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: Feigned indignation of a man who has connived at the murder
of a relative.]

Sometimes, instead of sending forth a band of warriors to ravage, burn,
and slaughter the whole male population of the village in which the
wicked sorcerer resides, the people of one village will come to a secret
understanding with the people of the sorcerer's village to have the
miscreant quietly put out of the way. A hint is given to the scoundrel's
next of kin, it may be his brother, son, or nephew, that if he will only
wink at the slaughter of his obnoxious relative, he will receive a
handsome compensation from the slayers. Should he privately accept the
offer, he is most careful to conceal his connivance at the deed of
blood, lest he should draw down on his head the wrath of his murdered
kinsman's ghost. So, when the deed is done and the murder is out, he
works himself up into a state of virtuous sorrow and indignation, covers
his head with the leaves of a certain plant, and chanting a dirge in
tones of heart-rending grief, marches straight to the village of the
murderers. There, on the public square, surrounded by an attentive
audience, he opens the floodgates of his eloquence and pours forth the
torrent of an aching heart. "You have slain my kinsman," says he, "you
are wicked men! How could you kill so good a man, who conferred so many
benefits on me in his lifetime? I knew nothing of the plot. Had I had an
inkling of it, I would have foiled it. How can I now avenge his death? I
have no property with which to hire men of war to go and punish his
murderers. Yet in spite of everything my murdered kinsman will not
believe in my innocence! He will be angry with me, he will pay me out,
he will do me all the harm he can. Therefore do you declare openly
whether I had any share whatever in his death, and come and strew lime
on my head in order that he may convince himself of my innocence." This
appeal of injured innocence meets with a ready response. The people dust
the leaves on his head with powdered lime; and so, decorated with the
white badge of spotless virtue, and enriched with a boar's tusk or other
valuable object as the price of his compliance, he returns to his
village with a conscience at peace with all the world, reflecting with
satisfaction on the profitable transaction he has just concluded, and
laughing in his sleeve at the poor deluded ghost of his murdered
relative.[457]

[Sidenote: Comedy acted to deceive the ghost of a murdered kinsman.]

Sometimes the worthy soul who thus for a valuable consideration consents
to waive all his personal feelings, will even carry his self-abnegation
so far as to be present and look on at the murder of his kinsman. But
true to his principles he will see to it that the thing is done decently
and humanely. When the struggle is nearly over and the man is down,
writhing on the ground with the murderers busy about him, his loving
kinsman will not suffer them to take an unfair advantage of their
superior numbers to cut him up alive with their knives, to chop him with
their axes, or to smash him with their clubs. He will only allow them to
stab him with their spears, repeating of course the stabs again and
again till the victim ceases to writhe and quiver, and lies there dead
as a stone. Then begins the real time of peril for the virtuous kinsman
who has been a spectator and director of the scene; for the ghost of the
murdered man has now deserted its mangled body, and, still blinded with
blood and smarting with pain, might easily and even excusably
misunderstand the situation. It is essential, therefore, in order to
prevent a painful misapprehension, that the kinsman should at once and
emphatically disclaim any part or parcel in the murder. This he
accordingly does in language which leaves no room for doubt or
ambiguity. He falls into a passion: he rails at the murderers: he
proclaims his horror at their deed. All the way home he refuses to be
comforted. He upbraids the assassins, he utters the most frightful
threats against them; he rushes at them to snatch their weapons from
them and dash them in pieces. But they easily wrench the weapons from
his unresisting hands. For the whole thing is only a piece of acting.
His sole intention is that the ghost may see and hear it all, and being
convinced of the innocence of his dear kinsman may not punish him with
bad crops, wounds, sickness, and other misfortunes. Even when he has
reached the village, he keeps up the comedy for a time, raging, fretting
and fuming at the irreparable loss he has sustained by the death of his
lamented relative.[458]

[Sidenote: Pretence of avenging the ghost of a murdered sorcerer.]

