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: Special treatment of the ghosts of women who died in
childbed.]

A special treatment is accorded to the ghosts of women who died in
childbed. If the mother dies and the child lives, her ghost will not go
away to the nether world without taking the infant with her. Hence in
order to deceive the ghost, they wrap a piece of a banana-trunk loosely
in leaves and lay it on the bosom of the dead mother when they lower her
into the grave. The ghost clasps the bundle to her breast, thinking it
is her baby, and goes away contentedly to the spirit land. As she walks,
the banana-stalk slips about in the leaves and she imagines it is the
infant stirring; for she has not all her wits about her, ghosts being
naturally in a dazed state at first on quitting their familiar bodies.
But when she arrives in deadland and finds she has been deceived, and
when perhaps some heartless ghosts even jeer at her wooden baby, back
she comes tearing to earth in grief and rage to seek and carry off the
real infant. However, the survivors know what to expect and have taken
the precaution of removing the child to another house where the mother
will never find it; but she keeps looking for it always, and a sad and
angry ghost is she.[578]

[Sidenote: Funeral feasts.]

After the funeral follows a series, sometimes a long series, of funeral
feasts, which form indeed one of the principal institutions of these
islands. The number of the feasts and the length of time during which
they are repeated vary much in the different islands, and depend also on
the consideration in which the deceased was held. The days on which the
feasts are celebrated are the fifth and the tenth after the death, and
afterwards every tenth day up to the hundredth or even it may be, in the
case of a father, a mother, or a wife, up to the thousandth day. These
feasts appear now to be chiefly commemorative, but they also benefit the
dead; for the ghost is naturally gratified by seeing that his friends
remember him and do their duty by him so handsomely. At these banquets
food is put aside for the dead with the words "This is for thee." The
practice of thus setting aside food for the ghost at a series of funeral
feasts appears at first sight, as Dr. Codrington observes, inconsistent
with the theory that the ghosts live underground.[579] But the objection
thus suggested is rather specious than real; for we must always bear in
mind that, to judge from the accounts given of them in all countries,
ghosts experience no practical difficulty in obtaining temporary leave
of absence from the other world and coming to this one, so to say, on
furlough for the purpose of paying a surprise visit to their sorrowing
friends and relations. The thing is so well known that it would be at
once superfluous and tedious to illustrate it at length; many examples
have incidentally met us in the course of these lectures.

[Sidenote: Funeral customs in Vate or Efat. Old people buried alive.]

The natives of Vate or Efat, one of the New Hebrides, set up a great
wailing at a death and scratched their faces till they streamed with
blood. Bodies of the dead were buried. When a corpse was laid in the
grave, a pig was brought to the place and its head was chopped off and
thrown into the grave to be buried with the body. This, we are told,
"was supposed to prevent disease spreading to other members of the
family." Probably, in the opinion of the natives, the pig's head was a
sop thrown to the ghost to keep him from coming and fetching away other
people to deadland. With the same intention, we may take it, they buried
with the dead the cups, pillows, and other things which he had used in
his lifetime. On the top of the grave they kindled a fire to enable the
soul of the deceased to rise to the sun. If that were not done, the soul
went to the wretched regions of Pakasia down below. The old were buried
alive at their own request. It was even deemed a disgrace to the family
of an aged chief if they did not bury him alive. When an old man felt
sick and weak and thought that he was dying, he would tell his friends
to get all ready and bury him. They yielded to his wishes, dug a deep
round pit, wound a number of fine mats round his body, and lowered him
into the grave in a sitting posture. Live pigs were then brought to the
brink of the grave, and each of them was tethered by a cord to one of
the old man's arms. When the pigs had thus, as it were, been made over
to him, the cords were cut, and the animals were led away to be killed,
baked, and eaten at the funeral feast; but the souls of the pigs the old
man took away with him to the spirit land, and the more of them he took
the warmer and more gratifying was the reception he met with from the
ghosts. Having thus ensured his eternal welfare by the pig strings which
dangled at his arms, the old man was ready; more mats were laid over
him, the earth was shovelled in, and his dying groans were drowned amid
the weeping and wailing of his affectionate kinsfolk.[580]

[Sidenote: Burial and mourning customs in Aurora, one of the New
Hebrides. Behaviour of the soul at death.]

