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: First-fruits of the canarium nuts sacrificed to ghosts.]

Twice a year there are general sacrifices in which the people of a
village take part. One of these occasions is when the canarium nut, so
much used in native cookery, is ripe. None of the nuts may be eaten till
the first-fruits have been offered to the ghost. "Devil he eat first;
all man he eat behind," is the lucid explanation which a native gave to
an English enquirer. The knowledge of the way in which the first-fruits
must be offered is handed down from generation to generation, and the
man who is learned in this lore has authority to open the season. He
observes the state of the crop, and early one morning he is heard to
shout. He climbs a tree, picks some nuts, cracks them, eats, and puts
some on the stones in his sacred place for the ghost. Then the rest of
the people may gather the nuts for themselves. The chief himself
sacrifices the new nuts, mixed with other food, to the public ghost on
the stones of the village sanctuary; and every man who has a private
ghost of his own does the same in his own sacred place. About two months
afterwards there is another public sacrifice when the root crops
generally have been dug; pig or fish is then offered; and a man who digs
up his yams, or whatever it may be, offers his private sacrifice
besides.[591]

[Sidenote: Sacrifice of first-fruits to ancestral spirits in Tanna.]

In like manner the natives of Tanna, one of the Southern New Hebrides,
offered the first-fruits to the deified spirits of their ancestors. On
this subject I will quote the evidence of the veteran missionary, the
Rev. Dr. George Turner, who lived in Tanna for seven months in 1841. He
says: "The general name for gods seemed to be _aremha_; that means a
_dead man_, and hints alike at the origin and nature of their religious
worship. The spirits of their departed ancestors were among their gods.
Chiefs who reach an advanced age were after death deified, addressed by
name, and prayed to on various occasions. They were supposed especially
to preside over the growth of the yams and the different fruit trees.
The first-fruits were presented to them, and in doing this they laid a
little of the fruit on some stone, or shelving branch of the tree, or
some more temporary altar of a few rough sticks from the bush, lashed
together with strips of bark, in the form of a table, with its four feet
stuck in the ground. All being quiet, the chief acted as high priest,
and prayed aloud thus: 'Compassionate father! here is some food for you;
eat it; be kind to us on account of it.' And, instead of an _amen_, all
united in a shout. This took place about mid-day, and afterwards those
who were assembled continued together feasting and dancing till midnight
or three in the morning."[592]

[Sidenote: Private ghosts. Fighting ghosts kept as auxiliaries.]

In addition to the public ghosts, each of whom is revered by a whole
village, many a man keeps, so to say, a private or tame ghost of his own
on leash. The art of taming a ghost consists in knowing the leaves,
bark, and vines in which he delights and in treating him accordingly.
This knowledge a man may acquire by the exercise of his natural
faculties or he may learn it from somebody else. However he may obtain
the knowledge, he uses it for his own personal advantage, sacrificing to
the ghost in order to win his favour and get something from him in
return. The mode of sacrificing to a private ghost is the same as to a
public ghost. The owner has a sacred place or private chapel of his own,
where he draws near to the ghost in prayer and burns his bit of food in
the fire. A man often keeps a fighting ghost (_keramo_), who helps him
in battle or in slaying his private enemy. Before he goes out to commit
homicide, he pulls up his ginger-plant and judges from the ease or
difficulty with which the plant yields to or resists his tug, whether he
will succeed in the enterprise or not. Then he sacrifices to the ghost,
and having placed some ginger and leaves on his shield, and stuffed some
more in his belt and right armlet, he sallies forth. He curses his enemy
by his fighting ghost, saying, "Siria (if that should be the name of the
ghost) eats thee, and I shall slay thee"; and if he kills him, he cries
to the ghost, "Thine is this man, Siria, and do thou give me
supernatural power!" No prudent Melanesian would attempt to commit
manslaughter without a ghost as an accomplice; to do so would be to
court disaster, for the slain man's ghost would have power over the
slayer; therefore before he imbrues his hands in blood he deems it
desirable to secure the assistance of a valiant ghost who can, if need
be, overcome the ghost of his victim in single combat. If he cannot
procure such a useful auxiliary in any other way, he must purchase him.
Further, he fortifies himself with some personal relic, such as a tooth
or lock of hair of the deceased warrior, whose ghost he has taken into
his service; this relic he wears as an amulet in a little bag round the
neck, when he is on active service; at other times it is kept in the
house.[593]

[Sidenote: Garden ghosts.]

