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)

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49

[Sidenote: Application of the juices of the dead to the persons of the
living.]

Some of the inland tribes of this district have a peculiar way of
disposing of their dead. A double platform about ten feet high is
erected near the village. On the upper platform the corpse is placed,
and immediately below it the widow or widower sleeps on the lower
platform, allowing juices of the decaying body to stream down on her or
him. This application of the decomposing juices of a corpse to the
persons of the living is not uncommon among savages; it appears to be a
form of communion with the dead, the survivors thus in a manner
identifying themselves with their departed kinsfolk by absorbing a
portion of their bodily substance. Among the tribes in question a
widower marks his affection for his dead wife by never washing himself
during the period of mourning; he would not rid himself of those
products of decomposition which link him, however sadly, with her whom
he has lost. Every day, too, reeking with these relics of mortality, he
solemnly stalks through the village.[335]

[Sidenote: Precautions taken by man-slayers against the ghosts of their
victims.]

But there is a distinction between ghosts. If all of them are feared,
some are more dreadful than others, and amongst the latter may naturally
be reckoned the ghosts of slain enemies. Accordingly the slayer has to
observe special precautions to guard against the angry and vengeful
spirit of his victim. Amongst these people, we are told, a man who has
taken life is held to be impure until he has undergone certain
ceremonies. As soon as possible after the deed is done, he cleanses
himself and his weapon. Then he repairs to his village and seats himself
on the logs of sacrificial staging. No one approaches him or takes any
notice whatever of him. Meantime a house is made ready, in which he must
live by himself for several days, waited on only by two or three small
boys. He may eat nothing but toasted bananas, and only the central parts
of them; the ends are thrown away. On the third day a small feast is
prepared for him by his friends, who also provide him with some new
waistbands. Next day, arrayed in all his finery and wearing the badges
which mark him as a homicide, he sallies forth fully armed and parades
the village. Next day a hunt takes place, and from the game captured a
kangaroo is selected. It is cut open, and with its spleen and liver the
back of the homicide is rubbed. Then he walks solemnly down to the
nearest water and standing straddle-legs in it washes himself. All young
untried warriors then swim between his legs, which is supposed to impart
his courage and strength to them. Next day at early dawn he dashes out
of his house fully armed and calls aloud the name of his victim. Having
satisfied himself that he has thoroughly scared the ghost of the dead
man, he returns to his house. Further, floors are beaten and fires
kindled for the sake of driving away the ghost, lest he should still be
lingering in the neighbourhood. A day later the purification of the
homicide is complete and he is free to enter his wife's house, which he
might not do before.[336] This account of the purification of a homicide
suggests that the purificatory rites, which have been observed in
similar cases by many peoples, including the ancient Greeks, are
primarily intended to free the slayer from the dangerous ghost of his
victim, which haunts him and seeks to take his life. Such rites in fact
appear designed, not to restore the homicide to a state of moral
innocence, but merely to guard him against a physical danger; they are
protective, not reformatory, in character; they are exorcisms, not
purifications in the sense which we attach to the word. This
interpretation of the ceremonies observed by manslayers among many
peoples might be supported by a large array of evidence; but to go into
the matter fully would lead me into a long digression. I have collected
some of the evidence elsewhere.[337]

[Sidenote: Beliefs and customs concerning the dead among the Massim of
south-eastern New Guinea. Hiyoyoa, the land of the dead. Mourners bathe
and shave their heads. Food deposited in the grave. Dietary restrictions
imposed on mourners.]

