Speaking generally, the practice of eating a dead kinsman, which is probably the earliest form of cannibalism, is also the earliest form to be abandoned. In the South Sea Islands, for example, where the custom of eating strangers has continued until recent years, the flesh of one’s own tribesmen is rejected, save in rare instances, such as that of Hawaii. In the Banks’ Islands it is occasionally eaten, in order to establish communion with a dead man for magical purposes: a practice likewise known in Australia.287.3But though the custom changes, the sacramental idea underlying it is retained; and the problem would be how to effect the necessary union between the dead and the living without partaking of the body. On the island of Vate, in the New Hebrides, the aged were put to death by burying them alive. A hole was dug, and the victim placed within it in a sitting posture, a live pig tied to each arm. Before closing the grave, the cords were cut; and the pigs were afterwards killed and served up at the funeral feast.287.4In this way they seem to be identified with the corpse.
In Europe, where flesh is not consumed ceremonially atthe funeral feast, other means even more expressive are taken to ensure the same object. In the Balkan peninsula the rites are very significant. In Albania, cakes of boiled wheat and other ingredients are carried in the funeral procession, and eaten by the mourners upon the grave as soon as it is filled up. All expressions of sorrow are repressed as sinful while it is being eaten; and as each person takes his share he says: “May he (or she) be forgiven!”288.1In some parts of the peninsula the cakes bear the image of the dead. They are broken up and eaten upon the tomb immediately after interment, every mourner pronouncing the words: “God rest him!”288.2At Calymnos, among the Greeks, the funeral, as elsewhere, takes place on the day of death. Kólyva cakes like those in Albania are then made, and are guarded in the house of the departed all night, with two lighted candles, by a watcher who must not go to sleep. The next day they are carried first to the church and then to the tomb, on which they are set to be distributed. The eating of Kólyva cakes is repeated with similar ceremonies on the third, ninth and fortieth days, and again at the end of three, six and nine months and of one, two and three years, after death.288.3It is impossible tomistake the meaning of these practices: the image of the dead upon the cakes, the acts of carrying them in the funeral procession and eating them upon the grave, elsewhere the night-watching, and everywhere the cessation of mourning and the pious exclamations during eating, all admit of but one interpretation.
The ritual eating of special food is used at funerals in many countries. Pulse is not mentioned as an ingredient of the Kólyva cakes. It was, however, an important part of the funeral feasts of the Romans; and Mr. F. B. Jevons, commenting on Plutarch, has quoted Porphyry’s statement, that Pythagoras bade his followers “abstain from beans as from human flesh,” and the reason mentioned by Pliny as entertained by some for the prohibition, namely, that the souls of the dead are in them.289.1The various taboos and other superstitions connected with beans point to the correctness of this reason, and tend to show that pulse was in some way identified with human flesh. In the French provinces of Berry and the Marche, a plate of beans, or of dried peas, always figures among the provisions of the funeral banquet.289.2In the Marches of Italy the family on returning from the burial-ground sit down together to a large plate of beans.289.3In some parts of Friuli a soup of beans is distributed; in other places cakes of barley, or grated cheese. Elsewhere a loaf or cake ofpan di tremeste, composed of rye and vetch, is given, with wine or brandy, to all who come to chant the rosary and other prayers over the corpse on the evening of death.289.4In the neighbourhoodof Rimini the feast consists of a broth of chick-pease.290.1But the form assumed by the ritual food is usually either cakes or fermented liquor, frequently both. Cakes calledwastêare eaten in the Ardennes.290.2In Wales it seems that a hot plum-cake fresh from the oven used to be handed round to the guests, broken in pieces, not cut with a knife. In Sardinia, on the seventh or ninth day after death, savoury cakes are prepared and sent hot from the oven to all the relatives and neighbours, and to all who have joined in the weeping for the dead, or accompanied the corpse to the tomb. The family then gathers at supper, celebrating the virtues of the deceased between the mouthfuls of food and their tears.290.3Dough-nuts, among the Turks, are sent to friends and to the poor on the third, seventh, and fortieth days after the funeral; and prayers for the soul are requested in return.290.4Bread carried in the funeral procession is distributed to the poor by the Tamil population of Ceylon.290.5On one of the Banks’ Islands, “when a great man dies, the people from all the villages around bring mashed yams the next morning to the place where the dead man lies and eat them there.”290.6Among the Abyssinians the poor receive from the banquet pieces of bread and of the entrails and liver of the animals which are served up.290.7The Tcheremiss of the Kama and the Volga provide small pancakes, which they eat as soon as the grave is filled up, every one depositing three morsels upon the grave, saying: “This is for thee.”291.1
In several of the cases cited the eating of the dead has evidently undergone a natural transformation into eating with the dead. But wherever a special food is used it may be suspected to represent the flesh of the deceased. In the funeral cakes of the Balkan peninsula the identity is manifest. I shall try to show that it is the same nearer home. In various parts of England and Wales a custom of giving small sponge-cakes to the guests is yet in force. In Yorkshire and elsewhere the last part of the funeral entertainment before the procession started for the churchyard was to hand round glasses of wine and small circular crisp sponge-cakes, whereof most of the guests partook. These cakes were called “Avril-bread.” The wordAvrilis said to be derived fromarval, succession-ale, heir-ale, the name of the feasts given by Icelandic heirs on succeeding to property.291.2Now, although it might be suspected that the avril-bread represented the corpse, we should not be justified in holding that it did without more direct evidence. That evidence can fortunately be supplied, from a funeral which took place near Market Drayton in Shropshire on the 1stJuly 1893, as described by an eye-witness. “The lady,” writes Miss Gertrude Hope, “who gave me the particulars, arrived rather early, and found the bearers enjoying a good lunch in the only downstairs room. Shortly afterwards the coffin was brought down and placed on two chairs in the centre of the room, and the mourners having gathered round it,” a short service was then and there conducted by the Nonconformist minister, as is frequently done, before setting out for the grave. “Directly the minister ended, the woman in charge of the arrangements poured out four glasses of wine and handed one to each bearer present across the coffin, with a biscuit called a ‘funeral biscuit.’ One of the bearers being absent at the moment, the fourth glass of wine and biscuit were offered to the eldest son of the deceased woman, who, however, refused to take it, and was not obliged to do so. The biscuits were ordinary sponge biscuits, usually called ‘sponge fingers’ or ‘lady’s fingers.’ They are, however, also known in the shops of Market Drayton as ‘funeral biscuits.’ ” These cakes are not exactly of the shape mentioned by Canon Atkinson as used in Yorkshire, but that is of no importance, because their shape varies with the place. What follows is enough to show that the scene described is not a solitary one. “The minister, who had lately come from Pembrokeshire, remarked to my informant that he was sorry to see that pagan custom still observed. He had been able to put an end to it in the Pembrokeshire village where he had formerly been.”292.1
Here, it will be observed, the ritual food is handed across the coffin. Pennant, writing early in the fourth quarter of the eighteenth century, says that in Wales “previous to afuneral, it was customary, when the corpse was brought out of the house and laid upon the bier, for the next of kin, be it widow, mother, sister or daughter (for it must be a female), to give, over the coffin, a quantity of white loaves, in a great dish, and sometimes a cheese, with a piece of money stuck in it, to certain poor persons. After that, they present, in the same manner, a cup of drink, and require the persons to drink a little of it immediately.” The Lord’s Prayer was then repeated by the minister, if present; and the procession started.293.1We can have little doubt that this was the same custom. A hundred years earlier still it was witnessed by John Aubrey at Beaumaris. He mentions it as occurring when the corpse is brought out of doors. The food consisted of cake and cheese, with “a new Bowle of Beere, and another of Milke with ye Anno Dni ingraved on it, & ye parties name deceased.” And Dr. Kennett, who annotated his manuscript, refers to a practice at Amersden, in Oxfordshire, of bringing to the minister in the church-porch after the interment a cake and a flagon of ale.293.2In Wales and the Welsh border the custom underwent a curious development. It became, for some cause, a profession to eat this funeral meal, and thereby, as was believed, to become responsible for the sins of the deceased. Aubrey describes one of these Sin-eaters, as they were called. “One of them I remember lived in a Cottage on Rosse-high way. (He was a long, leane, ugly, lamentable poor raskal.) The manner was that when the Corps was brought out of the house and layd on the Biere, a Loafe of bread was brought out, and delivered to the Sinne-eater over the corps, as also a Mazar-bowle of maple (Gossips bowle) full of beer, wch he was to drinke up, andsixpence in money, in consideration whereof he tooke upon him (ipso facto) all the Sinnes of the Defunct, and freed him (or her) from walking after they were dead.”294.1The profession of Sin-eater and the full ceremony, pagan enough in all conscience, have vanished from the earth only within the lifetime of persons yet living. The most modern account of it was given by Mr. Matthew Moggridge of Swansea to the Cambrian Archaeological Association at Ludlow in the year 1852. He said that “when a person died, the friends sent for the Sin-eater of the district, who on his arrival placed a plate of salt on the breast of the defunct, and upon the salt a piece of bread. He then muttered an incantation over the bread, which he finally ate, thereby eating up all the sins of the deceased. This done, he received his fee of 2s. 6d.” (a modest fee for the service, all things considered, though it had risen since Aubrey’s day), “and vanished as quickly as possible from the general gaze; for as it was believed that he really appropriated to his own use and behoof the sins of all those over whom he performed the above ceremony, he was utterly detested in the neighbourhood—regarded as a mere Pariah—as one irredeemably lost.” Mr. Moggridge specified the neighbourhood of Llandebie, about twelve or thirteen miles from Swansea, as a place where the custom had survived to within a recent period.294.2
Thus in our own country we find the relics of a ritual feast, where food is placed upon the coffin, or rather upon the body itself, or handed across it, and so in a manner identified with it, and where it is expressly believed that by the act of eating some properties of the dead are taken over by the eater. Let us now turn back for a moment to the East. At a Hindu funeral in Sindh the relations, in the course of the march to the place of burning, throw dry dates into the air over the corpse. These, we are told, are considered as a kind of alms, and are left to the poor. On returning to the house, after the cremation, the first thing done is to offer the couch, bedding, and some clothes of the deceased to a Karnigor who is in attendance. A Karnigor is a low caste-man,—according to some, the offspring of a Brahman father and a Sudra mother. North of Hydrabad his appearance and conduct resemble those of the servile, south of that city those of the priestly, order. The condition of the gift is, that the Karnigor must eat a certain sweetmeat prepared for the occasion. If he refuse, the ghost of the dead man would haunt the place. This means that the funeral rites would have been incomplete. The Karnigor has, therefore, the game in his own hands; and, rejecting the first advance, he demands not only all the articles of dress left by the departed, but fees into the bargain. “When his avarice is satiated, he eats four or five mouthfuls of the sweetmeat, seldom more, for fear of the spirit. After this, he carries off his plunder, taking care not to look behind him, as the Pinniyaworo [head mourner] and the person who prepared the confectionerywait until he is fifteen or twenty paces off, break up all the earthen cooking pots that have been used, and throw three of the broken pieces at him, in token of abhorrence.”296.1Can we fail to be reminded of the Sin-eater? Nor is this the most remarkable parallel to be found in India. The burning of the corpse of a king of Tanjore who died in 1801, and of two of his widows chosen for the purpose by the Brahmans, is described by the abbé Dubois. He states that a part of the bones which escaped the fury of the flames was reduced to powder, and this powder, having been mixed with boiled rice, was eaten by twelve Brahmans. The reason for the proceeding is put by the abbé almost in the very words I quoted in the last paragraph. The act “had for its object the expiation of the sins of the defunct persons: sins which, according to common opinion, are transmitted into the bodies of those whom the allurement of gain has induced to surmount the repugnance that a food so detestable should inspire. Moreover, people are persuaded