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: Human sacrifices in Fiji.]

Ferocious and inveterate cannibals themselves, the Fijians naturally
assumed that their gods were so too; hence human flesh was a common
offering, indeed the most valued of all.[713] Formal human sacrifices
were frequent. The victims were usually taken from a distant tribe, and
when war and violence failed to supply the demand, recourse was
sometimes had to negotiation. However obtained, the victims destined for
sacrifice were often kept for a time and fattened to make them better
eating. Then, tightly bound in a sitting posture, they were placed on
hot stones in one of the usual ovens, and being covered over with leaves
and earth were roasted alive, while the spectators roared with laughter
at the writhings and contortions of the victims in their agony. When
their struggles ceased and the bodies were judged to be done to a
nicety, they were raked out of the oven, their faces painted black, and
so carried to the temple, where they were presented to the gods, only,
however, to be afterwards removed, cut up, and devoured by the
people.[714]

[Sidenote: Human sacrifices offered when a king's house was built or a
great new canoe launched.]

However, roasting alive in ovens was not the only way in which men and
women were made away with in the service of religion. When a king's
house was built, men were buried alive in the holes dug to receive the
posts: they were compelled to clasp the posts in their arms, and then
the earth was shovelled over them and rammed down. And when a large new
canoe was launched, it was hauled down to the sea over the bodies of
living men, who were pinioned and laid out at intervals on the beach to
serve as rollers on which the great vessel glided smoothly into the
water, leaving a row of mangled corpses behind. The theory of both these
modes of sacrifice was explained by the Fijians to an Englishman who
witnessed them. I will quote their explanation in his words. "They said
in answer to the questions I put respecting the people being buried
alive with the posts, that a house or palace of a king was just like a
king's canoe: if the canoe was not hauled over men, as rollers, she
would not be expected to float long, and in like manner the palace could
not stand long if people were not to sit down and continually hold the
posts up. But I said, 'How could they hold the posts up after they were
dead?' They said, if they sacrificed their lives endeavouring to hold
the posts in their right position to their superior's _turanga kai na
kalou_ (chiefs and god), that the virtue of the sacrifice would
instigate the gods to uphold the house after they were dead, and that
they were honoured by being considered adequate to such a noble
task."[715] Apparently the Fijians imagined that the souls of the dead
men would somehow strengthen the souls of the houses and canoes and so
prolong the lives of these useful objects; for it is to be remembered
that according to Fijian theology houses and canoes as well as men and
women were provided with immortal souls.

[Sidenote: High estimation in which murder was held by the Fijians.]

Perhaps the same theory of immortality partially accounts for the high
honour in which the Fijian held the act of murder and for the admiration
which he bestowed on all murderers. "Shedding of blood," we are told,
"to him is no crime, but a glory. Whoever may be the victim,--whether
noble or vulgar, old or young, man, woman, or child,--whether slain in
war, or butchered by treachery,--to be somehow an acknowledged murderer
is the object of the Fijian's restless ambition."[716] It was customary
throughout Fiji to give honorary names to such as had clubbed to death a
human being, of any age or either sex, during a war. The new epithet was
given with the complimentary prefix _Koroi_. Mr. Williams once asked a
man why he was called _Koroi_. "Because," he replied, "I, with several
other men, found some women and children in a cave, drew them out and
clubbed them, and then was consecrated."[717] Mr. Fison learned from
another stout young warrior that he had earned the honourable
distinction of _Koroi_ by lying in wait among the mangrove bushes at the
waterside and killing a miserable old woman of a hostile tribe, as she
crept along the mudflat seeking for shellfish. The man would have been
equally honoured, adds Mr. Fison, if his victim had been a child. The
hero of such an exploit, for two or three days after killing his man or
woman, was allowed to besmear his face and bust with a mixture of
lampblack and oil which differed from the common black war-paint;
decorated with this badge of honour he strutted proudly through the
town, the cynosure of all eyes, an object of envy to his fellows and of
tender interest to the girls. The old men shouted approval after him,
the women would _lulilu_ admiringly as he passed by, and the boys looked
up to him as a superior being whose noble deeds they thirsted to
emulate. Higher titles of honour still were bestowed on such as had
slain their ten, or twenty, or thirty; and Mr. Fison tells us of a chief
whose admiring countrymen had to compound all these titles into one in
order to set forth his superlative claims to glory. A man who had never
killed anybody was of very little account in this life, and he received
the penalty due to his sin in the life hereafter. For in the spirit land
the ghost of such a poor-spirited wretch was sentenced to what the
Fijians regarded as the most degrading of all punishments, to beat a
heap of muck with his bloodless club.[718]

[Sidenote: Ceremony of consecrating a manslayer. The temporary
restrictions laid on a manslayer were probably dictated by a fear of his
victim's ghost.]

