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: The sick and aged put to death by their relatives.]

The proposal to put the sick and aged to death did not always emanate
from the parties principally concerned; when a son, for example, thought
that his parents were growing too old and becoming a burden to him, he
would give them notice that it was time for them to die, a notice which
they usually accepted with equanimity, if not alacrity. As a rule, it
was left to the choice of the aged and infirm to say whether they would
prefer to be buried alive or to be strangled first and buried
afterwards; and having expressed a predilection one way or the other
they were dealt with accordingly. To strangle parents or other frail and
sickly relatives with a rope was considered a more delicate and
affectionate way of dispatching them than to knock them on the head with
a club. In the old days the missionary Mr. Hunt witnessed several of
these tender partings. "On one occasion, he was called upon by a young
man, who desired that he would pray to his spirit for his mother, who
was dead. Mr. Hunt was at first in hopes that this would afford him an
opportunity of forwarding their great cause. On inquiry, the young man
told him that his brothers and himself were just going to bury her. Mr.
Hunt accompanied the young man, telling him he would follow in the
procession, and do as he desired him, supposing, of course, the corpse
would be brought along; but he now met the procession, when the young
man said that this was the funeral, and pointed out his mother, who was
walking along with them, as gay and lively as any of those present, and
apparently as much pleased. Mr. Hunt expressed his surprise to the young
man, and asked him how he could deceive him so much by saying his mother
was dead, when she was alive and well. He said, in reply, that they had
made her death-feast, and were now going to bury her; that she was old;
that his brother and himself had thought she had lived long enough, and
it was time to bury her, to which she had willingly assented, and they
were about it now. He had come to Mr. Hunt to ask his prayers, as they
did those of the priest. He added, that it was from love for his mother
that he had done so; that, in consequence of the same love, they were
now going to bury her, and that none but themselves could or ought to do
so sacred an office! Mr. Hunt did all in his power to prevent so
diabolical an act; but the only reply he received was, that she was
their mother, and they were her children, and they ought to put her to
death. On reaching the grave, the mother sat down, when they all,
including children, grandchildren, relations, and friends, took an
affectionate leave of her; a rope, made of twisted _tapa_ [bark-cloth],
was then passed twice around her neck by her sons, who took hold of it,
and strangled her; after which she was put into her grave, with the
usual ceremonies. They returned to feast and mourn, after which she was
entirely forgotten as though she had not existed."[683]

[Sidenote: Wives strangled or buried alive at their husbands' funerals.]

Again, wives were often strangled, or buried alive, at the funeral of
their husbands, and generally at their own instance. Such scenes were
frequently witnessed by white residents in the old days. On one occasion
a Mr. David Whippy drove away the murderers, rescued the woman, and
carried her to his own house, where she was resuscitated. But far from
feeling grateful for her preservation, she loaded him with reproaches
and ever afterwards manifested the most deadly hatred towards him. "That
women should desire to accompany their husbands in death, is by no means
strange when it is considered that it is one of the articles of their
belief, that in this way alone can they reach the realms of bliss, and
she who meets her death with the greatest devotedness, will become the
favourite wife in the abode of spirits. The sacrifice is not, however,
always voluntary; but, when a woman refuses to be strangled, her
relations often compel her to submit. This they do from interested
motives; for, by her death, her connexions become entitled to the
property of her husband. Even a delay is made a matter of reproach.
Thus, at the funeral of the late king Ulivou, which was witnessed by Mr.
Cargill, his five wives and a daughter were strangled. The principal
wife delayed the ceremony, by taking leave of those around her;
whereupon Tanoa, the present king, chid her. The victim was his own
aunt, and he assisted in putting the rope around her neck, and
strangling her, a service he is said to have rendered on a former
occasion to his own mother."[684] In the case of men who were drowned at
sea or killed and eaten by enemies in war, their wives were sacrificed
in the usual way. Thus when Ra Mbithi, the pride of Somosomo, was lost
at sea, seventeen of his wives were destroyed; and after the news of a
massacre of the Namena people at Viwa in 1839 eighty women were
strangled to accompany the spirits of their murdered husbands.[685]

[Sidenote: Human "grass" for the grave.]