We now pass to that branch of the Papuo-Melanesian race which occupies
the extreme south-eastern part of British New Guinea, and to which Dr.
Seligmann gives the name of Massim. These people have been observed more
especially at three places, namely Bartle Bay, Wagawaga, and Tubetube, a
small island of the Engineer group lying off the south-eastern extremity
of New Guinea. Among them the old custom was to bury the dead on the
outskirts of the hamlet and sometimes within a few yards of the houses,
and apparently the remains were afterwards as a rule left undisturbed;
there was no general practice of exhuming the bones and depositing them
elsewhere.[338] At Wagawaga the name for the spirit or soul of a dead
person is _arugo_, which also signifies a man's shadow or reflection in
a glass or in water; and though animals and trees are not supposed to
have spirits, their reflections bear the same name _arugo_.[339] The
souls of the dead are believed to depart to the land of Hiyoyoa, which
is under the sea, near Maivara, at the head of Milne Bay. The land of
the dead, as usual, resembles in all respects the land of the living,
except that it is day there when it is night at Wagawaga, and the dead
speak of the upper world in the language of Milne Bay instead of in that
of Wagawaga. A certain being called Tumudurere receives the ghosts on
their arrival and directs them where to make their gardens. The souls of
living men and women can journey to the land of the dead and return to
earth; indeed this happens not unfrequently. There is a man at Wagawaga
who has often gone thither and come back; whenever he wishes to make the
journey, he has nothing to do but to smear himself with a magical stuff
and to fall asleep, after which he soon wakes up in Hiyoyoa. At first
the ghosts whom he met in the other world did not invite him to partake
of their food, because they knew that if he did so he could not return
to the land of the living; but apparently practice has rendered him
immune to the usually fatal effects of the food of the dead.[340] Though
Hiyoyoa, at the head of Milne Bay, lies to the west of Wagawaga, the
dead are buried in a squatting posture with their faces turned to the
east, in order that their souls may depart to the other world.[341]
Immediately after the funeral the relations who have taken part in the
burial go down to the sea and bathe, and so do the widow and children of
the deceased because they supported the dying husband and father in his
extremity. After bathing in the sea the widow and children shave their
heads.[342] Both the bathing and the shaving are doubtless forms of
ceremonial purification; in other words, they are designed to rid the
survivors of the taint of death, or perhaps more definitely to remove
the ghost from their persons, to which he may be supposed to cling like
a burr. At Bartle Bay the dead are buried on their sides with their
heads pointing in the direction from which the totem clan of the
deceased is said to have come originally; and various kinds of food, of
which the dead man had partaken in his last illness, are deposited,
along with some paltry personal ornaments, in the grave. Apparently the
food is intended to serve as provision for the ghost on his journey to
the other world. Curiously enough, the widow is forbidden to eat of the
same kinds of food of which her husband ate during his last illness, and
the prohibition is strictly observed until after the last of the funeral
feasts.[343] The motive of the prohibition is not obvious; perhaps it
may be a fear of attracting the ghost back to earth through the savoury
food which he loved in the body. At Wagawaga, after the relatives who
took part in the burial have bathed in the sea, they cut down several of
the coco-nut trees which belonged to the deceased, leaving both nuts and
trees to rot on the ground. During the first two or three weeks after
the funeral these same relatives may not eat boiled food, but only
roast; they may not drink water, but only the milk of young coco-nuts
made hot, and although they may eat yams they must abstain from bananas
and sugar-cane.[344] A man may not eat coco-nuts grown in his dead
father's hamlet, nor pigs and areca-nuts from it during the whole
remainder of his life.[345] The reasons for these dietary restrictions
are not mentioned, but no doubt the abstinences are based on a fear of
the ghost, or at all events on a dread of the contagion of death, to
which all who had a share in the burial are especially exposed.

[Sidenote: Funeral customs at Tubetube. The fire on the grave. The happy
land.]

At Tubetube, in like manner, immediately after a funeral a brother of
the deceased cuts down two or three of the dead man's coco-nut trees.
There, also, the children of the deceased may not eat any coco-nuts from
their father's trees nor even from any trees grown in his hamlet; nay,
they may not partake of any garden produce grown in the vicinity of the
hamlet; and similarly they must abstain from the pork of all pigs
fattened in their dead father's village. But these prohibitions do not
apply to the brothers, sisters, and other relatives of the departed. The
relations who have assisted at the burial remain at the grave for five
or six days, being fed by the brothers or other near kinsfolk of the
deceased. They may not quit the spot even at night, and if it rains they
huddle into a shelter built over the grave. During their vigil at the
tomb they may not drink water, but are allowed a little heated coco-nut
milk; they are supposed to eat only a little yam and other vegetable
food.[346] On the day when the body is buried a fire is kindled at the
grave and kept burning night and day until the feast of the dead has
been held. "The reason for having the fire is that the spirit may be
able to get warm when it rises from the grave. The natives regard the
spirit as being very cold, even as the body is when the life has
departed from it, and without this external warmth provided by the fire
it would be unable to undertake the journey to its final home. The feast
for the dead is celebrated when the flesh has decayed, and in some
places the skull is taken from the grave, washed and placed in the
house, being buried again when the feast is over. At Tubetube this
custom of taking the skull from the grave is not regularly followed, in
some instances it is, but the feast is always held, and on the night of
the day on which the feast takes place, the fire, which has been in some
cases kept burning for over a month, is allowed to burn out, as the
spirit, being now safe and happy in the spirit-land, has no further need
of it."[347] "In this spirit-land eternal youth prevails, there are no
old men nor old women, but all are in the full vigour of the prime of
life, or are attaining thereto, and having reached that stage never grow
older. Old men and old women, who die as such on Tubetube, renew their
youth in this happy place, where there are no more sickness, no evil
spirits, and no death. Marriage, and giving in marriage, continue; if a
man dies, his widow, though she may have married again, is at her death
re-united to her first husband in the spirit-land, and the second
husband when he arrives has to take one of the women already there who
may be without a mate, unless he marries again before his death, in
which case he would have to wait until his wife joins him. Children are
born, and on arriving at maturity do not grow older. Houses are built,
canoes are made but they are never launched, and gardens are planted and
yield abundantly. The spirits of their animals, dogs, pigs, etc., which
have died on Tubetube, precede and follow them to the spirit-land.
Fighting and stealing are unknown, and all are united in a common
brotherhood."[348]