The ceremony of consecrating a manslayer was elaborate. He was anointed
with red oil from the hair of his head to the soles of his feet; and
when he had been thus incarnadined he exchanged clubs with the
spectators, who believed that their weapons acquired a mysterious virtue
by passing through his holy hands. Afterwards the anointed one, attended
by the king and elders, solemnly stalked down to the sea and wetted the
soles of his feet in the water. Then the whole company returned to the
town, while the shell-trumpets sounded and the men raised a peculiar
hoot. Custom required that a hut should be built in which the anointed
man and his companions must pass the next three nights, during which the
hero might not lie down, but had to sleep as he sat; all that time he
might not change his bark-cloth garment, nor wash the red paint away
from his body, nor enter a house in which there was a woman.[719] The
reason for observing these curious restrictions is not mentioned, but in
the light of similar practices, some of which have been noticed in these
lectures,[720] we may conjecture that they were dictated by a fear of
the victim's ghost, who among savages generally haunts his slayer and
will do him a mischief, if he gets a chance. As it is especially in
dreams that the naturally incensed spirit finds his opportunity, we can
perhaps understand why the slayer might not lie down for the first three
nights after the slaughter; the wrath of the ghost would then be at its
hottest, and if he spied his murderer stretched in slumber on the
ground, the temptation to take an unfair advantage of him might have
been too strong to be resisted. But when his anger had had time to cool
down or he had departed for his long home, as ghosts generally do after
a reasonable time, the precautions taken to baffle his vengeance might
be safely relaxed. Perhaps, as I have already hinted, the reverence
which the Fijians felt for any man who had taken a human life, or at all
events the life of an enemy, may have partly sprung from a belief that
the slayer increased his own strength and valour either by subjugating
the ghost of his victim and employing it as his henchman, or perhaps
rather by simply absorbing in some occult fashion the vital energy of
the slain. This view is confirmed by the permission given to the killer
to assume the name of the killed, whenever his victim was a man of
distinguished rank;[721] for by taking the name he, according to an
opinion common among savages, assumed the personality of his namesake.

[Sidenote: Other funeral customs based on a fear of the ghost.]

The same fear of the ghost of the recently departed which manifested
itself, if my interpretation of the customs is right, in the treatment
of manslayers, seems to have imprinted itself, though in a more
attenuated form, on some of the practices observed by Fijian mourners
after a natural, not a violent, death.

[Sidenote: Persons who have handled a corpse forbidden to touch food.
Seclusion of grave-diggers.]

Thus all the persons who had handled a corpse were forbidden to touch
anything for some time afterwards; in particular they were strictly
debarred from touching their food with their hands; their victuals were
brought to them by others, and they were fed like infants by attendants
or obliged to pick up their food with their mouths from the ground. The
time during which this burdensome restriction lasted was different
according to the rank of the deceased: in the case of great chiefs it
lasted from two to ten months; in the case of a petty chief it did not
exceed one month; and in the case of a common person a taboo of not more
than four days sufficed. When a chief's principal wife did not follow
him to the other world by being strangled or buried alive, she might not
touch her own food with her hands for three months. When the mourners
grew tired of being fed like infants or feeding themselves like dogs,
they sent word to the head chief and he let them know that he would
remove the taboo whenever they pleased. Accordingly they sent him
presents of pigs and other provisions, which he shared among the people.
Then the tabooed persons went into a stream and washed themselves; after
that they caught some animal, such as a pig or a turtle, and wiped their
hands on it, and the animal thereupon became sacred to the chief. Thus
the taboo was removed, and the men were free once more to work, to feed
themselves, and to live with their wives. Lazy and idle fellows
willingly undertook the duty of waiting on the dead, as it relieved them
for some time from the painful necessity of earning their own
bread.[722] The reason why such persons might not touch food with their
hands was probably a fear of the ghost or at all events of the infection
of death; the ghost or the infection might be clinging to their hands
and might so be transferred from them to their food with fatal effects.
In Great Fiji not every one might dig a chief's grave. The office was
hereditary in a certain clan. After the funeral the grave-digger was
shut up in a house and painted black from head to foot. When he had to
make a short excursion, he covered himself with a large mantle of
painted native cloth and was supposed to be invisible. His food was
brought to the house after dark by silent bearers, who placed it just
within the doorway. His seclusion might last for a long time;[723] it
was probably intended to screen him from the ghost.