The bodies of women who were put to death for this purpose were
regularly laid at the bottom of the grave to serve as a cushion for the
dead husband to lie upon; in this capacity they were called grass
(_thotho_), being compared to the dried grass which in Fijian houses
used to be thickly strewn on the floors and covered with mats.[686] On
this point, however, a nice distinction was observed. While wives were
commonly sacrificed at the death of their husbands, in order to be
spread like grass in their graves, it does not transpire that husbands
were ever sacrificed at the death of their wives for the sake of serving
as grass to their dead spouses in the grave. The great truth that all
flesh is grass appears to have been understood by the Fijians as
applicable chiefly to the flesh of women. Sometimes a man's mother was
strangled as well as his wives. Thus Ngavindi, a young chief of Lasakau,
was laid in the grave with a wife at his side, his mother at his feet,
and a servant not far off. However, men as well as women were killed to
follow their masters to the far country. The confidential companion of a
chief was expected as a matter of common decency to die with his lord;
and if he shirked the duty, he fell in the public esteem. When Mbithi, a
chief of high rank and greatly esteemed in Mathuata, died in the year
1840, not only his wife but five men with their wives were strangled to
form the floor of his grave. They were laid on a layer of mats, and the
body of the chief was stretched upon them.[687] There used to be a
family in Vanua Levu which enjoyed the high privilege of supplying a
hale man to be buried with the king of Fiji on every occasion of a royal
decease. It was quite necessary that the man should be hale and hearty,
for it was his business to grapple with the Fijian Cerberus in the other
world, while his majesty slipped past into the abode of bliss.[688]

[Sidenote: Sacrifices of foreskins and fingers in honour of the dead.
Circumcision performed on a lad as a propitiatory sacrifice to save the
life of his father or father's brother. The rite of circumcision
followed by a licentious orgy.]

A curious sacrifice offered in honour of a dead chief consisted in the
foreskins of all the boys who had arrived at a suitable age; the lads
were circumcised on purpose to furnish them. Many boys had their little
fingers chopped off on the same occasion, and the severed foreskins and
fingers were placed in the chief's grave. When this bloody rite had been
performed, the chief's relatives presented young bread-fruit trees to
the mutilated boys, whose friends were bound to cultivate them till the
boys could do it for themselves.[689] Women as well as boys had their
fingers cut off in mourning. We read of a case when after the death of a
king of Fiji sixty fingers were amputated and being each inserted in a
slit reed were stuck along the eaves of the king's house.[690] Why
foreskins and fingers were buried with a dead chief or stuck up on the
roof of his house, we are not informed, and it is not easy to divine.
Apparently we must suppose that, when they were buried with the body,
they were thought to be of some assistance to the departed spirit in the
land of souls. At all events it deserves to be noted that according to a
very good authority a similar sacrifice of foreskins used to be made not
only for the dead but for the living. When a man of note was dangerously
ill, a family council would be held, at which it might be agreed that a
circumcision should take place as a propitiatory measure. Notice having
been given to the priests, an uncircumcised lad, the sick man's own son
or the son of one of his brothers, was then taken by his kinsman to the
_Vale tambu_ or God's House, and there presented as a _soro_, or
offering of atonement, in order that his father or father's brother
might be made whole. His escort at the same time made a present of
valuable property at the shrine and promised much more in future, should
their prayers be answered. The present and the promises were graciously
received by the priest, who appointed a day on which the operation was
to be performed. In the meantime no food might be taken from the
plantations except what was absolutely required for daily use; no pigs
or fowls might be killed, and no coco-nuts plucked from the trees.
Everything, in short, was put under a strict taboo; all was set apart
for the great feast which was to follow the performance of the rite. On
the day appointed the son or nephew of the sick chief was circumcised,
and with him a number of other lads whose friends had agreed to take
advantage of the occasion. Their foreskins, stuck in the cleft of a
split reed, were taken to the sacred enclosure (_Nanga_) and presented
to the chief priest, who, holding the reeds in his hand, offered them to
the ancestral gods and prayed for the sick man's recovery. Then followed
a great feast, which ushered in a period of indescribable revelry and
licence. All distinctions of property were for the time being suspended.
Men and women arrayed themselves in all manner of fantastic garbs,
addressed one another in the foulest language, and practised
unmentionable abominations openly in the public square of the town. The
nearest relationships, even that of own brother and sister, seemed to be
no bar to the general licence, the extent of which was indicated by the
expressive phrase of an old Nandi chief, who said, "While it lasts, we
are just like the pigs." This feasting and orgy might be kept up for
several days, after which the ordinary restraints of society and the
common decencies of life were observed once more. The rights of private
property were again respected; the abandoned revellers and debauchees
settled down into staid married couples; and brothers and sisters, in
accordance with the regular Fijian etiquette, might not so much as speak
to one another. It should be added that these extravagances in connexion
with the rite of circumcision appear to have been practised only in
certain districts of Viti Levu, the largest of the Fijian Islands, where
they were always associated with the sacred stone enclosures which went
by the name of _Nanga_.[691]

