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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We may now consider the theory and practice of the Central Melanesians
on this subject somewhat more in detail; and in doing so we shall begin
with their funeral customs, which throw much light on their views of
death and the dead.

[Sidenote: Burial customs in the Solomon Islands. Land burial and sea
burial. Land-ghosts and sea-ghosts.]

Thus, for example, in Florida, one of the Solomon Islands, the corpse is
usually buried. Common men are buried in their gardens or plantations,
chiefs sometimes in the village, a chief's child sometimes in the house.
If the ghost of the deceased is worshipped, his grave becomes a
sanctuary (_vunuhu_); the skull is often dug up and hung in the house.
On the return from the burial the mourners take a different road from
that by which they carried the corpse to the grave; this they do in
order to throw the ghost off the scent and so prevent him from following
them home. This practice clearly shews the fear which the natives feel
for the ghosts of the newly dead. A man is buried with money, porpoise
teeth, and some of his personal ornaments; but, avarice getting the
better of superstition, these things are often secretly dug up again and
appropriated by the living. Sometimes a dying man will express a wish to
be cast into the sea; his friends will therefore paddle out with the
corpse, tie stones to the feet, and sink it in the depths. In the island
of Savo, another of the Solomon Islands, common men are generally thrown
into the sea and only great men are buried.[560] The same distinction is
made at Wango in San Cristoval, another of the same group of islands;
there also the bodies of common folk are cast into the sea, but men of
consequence are buried, and some relic of them, it may be a skull, a
tooth, or a finger-bone, is preserved in a shrine at the village. From
this difference in burial customs flows a not unimportant religious
difference. The souls of the great people who are buried on land turn
into land-ghosts, and the souls of commoners who are sunk in the sea
turn into sea-ghosts. The land-ghosts are seen to hover about the
villages, haunting their graves and their relics; they are also heard to
speak in hollow whispers. Their aid can be obtained by such as know
them. The sea-ghosts have taken a great hold on the imagination of the
natives of the south-eastern Solomon Islands; and as these people love
to illustrate their life by sculpture and painting, they shew us clearly
what they suppose these sea-ghosts to be like. At Wango there used to be
a canoe-house full of sculptures and paintings illustrative of native
life; amongst others there was a series of scenes like those which are
depicted on the walls of Egyptian tombs. One of the scenes represented a
canoe attacked by sea-ghosts, which were portrayed as demons compounded
partly of human limbs, partly of the bodies and tails of fishes, and
armed with spears and arrows in the form of long-bodied garfish and
flying-fish. If a man falls ill on returning from a voyage or from
fishing on the rocks, it is thought that one of these sea-ghosts has
shot him. Hence when men are in danger at sea, they seek to propitiate
the ghosts by throwing areca-nuts and fragments of food into the water
and by praying to the ghosts not to be angry with them. Sharks are also
supposed to be animated by the ghosts of the dead.[561] It is
interesting and instructive to find that in this part of the world
sea-demons, who might be thought to be pure spirits of nature, are in
fact ghosts of the dead.

[Sidenote: Burnt offerings in honour of the dead.]

In the island of Florida, two days after the death of a chief or of any
person who was much esteemed, the relatives and friends assemble and
hold a funeral feast, at which they throw a bit of food into the fire
for the ghost, saying, "This is for you."[562] In other of the Solomon
Islands morsels of food are similarly thrown on the fire at the
death-feasts as the dead man's share.[563] Thus, in the Shortlands
Islands, when a famous chief named Gorai died, his body was burnt and
his relatives cast food, beads, and other property into the fire. The
dead chief had been very fond of tea, so one of his daughters threw a
cup of tea into the flames. Women danced a funeral dance round the pyre
till the body was consumed.[564] Why should the dead man's food and
property be burnt? No explanation of the practice is given by our
authorities, so we are left to conjecture the reason of it. Is it that
by volatilising the solid substance of the food you make it more
accessible to the thin unsubstantial nature of the ghost? Is it that you
destroy the property of the ghost lest he should come back in person to
fetch it and so haunt and trouble the survivors? Is it that the spirits
of the dead are supposed to reside in the fire on the hearth, so that
offerings cast into the flames are transmitted to them directly? Whether
it is with any such ideas that the Solomon Islanders throw food into the
fire for ghosts, I cannot say. The whole question of the meaning of
burnt sacrifice is still to a great extent obscure.