Similarly when a chief has among his subjects a particular sorcerer whom
he fears but with whom he is professedly on terms of friendship, he will
sometimes engage a man to murder him. No sooner, however, is the murder
perpetrated than the chief who bespoke it hastens in seeming indignation
with a band of followers to the murderer's village. The assassin, of
course, has got a hint of what is coming, and he and his friends take
care not to be at home when the chief arrives on his mission of
vengeance. Balked by the absence of their victim the avengers of blood
breathe out fire and slaughter, but content themselves in fact with
smashing an old pot or two, knocking down a deserted hut, and perhaps
felling a banana-tree or a betel-palm. Having thus given the ghost of
the murdered man an unequivocal proof of the sincerity of their
friendship, they return quietly home.[459]

[Sidenote: The Kai afraid of ghosts.]

The habits of Kai ghosts are to some extent just the contrary of those
of living men. They sleep by day and go about their business by night,
when they frighten people and play them all kinds of tricks. Usually
they appear in the form of animals. As light has the effect of blinding
or at least dazzling them, they avoid everything bright, and hence it is
easy to scare them away by means of fire. That is why no native will go
even a short way in the dark without a bamboo torch. If it is absolutely
necessary to go out by night, which he is very loth to do, he will hum
and haw loudly before quitting the house so as to give notice to any
lurking ghost that he is coming with a light, which allows the ghost to
scuttle out of his way in good time. The people of a village live in
terror above all so long as a corpse remains unburied in it; after
nightfall nobody would then venture out of sight of the houses. When a
troop of people go by night to a neighbouring village with flaring
torches in their hands, nobody is willing to walk last on the path; they
all huddle together for safety in the middle, till one man braver than
the rest consents to act as rearguard. The rustling of a bush in the
evening twilight startles them with the dread of some ghastly
apparition; the sight of a pig in the gloaming is converted by their
fears into the vision of a horrible spectre. If a man stumbles, it is
because a ghost has pushed him, and he fancies he perceives the
frightful thing in a tree-stump or any chance object. No wonder a Kai
man fears ghosts, since he believes that the mere touch of one of them
may be fatal. People who fall down in fits or in faints are supposed to
have been touched by ghosts; and on coming to themselves they will tell
their friends with the most solemn assurance how they felt the
death-cold hand of the ghost on their body, and how a shudder ran
through their whole frame at contact with the uncanny being.[460]

[Sidenote: Services rendered to the living by ghosts of the dead.]

But it would be a mistake to imagine that the ghosts of the dead are a
source of danger, annoyance, and discomfort, and nothing more. That is
not so. They may and do render the Kai the most material services in
everyday life, particularly by promoting the supply of food both
vegetable and animal. I have said that these practical savages stand
towards their departed kinsfolk on a strictly commercial footing; and I
will now illustrate the benefits which the Kai hope to receive from the
ghosts in return for all the respect and attention lavished on them. In
the first place, then, so long as a ghost remains in the neighbourhood
of the village, it is expected of him that he shall make the crops
thrive and neither tread them down himself nor allow wild pigs to do so.
The expectation is reasonable, yet the conduct of the ghost does not
always answer to it. Occasionally, whether out of sheer perverseness or
simple absence of mind, he will sit down in a field; and wherever he
does so, he makes a hollow where the fruits will not grow. Indeed any
fruit that he even touches with his foot in passing, shrivels up. Where
these things have happened, the people offer boiled taro and a few crabs
to the ghosts to induce them to keep clear of the crops and to repose
their weary limbs elsewhere than in the tilled fields.[461]

[Sidenote: Ghosts help Kai hunters to kill game.]

But the most important service which the dead render to the living is
the good luck which they vouchsafe to hunters. Hence in order to assure
himself of the favour of the dead the hunter hangs his nets on a grave
before he uses them. If a man was a good and successful hunter in his
lifetime, his ghost will naturally be more than usually able to assist
his brethren in the craft after his death. For that reason when such a
man has just died, the people, to adopt a familiar proverb, hasten to
make hay while the sun shines by hunting very frequently, in the
confident expectation of receiving ghostly help from the deceased
hunter. In the evening, when they return from the chase, they lay a
small portion of their bag near his grave, scatter a powder which
possesses the special virtue of attracting ghosts, and call out,
"So-and-so, come and eat; here I set down food for you, it is a part of
all we have." If after such an offering and invocation the night wind
rustles the tops of the trees or shakes the thatch of leaves on the
roofs, they know that the ghost is in the village. The twinkle of a
glow-worm near his grave is the glitter of his eye. In the morning, too,
before they sally forth to the woods, one of the next of kin to the dead
huntsman will go betimes to his grave, stamp on it to waken the sleeper
below, and call out, "So-and-so, come! we are now about to go out
hunting. Help us to a good bag!" If they have luck, they praise the
deceased as a good spirit and in the evening supply his wants again with
food, tobacco, and betel. The sacrifice, as usually happens in such
cases, does not call for any great exercise of self-denial; since the
spirit consumes only the spiritual essence of the good things, while he
leaves their material substance to be enjoyed by the living.[462]

