That was the signal for war to the death between the princes who aspired to the throne.

They fought till only one was left alive.

He was the king." [220] After completing the above account, of which only the principal points have been stated, Sir J.G.Frazer remarks: "The rule which obliged the kings of Unyoro to kill themselves or be killed before their strength of mind and body began to fail through disease or age is only a particular example of a custom which appears to have prevailed widely among barbarous tribes in Africa and to some extent elsewhere.

Apparently this curious practice rests on a belief that the welfare of the people is sympathetically bound up with the welfare of their king, and that to suffer him to fall into bodily or mental decay would be to involve the whole kingdom in ruin." [221] Other instances connecting the life of the king with the ox or other domestic animal are given in _Totemism and Exogamy_ and _The Golden Bough_ [222] Among the Hereros the body of a dead chief was wrapped up in the hide of an ox before being buried.

[223] In the Vedic horse-sacrifice in India the horse was stifled in robes.