At Maewo in Aurora, one of the New Hebrides, when a death has taken
place, the body is buried in a grave near the village clubhouse. For a
hundred days afterwards the female mourners may not go into the open and
their faces may not be seen; they stay indoors and in the dark and cover
themselves with a large mat reaching to the ground. But the widow goes
every day, covered with her mat, to weep at the grave; this she does
both in the morning and in the afternoon. During this time of mourning
the next of kin may not eat certain succulent foods, such as yams,
bananas, and caladium; they eat only the gigantic caladium, bread-fruit,
coco-nuts, mallows, and so forth; "and all these they seek in the bush
where they grow wild, not eating those which have been planted." They
count five days after the death and then build up great heaps of stones
over the grave. After that, if the deceased was a very great man, who
owned many gardens and pigs, they count fifty days and then kill pigs,
and cut off the point of the liver of each pig; and the brother of the
deceased goes toward the forest and calls out the dead man's name,
crying, "This is for you to eat." They think that if they do not kill
pigs for the benefit of their departed friend, his ghost has no proper
existence, but hangs miserably on tangled creepers. After the sacrifice
they all cry again, smear their bodies and faces all over with ashes,
and wear cords round their necks for a hundred days in token that they
are not eating good food.[581] They imagine that as soon as the soul
quits the body at death, it mounts into a tree where there is a bird's
nest fern, and sitting there among the fronds it laughs and mocks at the
people who are crying and making great lamentations over his deserted
tabernacle. "There he sits, wondering at them and ridiculing them. 'What
are they crying for?' he says; 'whom are they sorry for? Here am I.' For
they think that the real thing is the soul, and that it has gone away
from the body just as a man throws off his clothes and leaves them, and
the clothes lie by themselves with nothing in them."[582] This estimate
of the comparative value of soul and body is translated from the words
of a New Hebridean native; it singularly resembles that which is
sometimes held up to our admiration as one of the finest fruits of
philosophy and religion. So narrow may be the line that divides the
meditations of the savage and the sage.

When a Maewo ghost has done chuckling at the folly of his surviving
relatives, who sorrow as those who have no hope, he turns his back on
his old home and runs along the line of hills till he comes to a place
where there are two rocks with a deep ravine between them. He leaps the
chasm, and if he lands on the further side, he is dead indeed; but if he
falls short, he returns to life. At the land's end, where the mountains
descend into the sea, all the ghosts of the dead are gathered to meet
him. If in his lifetime he had slain any one by club or arrow, or done
any man to death by magic, he must now run the gauntlet of the angry
ghosts of his victims, who beat and tear him and stab him with daggers
such as people stick pigs with; and as they do so, they taunt him,
saying, "While you were still in the world you thought yourself a
valiant man; but now we will take our revenge on you." At another point
in the path there is a deep gully, where if a ghost falls he is
inevitably dashed to pieces; and if he escapes this peril, there is a
ferocious pig waiting for him further on, which devours the ghosts of
all persons who in their life on earth omitted to plant pandanus trees,
from which mats are made. But the wise man, who planted pandanus
betimes, now reaps the fruit of his labours; for when the pig makes a
rush at his departed spirit, the ghost nimbly swarms up the pandanus
tree and so escapes his pursuer. That is why everybody in Maewo likes to
plant pandanus trees. And if a man's ears were not pierced in his life,
his ghost will not be allowed to drink water; if he was not tattooed,
his ghost may not eat good food. A thoughtful father will provide for
the comfort of his children in the other world by building a miniature
house for each of them in his garden when the child is a year old; if
the infant is a boy, he puts a bow, an arrow, and a club in the little
house; if the child is a girl, he plants pandanus for her beside the
tiny dwelling.[583]

[Sidenote: Only ghosts of powerful men are worshipped.]

So much for the fate of common ghosts in Central Melanesia. We have now
to consider the position of the more powerful spirits, who after death
are believed to exercise great influence over the living, especially
over their surviving relations, and who have accordingly to be
propitiated with prayer and sacrifice. This worship of the dead, as we
saw, forms the principal feature in the religion of the Solomon
Islanders. "But it must not be supposed," says Dr. Codrington, "that
every ghost becomes an object of worship. A man in danger may call upon
his father, his grandfather, or his uncle: his nearness of kin is
sufficient ground for it. The ghost who is to be worshipped is the
spirit of a man who in his lifetime had _mana_ [supernatural or magical
power] in him; the souls of common men are the common herd of ghosts,
nobodies alike before and after death. The supernatural power abiding in
the powerful living man abides in his ghost after death, with increased
vigour and more ease of movement. After his death, therefore, it is
expected that he should begin to work, and some one will come forward
and claim particular acquaintance with the ghost; if his power should
shew itself, his position is assured as one worthy to be invoked, and to
receive offerings, till his cultus gives way before the rising
importance of one newly dead, and the sacred place where his shrine once
stood and his relics were preserved is the only memorial of him that
remains; if no proof of his activity appears, he sinks into oblivion at
once."[584]

[Sidenote: Worship paid chiefly to the recent and well-remembered dead.]