that the money which is the price of this base condescension is never of any profit to them.”296.2If any doubt could remain as to the meaning of the Welsh custom, this would be enough to dissipate it. But in truth it is not needed; for we have in Europe other usages that set the meaning in the clearest light. In the Highlands of Bavaria, when the corpse is placed upon the bier, the room is carefullywashed out and cleaned. Formerly it was the custom for the housewife then to prepare theLeichen-nudeln, or Corpse-cakes. Having kneaded the dough, she placed it to rise on the dead body, as it lay there enswathed in a linen shroud. When the dough had risen, the cakes were baked for the expected guests. To the cakes so prepared, the belief attached that they contained the virtues and advantages of the departed, and that thus the living strength of the deceased passed over, by means of the corpse-cakes, into the kinsmen who consumed them, and so was retained within the kindred.297.1Here we find ourselves at an earlier stage in the disintegration of tradition than in the Welsh practice. The identification of the food with the dead man is not merely symbolic. The dough in rising is believed actually to absorb his qualities, which are transmitted to those of his kin who partake of the cakes; and—consistently with the requirement that the relatives eat the cakes—the qualities transferred are held to be not evil but good ones: the living strength, the virtues and so on of the dead are retained within the kin. Not less striking than the resemblance just pointed out between the objects of the Hindu and the Welsh rites, is that between the objects ofthe Bavarian custom and that of the Tariánas and other tribes of the Uaupes for consuming the pounded remains of their kinsmen in their caxirí. In both cases, indeed, there is more than resemblance. The objects are absolutely the same; and it is inconceivable that the European usages wherewith we are dealing had any other origin than a cannibal feast, the material of which was the very body of the deceased kinsman.
It is natural to inquire whether any trace of this cannibalism lingers among the Irish, who alone among European races have been charged with it. There is a trace, though it must be admitted a fainter trace than we have found on this side of Saint George’s Channel. Yet I think when we compare it with the latter we shall conclude that it is enough, and therefore that in all probability Strabo’s accusation was not unfounded. The drinking which goes on at a wake is of course a relic of the funeral feast. It takes place in the presence of the corpse. A foreigner, describing a nobleman’s obsequies which he witnessed at Shrewsbury in the early years of King Charles the Second, states that the minister made a funeral oration in the chamber where the body lay, and “during the oration there stood upon the coffin a large pot of wine, out of which every one drank to the health of the deceased. This being finished six men took up the corps, and carried it on their shoulders to the church.”298.1I am not aware whether in Ireland the whisky is thus brought into immediate contiguity with the bier. In Connaught it was the custom about a generation ago, and probably still is, to place a plate of tobacco cut in short lengths, and a plate of snuff on the breast of the corpse; a boy stood at the door with abasket of pipes, and each person helped himself according to his inclination.299.1Whatever may be the case as regards tobacco, I am informed by eye-witnesses that it is still an Irish custom to lay a plate of snuff on the breast of the dead; and everybody who attends the funeral is expected to take a pinch. This ceremony must have assumed its present shape in recent times; but it cannot be doubted that it represents the more archaic consumption of food or drink similarly placed.
I mentioned just now that dates were thrown, at a funeral in Sindh, over the corpse, and left to the poor. Before the funeral at Calymnos, figs and other fruit contributed by the relatives of the deceased, are carried from his house to the churchyard and there distributed among the poor.299.2In classic times the Greeks and Romans used to offer to the manes of the departed on the ninth day after the burial; and on the steps of the grave-monument a simple meal of milk, honey, oil and the blood of the sacrificed animals was prepared. If the tomb were large enough, there was a separate apartment provided, where the meal was consumed. As numerous guests were impossible in the limited space ordinarily available, the wealthy used often to distribute flesh-meat among the people, and in later times money.299.3To-day, in the Abruzzi, when amaiden dies, comfits and money are distributed during the procession from the house to the church, and in some places also from the church to the graveyard, just as they are distributed during a wedding procession. This perhaps has no significance for our present inquiry; but the funeral feast which follows the burial must not be left unnoticed. Its material is provided by the most intimate friend of the dead,300.1who sometimes joins in it. No one else is admitted beside relatives. The table whereon the coffin has rested is the one used for the meal, and if not large enough, others are added to it to extend it. On returning to the house the party, after an interval of solemn silence, begin by telling their beads. The nearest of kin, one after the other, hand round the food, and the life and merits of the defunct are the invariable subject of conversation. They repeatedly press one another to eat and drink. This and the talk about the departed, from the way they are mentioned, appear to be important parts of the ceremony. The utensils must be returned empty and unwashed to the friend who has furnished the meal. Nothing eatable may be sent back: it must be finished by the servants and those who have taken part in the preparations for the funeral. Nor may the meal be taken in the usual room.300.2
Several things are noteworthy in the Abruzzian feast; and there are few readers with the ceremonies we havebeen discussing in their minds, who will not come to the conclusion that where the solemn banquet is spread on the table where the corpse has previously lain, where there is mutual urging to eat and nothing is permitted to be left, and where the virtues of the deceased are discussed as part of the rite, there is a presumption that the feast was originally upon the flesh of the dead. Among the Masurs, though we hear nothing about the requirement to finish the food, special food is provided, which we already know as a suspicious circumstance. Combined with the other details I am about to give, I venture to think it affords fairly strong evidence as to the original character of the mortuary feast. The body is placed on a table in the middle of the room, and the neighbours and relatives assemble round it. Buns and schnaps are placed on the table for the men; and the schnaps is drunk in turn out of the same glass. The women drink it with a spoon from a bowl. Suitable religious songs are sung. After the funeral, schnaps thickened with honey is served to the women on the same table; and at the feast which follows, presumably on the same table, groats mingled with honey are a special dish. In some districts the body is covered with a table-cloth, which is afterwards put over the funeral bakemeats on the table; and no one can take them until it is removed. At the meal all drink in brandy to the everlasting rest of the departed.301.1
