Such a belief enhanced the guilt attaching to the act of causing
or being responsible for a Charan's death. Suicide from motives of
revenge has been practised in other countries. "Another common form
of suicide which is admired as heroic in China is that committed for
the purpose of taking revenge upon an enemy who is otherwise out of
reach--according to Chinese ideas a most effective mode of revenge,
not only because the law throws the responsibility of the deed on him
who occasioned it, but also because the disembodied soul is supposed
to be better able than the living man to persecute the enemy." [304]
Similarly, among the Hos or Mundas the suicide of young married women
is or was extremely common, and the usual motive was that the girl,
being unhappy in her husband's house, jumped down a well or otherwise
made away with herself in the belief that she would take revenge on
his family by haunting them after her death. The treatment of the
suicide's body was sometimes directed to prevent his spirit from
causing trouble. "According to Jewish custom persons who had killed
themselves were left unburied till sunset, perhaps for fear lest the
spirit of the deceased otherwise might find its way back to the old
home." [305] At Athens the right hand of a person who had taken his
own life was struck off and buried apart from the rest of the body,
evidently in order to make him harmless after death. [306] Similarly,
in England suicides were buried with a spike through the chest to
prevent their spirits from rising, and at cross-roads, so that the
ghost might not be able to find its way home. This fear appears to
have partly underlain the idea that suicide was a crime or an offence
against society and the state, though, as shown by Dr. Westermarck,
the reprobation attaching to it was far from universal; while in
the cultured communities of ancient Greece and Rome, and among such
military peoples as the Japanese suicide was considered at all times a
legitimate and, on occasion, a highly meritorious and praiseworthy act.
That condition of mind which leads to the taking of one's own
life from motives of revenge is perhaps a fruit of ignorance and
solitude. The mind becomes distorted, and the sufferer attributes the
unhappiness really caused by accident or his own faults or defects to
the persecution of a malignant fate or the ill-will of his neighbours
and associates. And long brooding over his wrongs eventuates in his
taking the extreme step. The crime known as running amok appears to be
the outcome of a similar state of mind. Here too the criminal considers
his wrongs or misery as the result of injury or unjust treatment
from his fellow-men, and, careless of his own life, determines to be
revenged on them. Such hatred of one's kind is cured by education,
leading to a truer appreciation of the circumstances and environment
which determine the course of life, and by the more cheerful temper
engendered by social intercourse. And these crimes of vengeance tend
to die out with the advance of civilisation.