Different from these truculent spirits are the peaceful ghosts who cause
the garden to bear fruit. If the gardener happens to know such a ghost,
he can pray and sacrifice to him on his own account; but if he has no
such friend in the spirit world, he must employ an expert. The man of
skill goes into the midst of the garden with a little mashed food in his
left hand, and smiting it with his right hand he calls on the ghost to
come and eat. He says: "This produce thou shall eat; give supernatural
power (_mana_) to this garden, that food may be good and plentiful." He
digs holes at the four corners of the garden, and in them he buries such
leaves as the ghost loves, so that the garden may have ghostly power and
be fruitful. And when the yams sprout, he twines them with the
particular creeper and fastens them with the particular wood to which
the ghost is known to be partial. These agricultural ghosts are very
sensitive; if a man enters the garden, who has just eaten pork or cuscus
or fish or shell-fish, the ghost of the garden manifests his displeasure
by causing the produce of the garden to droop; but if the eater lets
three or four days go by after his meal, he may then enter the garden
with impunity, for the food has left his stomach. For a similar reason,
apparently, when the yam vines are being trained, the men sleep near the
gardens and never approach their wives; for should they tread the garden
after conjugal intercourse, the yams would be blighted.[594]

[Sidenote: Human sacrifices to ghosts.]

Sometimes the favour of a ghost is obtained by human sacrifices. On
these occasions the flesh of the victim does not, like the flesh of a
pig, furnish the materials of a sacrificial banquet; but little bits of
it are eaten by young men to improve their fighting power and by elders
for a special purpose. Such sacrifices are deemed more effectual than
the sacrifices of less precious victims; and advantage was sometimes
taken of a real or imputed crime to offer the criminal to some ghost.
So, for example, within living memory Dikea, chief of Ravu, convicted a
certain man of stealing tobacco, and sentenced him to be sacrificed; and
the grown lads ate pieces of him cooked in the sacrificial fire. Again,
the same chief offered another human sacrifice in the year 1886. One of
his wives had proved false, and he sent her away vowing that she should
not return till he had offered a human sacrifice to Hauri. Also his son
died, and he vowed to kill a man for him. The vow was noised abroad, and
everybody knew that he would pay well for somebody to kill. Now the Savo
people had bought a captive boy in Guadalcanar, but it turned out a bad
bargain, for the boy was lame and nearly blind. So they brought him to
Dikea, and he gave them twenty coils of shell money for the lad. Then
the chief laid his hand on the victim's breast and cried, "Hauri! here
is a man for you," and his followers killed him with axes and clubs. The
cripple's skull was added to the chief's collection, and his legs were
sent about the country to make known what had been done. In Bugotu of
Ysabel, when the people had slain an enemy in fight, they used to bring
back his head in triumph, cut slices off it, and burn them in sacrifice.
And if they took a prisoner alive, they would bring him to the sacred
place, the grave of the man whose ghost was to be honoured. There they
bound him hand and foot and buffeted him till he died, or if he did not
die under the buffets they cut his throat. As they beat the man with
their fists, they called on the ghost to take him, and when he was dead,
they burned a bit of him in the fire for the ghost.[595]

[Sidenote: Sacrifices to ghosts in Saa.]

At Saa in Malanta, one of the Solomon Islands, sacrifices are offered to
ghosts on various occasions. Thus on his return from a voyage a man will
put food in the case which contains the relics of his dead father; and
in the course of his voyage, if he should land in a desert isle, he will
throw food and call on father, grandfather, and other deceased friends.
Again, when sickness is ascribed to the anger of a ghost, a man of skill
is sent for to discover what particular ghost is doing the mischief.
When he has ascertained the culprit, he is furnished by the patient's
relatives with a little pig, which he is to sacrifice to the ghost as a
substitute for the sick man. Provided with this vicarious victim he
repairs to the haunt of the ghost, strangles the animal, and burns it
whole in a fire along with grated yam, coco-nut, and fish. As he does
so, he calls out the names of all the ghosts of his family, his
ancestors, and all who are deceased, down even to children and women,
and he names the man who furnished the pig for the ghostly repast. A
portion of the mixed food he preserves unburnt, wraps it in a dracaena
leaf, and puts it beside the case which contains the relics of the man
to whose ghost the sacrifice has been offered. Sometimes, however,
instead of burning a pig in the fire, which is an expensive and wasteful
form of sacrifice, the relatives of the sick man content themselves with
cooking a pig or a dog in the oven, cutting up the carcase, and laying
out all the parts in order. Then the sacrificer comes and sits at the
animal's head, and calls out the names of all the dead members of the
ghost's family in order downwards, saying, "Help, deliver this man, cut
short the line that has bound him." Then the pig is eaten by all present
except the women; nothing is burnt.[596]

[Sidenote: Sacrifices of first-fruits to ghosts in Saa.]