[Sidenote: Funeral customs in the island of Florida. The ghostly ferry.]

At the funeral feast of a chief in the island of Florida the axes,
spears, shield and other belongings of the deceased are hung up with
great lamentations in his house; everything remains afterwards untouched
and the house falls into ruins, which as time goes on are thickly
mantled with the long tendrils of the sprouting yams. But we are told
that the weapons are not intended to accompany the ghost to the land of
souls; they are hung up only as a memorial of a great and valued man.
"With the same feeling they cut down a dead man's fruit-trees as a mark
of respect and affection, not with any notion of these things serving
him in the world of ghosts; he ate of them, they say, when he was alive,
he will never eat again, and no one else shall have them." However, they
think that the ghost benefits by burial; for if a man is killed and his
body remains unburied, his restless ghost will haunt the place.[565] The
ghosts of such Florida people as have been duly buried depart to
Betindalo, which seems to be situated in the south-eastern part of the
great island of Guadalcanar. A ship waits to ferry them across the sea
to the spirit-land. This is almost the only example of a ferry-boat used
by ghosts in Melanesia. On their way to the ferry the ghosts may be
heard twittering; and again on the shore, while they are waiting for the
ferry-boat, a sound of their dancing breaks the stillness of night; but
no man can see the dancers. It is not until they land on the further
shore that they know they are dead. There they are met by a ghost, who
thrusts a rod into their noses to see whether the cartilage is pierced
as it should be; ghosts whose noses have been duly bored in life follow
the onward path with ease, but all others have pain and difficulty in
making their way to the realm of the shades. Yet though the souls of the
dead thus depart to Betindalo, nevertheless their ghosts as usual not
only haunt their burial-places, but come to the sacrifices offered to
them and may be heard disporting themselves at night, playing on pipes,
dancing, and shouting.[566]

[Sidenote: Belief of the Solomon Islanders that the souls of the dead
live in islands. The second death.]

Similarly at Bugotu in the island of Ysabel (one of the Solomon Islands)
the ghosts of the dead are supposed to go away to an island, and yet to
haunt their graves and shew themselves to the survivors by night. In the
island of the dead there is a pool with a narrow tree-trunk lying across
it. Here is stationed Bolafagina, the ghostly lord of the place. Every
newly arrived ghost must appear before him, and he examines their hands
to see whether they bear the mark of the sacred frigate-bird cut on
them; if they have the mark, the ghosts pass across the tree-trunk and
mingle with the departed spirits in the world of the dead. But ghosts
who have not the mark on their hands are cast into the gulf and perish
out of their ghostly life: this is the second death.[567] The same
notion of a second death meets us in a somewhat different form among the
natives of Saa in Malanta, another of the Solomon Islands. All the
ghosts of these people swim across the sea to two little islands called
Marapa, which lie off Marau in Guadalcanar. There the ghosts of children
live in one island and the ghosts of grown-up people in another; for the
older people would be plagued by the chatter of children if they all
dwelt together in one island. Yet in other respects the life of the
departed spirits in these islands is very like life on earth. There are
houses, gardens, and canoes there just as here, but all is thin and
unsubstantial. Living men who land in the islands see nothing of these
things; there is a pool where they hear laughter and merry cries, and
where the banks are wet with invisible bathers. But the life of the
ghosts in these islands is not eternal. The spirits of common folk soon
turn into the nests of white ants, which serve as food for the more
robust ghosts. Hence a living man will say to his idle son, "When I die,
I shall have ants' nests to eat, but then what will you have?" The
ghosts of persons who were powerful on earth last much longer. So long
as they are remembered and worshipped by the living, their natural
strength remains unabated; but when men forget them, and turn to worship
some of the more recent dead, then no more food is offered to them in
sacrifice, so they pine away and change into white ants' nests just like
common folk. This is the second death. However, while the ghosts survive
they can return from the islands to Saa and revisit their village and
friends. The living can even discern them in the form of dim and
fleeting shadows. A man who wishes for any reason to see a ghost can
always do so very simply by taking a pinch of lime from his betel-box
and smearing it on his forehead. Then the ghost appears to him quite
plainly.[568]

[Sidenote: Burial customs in Saa. Preservation of the skull and jawbone.
Burial customs in Santa Cruz. Burial customs in Ysabel.]

