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When the king first
succeeded in getting the life of another accepted as a sacrifice
instead of his own, he would have to show that the death of that
other would serve the purpose quite as well as his own would have
done. Now it was as a god or demigod that the king had to die;
therefore the substitute who died for him had to be invested, at
least for the occasion, with the divine attributes of the king.
This, as we have just seen, was certainly the case with the
temporary kings of Siam and Cambodia; they were invested with the
supernatural functions, which in an earlier stage of society were
the special attributes of the king. But no one could so well
represent the king in his divine character as his son, who might be
supposed to share the divine afflatus of his father. No one,
therefore, could so appropriately die for the king and, through him,
for the whole people, as the king's son.
We have seen that according to tradition, Aun or On, King of Sweden,
sacrificed nine of his sons to Odin at Upsala in order that his own
life might be spared.


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