The last sort of sacrifices to ghosts at Saa which we need notice is the
sacrifice of first-fruits. Thus, when the yams are ripe the people fetch
some of them from each garden to offer to the ghosts. All the male
members of the family assemble at the holy place which belongs to them.
Then one of them enters the shrine, lays a yam beside the skull which
lies there, and cries with a loud voice to the ghost, "This is yours to
eat." The others call quietly on the names of all the ancestors and give
their yams, which are very many in number, because one from each garden
is given to each ghost. If any man has besides a relic of the dead, such
as a skull, bones, or hair, in his house, he takes home a yam and sets
it beside the relic. Again, the first flying-fish of the season are
sacrificed to ghosts, who may take the form of sharks; for we shall see
presently that Melanesian ghosts are sometimes supposed to inhabit the
bodies of these ferocious monsters. Some ghost-sharks have sacred places
ashore, where figures of sharks are set up. In that case the first
flying-fish are cooked and set before the shark images. But it may be
that a shark ghost has no sacred place on land, and then there is
nothing for it but to take the flying-fish out to sea and shred them
into the water, while the sacrificer calls out the name of the
particular ghost whom he desires to summon to the feast.[597]

[Sidenote: Vicarious sacrifices for the sick.]

Vicarious sacrifices for the sick are offered in San Cristoval to a
certain malignant ghost called Tapia, who is believed to seize a man's
soul and tie it up to a banyan tree. When that has happened, a man who
knows how to manage Tapia intercedes with him. He takes a pig or fish to
the sacred place and offers it to the grim ghost, saying, "This is for
you to eat in place of that man; eat this, don't kill him." With that he
can loose the captive soul and take it back to the sick man, who
thereupon recovers.[598]

[Sidenote: Sacrifices to ghosts in Santa Cruz. The dead represented by a
stock.]

In Santa Cruz the sacrifices offered to ghosts are very economical; for
if the offering is of food, the living eat it up after a decent
interval; if it is a valuable, they remove it and resume the use of it
themselves. The principle of this spiritual economy probably lies in the
common belief that ghosts, being immaterial, absorb the immaterial
essence of the objects, leaving the material substance to be enjoyed by
men. When a man of mark dies in Santa Cruz, his relations set up a stock
of wood in his house to represent him. This is renewed from time to
time, till after a while the man is forgotten or thrown into the shade
by the attractions of some newer ghost, so that the old stock is
neglected. But when the stock is first put up, a pig is killed and two
strips of flesh from the back bone are set before the stock as food for
the ghost, but only to be soon taken away and eaten by the living.
Similar offerings may be repeated from time to time, as when the stock
is renewed. Again, when a garden is planted, they spread feather-money
and red native cloth round it for the use of the ghost; but his
enjoyment of these riches is brief and precarious.[599]

[Sidenote: Native account of sacrifices to ghosts in Santa Cruz.]