[Sidenote: These orgies were apparently associated with the worship of
the dead, to whom offerings were made in the _Nanga_ or sacred enclosure
of stones.]

The meaning of such orgies is very obscure, but from what we know of the
savage and his ways we may fairly assume that they were no mere
outbursts of unbridled passion, but that in the minds of those who
practised them they had a definite significance and served a definite
purpose. The one thing that seems fairly clear about them is that in
some way they were associated with the worship or propitiation of the
dead. At all events we are told on good authority that the _Nanga_, or
sacred enclosure of stones, in which the severed foreskins were offered,
was "the Sacred Place where the ancestral spirits are to be found by
their worshippers, and thither offerings are taken on all occasions when
their aid is to be invoked. Every member of the _Nanga_ has the
privilege of approaching the ancestors at any time. When sickness visits
himself or his kinsfolk, when he wishes to invoke the aid of the spirits
to avert calamity or to secure prosperity, or when he deems it advisable
to present a thank-offering, he may enter the _Nanga_ with proper
reverence and deposit on the dividing wall his whale's tooth, or bundle
of cloth, or dish of toothsome eels so highly prized by the elders, and
therefore by the ancestors whose living representatives they are: or he
may drag into the Sacred _Nanga_ his fattened pig, or pile up there his
offering of the choicest yams. And, having thus recommended himself to
the dead, he may invoke their powerful aid, or express his thankfulness
for the benefits they have conferred, and beg for a continuance of their
goodwill."[692] The first-fruits of the yam harvest were presented with
great ceremony to the ancestors in the _Nanga_ before the bulk of the
crop was dug for the people's use, and no man might taste of the new
yams until the presentation had been made. The yams so offered were
piled up in the sacred enclosure and left to rot there. If any one were
impious enough to appropriate them to his own use, it was believed that
he would be smitten with madness. Great feasts were held at the
presentation of the first-fruits; and the sacred enclosure itself was
often spoken of as the _Mbaki_ or Harvest.[693]

[Sidenote: Periodical initiation of young men in the _Nanga_.]