[Sidenote: Hair cropped and finger-joints cut off in mourning.]

The usual outward sign of mourning was to crop the hair or beard, or
very rarely both. Some people merely made bald the crown of the head.
Indeed the Fijians were too vain of their hair to part with it lightly,
and to conceal the loss which custom demanded of them on these occasions
they used to wear wigs, some of which were very skilfully made. The
practice of cutting off finger-joints in mourning has already been
mentioned; one early authority affirms and another denies that joints of
the little toes were similarly amputated by the living as a mark of
sorrow for the dead. So common was the practice of lopping off the
little fingers in mourning that till recently few of the older natives
could be found who had their hands intact; most of them indeed had lost
the little fingers of both hands. There was a Fijian saying that the
fourth finger "cried itself hoarse in vain for its absent mate"
(_droga-droga-wale_). The mutilation was usually confined to the
relations of the deceased, unless he happened to be one of the highest
chiefs. However, the severed joints were often sent by poor people to
wealthy families in mourning, who never failed to reward the senders for
so delicate a mark of sympathy. Female mourners burned their skin into
blisters by applying lighted rolls of bark-cloth to various parts of
their bodies; the brands so produced might be seen on their arms,
shoulders, necks, and breasts.[724] During the mourning for a king
people fasted till evening for ten or twenty days; the coast for miles
was tabooed and no one might fish there; the nuts also were made sacred.
Some people in token of grief for a bereavement would abstain from fish,
fruit, or other pleasant food for months together; others would dress in
leaves instead of in cloth.[725]

[Sidenote: Men whipped by women in time of mourning for a chief.]

Though the motive for these observances is not mentioned, we may suppose
that they were intended to soothe and please the ghost by testifying to
the sorrow felt by the survivors at his decease. It is more doubtful
whether the same explanation would apply to another custom which the
Fijians used to observe in mourning. During ten days after a death,
while the soul of a deceased chief was thought to be still lingering in
or near his body, all the women of the town provided themselves with
long whips, knotted with shells, and applied them with great vigour to
the bodies of the men, raising weals and inflicting bloody wounds, while
the men retorted by flirting pellets of clay from splinters of
bamboo.[726] According to Mr. Williams, this ceremony was performed on
the tenth day or earlier, and he adds: "I have seen grave personages,
not accustomed to move quickly, flying with all possible speed before a
company of such women. Sometimes the men retaliate by bespattering their
assailants with mud; but they use no violence, as it seems to be a day
on which they are bound to succumb."[727] As the soul of the dead was
believed to quit his body and depart to his destined abode on the tenth
day after death,[728] the scourging of the men by the women was probably
supposed in some way to speed the parting guest on his long journey.

[Sidenote: The dead taken out of the house by a special opening made in
a wall. Examples of the custom among Aryan peoples.]

When a certain king of Fiji died, the side of the house was broken down
to allow the body to be carried out, though there were doorways wide
enough for the purpose close at hand. The missionary who records the
fact could not learn the reason of it.[729] The custom of taking the
dead out of the house by a special opening, which is afterwards closed
up, has not been confined to Fiji; on the contrary it has been practised
by a multitude of peoples, savage, barbarous, and civilised, in many
parts of the world. For example, it was an old Norse rule that a corpse
might not be carried out of the house by the door which was used by the
living; hence a hole was made in the wall at the back of the dead man's
head and he was taken out through it backwards, or a hole was dug in the
ground under the south wall and the body was drawn out through it.[730]
The custom may have been at one time common to all the Aryan or
Indo-european peoples, for it is mentioned in other of their ancient
records and has been observed by widely separated branches of that great
family down to modern times. Thus, the Zend-Avesta prescribes that, when
a death has occurred, a breach shall be made in the wall and the corpse
carried out through it by two men, who have first stripped off their
clothes.[731] In Russia "the corpse was often carried out of the house
through a window, or through a hole made for the purpose, and the custom
is still kept up in many parts."[732] Speaking of the Hindoos a French
traveller of the eighteenth century says that "instead of carrying the
corpse out by the door they make an opening in the wall by which they
pass it out in a seated posture, and the hole is closed up after the
ceremony."[733] Among various Hindoo castes it is still customary, when
a death has occurred on an inauspicious day, to remove the corpse from
the house not through the door, but through a temporary hole made in the
wall.[734] Old German law required that the corpses of criminals and
suicides should be carried out through a hole under the threshold.[735]
In the Highlands of Scotland the bodies of suicides were not taken out
of the house for burial by the doors, but through an opening made
between the wall and the thatch.[736]

[Sidenote: Examples of the custom among non-Aryan peoples.]