In classical times and classical lands, as we saw, the tables were spread at the tomb. At Argentière, in the department of the Hautes Alpes, France, this continues to be done immediately after the burial; and the table of the curé and the family is placed upon the grave itself. The dinnerended, every one, led by the next of kin, drinks the health of the departed. Here the situation of the chief table is unambiguous. We should hesitate to say so much of the classical feast, or of the custom prescribed by the ritual of the monastery of Saint Ouen at Rouen, where after the abbot’s death a repast of spices and wine was given in his chamber.302.1Neither the celebration of the formal meal in the death-chamber nor at the grave is conclusive of itself. When once the practice of eating the dead was abandoned, and only a symbol of the loathsome food remained, the meaning of the symbol would tend to pass out of memory, and, according to varying circumstances, sooner or later the symbol itself would undergo change and disappear. The totem-feast, on the other hand, of which it may be plausibly maintained the cannibal feast on the dead kinsman was originally part, shorn of its most savage detail, would remain in full vigour. So far as it was a funeral observance it would receive a specific development with appropriate surroundings, and its totemistic character would gradually be forgotten. Moreover, it is possible that the cannibal feast was by no means universal at any time. However this may be, the totem-feast being a sacramental rite, a communion between the living members of a clan and their totem, one of the most obvious extensions of the sacramental idea would be that of communion with the dead. The latter would be supposed to join in the feast and partake of the food: a portion of which would accordingly be reserved for them. And as the deceased member of the clan would be supposed to be sojourning at his grave, it would of course be greatly for the convenience of all parties that the feast should be heldthere, and the portion meant for him deposited in or upon the tomb. Death had not relieved him of the wants of life; but it had released him from certain of its limitations. The conditions of his existence were changed. While in some directions he had been deprived of power, in others he had become possessed of greater power than during life; and all beings possessed of extraordinary power were regarded with distrust. Savage man felt himself capricious, revengeful, envious, cruel. The feelings he experienced, the feelings he saw manifested in his fellow-men, he attributed to the mightier creatures of his imagination. Now life was, in his contemplation, so much more desirable than death, that the dead would naturally have been supposed to envy the living. Here was a distinct cause of ill-will. The dead man must, therefore, be kept from haunting the survivors. To that end his funeral rites must be fully and properly performed, and every precaution taken both to persuade him to stay at a distance and to prevent him from finding his way back. One means to do this was to provide him with food in or upon his sepulchre. He would thus be induced to abide there, or, as the case might be, to take his departure straight thence to the dwelling-place of spirits, and not to linger among the kindred who were anxious to be rid of him. This belief gave rise to the repetition of feasts of the dead, for the needs of the dead must be constantly supplied. Besides, to keep them in good humour would be to enlist their sympathy and their help; and who could know how much that help might mean against enemies, or in the chase, or in the operations of agriculture? Thus, not only love for the departed, and the desire for communion with them, but every other motive concurred on the one hand to providethem with food, and on the other hand to consult their convenience in facilitating their enjoyment of it. The reasoning was not free from inconsistencies, because there were cross-currents of tradition. All of them did not flow from the habit of looking upon the dead as abiding permanently in their graves. Probably this was the original faith. But the belief in a separate realm of souls grew up as culture advanced, and disturbed the earlier tradition. The possibility of return to life by a new birth into the kin was another opinion that affected it. And the doctrine of Transformation must, from the most archaic times, have intervened as a modifying influence, for transformation implies locomotion. The savage did not always trouble himself to reconcile inconsistencies. His simple credulity accepted them all. We need not wonder; for even the mind of civilised and educated man is built in watertight compartments: whereof no reader will want examples.
The meal at the grave, then, or in the death-chamber, may be a meal at which the dead man is one of the convives. Instances are numerous in the lower culture. Some of them, like that of the Tcheremiss Tartars, have been mentioned; and I select a few more, out of many, further to illustrate the practice. It will be convenient to begin with the Tchuvash, whose seats are on the middle reaches of the Volga, because their customs, if correctly reported, seem, like those of the Tcheremiss, to show the eating of the dead passing over into the eating with the dead. After burial in the public cemetery the relatives deposit on the grave some cakes and a piece of cooked fowl, saying, like the Tcheremiss: “This is for thee.” The old clothes of the deceased are thrown over the tomb; and the rest of the cakes are eaten by the funeral escort,by whom the repast is regarded as taken in company with the dead. On the fortieth day after burial an animal, designated by the deceased in his lifetime for that purpose, is killed. Libations are made, and half the flesh with other food is deposited on the grave. This is devoured, amid lamentations of the relatives, by dogs; “for it is believed that the dogs become the dwelling-place of the souls of the dead. The feasting then begins, and eating and drinking continue until all the supplies are exhausted.”305.1The Tchuvash appear to be the same people of whom Hanway, in the middle of the last century, relates that they throw their dead into the open field to be devoured by dogs, of which many run wild, and some are kept for the purpose.305.2If the dogs become the dwelling-place of the souls of the dead by eating of the memorial banquet, we are presented with a result comparable with that obtained by the Bavarian Highlanders and the Tariánas; and we may conjecture that in earlier times the deceased was eaten by the kin.