But the most characteristic and perhaps the most important of the rites
performed in the _Nanga_ or sacred stone enclosure was the periodical
initiation of young men, who by participation in the ceremony were
admitted to the full privileges of manhood. According to one account the
ceremony of initiation was performed as a rule only once in two years;
according to another account it was observed annually in October or
November, when the _ndrala_ tree (_Erythrina_) was in flower. The
flowering of the tree marked the beginning of the Fijian year; hence the
novices who were initiated at this season bore the title of _Vilavou_,
that is, "New Year's Men." As a preparation for the feasts which
attended the ceremony enormous quantities of yams were garnered and
placed under a strict taboo; pigs were fattened in large numbers, and
bales of native cloth stored on the tie-beams of the house-roofs. Spears
of many patterns and curiously carved clubs were also provided against
the festival. On the day appointed the initiated men went first into the
sacred enclosure and made their offerings, the chief priest having
opened the proceedings by libation and prayer. The heads of the novices
were clean shaven, and their beards, if they had any, were also removed.
Then each youth was swathed in long rolls of native cloth, and taking a
spear in one hand and a club in the other he marched with his comrades,
similarly swathed and armed, in procession into the sacred enclosure,
though not into its inner compartment, the Holy of Holies. The
procession was headed by a priest bearing his carved staff of office,
and it was received on the holy ground by the initiates, who sat
chanting a song in a deep murmuring tone, which occasionally swelled to
a considerable volume of sound and was thought to represent the muffled
roar of the surf breaking on a far-away coral reef. On entering the
enclosure the youths threw down their weapons before them, and with the
help of the initiated men divested themselves of the huge folds of
native cloth in which they were enveloped, each man revolving slowly on
his axis, while his attendant pulled at the bandage and gathered in the
slack. The weapons and the cloth were the offerings presented by the
novices to the ancestral spirits for the purpose of rendering themselves
acceptable to these powerful beings. The offerings were repeated in like
manner on four successive days; and as each youth was merely, as it
were, the central roller of a great bale of cloth, the amount of cloth
offered was considerable. It was all put away, with the spears and
clubs, in the sacred storehouse by the initiated men. A feast concluded
each day and was prolonged far into the night.

[Sidenote: Ceremony of death and resurrection.]

On the fifth day, the last and greatest of the festival, the heads of
the young men were shaven again and their bodies swathed in the largest
and best rolls of cloth. Then, taking their choicest weapons in their
hands, they followed their leader as before into the sacred enclosure.
But the outer compartment of the holy place, where on the previous days
they had been received by the grand chorus of initiated men, was now
silent and deserted. The procession stopped. A dead silence prevailed.
Suddenly from the forest a harsh scream of many parrots broke forth, and
then followed a mysterious booming sound which filled the souls of the
novices with awe. But now the priest moves slowly forward and leads the
train of trembling novices for the first time into the inner shrine, the
Holy of Holies, the _Nanga tambu-tambu_. Here a dreadful spectacle meets
their startled gaze. In the background sits the high priest, regarding
them with a stony stare; and between him and them lie a row of dead men,
covered with blood, their bodies seemingly cut open and their entrails
protruding. The leader steps over them one by one, and the awestruck
youths follow him until they stand in a row before the high priest,
their very souls harrowed by his awful glare. Suddenly he utters a great
yell, and at the cry the dead men start to their feet, and run down to
the river to cleanse themselves from the blood and filth with which they
are besmeared. They are initiated men, who represent the departed
ancestors for the occasion; and the blood and entrails are those of many
pigs that have been slaughtered for that night's revelry. The screams of
the parrots and the mysterious booming sound were produced by a
concealed orchestra, who screeched appropriately and blew blasts on
bamboo trumpets, the mouths of which were partially immersed in water.

[Sidenote: Sacrament of food and water.]

The dead men having come to life again, the novices offered their
weapons and the bales of native cloth in which they were swathed. These
were accordingly removed to the storehouse and the young men were made
to sit down in front of it. Then the high priest, cheered perhaps by the
sight of the offerings, unbent the starched dignity of his demeanour.
Skipping from side to side he cried in stridulous tones, "Where are the
people of my enclosure? Are they gone to Tongalevu? Are they gone to the
deep sea?" He had not called long when an answer rang out from the river
in a deep-mouthed song, and soon the singers came in view moving
rhythmically to the music of their solemn chant. Singing they filed in
and took their places in front of the young men; then silence ensued.
After that there entered four old men of the highest order of initiates;
the first bore a cooked yam carefully wrapt in leaves so that no part of
it should touch the hands of the bearer; the second carried a piece of
baked pork similarly enveloped; the third held a drinking-cup of
coco-nut shell or earthenware filled with water and wrapt round with
native cloth; and the fourth bore a napkin of the same material.
Thereupon the first elder passed along the row of novices putting the
end of the yam into each of their mouths, and as he did so each of them
nibbled a morsel of the sacred food; the second elder did the same with
the sacred pork; the third elder followed with the holy water, with
which each novice merely wetted his lips; and the rear was brought up by
the fourth elder, who wiped all their mouths with his napkin. Then the
high priest or one of the elders addressed the young men, warning them
solemnly against the sacrilege of divulging to the profane any of the
high mysteries they had seen and heard, and threatening all such
traitors with the vengeance of the gods.

