Here, again, we have the same dominant feature;
it is not merely the untimely death which is lamented, but the
restoration to life which is celebrated.
Throughout the whole study the author fails to discriminate between
the activities of the living, and the dead, king. The Dead king may,
as I have said above, be regarded as the Benefactor, as the
Protector, of his people, but it is the Living king upon whom their
actual and continued prosperity depends. The detail that the ruling
sovereign is sometimes regarded as the re-incarnation of the original
founder of the race strengthens this point--the king never dies--Le
Roi est mort, Vive le Roi is very emphatically the motto of this
Faith. It is the insistence on Life, Life continuous, and
ever-renewing, which is the abiding characteristic of these cults, a
characteristic which differentiates them utterly and entirely from the
ancestral worship with which Sir W. Ridgeway would fain connect them.
Nor are the arguments based upon the memorial rites of definitely
historical heroes, of comparatively late date, such as Hussein and
Hossein, of any value here. It is precisely the death, and not the
resurrection, of the martyr which is of the essence of the Muharram.
No one contends that Hussein rose from the dead, but it is precisely
this point which is of primary importance in the Nature cults; and Sir
W.
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