Immediately before the burial of an Ainu, millet-cakes and wine are handed round to the assembled relatives and friends. Each person “offers two or three drops of the wine to the spirit of the dead, then drinks a little, and pours what is left before the fire as an offering to the fire-goddess, all the time muttering some short prayer. Then part of the millet-cake is eaten, and the remainder hidden in the ashes upon the hearth, each person burying a little piece.” After the body has been interred these fragments are carried out of the hut and placed together before the eastern window, which is always a sacred spot.305.3When adead Chinaman is put into his coffin, a quantity of food is put before him, and afterwards removed and eaten by his family; and again at the burial eatables are taken from the house and set on the tomb, and subsequently brought back to be consumed at the funeral meal.306.1Moreover, at each of the oft-repeated memorial feasts for the departed, some of the food is first placed before the ancestral tablets, or the tombs, and then eaten by the family; and it is believed that the spirits partake of its “essential and immaterial elements.”306.2In the funeral rites of the Dyaks food is set before the dead ere the coffin is closed. It is allowed to stand for about an hour by the corpse, and is then devoured by the next-of-kin.306.3On the death of a Hungarian Gipsy he is carried out of the tent or hut. It is now the duty of the members of his clan to offer to the deceased gifts, especially food and drink, which they lay beside the body and later on themselves consume.306.4The Sàkalàva of Madagascar bury in a family cemetery. “A cup and a plate are placed by the side of the coffin, and every now and then the friends go in large numbers, and taking rice and rum with them, hold a feast in these cemeteries, and believe that the spirits of their dead ancestors and relatives come and join them.”306.5The Hillmen of Rájmahál on the death of a chief, hold a feast where a part of the provisions is dedicated to their god and to the spirit of the deceased, and thus becoming forbiddento the survivors, is thrown away.307.1On Florida and San Cristoval, and possibly other of the Solomon Islands, at the funeral feast a bit of the food is thrown into the fire for the departed, with the words: “This is for you.” On Lepers’ Island and the Banks’ Islands, the feasts are repeated for a long period; and a portion is always set aside with the words: “This is for thee.” On the Banks’ Islands, indeed, at ordinary meals when the oven is opened a morsel of food is put aside for the dead with the words: “This is for you; let our oven be well cooked.”307.2The tribes about Lake Nyassa, in Central East Africa, hold a memorial feast two or three months after the death, of which the spirit of the deceased is considered to partake.307.3Among some of the Senegambian tribes, when the grave is filled up, a fowl, with its legs tied, is laid upon the mound, within reach of some water and boiled rice, which are placed at the head of the grave. If it eat any of the rice it is killed, the tomb is sprinkled with its blood, the flesh cooked and partly eaten, partly left for the dead. This ceremony is repeated at every renewal of the customary lamentations.307.4The Koiari tribe of New Guinea cook food at stated times, formally present it to the dead man, and then eat it.307.5The Dorah tribesmen on the same island hold a feast two or three months after the death of a first-born son, when the skull is produced, adorned with a wooden pair of ears and nose and with eyes of colouredseeds. The head thus prepared is honoured with a portion of all the dishes.308.1So on the island of Nagir, in Torres Straits, at the death-dance held three months after the death of a man whose skull was afterwards sold to Professor Haddon, the skull being prepared and adorned was placed on a mat in the midst of the assembly. Food was provided for the immediate relatives, and laid before the skull. The feast then began; and it must have been accompanied by much enjoyment, for we are told that all got very drunk.308.2Perhaps this was the way in which the Issedones used the skulls of their dead. The same intention is doubtless to be understood of the memorial feast, or Karmantram ceremony, of the Eastern Kullens of Madura, in Southern India. After a meal, to which the relatives are invited, in the evening a bier, followed by the kin, is carried with music to the grave. The dead man’s wife’s brother digs up the corpse, and removes the skull, which he washes and smears with sandal-wood powder and spices. He then seats himself on the bier, holding the skull in his hand, and is carried without music to a shed in front of the house of the deceased, where the skull is set down, and the relatives weep and mourn over it until the following noon. The succeeding twenty-four hours are given over to drunken revelry. This, it will be observed, is in the presence or immediate neighbourhood of the skull. It is afterwards carried back by the person who brought it from the grave, seated again on the bier and accompanied by music. Arrived once more at the grave, the son or heir of the deceased, at whose expense the rite is performed, burns the skull and breaks an earthen pot. The relatives onreturning bathe and then feast together,309.1—an ordinary conclusion to a funeral ceremony. Here, if I am right in my interpretation, only drink is offered—by no means a solitary instance. The Livonians used to stand round a corpse drinking, inviting it to partake, and pouring for that purpose a part of the liquor over it. The pagan Lapps sprinkle the grave with brandy, part of which is reserved for the mourners at the funeral feast. However, they also kill the reindeer that draws the body to the burial-ground, eat the flesh and bury the bones, but in a separate coffin.309.2Among the Peguenches in the south of Chili, when the body is deposited in the graveyard, but before it is put into the ground, a feast is prepared. Every one who partakes, before eating throws a morsel of food towards the corpse, crying out “Yuca-pai.”309.3At the other extremity of the Western Continent the Eskimo sometimes pay a formal visit to the sepulchre taking pieces of deerskin and fat. Of the fat they eat a portion, standing round the grave, and talking the while to the dead. Then each of them lays a piece of deerskin (still covered with the fur) and a piece of fat under a stone, exclaiming: “Here is something to eat, and something to keep you warm.”309.4The feast with the dead is common among the North American tribes. It is eaten at the grave. A fire is kindled; and each person before eating cuts off a small piece of meat which he casts into the fire. The smoke and smell of this, they say, attracts theghost to come and eat with them. Nor only so. The practice of setting aside a portion of their food for the ghost whenever they eat or drink is continued, sometimes for years, until they have an opportunity of sending out this memorial with a war-party, to be thrown down on the field of battle, when their obligation to the departed ceases.310.1
Among the examples I have given, the skull of the dead man often appears at the festivity. Other representatives of the deceased are also found. The Tcheremisskart, or shaman, wears the garments of the deceased; and when the feast is over it is he who gives what is left to the dogs.310.2The Teng-ger tribes of Java accord the most conspicuous position to a mannikin about a foot and a half high, made of leaves, dressed in the clothes of the dead and ornamented with flowers.310.3The practice of making images of the dead and conjuring the spirits into them is not an uncommon one; and wherever it exists we are justified in assuming that the images would not be allowed to go without their due share of nourishment at proper times.