From this instructive account we learn that worship is paid chiefly to
the recent and well-remembered dead, to the men whom the worshippers
knew personally and feared or respected in their lifetime. On the other
hand, when men have been long dead, and all who knew them have also been
gathered to their fathers, their memory fades away and with it their
worship gradually falls into complete desuetude. Thus the spirits who
receive the homage of these savages were real men of flesh and blood,
not mythical beings conjured up by the fancy of their worshippers, which
some legerdemain of the mind has foisted into the shrine and encircled
with the halo of divinity. Not that the Melanesians do not also worship
beings who, so far as we can see, are purely mythical, though their
worshippers firmly believe in their reality. But "they themselves make a
clear distinction between the existing, conscious, powerful disembodied
spirits of the dead, and other spiritual beings that never have been men
at all. It is true that the two orders of beings get confused in native
language and thought, but their confusion begins at one end and the
confusion of their visitors at another; they think so much and
constantly of ghosts that they speak of beings who were never men as
ghosts; Europeans take the spirits of the lately dead for gods; less
educated Europeans call them roundly devils."[585]

[Sidenote: Way in which a dead warrior came to be worshipped as a
martial ghost.]

As an example of the way in which the ghost of a real man who has just
died may come to be worshipped Dr. Codrington tells us the story of
Ganindo, which he had from Bishop Selwyn. This Ganindo was a great
fighting man of Honggo in Florida, one of the Solomon Islands. He went
with other warriors on a head-hunting expedition against Gaeta; but
being mortally wounded with an arrow near the collar-bone he was brought
back by his comrades to the hill of Bonipari, where he died and was
buried. His friends cut off his head, put it in a basket, built a house
for it, and said that he was a worshipful ghost (_tindalo_). Afterwards
they said, "Let us go and take heads." So they embarked on their canoe
and paddled away to seek the heads of enemies. When they came to quiet
water, they stopped paddling and waited till they felt the canoe rock
under them, and when they felt it they said, "That is a ghost." To find
out what particular ghost it was they called out the names of several,
and when they came to the name of Ganindo, the canoe rocked again. So
they knew that it was he who was making the canoe to rock. In like
manner they learned what village they were to attack. Returning
victorious with the heads of the foe they threw a spear into the roof of
Ganindo's house, blew conch-shells, and danced round it, crying, "Our
ghost is strong to kill!" Then they sacrificed fish and other food to
him. Also they built him a new house, and made four images of him for
the four corners, one of Ganindo himself, two of his sisters, and
another. When it was all ready, eight men translated the relics to the
new shrine. One of them carried Ganindo's bones, another his betel-nuts,
another his lime-box, another his shell-trumpet. They all went into the
shrine crouching down, as if burdened by a heavy weight, and singing in
chorus, "Hither, hither, let us lift the leg!" At that the eight legs
went up together, and then they sang, "Hither, hither!" and at that the
eight legs went down together. In this solemn procession the relics were
brought and laid on a bamboo platform, and sacrifices to the new martial
ghost were inaugurated. Other warlike ghosts revered in Florida are
known not to have been natives of the island but famous warriors of the
western isles, where supernatural power is believed to be stronger.[586]

[Sidenote: Offerings to the dead.]

Throughout the islands of Central Melanesia prayers and offerings are
everywhere made to ghosts or spirits or to both. The simplest and
commonest sacrificial act is that of throwing a small portion of food to
the dead; this is probably a universal practice in Melanesia. A morsel
of food ready to be eaten, for example of yam, a leaf of mallow, or a
bit of betel-nut, is thrown aside; and where they drink kava, a libation
is made of a few drops, as the share of departed friends or as a
memorial of them with which they will be pleased. At the same time the
offerer may call out the name of some one who either died lately or is
particularly remembered at the time; or without the special mention of
individuals he may make the offering generally to the ghosts of former
members of the community. To set food on a burial-place or before some
memorial image is a common practice, though in some places, as in Santa
Cruz, the offering is soon taken away and eaten by the living.[587]

[Sidenote: Sacrificial ritual in the Solomon Islands.]

