority and power leads us
to commit additional crimes.   Supposedly we can change our own behavior
today, but these distortions make that much harder to do.   
Excess power over others does corrupt.   
And that includes power to manage information, 
to misrepresent or to exclude other views.

I very much look forward to learning from some of the readings
suggested by John Hoopes and others.

Best wishes,
Lloyd

Lloyd Anderson
Ecological Linguistics
PO Box 15156
Washington DC 20003
ecoling at aol.com
202-547-7683



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