The meaning of some ceremonies may not be quite so clear; as when one tribe of Tartars, having eaten the favourite horse of the departed, sticks up its head on the grave; or another tribe, killing and eating a fat mare, hangs her skin from the branches of the tree that shades the tomb.310.4The southern tribes of British Columbia often killed the horse of the deceased and decked the grave with its skin.310.5The Yoruba of West Africa collect the bones of the fowls and sheep eaten by the guests, and of the othervictims sacrificed, and place them over the grave.311.1The Kamtchadales eat a fish in memory of the departed and throw the fins into the fire.311.2The Kirghiz Tartars burn on the tomb the bones of the horse they have eaten—usually the favourite of the dead man.311.3Animal bones, burnt and unburnt, and especially the head of an ox, are frequently found in opening barrows in this country, pointing to practices on the part of the prehistoric inhabitants analogous to these.311.4Probably, in many cases at least, they are the remains of a banquet common to the living and the dead.
The drink bestowed on the dead in some of the foregoing instances perhaps represents blood; and blood, it will be remembered, was the share of the totem-god in the sacrificial feasts. Nothing could, therefore, more plainly bespeak the meaning of these funeral rites. In some cases, indeed, as we have seen, the blood is sprinkled upon the grave. So among the Wanyika the corpse when buried holds in its hand a piece of skin taken from the head of a goat or cow which has been killed for the feast, and the grave is sprinkled with the blood before it is filled up.311.5The dead body of a Yoruba is spattered with the blood of a he-goat slain to propitiate the phallic deity, Elegba; but whether the mourners partake of the flesh we are not told: most likely they do.311.6In the same way wine was sprinkled on a Roman’s grave—a ceremony of which we find the relic, after cremation began to be practised, in the formal extinctionof the ashes by the outpouring of wine. The rites of the Todas and Kotas of the Neilgherry Hills are complicated; and only a portion of them need be noticed in this connection. The corpse is burnt; but a piece of the scalp and some of the finger-nails are first cut off and preserved between two strips of bark as relics. On the anniversary, or some other suitable day, buffaloes are sacrificed; the relics are rubbed with their blood and ceremonially burnt; and their flesh is eaten by the Kotas.312.1
We may dismiss funeral banquets with one further observation. The intention of sharing a common meal with the dead is by no means abandoned at the completion of the funeral ceremonies. The feasts, as in several cases we have already noted, are repeated at intervals. Indeed, at all festivals when the entire kin is assembled the deceased members are conceived as assembled with them; a portion of the food is set aside, a portion of the drink is poured out for the departed. The cult of the dead in this form survives into the higher phases of civilisation. At various times in the year, particularly at Halloween, all over Europe, the tables are set, the doors are opened, and the ghosts are invited to partake of the fare provided by their descendants and relatives; and it is believed that they actually come and enjoy the food prepared for them, and warm themselves on the hearth, which, in the days of their flesh, they used to tend, and around which they used to gather, when work was over, to eat their frugal fare, and to rejoice one another with social converse and the performance of domestic rites. A tender custom! and one that pleads pathetically for its continuance as a witness toa faith in comparison wherewith Christianity is a thing of yesterday, a faith not less true than Christianity itself in its recognition and its consecration of some of the deepest and most vital emotions of our nature.
There are other ways of forming a sacramental union with the dead. Among the Tolkotins of Oregon, who burnt their dead, the widow was compelled to pass her hands through the flame and collect some of the liquid fat exuding from the body, wherewith to daub herself. The Modocs appear to have smeared their persons with the blood of any of their kindred who died violent deaths.313.1On the Gilbert Islands “the nearest relations,” whatever that expression may include, are said to rub themselves with the saliva which escapes from the mouth in the agonies of death.313.2Other savages rub themselves with the liquid flowing from the putrefying corpse. There is no need to dwell on this loathsome custom. It is reported of tribes extending over a considerable area of the earth’s surface, namely, of the Krumen near Sierra Leone, the Antankàrana in Madagascar, the aborigines of Victoria, the Andrawillas in East Central Australia, the Koiari of New Guinea, the Laughlan Islanders between New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, the inhabitants of New Britain and the Similkameens of British Columbia. Of the last we are told in so many words that they believe that in this way some portion of the deceased becomes incorporated in them.313.3Nay, somepeoples, like the Banks’ Islanders and the Aron Islanders imbibe these fluids; but the Nias Islanders perform the duty by deputy in the persons of their wretched slaves, who according to one account are suffocated in the process.314.1Of a party of Tasmanians who were deported to Barren Island we are told that they were seen to collect the ashes of the dead after burning, and smear a portion of them every morning on their faces, singing the while a death-song and weeping.314.2Among the Digger Indians of California the relatives are said to cover their hands and faces with a mixture of tar and the ashes of the deceased.314.3And the Correguajes Indians of New Granada burn the bones when the wild beasts have removed the flesh, and use the ashes as a pigment for painting themselves, “the relatives having the first right to its use.”314.4Earlier in the chapter I mentioned a method of dealing with the dead body of a Koniaga whaler. An alternative method is to cut it into small pieces and distribute it among the other whalers, each of whom rubs the point of his lance upon it, so to unite the weapon with the skill and power inherent in the deceased, and preserves the morsel as a permanent talisman.314.5Sometimes a Tchuktchi, tired of life, is put to death by his kinsmen at his own desire. All who take part in the ceremony bathe their faces and hands in his blood. They then burn his body on a funeral pyre,standing around it and praying the departed not to forget them.315.1A Dyak rite identifies the victim at the commemorative festival with the deceased. The corpse is put into a temporary coffin for preliminary burial until theTiwah, or Feast of the Dead, can be held. On that occasion a slave, or prisoner of war, is provided and dressed in the usual clothing of the deceased. Thus clad, the victim is wounded by all the assembled guests and finally killed. The priestesses in attendance then daub the relations of the deceased with the victim’s blood, “so to reconcile them with the departed and to give them to understand that they have now fulfilled their obligation towards his wandering soul.” After a night of debauchery the remains of the dead man and the victim are placed in one permanent coffin, in the family dead-house; but the victim’s skull is ranged with others outside.315.2The details of this ceremony are unmistakable, though it is right to say that the victim is now regarded simply as an attendant on the departed in the other world.