In the Solomon Islands the sacrificial ritual is more highly developed.
It may be described in the words of a native of San Cristoval. "In my
country," he wrote, "they think that ghosts are many, very many indeed,
some very powerful, and some not. There is one who is principal in war;
this one is truly mighty and strong. When our people wish to fight with
any other place, the chief men of the village and the sacrificers and
the old men, and the elder and younger men, assemble in the place sacred
to this ghost; and his name is Harumae. When they are thus assembled to
sacrifice, the chief sacrificer goes and takes a pig; and if it be not a
barrow pig they would not sacrifice it to that ghost, he would reject it
and not eat of it. The pig is killed (it is strangled), not by the chief
sacrificer, but by those whom he chooses to assist, near the sacred
place. Then they cut it up; they take great care of the blood lest it
should fall upon the ground; they bring a bowl and set the pig in it,
and when they cut it up the blood runs down into it. When the cutting up
is finished, the chief sacrificer takes a bit of flesh from the pig, and
he takes a cocoa-nut shell and dips up some of the blood. Then he takes
the blood and the bit of flesh and enters into the house (the shrine),
and calls that ghost and says, 'Harumae! Chief in war! we sacrifice to
you with this pig, that you may help us to smite that place; and
whatsoever we shall carry away shall be your property, and we also will
be yours.' Then he burns the bit of flesh in a fire upon a stone, and
pours down the blood upon the fire. Then the fire blazes greatly upwards
to the roof, and the house is full of the smell of pig, a sign that the
ghost has heard. But when the sacrificer went in he did not go boldly,
but with awe; and this is the sign of it; as he goes into the holy house
he puts away his bag, and washes his hands thoroughly, to shew that the
ghost shall not reject him with disgust." The pig was afterwards eaten.
It should be observed that this Harumae who received sacrifices as a
martial ghost, mighty in war, had not been dead many years when the
foregoing account of the mode of sacrificing to him was written. The
elder men remembered him alive, nor was he a great warrior, but a kind
and generous man, believed to be plentifully endowed with supernatural
power. His shrine was a small house in the village, where relics of him
were preserved.[588] Had the Melanesians been left to themselves, it
seems possible that this Harumae might have developed into the war-god
of San Cristoval, just as in Central Africa another man of flesh and
blood is known to have developed into the war-god of Uganda.[589]

[Footnote 552: R. H. Codrington, _The Melanesians_ (Oxford, 1891), pp.
122, 123, 124, 180 _sq._]

[Footnote 553: R. H. Codrington, _The Melanesians_ (Oxford, 1891), pp.
247, 253.]

[Footnote 554: R. H. Codrington, _op. cit._ p. 248.]

[Footnote 555: R. H. Codrington, _op. cit._ pp. 255 _sqq_., 264 _sqq_.]

[Footnote 556: R. H. Codrington, _op. cit._ 253 _sq_.]

[Footnote 557: R. H. Codrington, _op. cit._ pp. 254, 258, 261; compare
_id._, pp. 125, 130.]

[Footnote 558: R. H. Codrington, _op. cit._ pp. 120, 254.]

[Footnote 559: R. H. Codrington, _op. cit._ pp. 118 _sqq._]

[Footnote 560: R. H. Codrington, _op. cit._ pp. 254 _sq._]

[Footnote 561: R. H. Codrington, _op. cit._ pp. 258 _sq._]

[Footnote 562: R. H. Codrington, _op. cit._ p. 255.]

[Footnote 563: R. H. Codrington, _op. cit._ p. 259.]

[Footnote 564: G. Brown, D.D., _Melanesians and Polynesians_ (London,
1910), pp. 214, 217.]

[Footnote 565: R. H. Codrington, _op. cit._ p. 255.]

[Footnote 566: R. H. Codrington, _op. cit._ pp. 255 _sq._]

[Footnote 567: R. H. Codrington, _op. cit._ pp. 256 _sq._]

[Footnote 568: R. H. Codrington, _op. cit._ pp. 260 _sq._]

[Footnote 569: R. H. Codrington, _op. cit._ pp. 261 _sq._]

[Footnote 570: R. H. Codrington, _op. cit._ pp. 263 _sq._]

[Footnote 571: R. H. Codrington, _op. cit._ p. 257.]

[Footnote 572: R. H. Codrington, _op. cit._ pp. 264, 273 _sq._,
275-277.]

[Footnote 573: R. H. Codrington, _op. cit._ pp. 274 _sq._]

[Footnote 574: R. H. Codrington, _op. cit._ pp. 266, 276, 277, 286.]

[Footnote 575: R. H. Codrington, _The Melanesians_, pp. 267-270.]

[Footnote 576: R. H. Codrington, _op. cit._ p. 269.]

[Footnote 577: R. H. Codrington, _The Melanesians_, pp. 270 _sq._]

[Footnote 578: R. H. Codrington, _The Melanesians_, p. 275.]

