The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3)

S >> Sir James George Frazer >> The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3)

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[Sidenote: Custom of burying people in the place where they were born.
The custom perhaps intended to facilitate the rebirth of the soul.]

The same motive may possibly explain the custom observed by some
Australian tribes of burying people, as far as possible, at the place
where they were born. Thus in regard to the tribes of Western Victoria
we are informed that "dying persons, especially those dying from old
age, generally express an earnest desire to be taken to their
birthplace, that they may die and be buried there. If possible, these
wishes are always complied with by the relatives and friends. Parents
will point out the spot where they were born, so that when they become
old and infirm, their children may know where they wish their bodies to
be disposed of."[249] Again, some tribes in the north and north-east of
Victoria "are said to be more than ordinarily scrupulous in interring
the dead. If practicable, they will bury the corpse near the spot where,
as a child, it first drew breath. A mother will carry a dead infant for
weeks, in the hope of being able to bury it near the place where it was
born; and a dead man will be conveyed a long distance, in order that the
last rites may be performed in a manner satisfactory to the tribe."[250]
Another writer, speaking of the Australian aborigines in general, says:
"By what I could learn, it is considered proper by many tribes that a
black should be buried at or near the spot where he or she was born, and
for this reason, when a black becomes seriously ill, the invalid is
carried a long distance to these certain spots to die, as in this case.
They apparently object to place a body in strange ground." The same
writer mentions the case of a blackfellow, who began digging a grave
close beside the kitchen door of a Mr. Campbell. When Mr. Campbell
remonstrated with him, the native replied that he had no choice, for the
dead man had been born on that very spot. With much difficulty Mr.
Campbell persuaded him to bury his deceased friend a little further off
from the kitchen door.[251] A practice of this sort would be
intelligible on the theory of the Central Australians, who imagine that
the spirits of all the dead return to the very spots where they entered
into their mothers' wombs, and that they wait there until another
opportunity presents itself to them of being born again into the world.
For if people really believe, as do many Australian tribes, that when
they die they will afterwards come to life again as infants, it is
perfectly natural that they should take steps to ensure and facilitate
the new birth. The Unmatjera and Kaitish tribes of Central Australia do
this in the case of dead children. These savages draw a sharp
distinction between young children and very old men and women. When very
old people die, their bodies are at once buried in the ground, but the
bodies of children are placed in wooden troughs and deposited on
platforms of boughs in the branches of trees, and the motive for
treating a dead child thus is, we are informed, the hope "that before
very long its spirit may come back again and enter into the body of a
woman--in all probability that of its former mother."[252] The reason
for drawing this distinction between the young and the old by disposing
of their bodies in different fashions, is explained with great
probability by Messrs. Spencer and Gillen as follows: "In the Unmatjera
and Kaitish tribes, while every old man has certain privileges denied to
the younger men, yet if he be decidedly infirm and unable to take his
part in the performance of ceremonies which are often closely
concerned--or so at least the natives believe them to be--with the
general welfare of the tribe, then the feeling undoubtedly is that there
is no need to pay any very special respect to his remains. This feeling
is probably vaguely associated with the idea that, as his body is
infirm, so to a corresponding extent will his spirit part be, and
therefore they have no special need to consider or propitiate this, as
it can do them no harm. On the other hand they are decidedly afraid of
hurting the feelings of any strong man who might be capable of doing
them some mischief unless he saw that he was properly mourned for.
Acting under much the same feeling they pay respect to the bodies of
dead children and young women, in the hope that the spirit will soon
return and undergo reincarnation. It is also worth noticing that they do
not bury in trees any young man who has violated tribal law by taking as
wife a woman who is forbidden to him; such an individual is always
buried directly in the ground."[253] Apparently these law-abiding
savages are not anxious that members of the criminal classes should be
born again and should have the opportunity of troubling society once
more.

[Sidenote: Different modes of disposing of the dead adopted in the same
tribe.]