[Sidenote: Ill-treatment of a ghost who fails to help hunters.]

However, it sometimes happens that the ghost disappoints them, and that
the hunters return in the evening hungry and empty-handed. This may even
be repeated day after day, and still the people will not lose hope. They
think that the ghost is perhaps busy working in his field, or that he
has gone on a visit and will soon come home. To give him time to do his
business or see his friends at leisure, they will remain in the village
for several days. Then, when they imagine that he must surely have
returned, they go out into the woods and try their luck again. But
should there still be no ghost and no game, they begin to be seriously
alarmed. They think that some evil must have befallen him. But if time
goes on and still he gives no sign and the game continues scarce and
shy, their feelings towards the ghost undergo a radical alteration.
Passion getting the better of prudence, they will even reproach him with
ingratitude, taunt him with his uselessness, and leave him to starve.
Should he after that still remain deaf to their railing and regardless
of the short commons to which they have reduced him, they will discharge
a volley of abuse at his grave and trouble themselves about him no more.
However, if, not content with refusing his valuable assistance in the
chase, the ghost should actually blight the crops or send wild boars
into the fields to trample them down, the patience of the long-suffering
people is quite exhausted: the vials of their wrath overflow; and
snatching up their cudgels in a fury they belabour his grave till his
bones ache, or even drive him with blows and curses altogether from the
village.[463]

[Sidenote: The journey of ghosts to the spirit land.]

Such an outcast ghost, if he does not seek his revenge by prowling in
the neighbourhood and preying on society at large, will naturally
bethink himself of repairing to his long home in the under world. For
sooner or later the spirits of the dead congregate there. It is
especially when the flesh has quite mouldered away from his bones that
the ghost packs up his little traps and sets out for the better land.
The entrance to the abode of bliss is a cave to the west of Saddle
Mountain. Here in the gully there is a projecting tree-stump on which
the ghosts perch waiting for a favourable moment to jump into the mouth
of the cavern. When a slight earthquake is felt, a Kai man will often
say, "A ghost has just leaped from the tree into the cave; that is why
the earth is shaking." Down below the ghosts are received by Tulmeng,
lord of the nether world. Often he appears in a canoe to ferry them over
to the further shore. "Blood or wax?" is the laconic question which he
puts to the ghost on the bank. He means to say, "Were you killed or were
you done to death by magic?" For it is with wax that the sorcerer stops
up the fatal little tubes in which he encloses the souls of his enemies.
And the reason why the lord of the dead puts the question to the
newcomer is that the ghosts of the slain and the ghosts of the bewitched
dwell in separate places. Right in front of the land of souls rises a
high steep wall, which cannot be climbed even by ghosts. The spirits
have accordingly to make their way through it and thereupon find
themselves in their new abode. According to some Kai, before the ghosts
are admitted to ghost land they must swing to and fro on a rope and then
drop into water, where they are washed clean of bloodstains and all
impurity; after which they ascend, spick and span, the last slope to the
village of ghosts.

[Sidenote: Life of ghosts in the other world.]

Tulmeng has the reputation of being a very stern ruler in his weird
realm, but the Kai really know very little about him. He beats
refractory souls, and it is essential that every ghost should have his
ears and nose bored. The operation is very painful, and to escape it
most people take the precaution of having their ears and noses bored in
their lifetime. Life in the other world goes on just like life in this
one. Houses are built exactly like houses on earth, and there as here
pigs swarm in the streets. Fields are tilled and crops are got in;
ghostly men marry ghostly women, who give birth to ghostly children. The
same old round of love and hate, of quarrelling and fighting, of battle,
murder and sudden death goes on in the shadowy realm below ground just
as in the more solid world above ground. Sorcerers are there also, and
they breed just as bad blood among the dead as among the living. All
things indeed are the same except for their shadowy unsubstantial
texture.[464]

[Sidenote: Ghosts die and turn into animals.]