In Saa the dead are usually buried in a common cemetery; but when the
flesh has decayed the bones are taken up and heaped on one side. But if
the deceased was a very great man or a beloved father, his body is
preserved for a time in his son's house, being hung up either in a canoe
or in the carved effigy of a sword-fish. Very favourite children are
treated in the same way. The corpse may be kept in this way for years.
Finally, there is a great funeral feast, at which the remains are
removed to the common burial-ground, but the skull and jawbone are
detached from the skeleton and kept in the house enclosed in the hollow
wooden figure of a bonito-fish. By means of these relics the survivors
think that they can secure the aid of the powerful ghost. Sometimes the
corpse and afterwards the skull and jawbone are preserved, not in the
house of the deceased, but in the _oha_ or public canoe-house, which so
far becomes a sort of shrine or temple of the dead.[569] At Santa Cruz
in the Solomon Islands the corpse is buried in a very deep grave in the
house. Inland they dig up the bones again to make arrow-heads; also they
detach the skull and keep it in a chest in the house, saying that it is
the man himself. They even set food before the skull, no doubt for the
use of the ghost. Yet they imagine that the ghosts of the dead go to the
great volcano Tamami, where they are burnt in the crater and thus being
renewed stay in the fiery region. Nevertheless the souls of the dead
also haunt the forests in Santa Cruz; on wet and dark nights the natives
see them twinkling in the gloom like fire-flies, and at the sight they
are sore afraid.[570] So little consistent with itself is the creed of
these islanders touching the state of the dead. At Bugotu in the island
of Ysabel (one of the Solomon Islands) a chief is buried with his head
near the surface and a fire is kept burning over the grave, in order
that the skull may be taken up and preserved in the house of his
successor. The spirit of the dead chief has now become a worshipful
ghost, and an expedition is sent out to cut off and bring back human
heads in his honour. Any person, not belonging to the place, whom the
head-hunters come across will be killed by them and his or her skull
added to the collection, which is neatly arranged on the shore. These
ghastly trophies are believed to add fresh spiritual power (_mana_) to
the ghost of the dead chief. Till they have been procured, the people of
the place take care not to move about. The grave of the chief is built
up with stones and sacrifices are offered upon it.[571]

[Sidenote: Beliefs and customs of the Eastern islanders concerning the
dead. Panoi, the subterranean abode of the dead.]

Thus far we have been considering the beliefs and practices concerning
the dead which prevail among the Western Melanesians of the Solomon
Islands and Santa Cruz. We now turn to those of the Eastern Melanesians,
who inhabit the Torres Islands, the Banks' Islands, and the New
Hebrides. A broad distinction exists between the ghosts of these two
regions in as much as the ghosts of the Western Melanesians all live in
islands, but the ghosts of all Eastern Melanesians live underground in a
subterranean region which commonly bears the name of Panoi. The exact
position of Panoi has not been ascertained; all that is regarded as
certain is that it is underground. However, there are many entrances to
it and some of them are well known. One of them, for example, is a rock
on the mountain at Mota, others are at volcanic vents which belch flames
on the burning hill of Garat over the lake at Gaua, and another is on
the great mountain of Vanua Lava. The ghosts congregate on points of
land before their departure, as well as at the entrances to the
underworld, and there on moonlight nights you may hear the ghostly crew
dancing, singing, shouting, and whistling on the claws of land-crabs. It
is not easy to extract from the natives a precise and consistent account
of the place of the dead and the state of the spirits in it; nor indeed,
as Dr. Codrington justly observes, would it be reasonable to expect full
and precise details on a subject about which the sources of information
are perhaps not above suspicion. However, as far as can be made out,
Panoi or the abode of the dead is on the whole a happy region. In many
respects it resembles the land of the living; for there are houses there
and villages, and trees with red leaves, and day and night. Yet all is
hollow and unreal. The ghosts do nothing but talk and sing and dance;
there is no clubhouse there, and though men and women live together,
there is no marrying or giving in marriage. All is very peaceful, too,
in that land; for there is no war and no tyrant to oppress the people.
Yet the ghost of a great man goes down like a great man among the
ghosts, resplendent in all his trinkets and finery; but like everything
else in the underworld these ornaments, for all the brave show they
make, are mere unsubstantial shadows. The pigs which were killed at his
funeral feast and the food that was heaped on his grave cannot go down
with him into that far country; for none of these things, not even pigs,
have souls. How then could they find their way to the spirit world? It
is clearly impossible. The ghosts in the nether world do not mix
indiscriminately. There are separate compartments for such as died
violent deaths. There is one compartment for those who were shot, there
is another for those who were clubbed, and there is another for those
who were done to death by witchcraft. The ghosts of those who were shot
keep rattling the reeds of the arrows which dealt them their fatal
wounds. Ghosts in the nether world have no knowledge of things out of
their sight and hearing; yet the living call upon them in time of need
and trouble, as if they could hear and help. Life, too, in the kingdom
of shadows is not eternal. The ghosts die the second death. Yet some say
that there are two such kingdoms, each called Panoi, the one over the
other; and that when the dead die the second death in the upper realm
they rise again from the dead in the nether realm, where they never die
but only turn into white ants' nests.[572]

