This being the custom, as may be imagined, the relations between church and state were much strained, but hitherto, as Olfan explained with suppressed rage, the church had been supreme.
Indeed, the king for the time being was only its mouthpiece, or executive officer.

He led the armies, but the superstitions of the people, and even of the soldiers themselves, prevented him from wielding any real power; and, unless he chanced to die naturally, his end was nearly always the same: to be sacrificed when the seasons were bad or "Jal was angry." The country was large but sparsely populated, the fighting men numbered not more than four thousand, of whom about half lived in the great city, the rest occupying villages here and there on the mountain slopes.

As a rule the people were monogamous, except the priests.

It was the custom of sacrifice which kept down the population to its low level, made the power of the priests absolute, and their wealth greater than that of all the other inhabitants of the country put together, for they chose the victims that had offended against Jal or against the mother-goddess, and confiscated their possessions to "the service of the temple." Thus the great herds of half-wild cattle which the travellers had seen on the plains belonged to the priests, and the priests took a fourth of the produce of every man's field and garden--that is, when they did not take it all, and his life with it.
Twice in every year great festivals were held in the temple of Jal, at the beginning of the spring season and in the autumn after the ingathering of the crops.

At each of these festivals many victims were offered in sacrifice, some upon the stone and some by being hurled into the boiling pool beneath the statue, there to be consumed by the Snake or swept down the secret course of the underground river.