I would call your attention particularly to the different modes of
burial thus accorded by these two tribes to different classes of
persons. It is too commonly assumed that each tribe has one uniform way
of disposing of all its dead, say either by burning or by burying, and
on that assumption certain general theories have been built as to the
different views taken of the state of the dead by different tribes. But
in point of fact the assumption is incorrect. Not infrequently the same
tribe disposes of different classes of dead people in quite different
ways; for instance, it will bury some and burn others. Thus amongst the
Angoni of British Central Africa the corpses of chiefs are burned with
all their household belongings, but the bodies of commoners are buried
with all their belongings in caves.[254] In various castes or tribes of
India it is the custom to burn the bodies of married people but to bury
the bodies of the unmarried.[255] With some peoples of India the
distinction is made, not between the married and the unmarried, but
between adults and children, especially children under two years old; in
such cases the invariable practice appears to be to burn the old and
bury the young. Thus among the Malayalis of Malabar the bodies of men
and women are burned, but the bodies of children under two years are
buried, and so are the bodies of all persons who have died of cholera or
small-pox.[256] The same distinctions are observed by the Nayars,
Kadupattans, and other castes or tribes of Cochin.[257] The old rule
laid down in the ancient Hindoo law-book _The Grihya-Sutras_ was that
children who died under the age of two should be buried, not burnt.[258]
The Bhotias of the Himalayas bury all children who have not yet obtained
their permanent teeth, but they burn all other people.[259] Among the
Komars the young are buried, and the old cremated.[260] The Coorgs bury
the bodies of women and of boys under sixteen years of age, but they
burn the bodies of men.[261] The Chukchansi Indians of California are
said to have burned only those who died a violent death or were bitten
by snakes, but to have buried all others.[262] The Minnetaree Indians
disposed of their dead differently according to their moral character.
Bad and quarrelsome men they buried in the earth that the Master of Life
might not see them; but the bodies of good men they laid on scaffolds,
that the Master of Life might behold them.[263] The Kolosh or Tlingit
Indians of Alaska burn their ordinary dead on a pyre, but deposit the
bodies of shamans in large coffins, which are supported on four
posts.[264] The ancient Mexicans thought that all persons who died of
infectious diseases were killed by the rain-god Tlaloc; so they painted
their bodies blue, which was the rain-god's colour, and buried instead
of burning them.[265]

[Sidenote: Special modes of burial adopted to prevent or facilitate the
return of the spirit.]

These examples may suffice to illustrate the different ways in which the
same people may dispose of their dead according to the age, sex, social
rank, or moral character of the deceased, or the manner of his death. In
some cases the special mode of burial adopted seems clearly intended to
guard against the return of the dead, whether in the form of ghosts or
of children born again into the world. Such, for instance, was obviously
the intention of the old English custom of burying a suicide at a
cross-road with a stake driven through his body. And if some burial
customs are plainly intended to pin down the dead in the earth, or at
least to disable him from revisiting the survivors, so others appear to
be planned with the opposite intention of facilitating the departure of
the spirit from the grave, in order that he may repair to a more
commodious lodging or be born again into the tribe. For example, the
Arunta of Central Australia always bury their dead in the earth and
raise a low mound over the grave; but they leave a depression in the
mound on the side which faces towards the spot where the spirit of the
deceased is supposed to have dwelt in the intervals between his
successive reincarnations; and we are expressly told that the purpose of
leaving this depression is to allow the spirit to go out and in easily;
for until the final ceremony of mourning has been performed at the
grave, the ghost is believed to spend his time partly in watching over
his near relations and partly in the company of its _arumburinga_ or
spiritual double, who lives at the old _nanja_ spot, that is, at the
place where the disembodied soul tarries waiting to be born again.[266]
Thus the Arunta imagine that for some time after death the spirit of the
deceased is in a sort of intermediate state, partly hovering about the
abode of the living, partly visiting his own proper spiritual home, to
which on the completion of the mourning ceremonies he will retire to
await the new birth. The final mourning ceremony, which marks the close
of this intermediate state, takes place some twelve or eighteen months
after the death. It consists mainly in nothing more or less than a ghost
hunt; men armed with shields and spear-throwers assemble and with loud
shouts beat the air, driving the invisible ghost before them from the
spot where he died, while the women join in the shouts and buffet the
air with the palms of their hands to chase away the dead man from the
old camp which he loves to haunt. In this way the beaters gradually
advance towards the grave till they have penned the ghost into it, when
they immediately dance on the top of it, beating the air downwards as if
to drive the spirit down, and stamping on the ground as if to trample
him into the earth. After that, the women gather round the grave and cut
each other's heads with clubs till the blood streams down on it. This
brings the period of mourning to an end; and if the deceased was a man,
his widow is now free to marry again. In token that the days of her
sorrow are over, she wears at this final ceremony the gay feathers of
the ring-neck parrot in her hair. The spirit of her dead husband, lying
in the grave, is believed to know the sign and to bid her a last
farewell. Even after he has thus been hunted into the grave and trampled
down in it, his spirit may still watch over his friends, guard them from
harm, and visit them in dreams.[267]

[Sidenote: Departure of the ghost supposed to coincide with the
disappearance of the flesh from his bones.]