[Sidenote: Distinction between the fate of the good and the fate of the
bad in the other world.]

It is interesting and not unimportant to observe that some of these
islanders make a distinction between the fate of good people and the
fate of bad people after death. The natives of Motlav, one of the Banks'
Islands, think that Panoi is a good place and that only the souls of the
good can enter it. According to them the souls of murderers, sorcerers,
thieves, liars, and adulterers are not suffered to enter the happy land.
The ghost of a murderer, for example, is met at the entrance by the
ghost of his victim, who withstands him and turns him back. All the bad
ghosts go away to a bad place, where they live, not indeed in physical
pain, but in misery: they quarrel, they are restless, homeless,
pitiable, malignant: they wander back to earth: they eat the foulest
food, their breath is noisome: they harm the living out of spite, they
eat men's souls, they haunt graves and woods. But in the true Panoi the
souls of the good live in peace and harmony.[573] Thus these people
believe that the state of the soul after death depends on the kind of
life a man led on earth; if he was good, he will be happy; if he was
bad, he will be miserable. If this creed is of purely native origin, and
Dr. Codrington seems to entertain no doubt that it is so, it marks a
considerable ethical advance among those who accept it.

[Sidenote: Descent of the living to the world of the dead.]

The Eastern Melanesians think that living people can go down to the land
of the dead and return alive to the upper world. Sometimes they do this
in the body, but at other times only in the spirit, when they are asleep
or in a faint; for at such times their souls quit their bodies and can
wander away down to Panoi. When the living thus make their way to the
spirit land, they are sometimes cautioned by friendly ghosts to eat
nothing there, no doubt lest by partaking of ghostly food they should be
turned to ghosts and never return to the land of the living.[574]

[Sidenote: Disposal of the dead among the Eastern islanders. Burial
customs of the Banks' Islanders.]

We will now consider the various modes in which the Eastern Melanesians
dispose of their dead; for funeral customs commonly furnish some
indication of the ideas which a people entertain as to the state of the
soul after death. The Banks' Islanders generally buried their dead in
the forest not far from the village; but if the deceased was a great man
or died a remarkable death, they might inter him in the village near the
men's clubhouse (_gamal_). A favourite son or child might be buried in
the house itself; but in such cases the grave would be opened after
fifty or a hundred days and the bones taken up and hidden in the forest,
though some of them might be hung up in the house. However, in some
places there was, and indeed still is, a custom of keeping the
putrefying corpse unburied in the house as a mark of affection. At Gaua,
in Santa Maria, the body was dried over slow fires for ten days or more,
till nothing but skin and bones remained; and the women who watched over
it during these days drank the juices of putrefaction which dripped from
the decaying flesh. The same thing used formerly to be done in Mota,
another of the Banks' Islands. The corpses of great men in these islands
were adorned in all their finery and laid out on the open space in the
middle of the village. Here bunches of coco-nuts, yams, and other food
were heaped up beside the body; and an orator of fluent speech addressed
the ghost telling him that when he had gone down to Panoi, the spirit
land, and the ghosts asked him after his rank, he was to give them a
list of all the things heaped beside his dead body; then the ghosts
would know what a great man he was and would treat him with proper
deference. The orator dealt very candidly with the moral character of
the deceased. If he had been a bad man, the speaker would say, "Poor
ghost, will you be able to enter Panoi? I think not." The food which is
piled up beside the body while the orator is pronouncing the eulogium or
the censure of the departed is afterwards heaped up on the grave or
buried in it. At Gaua they kill pigs and hang up the carcases or parts
of them at the grave. The object of all this display is to make a
favourable impression on the ghosts in the spirit land, in order that
they may give the newly deceased man a good reception. When the departed
was an eminent warrior or sorcerer, his friends will sometimes give him
a sham burial and hide his real grave, lest people should dig up his
bones and his skull to make magic with them; for the relics of such a
man are naturally endowed with great magical virtue.[575]