To supplement the foregoing account of sacrifices to ghosts in Santa
Cruz, I will add a description of some of them which was given by a
native of Santa Cruz in his own language and translated for us by a
missionary. It runs thus: "When anyone begins to fall sick he seeks a
doctor (_meduka_), and when the doctor comes near the sick man he
stiffens his body, and all those in the house think a ghost has entered
into the doctor, and they are all very quiet. Some doctors tell the sick
man's relatives to kill a pig for the ghost who has caused the sickness.
When they have killed the pig they take it into the ghost-house and
invite some other men, and they eat with prayers to the ghost; and the
doctor takes a little piece and puts it near the base of the ghost-post,
and says to it: 'This is thy food; oh, deliver up again the spirit of
thy servant, that he may be well again.' The little portion they have
offered to the ghost is then eaten; but small boys may not eat of
it."[600] "Every year the people plant yams and tomagos; and when they
begin to work and have made ready the place and begun to plant, first,
they offer to the ghost who they think presides over foods. There is an
offering place in the bush, and they go there and take much food, and
also feather money. Men, women, and children do this, and they think the
ghost notices if there are many children, and gives much food at
harvest; and the ghost to whom they offer is named Ilene. When the
bread-fruit begins to bear they take great care lest anyone should light
a fire near the bole of the tree, or throw a stone at the tree. The
ghost, who they think protects the bread-fruit, is called Duka-Kane or
Kae Tuabia, who has two names; they think this ghost has four
eyes."[601] "The heathen thinks a ghost makes the sun to shine and the
rain. If it is continual sunshine and the yams are withering the people
assemble together and contribute money, and string it to the man with
whom the rain-ghost abides, and food also, and beseech him not to do the
thing he was doing. That man will not wash his face for a long time, he
will not work lest he perspire and his body be wet, for he thinks that
if his body be wet it will rain. Then this man, with whom the rain-ghost
is, takes water and goes into the ghost-house and sprinkles it at the
head of the ghost-post (_duka_), and if there are many ghost-posts in
the house he pours water over them all that it may rain."[602]

[Sidenote: Combination of magic with religion.]

In these ceremonies for the making of rain we see a combination of magic
with religion. The appeal to the rain-ghost is religious; but the
pouring of the water on the ghost-post is magical, being an imitation of
the result which the officiating priest or magician, whichever we choose
to call him, desires to produce. The taboos observed by the owner of the
rain-ghost so long as he wishes to prevent the rain from falling are
also based on the principle of homoeopathic or imitative magic: he
abstains from washing his face or working, lest the water or the sweat
trickling down his body should mimick rain and thereby cause it to
fall.[603]

[Sidenote: Prayers to the dead.]

The natives of Aneiteum, one of the Southern New Hebrides, worshipped
the spirits of their ancestors, chiefly on occasions of sickness.[604]
Again, the people of Vate or Efat, another of the New Hebrides,
worshipped the souls of their forefathers and prayed to them over the
_kava_-bowl for health and prosperity.[605] As an example of prayers
offered to the dead we may take the petition which the natives of
Florida put up at sea to Daula, a well-known ghost, who is associated
with the frigate-bird. They say: "Do thou draw the canoe, that it may
reach the land; speed my canoe, grandfather, that I may quickly reach
the shore whither I am bound. Do thou, Daula, lighten the canoe, that it
may quickly gain the land and rise upon the shore." They also invoke
Daula to help them in fishing. "If thou art powerful, O Daula," they
say, "put a fish or two into this net and let them die there." After a
good catch they praise him, saying, "Powerful is the ghost of the net."
And when the natives of Florida are in danger on the sea, they call upon
their immediate forefathers; one will call on his grandfather, another
on his father, another on some dead friend, calling with reverence and
saying, "Save us on the deep! Save us from the tempest! Bring us to the
shore!" In San Cristoval people apply to ghosts for victory in battle,
health in sickness, and good crops; but the word which they use to
signify such an application conveys the notion of charm rather than of
prayer. However, in the Banks' Islands what may be called prayer is
strictly speaking an invocation of the dead; indeed the very word for
prayer (_tataro_) seems to be identical with that for a powerful ghost
(_'ataro_ in San Cristoval). A man in peril on the sea will call on his
dead friends, especially on one who was in his lifetime a good sailor.
And in Mota, when an oven is opened, they throw in a leaf of cooked
mallow for a ghost, saying to him, "This is a lucky bit for your eating;
they who have charmed your food or clubbed you (as the case may be),
take hold of their hands, drag them away to hell, let them be dead." So
when they pour water on the oven, they pray to the ghost, saying, "Pour
it on the head of him down there who has laid plots against me, has
clubbed me, has shot me, has stolen things of mine (as the case may be),
he shall die." Again, when they make a libation before drinking, they
pray, saying, "Grandfather! this is your lucky drop of kava; let boars
come in to me; the money I have spent, let it come back to me; the food
that is gone, let it come back hither to the house of you and me." And
on starting for a voyage they will say, "Uncle! father! plenty of boars
for you, plenty of money; kava for your drinking, lucky food for your
eating in the canoe. I pray you with this, look down upon me, let me go
on a safe sea." Or when the canoe labours with a heavy freight, they
will pray, "Take off your burden from us, that we may speed on a safe
sea."[606]

[Sidenote: Sanctuaries of ghosts in Florida.]