[Sidenote: The names of the dead not mentioned.]

In the south-eastern part of New Guinea the fear of the dead is further
manifested by the common custom of avoiding the mention of their names.
If their names were those of common objects, the words are dropped from
the language of the district so long as the memory of the departed
persists, and new names are substituted for them. For example, when a
man named Binama, which means the hornbill, died at Wagawaga, the name
of the bird was changed to _ambadina_, which means "the plasterer."[349]
In this way many words are either permanently lost or revived with
modified or new meanings. Hence the fear of the dead is here, as in many
other places, a fertile source of change in language. Another indication
of the terror inspired by ghosts is the custom of abandoning or
destroying the house in which a death has taken place; and this custom
used to be observed in certain cases at Tubetube and Wagawaga.[350]

[Sidenote: Beliefs and customs concerning the dead in the island of
Kiwai.]

Thus far I have dealt mainly with the beliefs and practices of the
Papuo-Melanesians in the eastern part of British New Guinea. With regard
to the pure Papuan population in the western part of the possession our
information is much scantier. However, we learn that in Kiwai, a large
island at the mouth of the Fly River, the dead are buried in the
villages and the ghosts are supposed to live in the ground near their
decaying bodies, but to emerge from time to time into the upper air and
look about them, only, however, to return to their abode beneath the
sod. Nothing is buried with the corpse; but a small platform is made
over the grave, or sticks are planted in the ground along its sides, and
on these are placed sago, yams, bananas, coco-nuts, and cooked crabs and
fish, all for the spirit of the dead to eat. A fire is also kindled
beside the grave and kept up by the friends for nine days in order that
the poor ghost may not shiver with cold at night. These practices prove
not merely a belief in the survival of the soul after death but a desire
to make it comfortable. Further, when the deceased is a man, his bow and
arrows are stuck at the head of the grave; when the deceased is a woman,
her petticoat is hung upon a stick. No doubt the weapons and the garment
are intended for the use of the ghost, when he or she revisits the upper
air. On the ninth day after the burial a feast is prepared, the drum is
beaten, the conch shell blown, and the chief mourner declares that no
more fires need be lighted and no more food placed on the grave.[351]

[Sidenote: Adiri, the land of the dead, and Sido, the first man who went
thither. The fear of ghosts.]

According to the natives of Kiwai the land of the dead is called Adiri
or Woibu. The first man to go thither and to open up a road for others
to follow him, was Sido, a popular hero about whom the people tell many
tales. But whereas in his lifetime Sido was an admired and beneficent
being, in his ghostly character he became a mischievous elf who played
pranks on such as he fell in with. His adventures after death furnish
the theme of many stories. However, it is much to his credit that,
finding the land of the dead a barren region without vegetation of any
sort, he, by an act of generation, converted it into a garden, where
bananas, yams, taro, coco-nuts and other fruits and vegetables grew and
ripened in a single night. Having thus fertilised the lower region, he
announced to Adiri, the lord of the subterranean realm, that he was the
precursor of many more men and women who would descend thereafter into
the spirit world. His prediction has been amply fulfilled; for ever
since then everybody has gone by the same road to the same place.[352]
However, when a person dies, his or her spirit may linger for a few days
in the neighbourhood of its old home before setting out for the far
country. During that time the spirit may occasionally be seen by
ordinary people, and accordingly the natives are careful not to go out
in the dark for fear of coming bolt on the ghost; and they sometimes
adopt other precautions against the prowling spectre, who might
otherwise haunt them and carry them off with him to deadland. Some
classes of ghosts are particularly dreaded on account of their
malignity; such, for example, are the spirits of women who have died in
childbed, and of people who have hanged themselves or been devoured by
crocodiles. Such ghosts loiter for a long time about the places where
they died, and they are very dangerous, because they are for ever luring
other people to die the same death which they died themselves. Yet
another troop of evil ghosts are the souls of those who were beheaded in
battle; for they kill and devour people, and at night you may see the
blood shining like fire as it gushes from the gaping gashes in their
throats.[353]