We may naturally ask, Why should the spirit of the dead be supposed at
first to dwell more or less intermittently near the spot where he died,
and afterwards to take up his abode permanently at his _nanja_ spot till
the time comes for him to be born again? A good many years ago I
conjectured[268] that this idea of a change in the abode of the ghost
may be suggested by a corresponding change which takes place, or is
supposed to take place, about the same time in the state of the body; in
fact, that so long as the flesh adheres to the bones, so long the soul
of the dead man may be thought to be detained in the neighbourhood of
the body, but that when the flesh has quite decayed, the soul is
completely liberated from its old tabernacle and is free to repair to
its true spiritual home. In confirmation of this conjecture I pointed to
the following facts. Some of the Indians of Guiana bring food and drink
to their dead so long as the flesh remains on the bones; but when it has
mouldered away, they conclude that the man himself has departed.[269]
The Matacos Indians of the Gran Chaco in Argentina believe that the soul
of a dead man does not pass down into the nether world until his body is
decomposed or burnt. Further, the Alfoors of Central Celebes
suppose that the spirits of the departed cannot enter the spirit-land
until all the flesh has been removed from their bones; for until that
has been done, the gods (_lamoa_) in the other world could not bear the
stench of the corpse. Accordingly at a great festival the bodies of all
who have died within a certain time are dug up and the decaying flesh
scraped from the bones. Comparing these ideas, I suggested that
they may explain the widespread custom of a second burial, that is, the
practice of disinterring the dead after a certain time and disposing of
their bones otherwise.

[Sidenote: Second burial of the bones among the tribes of Central
Australia. Final burial ceremony among the Warramunga.]

Now so far as the tribes of Central Australia are concerned, my
conjecture has been confirmed by the subsequent researches of Messrs.
Spencer and Gillen in that region. For they have found that the tribes
to the north of the Arunta regularly give their dead a second burial,
that a change in the state of the ghosts is believed to coincide with
the second burial, and apparently also, though this is not so definitely
stated, that the time for the second burial is determined by the
disappearance of the flesh from the bones. Amongst the tribes which
practise a second burial the custom is first to deposit the dead on
platforms among the branches of trees, till the flesh has quite
mouldered away, and then to bury the bones in the earth: in short, they
practise tree-burial first and earth-burial afterwards.[270] For
example, in the Unmatjera and Kaitish tribes, when a man dies, his body
is carried by his relations to a tree distant a mile or two from the
camp. There it is laid on a platform by itself for some months. When the
flesh has disappeared from the bones, a kinsman of the deceased, in
strictness a younger brother (_itia_), climbs up into the tree,
dislocates the bones, places them in a wooden vessel, and hands them
down to a female relative. Then the bones are laid in the grave with the
head facing in the direction in which his mother's brother is supposed
to have camped in days of old. After the bones have been thus interred,
the spirit of the dead man is believed to go away and to remain in his
old _alcheringa_ home until such time as he once more undergoes
reincarnation.[271] But in these tribes, as we saw, very old men and
women receive only one burial, being at once laid in an earthy grave and
never set up on a platform in a tree; and we have seen reason to think
that this difference in the treatment of the aged springs from the
indifference or contempt in which their ghosts are held by comparison
with the ghosts of the young and vigorous. In the Warramunga tribe, who
regularly deposit their dead in trees first and in the earth afterwards,
so long as the corpse remains in the tree and the flesh has not
completely disappeared from the bones, the mother of the deceased and
the women who stand to him or her in the relation of tribal motherhood
are obliged from time to time to go to the tree, and sitting under the
platform to allow its putrid juices to drip down on their bodies, into
which they rub them as a token of sorrow. This, no doubt, is intended to
please the jealous ghost; for we are told that he is believed to haunt
the tree and even to visit the camp, in order, if he was a man, to see
for himself that his widows are mourning properly. The time during which
the mouldering remains are left in the tree is at least a year and may
be more.[272] The final ceremony which brings the period of mourning to
an end is curious and entirely different from the one observed by the
Arunta on the same occasion. When the bones have been taken down from
the tree, an arm-bone is put carefully apart from the rest. Then the
skull is smashed, and the fragments together with all the rest of the
bones except the arm-bone, are buried in a hollow ant-hill near the
tree. Afterwards the arm-bone is wrapt up in paper-bark and wound round
with fur-string, so as to make a torpedo-shaped parcel, which is kept by
a tribal mother of the deceased in her rude hovel of branches, till,
after the lapse of some days or weeks, the time comes for the last
ceremony of all. On that day a design emblematic of the totem of the
deceased is drawn on the ground, and beside it a shallow trench is dug
about a foot deep and fifteen feet long. Over this trench a number of
men, elaborately decorated with down of various colours, stand
straddle-legged, while a line of women, decorated with red and yellow
ochre, crawl along the trench under the long bridge made by the
straddling legs of the men. The last woman carries the arm-bone of the
dead in its parcel, and as soon as she emerges from the trench, the bone
is snatched from her by a kinsman of the deceased, who carries it to a
man standing ready with an uplifted axe beside the totemic drawing. On
receiving the bone, the man at once smashes it, hastily buries it in a
small pit beside the totemic emblem of the departed, and closes the
opening with a large flat stone, signifying thereby that the season of
mourning is over and that the dead man or woman has been gathered to his
or her totem. The totemic design, beside which the arm-bone is buried,
represents the spot at which the totemic ancestor of the deceased
finally went down into the earth. When once the arm-bone has thus been
broken and laid in its last resting-place, the soul of the dead person,
which they describe as being of about the size of a grain of sand, is
supposed to go back to the place where it camped long ago in a previous
incarnation, there to remain with the souls of other men and women of
the same totem until the time comes for it to be born again.[273]