Other means are also adopted. Among the Andaman Islanders, over a large part of the Southern Ocean, in various districts of America, and perhaps among the Wahuma of East Africa, certain of the bones, either whole or calcined, are worn. Naturally the widow is, above everybody, expected to do this. Among the Mosquitos of Central America and the tribes of Honduras the widow took up the bones after burial for a year and carried them for another year, sleeping with them at night. Not until she had ceased to do this was she permitted to marry again.315.3InAustralia the Kulin widow seems to have carried the head and arms of her husband for an indefinite time, if not for the rest of her life.316.1Among the Kurnai the mummified corpse was carried about by the family in its migrations for years under special charge of the parents, the wife or other near relatives, and finally, after it was buried or stowed away in a hollow tree, the father or mother, if living, would carry the lower jaw “as a memento.”316.2The Kiriwina widow in New Guinea hangs from her neck her husband’s lower jaw richly ornamented with glass and shell beads.316.3The Mincopie widow is said to wear the entire skull.316.4Among the natives of the western districts of Victoria the widow of a chief by his first marriage wears a bag containing some of his calcined bones for two years, or until she marries again; and she also gets the lower bones of the right arm entire, which are carried in an opossum skin for the same period. Conversely, a widower wears his wife’s calcined bones in a bag of opossum-skin for twelve moons, and then buries them.316.5The Taw-wa-tins and Tacullies of British Columbia, and the Tolkotins of Oregon, compel a widow to wear her husband’s calcined bones for three years, during which time her life is made a burden to her by his kindred, so that widows marrying again have been known to commit suicide rather than undergo the suffering a second time.316.6In many cases the bones are permanently worn by the relatives of the deceased: in other cases, only for a time. Sometimes they are expressly recognised as charms; but always they seem to be something more than mere memorials of the dead.317.1
The skull and various other bones are yet more frequently kept in the dwelling.317.2The instances to whichreference is given in the note are, with the exceptions of the Issedones in antiquity and the Krumen of the Grain Coast and the Andaman Islanders among modern savages, confined to the islanders of the Pacific Ocean, and certain tribes of North America, Honduras, and the northern parts of South America. Where the circumstances permit, as in the case of the Ichthyophagi and other ancient Ethiopian tribes, the old Egyptians, the Chinese, the Solomon Islanders, the Banks’ Islanders, the islanders of Ambrym in the New Hebrides, and the Yorubas of the Slave Coast, the corpse is kept either permanently, or for a lengthened period in the house unburied.318.1And after burning, the ashes are similarly kept by several of the aboriginal peoples of Bengal and Assam, until the time arrives when they can be solemnly committed to the river or put into the family grave.318.2The Wakonda burn the corpse; and the ashes, collected into a jar are preserved by the family.318.3Along the Skeena River in British Columbia the natives cremated their dead, and sometimes hung the ashes in boxes to the family totem-pole.318.4Like certain Tibetan tribes, and perhapsthe Issedones, some of the native Australians used the skull for a drinking-cup.319.1
A custom more widely spread than that of keeping the bones, because attended with much less inconvenience, is that of taking and keeping some of the hair, nails or pieces of garments of the dead. It may, indeed, be said to prevail through the greater part of the world; nor has the custom of preserving a lock of hair cut after death as a memorial of the departed yet vanished from among ourselves. An acute writer in theContemporary Reviewsome years ago related that in the West Indian island of St. Croix those who washed the dead prior to burial always took a lock of hair, a garment, or at least a fragment of a garment, in order to prevent the spirit from molesting them for venturing to tamper with the place of its late habitation. And he adds: “At first thought, it seems most natural to believe that the surest way to prevent any visit from a dead man is to take nothing of his with you. But not so. A liberty has been taken with his body by one who is probably a total stranger, hired perhaps for the express purpose of preparing him for his coffin. Now, if you take something of his, something that is either a part of him, or has been on his person, you in a sense identify yourself with him; you establish as it were, a kind of relationship, and thus the liberty you take with him must seem much less to him.”319.2The reader who has followed the argument ofthe preceding paragraphs and the preceding chapters will have no difficulty in admitting that here the true theory has been touched. The motive that prompts an English mother to wear in a brooch a lock of hair and the likeness of the darling she will see no more on earth is the same as induces a Friendly Islander to pass a braid of the hair of his dead kinsman through his own ear, and to wear it there for the rest of his life. It is the same as leads a Mosquito widow to carry about her husband’s bones and to sleep with them. Consciously or unconsciously, the idea at the root of these and similar practices is that of sacramental communion with the dead. In the West Indian Negro practice just cited we see the application of this idea to the protection of the person who may perchance have incurred the wrath of the dead. Thus applied, it is analogous to that of counteracting witchcraft by uniting the witch in blood-brotherhood with her victim.