[Sidenote: The path of the ghosts to Adiri. Adiri, the land of the
dead.]

The road to Adiri or deadland is fairly well known, and the people can
point to many landmarks on it. For example, in the island of Paho there
is a tree called _dani_, under which the departing spirits sit down and
weep. When they have cried their fill and rubbed their poor
tear-bedraggled faces with mud, they make little pellets of clay and
throw them at the tree, and anybody can see for himself the pellets
sticking to the branches. It is true that the pellets resemble the nests
of insects, but this resemblance is only fortuitous. Near the tree is a
rocking stone, which the ghosts set in motion, and the sound that they
make in so doing is like the muffled roll of a drum. And while the stone
rocks to and fro with a hollow murmur, the ghosts dance, the men on one
side of the stone and the women on the other. Again at Mabudavane, where
the Mawata people have gardens, you may sometimes hear, in the stillness
of night, the same weird murmur, which indicates the presence of a
ghost. Then everybody keeps quiet, the children are hushed to silence,
and all listen intently. The murmur continues for a time and then ends
abruptly in a splash, which tells the listeners that the ghost has
leaped over the muddy creek. Further on, the spirits come to Boigu,
where they swim in the waterhole and often appear to people in their
real shape. But after Boigu the track of the ghosts is lost, or at least
has not been clearly ascertained. The spirit world lies somewhere away
in the far west, but the living are not quite sure of the way to it, and
they are somewhat vague in their accounts of it. There is no difference
between the fate of the good and the fate of the bad in the far country;
the dead meet the friends who died before them; and people who come from
the same village probably live together in the same rooms of the long
house of the ghosts. However, some native sceptics even doubt whether
there is such a place as Adiri at all, and whether death may not be the
end of consciousness to the individual.[354]

[Sidenote: Appearance of the dead to the living in dreams.]

The dead often appear to the living in dreams, warning them of danger or
furnishing them with useful information with regard to the cultivation
of their gardens, the practice of witchcraft, and so on. In order to
obtain advice from his dead parents a man will sometimes dig up their
skulls from the grave and sleep beside them; and to make sure of
receiving their prompt attention he will not infrequently provide
himself with a cudgel, with which he threatens to smash their skulls if
they do not answer his questions. Some persons possess a special faculty
of communicating with the departing spirit of a person who has just
died. Should they desire to question it they will lurk beside the road
which ghosts are known to take; and in order not to be betrayed by their
smell, which is very perceptible to a ghost, they will chew the leaf or
bark of a certain tree and spit the juice over their bodies. Then the
ghost cannot detect them, or rather he takes them to be ghosts like
himself, and accordingly he may in confidence impart to them most
valuable information, such for example as full particulars with regard
to the real cause of his death. This priceless intelligence the
ghost-seer hastens to communicate to his fellow tribesmen.[355]

[Sidenote: Offerings to the dead.]

When a man has just died and been buried, his surviving relatives lay
some of his weapons and ornaments, together with presents of food, upon
his grave, no doubt for the use of the ghost; but some of these things
they afterwards remove and bring back to the village, probably
considering, with justice, that they will be more useful to the living
than to the dead. But offerings to the dead may be presented to them at
other places than their tombs. "The great power," says Dr. Landtman,
"which the dead represent to the living has given rise to a sort of
simple offering to them, almost the only kind of offering met with among
the Kiwai Papuans. The natives occasionally lay down presents of food at
places to which spirits come, and utter some request for assistance
which the spirits are supposed to hear."[356] In such offerings and
prayers we may detect the elements of a regular worship of the dead.

[Sidenote: Dreams as a source of the belief in immortality.]