[Sidenote: General conclusion as to the belief in immortality and the
worship of the dead among the Australian aborigines.]

This must conclude what I have to say as to the belief in immortality
and the worship of the dead among the aborigines of Australia. The
evidence I have adduced is sufficient to prove that these savages firmly
believe both in the existence of the human soul after death and in the
power which it can exert for good or evil over the survivors. On the
whole the dominant motive in their treatment of the dead appears to be
fear rather than affection. Yet the attention which many tribes pay to
the comfort of the departed by providing them with huts, food, water,
fire, clothing, implements and weapons, may not be dictated by purely
selfish motives; in any case they are clearly intended to please and
propitiate the ghosts, and therefore contain the germs of a regular
worship of the dead.

[Footnote 216: E. J. Eyre, _Journals of Expeditions of Discovery into
Central Australia_ (London, 1845), ii. 349.]

[Footnote 217: A. Oldfield, "The Aborigines of Victoria," _Transactions
of the Ethnological Society of London_, N.S. iii. (1865) p. 245.]

[Footnote 218: P. Beveridge, in _Journal and Proceedings of the Royal
Society of New South Wales_, xvii. (1883) pp. 29 _sq._ Compare R. Brough
Smyth, _Aborigines of Victoria_, i. 100 note.]

[Footnote 219: (Sir) G. Grey, _Journals of Two Expeditions of
Discovery_, ii. 332 _sq._]

[Footnote 220: Rev. J. Roscoe, _The Baganda_ (London, 1911), pp. 109
_sqq._]

[Footnote 221: E. M. Curr, _The Australian Race_ (Melbourne and London,
1886-1887), i. 87.]

[Footnote 222: A. W. Howitt, _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, p.
463.]

[Footnote 223: A. W. Howitt, _op. cit._ p. 461.]

[Footnote 224: A. W. Howitt, _op. cit._ p. 473.]

[Footnote 225: A. W. Howitt, _op. cit._ p. 474.]

[Footnote 226: F. C. Urquhart, "Legends of the Australian Aborigines,"
_Journal of the Anthropological Institute_, xiv. (1885) p. 88.]

[Footnote 227: E. M. Curr, _The Australian Race_, i. 87.]

[Footnote 228: Leviticus xix. 28; Deuteronomy xiv. 1.]

[Footnote 229: W. Stanbridge, "Tribes in the Central Part of Victoria,"
_Transactions of the Ethnological Society of London_, N.S. i. (1861) p.
298.]

[Footnote 230: R. Brough Smyth, _Aborigines of Victoria_, i. 105.]

[Footnote 231: A. W. Howitt, _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, p.
459.]

[Footnote 232: A. W. Howitt, _op. cit_. p. 453.]

[Footnote 233: P. Beveridge, in _Journal and Proceedings of the Royal
Society of New South Wales_, xvii. (1883) pp. 28, 29.]

[Footnote 234: A. W. Howitt, _op. cit_. p. 466.]

[Footnote 235: E. J. Eyre, _Journals of Expeditions of Discovery into
Central Australia_ (London, 1845), ii. 347.]

[Footnote 236: W. E. Roth, _Studies among the North-West-Central
Queensland Aborigines_ (Brisbane and London, 1897), p. 164; compare p.
165.]

[Footnote 237: Spencer and Gillen, _Native Tribes of Central Australia_,
p. 500.]

[Footnote 238: Spencer and Gillen, _op. cit._ p. 510.]

[Footnote 239: Spencer and Gillen, _Northern Tribes of Central
Australia_, pp. 516-552.]

[Footnote 240: Spencer and Gillen, _Native Tribes_, p. 510.]