[Sidenote: Presentation of the pig.]

That ceremony being over, all the junior initiated men (_Lewe ni Nanga_)
came forward, and each man presented to the novices a yam and a piece of
nearly raw pork; whereupon the young men took the food and went away to
cook it for eating. When the evening twilight had fallen, a huge pig,
which had been specially set aside at a former festival, was dragged
into the sacred enclosure and there presented to the novices, together
with other swine, if they should be needed to furnish a plenteous
repast.

[Sidenote: Acceptance of the novices by the ancestral spirits.]

The novices were now "accepted members of the _Nanga_, qualified to take
their place among the men of the community, though still only on
probation. As children--their childhood being indicated by their shaven
heads--they were presented to the ancestors, and their acceptance was
notified by what (looking at the matter from the natives' standpoint) we
might, without irreverence, almost call the _sacrament_ of food and
water, too sacred even for the elders' hands to touch. This acceptance
was acknowledged and confirmed on the part of all the _Lewe ni Nanga_
[junior initiated men] by their gift of food, and it was finally
ratified by the presentation of the Sacred Pig. In like manner, on the
birth of an infant, its father acknowledges it as legitimate, and
otherwise acceptable, by a gift of food; and his kinsfolk formally
signify approval and confirmation of his decision on the part of the
clan by similar presentations."

[Sidenote: The initiation followed by a period of sexual license. Sacred
pigs.]

Next morning the women, their hair dyed red and wearing waistbands of
hibiscus or other fibre, came to the sacred enclosure and crawled
through it on hands and knees into the Holy of Holies, where the elders
were singing their solemn chant. The high priest then dipped his hands
into the water of the sacred bowl and prayed to the ancestral spirits
for the mothers and for their children. After that the women crawled
back on hands and feet the way they had come, singing as they went and
creeping over certain mounds of earth which had been thrown up for the
purpose in the sacred enclosure. When they emerged from the holy ground,
the men and women addressed each other in the vilest language, such as
on ordinary occasions would be violently resented; and thenceforth to
the close of the ceremonies some days later very great, indeed almost
unlimited, licence prevailed between the sexes. During these days a
number of pigs were consecrated to serve for the next ceremony. The
animals were deemed sacred, and had the run of the fleshpots in the
villages in which they were kept. Indeed they were held in the greatest
reverence. To kill one, except for sacrifice at the rites in the
_Nanga_, would have been a sacrilege which the Fijian mind refused to
contemplate; and on the other hand to feed the holy swine was an act of
piety. Men might be seen throwing down basketfuls of food before the
snouts of the worshipful pigs, and at the same time calling the
attention of the ancestral spirits to the meritorious deed. "Take
knowledge of me," they would cry, "ye who lie buried, our heads! I am
feeding this pig of yours." Finally, all the men who had taken part in
the ceremonies bathed together in the river, carefully cleansing
themselves from every particle of the black paint with which they had
been bedaubed. When the novices, now novices no more, emerged from the
water, the high priest, standing on the river bank, preached to them an
eloquent sermon on the duties and responsibilities which devolved on
them in their new position.[694]

[Sidenote: The intention of the initiatory rites seems to be to
introduce the young men to the ancestral spirits. The drama of death and
resurrection. The Fijian rites of initiation seem to have been imported
by Melanesian immigrants from the west.]