In the island of Florida, the sanctuary of a powerful ghost is called a
_vunuhu_. Sometimes it is in the village, sometimes in the
garden-ground, sometimes in the forest. If it is in the village, it is
fenced about, lest the foot of any rash intruder should infringe its
sanctity. Sometimes the sanctuary is the place where the dead man is
buried; sometimes it merely contains his relics, which have been
translated thither. In some sanctuaries there is a shrine and in some an
image. Generally, if not always, stones may be seen lying in such a holy
place. The sight of one of them has probably struck the fancy of the man
who founded the worship; he thought it a likely place for the ghost to
haunt, and other smaller stones and shells have been subsequently added.
Once a sanctuary has been established, everything within it becomes
sacred (_tambu_) and belongs to the ghost. Were a tree growing within it
to fall across the path, nobody would step over it. When a sacrifice is
to be offered to the ghost on the holy ground, the man who knows the
ghost, and whose duty it is to perform the sacrifice, enters first and
all who attend him follow, treading in his footsteps. In going out no
one will look back, lest his soul should stay behind. No one would pass
such a sanctuary when the sun was so low as to cast his shadow into it;
for if he did the ghost would seize his shadow and so drag the man
himself into his den. If there were a shrine in the sanctuary, nobody
but the sacrificer might enter it. Such a shrine contained the weapons
and other properties which belonged in his lifetime to the man whose
ghost was worshipped on the spot.[607]

[Sidenote: Sanctuaries of ghosts in Malanta.]

At Saa in Malanta, another of the Solomon Islands, all burial-grounds
where common people are interred are so far sacred that no one will go
there without due cause; but places where the remains of nobles repose,
and where sacrifices are offered to their ghosts, are regarded with very
great respect, they may indeed be called family sanctuaries. Some of
them are very old, the powerful ghosts who are worshipped in them being
remote ancestors. It sometimes happens that the man who used to
sacrifice in such a place dies without having instructed his son in the
proper chant of invocation with which the worshipful ghost should be
approached. In such a case the young man who succeeds him may fear to go
to the old sanctuary, lest he should commit a mistake and offend the
ghost; so he will take some ashes from the old sacrificial fire-place
and found a new sanctuary. It is not common in that part of Malanta to
build shrines for the relics of the dead, but it is sometimes done. Such
shrines, on the other hand, are common in the villages of San Cristoval
and in the sacred places of that island where great men lie buried. To
trespass on them would be likely to rouse the anger of the ghosts, some
of whom are known to be of a malignant disposition.[608]

[Sidenote: Sanctuaries which are not burial-grounds.]

But burial-grounds are not the only sanctuaries in the Solomon Islands.
There are some where no dead man is known to be interred, though in Dr.
Codrington's opinion there are probably none which do not derive their
sanctity from the presence of a ghost. In the island of Florida the
appearance of something wonderful will cause any place to become a
sanctuary, the wonder being accepted as proof of a ghostly presence. For
example, in the forest near Olevuga a man planted some coco-nut and
almond trees and died not long afterwards. Then there appeared among the
trees a great rarity in the shape of a white cuscus. The people took it
for granted that the animal was the dead man's ghost, and therefore they
called it by his name. The place became a sanctuary; no one would gather
the coco-nuts and almonds that grew there, till two Christian converts
set the ghost at defiance and appropriated his garden, with the
coco-nuts and almonds. Through the same part of the forest ran a stream
full of eels, one of which was so big that the people were quite sure it
must be a ghost; so nobody would bathe in that stream or drink from it,
except at one pool, which for the sake of convenience was considered not
to be sacred. Again, in Bugotu, a district of Ysabel, which is another
of the Solomon Islands, there is a pool known to be the haunt of a very
old ghost. When a man has an enemy whom he wishes to harm he will obtain
some scraps of his food and throw them into the water. If the food is at
once devoured by the fish, which swarm in the pool, the man will die,
but otherwise his life may be saved by the intervention of a man who
knows the habits of the ghost and how to propitiate him. In these sacred
places there are stones, on which people place food in order to obtain
good crops, while for success in fishing they deposit morsels of cooked
fish. Such stones are treated with reverence and seem to be in a fair
way to develop into altars. However, when the old ghost is superseded,
as he often is, by younger rivals, the development of an altar out of
the stones is arrested.[609]