[Sidenote: Ghosts driven away from the village. Expulsion of the ghosts
of persons who suffered from sores and ulcers.]

In these islands the ghost does not at once leave the neighbourhood of
his old body; he shews no haste to depart to the nether world. Indeed he
commonly loiters about the house and the grave for five or ten days,
manifesting his presence by noises in the house and by lights upon the
grave. By the fifth day his relations generally think that they have had
quite enough of him, and that it is high time he should set out for his
long home. Accordingly they drive him away with shouts and the blowing
of conch-shells or the booming sound of bull-roarers.[576] At
Ureparapara the mode of expelling the ghost from the village is as
follows. Missiles to be hurled at the lingering spirit are collected in
the shape of small stones and pieces of bamboo, which have been charmed
by wizards so as to possess a ghost-expelling virtue. The artillery
having been thus provided, the people muster at one end of the village,
armed with bags of enchanted stones and pieces of enchanted bamboos. The
signal to march is given by two men, who sit in the dead man's house,
one on either side, holding two white stones in their hands, which they
clink together. At the sound of the clinking the women begin to wail and
the men to march; tramp, tramp they go like one man through the village
from end to end, throwing stones into the houses and all about and
beating the bamboos together. Thus they drive the reluctant ghost step
by step from the village into the forest, where they leave him to find
his own way down to the land of the dead. Till that time the widow of
the deceased was bound to remain on his bed without quitting it for a
moment except on necessity; and if she had to leave it for a few minutes
she always left a coco-nut on the bed to represent her till she came
back. The reason for this was that her husband's ghost was believed to
be lingering in the house all these days, and he would naturally expect
to see his wife in the nuptial chamber. At Motlav the people are not so
hard upon the poor ghosts: they do not drive away all ghosts from their
old homes, but only the ghosts of such as had in their lifetime the
misfortune to be afflicted with grievous sores and ulcers. The expulsion
of such ghosts may therefore be regarded as a sanitary precaution
designed to prevent the spirits from spreading the disease. When a man
who suffers severely from sores or ulcers lies dying, the people of his
village, taking time by the forelock, send word to the inhabitants of
the next village westwards, warning them to be in readiness to give the
ghost a warm reception. For it is well known that at their departure
from the body ghosts always go westward towards the setting sun. So when
the poor man is dead, they bury his diseased body in the village and
devote all their energies to the expulsion of his soul. By blowing
blasts on shell-trumpets and beating the ground with the stalks of
coco-nut fronds they chase the ghost clean away from their own village
and on to the next. The inhabitants of that village meantime are ready
to receive their unwelcome visitor, and beating their bounds in the most
literal sense they soon drive him onwards to the land of their next
neighbours. So the chase goes on from village to village, till the ghost
has been finally hunted into the sea at the point of the shore which
faces the setting sun. There at last the beaters throw away the stalks
which have served to whack the ghost, and return home in the perfect
assurance that he has left the island and gone to his own place down
below, so that he cannot afflict anybody with the painful disease from
which he suffered. But as for his ulcerated corpse rotting in the grave,
they do not give a thought to it. Their concern is with the spiritual
and the unseen; they do not stoop to regard the material and
carnal.[577]