But widespread as such customs have been among Indo-european peoples,
they have been by no means confined to that branch of the human race. It
was an ancient Chinese practice to knock down part of the wall of a
house for the purpose of carrying out a corpse.[737] Some of the
Canadian Indians would never take a corpse out of the hut by the
ordinary door, but always lifted a piece of the bark wall near which the
dead man lay and then drew him through the opening.[738] Among the
Esquimaux of Bering Strait a corpse is usually raised through the
smoke-hole in the roof, but is never taken out by the doorway. Should
the smoke-hole be too small, an opening is made in the rear of the house
and then closed again.[739] When a Greenlander dies, "they do not carry
out the corpse through the entry of the house, but lift it through the
window, or if he dies in a tent, they unfasten one of the skins behind,
and convey it out that way. A woman behind waves a lighted chip backward
and forward, and says: 'There is nothing more to be had here.'"[740]
Similarly the Hottentots, Bechuanas, Basutos, Marotse, Barongo, and many
other tribes of South and West Africa never carry a corpse out by the
door of the hut but always by a special opening made in the wall.[741] A
similar custom is observed by the maritime Gajos of Sumatra[742] and by
some of the Indian tribes of North-west America, such as the Tlingit and
the Haida.[743] Among the Lepchis of Sikhim, whose houses are raised on
piles, the dead are taken out by a hole made in the floor.[744] Dwellers
in tents who practise this custom remove a corpse from the tent, not by
the door, but through an opening made by lifting up an edge of the
tent-cover: this is done by European gypsies[745] and by the Koryak of
north-eastern Asia.[746]

[Sidenote: The motive of the custom is a desire to prevent the ghost
from returning to the house.]

In all such customs the original motive probably was a fear of the ghost
and a wish to exclude him from the house, lest he should return and
carry off the survivors with him to the spirit land. Ghosts are commonly
credited with a low degree of intelligence, and it appears to be
supposed that they can only find their way back to a house by the
aperture through which their bodies were carried out. Hence people made
a practice of taking a corpse out not by the door, but through an
opening specially made for the purpose, which was afterwards blocked up,
so that when the ghost returned from the grave and attempted to enter
the house, he found the orifice closed and was obliged to turn away
disappointed. That this was the train of reasoning actually followed by
some peoples may be gathered from the explanations which they themselves
give of the custom. Thus among the Tuski of Alaska "those who die a
natural death are carried out through a hole cut in the back of the hut
or _yarang_. This is immediately closed up, that the spirit of the dead
man may not find his way back."[747] Among the Esquimaux of Hudson Bay
"the nearest relatives on approach of death remove the invalid to the
outside of the house, for if he should die within he must not be carried
out of the door but through a hole cut in the side wall, and it must
then be carefully closed to prevent the spirit of the person from
returning."[748] Again, "when a Siamese is dead, his relations deposit
the body in a coffin well covered. They do not pass it through the door
but let it down into the street by an opening which they make in the
wall. They also carry it thrice round the house, running at the top of
their speed. They believe that if they did not take this precaution, the
dead man would remember the way by which he had passed, and that he
would return by night to do some ill turn to his family."[749] In
Travancore the body of a dead rajah "is taken out of the palace through
a breach in the wall, made for the purpose, to avoid pollution of the
gate, and afterwards built up again so that the departed spirit may not
return through the gate to trouble the survivors."[750] Among the Kayans
of Borneo, whose dwellings are raised on piles above the ground, the
coffin is conveyed out of the house by lowering it with rattans either
through the floor, planks being taken up for the purpose, or under the
eaves at the side of the gallery. "In this way they avoid carrying it
down the house-ladder; and it seems to be felt that this precaution
renders it more difficult for the ghost to find its way back to the
house."[751] Among the Cheremiss of Russia, "old custom required that
the corpse should not be carried out by the door but through a breach in
the north wall, where there is usually a sash-window. But the custom has
long been obsolete, even among the heathen, and only very old people
speak of it. They explain it as follows: to carry it out by the door
would be to shew the _Asyren_ (the dead man) the right way into the
house, whereas a breach in the wooden wall is immediately closed by
replacing the beams in position, and thus the _Asyren_ would in vain
seek for an entrance."[752] The Samoyeds never carry a corpse out of the
hut by the door, but lift up a piece of the reindeer-skin covering and
draw the body out, head foremost, through the opening. They think that
if they were to carry a corpse out by the door, the ghost would soon
return and fetch away other members of the family.[753] On the same
principle, as soon as the Indians of Tumupasa, in north-west Bolivia,
have carried a corpse out of the house, "they shift the door to the
opposite side, in order that the deceased may not be able to find
it."[754] Once more, in Mecklenburg "it is a law regulating the return
of the dead that they are compelled to return by the same way by which
the corpse was removed from the house. In the villages of Picher,
Bresegard, and others the people used to have movable thresholds at the
house-doors, which, being fitted into the door-posts, could be shoved
up. The corpse was then carried out of the house under the threshold,
and therefore could not return over it."[755]