But the ghosts do not live for ever in the nether world. They die the
second death and turn into animals, generally into cuscuses. In the
shape of animals they haunt the wildest, deepest, darkest glens of the
rugged mountains. No one but the owner has the right to set foot on such
haunted ground. He may even kill the ghostly animals. Any one else who
dared to disturb them in their haunts would do so at the peril of his
life. But even the owner of the land who has killed one of the ghostly
creatures is bound to appease the spirit of the dead beast. He may not
cut up the carcase at once, but must leave it for a time, perhaps for a
whole night, after laying on it presents which are intended to mollify
and soothe the injured spirit. In placing the gifts on the body he says,
"Take the gifts and leave us that which was a game animal, that we may
eat it." When the animal's ghost has appropriated the spiritual essence
of the offerings, the hunter and his family may eat the carcase. Should
one of these ghostly creatures die or be killed, its spirit turns either
into an insect or into an ant-hill. Children who would destroy such an
ant-hill or throw little darts at it, are warned by their elders not to
indulge in such sacrilegious sport. When the insect also dies, the
series of spiritual transformations is at an end.[465]

[Sidenote: Ghosts of persons eminent for good or evil in their lives are
remembered and appealed to for help long after their deaths. Prayers to
ghosts for rain, a good crop of yams, and so forth.]

The ghosts whose help is invoked by hunters and farmers are commonly the
spirits of persons who have lately died, since such spirits linger for a
time in the neighbourhood, or rather in the memory of the people. But
besides these spirits of the recent dead there are certain older ghosts
who may be regarded as permanent patrons of hunting and other
departments of life and nature, because their fame has survived long
after the men or women themselves were gathered to their fathers. For
example, men who were bold and resolute in battle during their life will
be invoked long after their death, whenever a stout heart is needed for
some feat of daring. And men who were notorious thieves and villains in
the flesh will be invited, long after their bodies have mouldered in the
grave, to lend their help when a deed of villainy is to be done. The
names of men or women who were eminent for good or evil in their lives
survive indefinitely in the memory of the tribe. Thus before a battle
many a Kai warrior will throw something over the enemy's village and as
he does so he will softly call on two ghosts, "We and Gunang, ye two
heroes, come and guard me and keep the foes from me, that they may not
be able to hurt me! But stand by me that I may be able to riddle them
with spears!" Again, when a magician wishes to cause an earthquake, he
will take a handful of ashes, wrap them in certain leaves, and pronounce
the following spell over the packet: "Thou man Saiong, throw about
everything that exists; houses, villages, paths, fields, bushes and tall
forest trees, yams, and taro, throw them all hither and thither; break
and smash everything, but leave me in peace!" While he utters this
incantation or prayer, the sorcerer's body itself twitches and quivers
more and more violently, till the hut creaks and cracks and his strength
is exhausted. Then he throws the packet of ashes out of the hut, and
after that the earthquake is sure to follow sooner or later. So when
they want rain, the Kai call upon two ghostly men named Balong and Batu,
or Dinding and Bojang, to drive away a certain woman named Yondimi, so
that the rain which she is holding up may fall upon the earth. The
prayer for rain addressed to the ghosts is combined with a magical spell
pronounced over a stone. And when rain has fallen in abundance and the
Kai wish to make it cease, they strew hot ashes on the stone or lay it
in a wood fire. On the principle of homoeopathic magic the heat of the
ashes or of the fire is supposed to dry up the rain. Thus in these
ceremonies for the production or cessation of rain we see that religion,
represented by the invocation of the ghosts, goes hand in hand with
magic, represented by the hocus-pocus with the stone. Again, certain
celebrated ghosts are invoked to promote the growth of taro and yams.
Thus to ensure a good crop of taro, the suppliant will hold a bud of
taro in his hand and pray, "O Mrs. Zewanong, may my taro leaves unfold
till they are as broad as the petticoat which covers thy loins!" When
they are planting yams, they pray to two women named Tendung and Molewa
that they would cause the yams to put forth as long suckers as the
strings which the women twist to make into carrying-nets. Before they
dig up the yams, they take a branch and drive with it the evil spirits
or ghosts from the house in which the yams are to be stored. Having
effected this clearance they stick the branch in the roof of the house
and appoint a certain ghostly man named Ehang to act as warden. Again,
fowlers invoke a married pair of ghosts called Manze and Tamingoka to
frighten the birds from the trees and drive them on the limed twigs. Or
they pray to a ghostly woman named Lane, saying, "In all places of the
neighbourhood shake the betel-nuts from the palms, that they may fall
down to me on this fruit-tree and knock the berries from the boughs!"
But by the betel-nuts the fowler in veiled language means the birds,
which are to come in flocks to the fruit-tree and be caught fast by the
lime on the branches. Again, when a fisherman wishes to catch eels, he
prays to two ghosts called Yambi and Ngigwali, saying: "Come, ye two
men, and go down into the holes of the pool; smite the eels in them, and
draw them out on the bank, that I may kill them!" Once more, when a
child suffers from enlarged spleen, which shews as a swelling on its
body, the parent will pray to a ghost named Aidolo for help in these
words: "Come and help this child! It is big with a ball of sickness. Cut
it up and squeeze and squash it, that the blood and pus may drain away
and my child may be made whole!" To give point to the prayer the
petitioner simultaneously pretends to cut a cross on the swelling with a
knife.[466]