With regard to the source of these beliefs among the Kiwai people Dr.
Landtman observes that "undoubtedly dreams have largely contributed in
supplying the natives with ideas about Adiri and life after death. A
great number of dreams collected by me among the Kiwai people tell of
wanderings to Adiri or of meetings with spirits of dead men, and as
dreams are believed to describe the real things which the soul sees
while roaming about outside the body, we understand that they must
greatly influence the imagination of the people."[357]

That concludes what I have to say as to the belief in immortality and
the worship of the dead among the natives of British New Guinea. In the
following lectures I shall deal with the same rudimentary aspect of
religion as it is reported to exist among the aborigines of the vast
regions of German and Dutch New Guinea.

[Footnote 310: C. G. Seligmann, _The Melanesians of British New Guinea_
(Cambridge, 1910), pp. 1 _sq._]

[Footnote 311: See below, pp. 242, 256, 261 _sq._, 291.]

[Footnote 312: A. C. Haddon, _Headhunters, Black, White, and Brown_
(London, 1901), pp. 249 _sq._ As to the Motu and their Melanesian or
Polynesian affinities, see Rev. W. Y. Turner, "The Ethnology of the
Motu," _Journal of the Anthropological Institute_, vii. (1878) pp. 470
_sqq._]

[Footnote 313: Rev. J. Chalmers, _Pioneering in New Guinea_ (London,
1887), pp. 168-170. Compare Rev. W. Y. Turner, "The Ethnology of the
Motu," _Journal of the Anthropological Institute_, vii. (1878) pp. 484
_sqq._; Rev. W. G. Lawes, "Ethnological Notes on the Motu, Koitapu and
Koiari Tribes of New Guinea," _Journal of the Anthropological
Institute_, viii. (1879) pp. 370 _sq._]

[Footnote 314: A. C. Haddon, _Headhunters, Black, White, and Brown_, pp.
249 _sq._; C. G. Seligmann, _The Melanesians of British New Guinea_, pp.
16, 41. As to the Koita (or Koitapu) and the Motu, see further the Rev.
W. Y. Turner, "The Ethnology of the Motu," _Journal of the
Anthropological Institute_, vii. (1878) pp. 470 _sqq._; Rev. W. G.
Lawes, "Ethnological Notes on the Motu, Koitapu and Koiari Tribes of New
Guinea," _Journal of the Anthropological Institute_, viii. (1879) pp.
369 _sq._]

[Footnote 315: C. G. Seligmann, _op. cit._ pp. 189-191.]

[Footnote 316: C. G. Seligmann, _op. cit._ pp. 185 _sq._]

[Footnote 317: C. G. Seligmann, _op. cit._ p. 192.]

[Footnote 318: C. G. Seligmann, _op. cit._ pp. 190-192. As to the
desertion of the house after death, see _id._, pp. 89 _sq._]

[Footnote 319: The territory of the Roro-speaking tribes extends from
Kevori, east of Waimatuma (Cape Possession), to Hiziu in the
neighbourhood of Galley Reach. Inland of these tribes lies a region
called by them Mekeo, which is inhabited by two closely related tribes,
the Biofa and Vee. Off the coast lies Yule Island, which is commonly
called Roro. See C. G. Seligmann, _op. cit._ p. 195.]

[Footnote 320: V. Jouet, _La Societe des Missionaires du Sacre Coeur
dans les Vicariats Apostoliques de la Melanesie et de la Micronesie_
(Issoudun, 1887), p. 30; Father Guis, "Les Canaques: Mort-deuil,"
_Missions Catholiques_, xxxiv. (1902) pp. 186, 200.]

[Footnote 321: C. G. Seligmann, _op. cit._ pp. 274 _sq._]

[Footnote 322: Father Guis, "Les Canaques: Mort-deuil," _Missions
Catholiques_, xxxiv. (1902) pp. 208 _sq._ See _Psyche's Task_, pp. 75
_sq._]

[Footnote 323: C. G. Seligmann, _op. cit._ p. 310.]

[Footnote 324: R. W. Williamson, _The Mafulu Mountain People of British
New Guinea_ (London, 1912), pp. 2 _sq._, 297 _sqq._]

[Footnote 325: R. W. Williamson, _op. cit._ pp. 243 _sq._, 246,
266-269.]

[Footnote 326: R. W. Williamson, _op. cit._ pp. 245-250.]

[Footnote 327: R. W. Williamson, _op. cit._ pp. 256-258, 261-263.]