[Sidenote: Some people only remove in this manner the bodies of persons
whose ghosts are especially feared.]

Even without such express testimonies to the meaning of the custom we
may infer from a variety of evidence that the real motive for practising
it is a fear of the ghost and a wish to prevent his return. For it is to
be observed that some peoples do not carry out all their dead by a
special opening, but that they accord this peculiar mode of removal only
to persons who die under unlucky or disgraceful circumstances, and whose
ghosts accordingly are more than usually dreaded. Thus we have seen that
some modern Hindoo castes observe the custom only in the case of people
who have died on inauspicious days; and that in Germany and the
Highlands of Scotland this mode of removal was specially reserved for
the bodies of suicides, whose ghosts are exceedingly feared by many
people, as appears from the stringent precautions taken against
them.[756] Again, among the Kavirondo of Central Africa, "when a woman
dies without having borne a child, she is carried out of the back of the
house. A hole is made in the wall and the corpse is ignominiously pushed
through the hole and carried some distance to be buried, as it is
considered a curse to die without a child. If the woman has given birth
to a child, then her corpse is carried out through the front door and
buried in the verandah of the house."[757] In Brittany a stillborn child
is removed from the house, not by the door, but by the window; "for if
by ill-luck it should chance otherwise, the mothers who should pass
through that fatal door would bear nothing but stillborn infants."[758]
In Perche, another province of France, the same rule is observed with
regard to stillborn children, though the reason for it is not
alleged.[759] But of all ghosts none perhaps inspire such deep and
universal terror as the ghosts of women who have died in childbed, and
extraordinary measures are accordingly taken to disable these dangerous
spirits from returning and doing a mischief to the living.[760] Amongst
the precautions adopted to keep them at bay is the custom of carrying
their corpses out of the house by a special opening, which is afterwards
blocked up. Thus in Laos, a province of Siam, "the bodies of women dying
in childbirth, or within a month afterwards, are not even taken out of
the house in the ordinary way by the door, but are let down through the
floor."[761] The Kachins of Burma stand in such fear of the ghosts of
women dying in childbed that no sooner has such a death occurred than
the husband, the children, and almost all the people in the house take
to flight lest the woman's ghost should bite them. "The body of the
deceased must be burned as soon as possible in order to punish her for
dying such a death, and also in order to frighten her ghost (_minla_).
They bandage her eyes with her own hair and with leaves to prevent her
from seeing anything; they wrap her in a mat, and they carry her out of
the house, not by the ordinary door, but by an opening made for the
purpose in the wall or the floor of the room where she breathed her
last. Then they convey her to a deep ravine, where no one dares to pass;
they lay her in the midst of a great pyre with all the clothes,
jewellery, and other objects which belonged to her and of which she made
use; and they burn the whole to cinders, to which they refuse the rites
of sepulture. Thus they destroy all the property of the unfortunate
woman, in order that her soul may not think of coming to fetch it
afterwards and to bite people in the attempt."[762] Similarly among the
Kayans or Bahaus of Central Borneo "the corpses of women dying in
childbed excite a special horror; no man and no young woman may touch
them; they are not carried out of the house through the front gallery,
but are thrown out of the back wall of the dwelling, some boards having
been removed for the purpose."[763] Indeed so great is the alarm felt by
the Kayans at a miscarriage of this sort that when a woman labours hard
in childbed, the news quickly spreads through the large communal house
in which the people dwell; and if the attendants begin to fear a fatal
issue, the whole household is thrown into consternation. All the men,
from the chief down to the boys, will flee from the house, or, if it is
night, they will clamber up among the beams of the roof and there hide
in terror; and, if the worst happens, they remain there until the
woman's corpse has been removed from the house for burial.[764]