t part in civil life
as a means of determining the guilt or innocence of an accused person.
From very early times ordeals of various sorts have been devised for
securing a judicial opinion when ordinary means of investigation have
failed. One of the simplest methods is to require an accused person to
swear that he is innocent, the belief being that the god will avenge
false swearing with immediate and visible punishment.[1661] This method
is employed by the Ashanti:[1662] the accused is required to drink a
certain decoction; if he is made sick by it this is proof of his
innocence;[1663] and if there be a question between two men, and one
after drinking is made sick, the other is regarded as guilty, and
executed. On the Lower Congo the accused swallows a pill made of a bark
said to be poisonous; if he soon vomits it he is declared innocent, if
not, he is adjudged guilty.[1664] A similar procedure was employed in
Samoa:[1665] standing in the presence of representatives of the village
god, the suspected person laying his hand on the object wishes that if
he is guilty he may speedily die. Among the Hill people of Ceylon also
this custom exists. Ordeals in Loango are described by Purchas.[1666]

+925+. Among the ancient nations the earliest example of an ordeal
occurs in the code of Hammurabi (about 2000 B.C.). Here the accused is
thrown into the sacred water, and if not drowned is declared innocent;
he is protected by the deity.[1667] The same principle appears in the
old Hebrew ordeal: when a woman was accused of unfaithfulness to her
husband the accused was made to drink sacred water; if she was innocent
no bad consequences followed; if she was guilty she died.[1668] In
India, where various tests by fire, water, and food have been and are
employed, the decision is sometimes as in the Hebrew procedure;
sometimes (when the accused is thrown into the water) the principle
(found elsewhere abundantly) is recognized that it is the innocent
person that suffers and the guilty that is uninjured.[1669] The ordeal
as a civil process continued in Europe until the Middle Ages. In the
submersion in water of a woman suspected of being a witch the principle
of decision was the same as is now practiced in Ashantiland and
India--if the woman was drowned it was a sign that she was innocent, but
if she rose unharmed from the water she was adjudged guilty and was put
to death.[1670]

+926+. The imprecation is similar to the ordeal. A man inv