[Footnote 579: R. H. Codrington, _The Melanesians_, pp. 271 _sq._]

[Footnote 580: G. Turner, _Samoa a Hundred Years Ago and long before_
(London, 1884), pp. 335 _sq._ This account is based on information
furnished by Sualo, a Samoan teacher, who lived for a long time on the
island. The statement that the fire kindled on the grave was intended
"to enable the soul of the departed to rise to the sun" may be doubted;
it may be a mere inference of Dr. Turner's Samoan informant. More
probably the fire was intended to warm the shivering ghost. I do not
remember any other evidence that the souls of the Melanesian dead ascend
to the sun; certainly it is much more usual for them to descend into the
earth.]

[Footnote 581: R. H. Codrington, _op. cit._ pp. 281 _sq._]

[Footnote 582: R. H. Codrington, _op. cit._ pp. 278 _sq._]

[Sidenote: Journey of the ghost to the other world.]

[Footnote 583: R. H. Codrington, _op. cit._ pp. 279 _sq._]

[Footnote 584: R. H. Codrington, _The Melanesians_, pp. 124 _sq._]

[Footnote 585: R. H. Codrington, _The Melanesians_, p. 121.]

[Footnote 586: R. H. Codrington, _The Melanesians_, pp. 125 _sqq._]

[Footnote 587: R. H. Codrington, _The Melanesians_, pp. 127, 128.]

[Footnote 588: R. H. Codrington, _The Melanesians_, pp. 129 _sq._]

[Footnote 589: Rev. J. Roscoe, "Kibuka, the War God of the Baganda,"
_Man_, vii. (1907) pp. 161-166; _id._, _The Baganda_ (London, 1911), pp.
301 _sqq._ The history of this African war-god is more or less mythical,
but his personal relics, which are now deposited in the Ethnological
Museum at Cambridge, suffice to prove his true humanity.]

LECTURE XVII

THE BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY AMONG THE NATIVES OF CENTRAL MELANESIA
(_concluded_)

[Sidenote: Public sacrifices to ghosts in the Solomon Islands.]

At the close of last lecture I described the mode in which sacrifices
are offered to a martial ghost in San Cristoval, one of the Solomon
Islands. We saw that the flesh of a pig is burned in honour of the ghost
and that the victim's blood is poured on the flames. Similarly in
Florida, another of the Solomon Islands, food is conveyed to worshipful
ghosts by being burned in the fire. Some ghosts are known by name to
everybody, others may be known only to individuals, who have found out
or been taught how to approach them, and who accordingly regard such
ghosts as their private property. In every village a public ghost is
worshipped, and the chief is the sacrificer. He has learned from his
predecessor how to throw or heave the sacrifice, and he imparts this
knowledge to his son or nephew, whom he intends to leave as his
successor. The place of sacrifice is an enclosure with a little house or
shrine in which the relics are kept; it is new or old according as the
man whose ghost is worshipped died lately or long ago. When a public
sacrifice is performed, the people assemble near but not in the sacred
place; boys but not women may be present. The sacrificer alone enters
the shrine, but he takes with him his son or other person whom he has
instructed in the ritual. Muttering an incantation he kindles a fire of
sticks, but may not blow on the holy flame. Then from a basket he takes
some prepared food, such as a mash of yams, and throws it on the fire,
calling out the name of the ghost and bidding him take his food, while
at the same time he prays for whatever is desired. If the fire blazes up
and consumes the food, it is a good sign; it proves that the ghost is
present and that he is blowing up the flame. The remainder of the food
the sacrificer takes back to the assembled people; some of it he eats
himself and some of it he gives to his assistant to eat. The people
receive their portions of the food at his hands and eat it or take it
away. While the sacrificing is going on, there is a solemn silence. If a
pig is killed, the portion burned in the sacrificial fire is the heart
in Florida, but the gullet at Bugotu. One ghost who is commonly known
and worshipped is called Manoga. When the sacrificer invokes this ghost,
he heaves the sacrifice round about and calls him, first to the east,
where rises the sun, saying, "If thou dwellest in the east, where rises
the sun, Manoga! come hither and eat thy _tutu_ mash!" Then turning he
lifts it towards where sets the sun, and says, "If thou dwellest in the
west, where sets the sun, Manoga! come hither and eat thy _tutu_!" There
is not a quarter to which he does not lift it up. And when he has
finished lifting it he says, "If thou dwellest in heaven above, Manoga!
come hither and eat thy _tutu_! If thou dwellest in the Pleiades or
Orion's belt; if below in Turivatu; if in the distant sea; if on high in
the sun, or in the moon; if thou dwellest inland or by the shore,
Manoga! come hither and eat thy _tutu_!"[590]