[Sidenote: Possible development of departmental gods out of ghosts.]

From this it appears that men and women who impressed their
contemporaries by their talents, their virtues, or their vices in their
lifetime, are sometimes remembered long after their death and continue
to be invoked by their descendants for help in the particular department
in which they had formerly rendered themselves eminent either for good
or for evil. Such powerful and admired or dreaded ghosts might easily
grow in time into gods and goddesses, who are worshipped as presiding
over the various departments of nature and of human life. There is good
reason to think that among many tribes and nations of the world the
history of a god, if it could be recovered, would be found to be the
history of a spirit who served his apprenticeship as a ghost before he
was promoted to the rank of deity.

[Sidenote: Kai lads at circumcision supposed to be swallowed by a
monster. Bull-roarers.]

Before quitting the Kai tribe I will mention that they, like the other
tribes on this coast, practise circumcision and appear to associate the
custom more or less vaguely with the spirits of the dead. Like their
neighbours, they impress women with the belief that at circumcision the
lads are swallowed by a monster, who can only be induced to disgorge
them by the bribe of much food and especially of pigs, which are
accordingly bred and kept nominally for this purpose, but really to
furnish a banquet for the men alone. The ceremony is performed at
irregular intervals of several years. A long hut, entered through a high
door at one end and tapering away at the other, is built in a lonely
part of the forest. It represents the monster which is to swallow the
novices in its capacious jaws. The process of deglutition is represented
as follows. In front of the entrance to the hut a scaffold is erected
and a man mounts it. The novices are then led up one by one and passed
under the scaffold. As each comes up, the man overhead makes a gesture
of swallowing, while at the same time he takes a great gulp of water
from a coco-nut flask. The trembling novice is now supposed to be in the
maw of the monster; but a pig is offered for his redemption, the man on
the scaffold, as representative of the beast, accepts the offering, a
gurgling sound is heard, and the water which he had just gulped descends
in a jet on the novice, who now goes free. The actual circumcision
follows immediately on this impressive pantomime. The monster who
swallows the lads is named Ngosa, which means "Grandfather"; and the
same name is given to the bull-roarers which are swung at the festival.
The Kai bull-roarer is a lance-shaped piece of palm-wood, more or less
elaborately carved, which being swung at the end of a string emits the
usual droning, booming sound. When they are not in use, the instruments
are kept, carefully wrapt up, in the men's house, which no woman may
enter. Only the old men have the right to undo these precious bundles
and take out the sacred bull-roarers. Women, too, are strictly excluded
from the neighbourhood of the circumcision ground; any who intrude on it
are put to death. The mythical monster who is supposed to haunt the
ground is said to be very dangerous to the female sex. When the novices
go forth to be swallowed by him in the forest, the women who remain in
the village weep and wail; and they rejoice greatly when the lads come
back safe and sound.[467]