[Footnote 241: Spencer and Gillen, _Northern Tribes_, p. 507.]

[Footnote 242: Spencer and Gillen, _Native Tribes_, p. 511.]

[Footnote 243: F. Bonney, "On some Customs of the Aborigines of the
River Darling," _Journal of the Anthropological Institute_, xiii. (1884)
pp. 134 _sq._]

[Footnote 244: Spencer and Gillen, _Native Tribes of Central Australia_,
pp. 507, 509 _sq._]

[Footnote 245: (Sir) G. Grey, _Journals of Two Expeditions of
Discovery_, ii. 332, quoting Mr. Bussel.]

[Footnote 246: Scholiast on Pindar, _Olymp._ i. 146.]

[Footnote 247: Homer, _Odyssey_, xi. 23 _sqq._]

[Footnote 248: _The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings_, i. 91 _sq._]

[Footnote 249: J. Dawson, _Australian Aborigines_, p. 62.]

[Footnote 250: R. Brough Smyth, _Aborigines of Victoria_, i. 108.]

[Footnote 251: J. F. Mann, "Notes on the Aborigines of Australia,"
_Proceedings of the Geographical Society of Australasia_, i. (Sydney,
1885) p. 48.]

[Footnote 252: Spencer and Gillen, _Northern Tribes of Central
Australia_, p. 506.]

[Footnote 253: Spencer and Gillen, _Northern Tribes_, p. 512.]

[Footnote 254: R. Sutherland Rattray, _Some Folk-lore Stories and Songs
in Chinyanja_ (London, 1907), pp. 99-101, 182.]

[Footnote 255: F. Fawcett, "The Kondayamkottai Maravars, a Dravidian
Tribe of Tinnevelly, Southern India," _Journal of the Anthropological
Institute_, xxxiii. (1903) p. 64; Captain Wolsley Haig, "Notes on the
Rangari Caste in Barar," _Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal_,
lxx. Part iii. (1901) p. 8; E. Thurston, _Castes and Tribes of Southern
India_ (Madras, 1909), iv. 226 (as to the Lambadis), vi. 244 (as to the
Raniyavas); compare _id._, _Ethnographic Notes in Southern India_
(Madras, 1906), p. 155.]

[Footnote 256: E. Thurston, _Ethnographic Notes in Southern India_, p.
207.]

[Footnote 257: L. K. Anantha Krishna Iyer, _The Cochin Tribes and
Castes_ (Madras, 1909-1912), ii. 91, 112, 157, 360, 378.]

[Footnote 258: _The Grihya Sutras_, translated by H. Oldenberg, Part i.
p. 355 (_Sacred Books of the East_, vol. xxix.). Compare W. Crooke,
_Popular Religion and Folk-lore of Northern India_ (Westminster, 1896),
i. 245.]

[Footnote 259: Ch. A. Sherring, _Western Tibet and the British
Borderland_ (London, 1906), pp. 123 _sq._]

[Footnote 260: P. N. Bose, "Chhattisgar," _Journal of the Asiatic
Society of Bengal_, lix., Part i. (1891) p. 290.]

[Footnote 261: E. Thurston, _Ethnographic Notes in Southern India_, p.
205.]

[Footnote 262: S. Powers, _Tribes of California_ (Washington, 1877), p.
383.]

[Footnote 263: Maximilian Prinz zu Wied, _Reise in das Innere
Nord-America_ (Coblenz, 1839-1841), ii. 235.]

[Footnote 264: T. de Pauly, _Description Ethnographique des Peuples de
la Russie, Peuples de l'Amerique Russe_ (St. Petersburg, 1862), p. 13.]

[Footnote 265: E. Seler, _Altmexikanische Studien_, ii. (Berlin, 1899)
p. 42 (_Veroeffentlichungen aus dem Koeniglichen Museum fuer Voelkerkunde_,
vi. 2/4).]

[Footnote 266: Spencer and Gillen, _Native Tribes of Central Australia_,
p. 497; _id._, _Northern Tribes of Central Australia_, p. 506.]

[Footnote 267: Spencer and Gillen, _Native Tribes of Central Australia_,
pp. 503-508. The name of the final mourning ceremony among the Arunta is
_urpmilchima_.]

[Footnote 268: _The Golden Bough_, Second Edition (London, 1900), i. 434
_sq._]

[Footnote 269: A. Biet, _Voyage de la France Equinoxiale en l'Isle de
Cayenne_ (Paris, 1664), p. 392.]

[Footnote 270: Spencer and Gillen, _Northern Tribes of Central
Australia_, pp. 505 _sqq._]