The general intention of these initiatory rites appears to be, as Mr.
Fison has said in the words which I have quoted, to introduce the young
men to the ancestral spirits at their sanctuary, to incorporate them, so
to say, in the great community which embraces all adult members of the
tribe, whether living or dead. At all events this interpretation fits in
very well with the prayers which are offered to the souls of departed
kinsfolk on these occasions, and it is supported by the analogy of the
New Guinea initiatory rites which I described in former lectures; for in
these rites, as I pointed out, the initiation of the youths is closely
associated with the conceptions of death and the dead, the main feature
in the ritual consisting indeed of a simulation of death and subsequent
resurrection. It is, therefore, significant that the very same
simulation figures prominently in the Fijian ceremony, nay it would seem
to be the very pivot on which the whole ritual revolves. Yet there is an
obvious and important difference between the drama of death and
resurrection as it is enacted in New Guinea and in Fiji; for whereas in
New Guinea it is the novices who pretend to die and come to life again,
in Fiji the pretence is carried out by initiated men who represent the
ancestors, while the novices merely look on with horror and amazement at
the awe-inspiring spectacle. Of the two forms of ritual the New Guinea
one is probably truer to the original purpose of the rite, which seems
to have been to enable the novices to put off the old, or rather the
young, man and to put on a higher form of existence by participating in
the marvellous powers and privileges of the mighty dead. And if such was
really the intention of the ceremony, it is obvious that it was better
effected by compelling the young communicants, as we may call them, to
die and rise from the dead in their own persons than by obliging them to
assist as mere passive spectators at a dramatic performance of death and
resurrection. Yet in spite of this difference between the two rituals,
the general resemblance between them is near enough to justify us in
conjecturing that there may be a genetic connexion between the one and
the other. The conjecture is confirmed, first, by the very limited and
definite area of Fiji in which these initiatory rites were practised,
and, second, by the equally definite tradition of their origin. With
regard to the first of these points, the _Nanga_ or sacred stone
enclosure with its characteristic rites was known only to certain
tribes, who occupied a comparatively small area, a bare third of the
island of Viti Levu. These tribes are the Nuyaloa, Vatusila, Mbatiwai,
and Mdavutukia. They all seem to have spread eastward and southward from
a place of origin in the western mountain district. Their physical type
is pure Melanesian, with fewer traces of Polynesian admixture than can
be detected in the tribes on the coast.[695] Hence it is natural to
enquire whether the ritual of the _Nanga_ may not have been imported
into Fiji by Melanesian immigrants from the west. The question appears
to be answered in the affirmative by native tradition. "This is the word
of our fathers concerning the _Nanga_," said an old Wainimala grey-beard
to Mr. Fison. "Long, long ago their fathers were ignorant of it; but one
day two strangers were found sitting in the _rara_ (public square), and
they said they had come up from the sea to give them the _Nanga_. They
were little men, and very dark-skinned, and one of them had his face and
bust painted red, while the other was painted black. Whether these two
were gods or men our fathers did not tell us, but it was they who taught
our people the _Nanga_. This was in the old old times when our fathers
were living in another land--not in this place, for we are strangers
here. Our fathers fled hither from Navosa in a great war which arose
among them, and when they came there was no _Nanga_ in the land. So they
built one of their own after the fashion of that which they left behind
them." "Here," says Mr. Basil Thomson, "we have the earliest
tradition of missionary enterprise in the Pacific. I do not doubt that
the two sooty-skinned little men were castaways driven eastward by one
of those strong westerly gales that have been known to last for three
weeks at a time. By Fijian custom the lives of all castaways were
forfeit, but the pretence to supernatural powers would have saved men
full of the religious rites of their Melanesian home, and would have
assured them a hearing. The Wainimala tribes can name six generations
since they settled in their present home, and therefore the introduction
of the _Nanga_ cannot have been less than two centuries ago. During that
time it has overspread one third of the large island."