Hitherto we have only considered methods of effecting communion with the dead based on the appropriation by the living of some part of the corpse. This, however, implies the reciprocal possibility of communion formed by means of a gift of some portion of the living body to thedead. Nothing more nor less I take to be the real meaning of the practice, forbidden to the Hebrews, of cutting oneself for the dead.321.1We find this practice in its most complete form among the Orang Sakei, a people whose chief seats are about the river Siak on the eastern side of Sumatra. There, at a funeral the kindred, making a cross-cut with a knife on their heads, drop the blood on the face of the corpse. Individuals are found who by repetition of this mutilation have lost all the hair from their heads.321.2They have indeed, in the words of the Deuteronomist, made a baldness between their eyes for the dead. At Tahiti, in Captain Cook’s time, mourners were in the habit of wounding themselves with knives and clubs consisting of canes or pieces of wood set with sharks’ teeth, and allowing the blood and tears to drip on small cloths which they threw under the bier. As described by Mr. Ellis, some half century later, the performance was a little different. Both sexes cut themselves. The females wore short aprons of a special kind of cloth, which they held up to catch the blood until it almost saturated them. The aprons were then dried in the sun and given to the nearest surviving relatives as proofs of the affection of the donors, and were preserved by the bereaved family as tokens of the esteem in which the departed had been held.321.3It is easy to see that this may have been a modification of the rite as it prevailed in Captain Cook’s day, and that both may have been derived from a rite similar to that of the Orang Sakei. In Australia the rite is found both in its original and itsdegraded forms. When the body is placed in the ground the practice of several tribes is that the mourners leap into the grave in turn, and are there cut on the head with a boomerang, so as to allow the blood to fall over the corpse. Among the tribes of the Murray river, the kindred of the deceased, assembled round the corpse, or at all events in its presence, used to lacerate their thighs, backs and breasts with shells or flints until the blood flowed in streams. After burial the women visited the grave at stated intervals, by night or in the early morning, there to renew their wailings and lacerations. With other tribes it is enough for the mourners to gash themselves, or be gashed by others, in sign of grief: the process of ceremonial decay has caused the need of bringing the blood into contact with the body of the deceased to be no longer recognised.322.1The Mosquito Indians lacerate and bruise themselves until they bleed in the dead man’s hut.322.2The Bororó women in Central Brazil, at the festival for a dead man, cause their limbs to be scratched until the blood flows, and allow it to drip into the basket containing the bones.322.3Four aborigines executed for murder at Helena, on the head waters of the Missouri, in December 1890, were mourned by two squaws. One of the squaws cut off two of her fingers and threw them into the grave. The other gashed her face. Both caused the blood to flow into the grave, and had previously scalped their children.322.4In another caseof which a traveller in the early part of the present century was a witness, the mourners’ blood was made to flow over the dead man and over the food that was buried with him. But, though we have sufficient testimony to the archaic form of the custom among the North American peoples, that form is far from universal. More usually they are content with simply wounding themselves, careless where the blood may fall.323.1On the occasion of a burial among the Battas the wives of the dead not only weep and howl, but scratch their faces and bodies until the torn skin hangs down in places, and the blood streams on the earth.323.2When an Abyssinian corpse is about to be removed to its final resting-place some of the mourners “frantically grasp the bier, as if wishing to retain it by force; others, convulsed by the throes of agony and despair, rend their clothes, tear their hair, lacerate their faces and necks with their nails, so that the blood trickles down in streams.”323.3The Abyssinians call themselves Christians; but in this respect they have hardly advanced beyond many benighted pagans, like those already mentioned, or like the Gallinomero of California who burnt the bodies of their dead, and howled and wounded themselves the while in a manner, we are told, too terrible for description.323.4
Nor is mere cutting and wounding all. Many savages deem it necessary to inflict permanent mutilations on themselves, like the squaws of Montana just mentioned. Amongthe Fiji Islanders, when a king died, each of the women cut off a finger-joint. These were hung upon the eaves of the royal house. The amputation of a finger-joint was a common sign of mourning; and poor people made a business of it, receiving payment from the relatives of the dead in exchange for their severed members.324.1In numerous cases of mutilation, as of laceration, however, the evidence is wanting that the amputated member, like the blood, was brought into contact or proximity with the corpse. In such the rite is probably in a decayed form. The mere wounding or amputation had come to be looked upon as enough. With regard especially to amputation the process is clear. As the totem developed into a god the idea of sacrifice evolved in like measure from sacramental communion into a gift, a present to propitiate an offended being, a substitute for the votary himself who had deserved death, or (as in the instance of Admetos) whom the divinity was calling out of life. To save themselves from death, or from calamity, men offered up something of less value than their own lives, or than that whose loss or injury they dreaded, but still something of value and importance. Thus, as Dr. Tylor recalls, mothers in the southern provinces of India will cut off their own fingers as sacrifices lest they lose their children; and golden fingers are sometimes offered—“the substitute of a substitute.”324.2At length a virtue is attached to the mere abnegation. To deprive oneself of what is held dear, or what is essential to enjoyment, or even to life, is in itself of merit,quite apart from any thought of benefiting the deity. The shedding of blood, or the amputation of a finger, for the purpose of communion with the dead would follow a parallel course, and would gradually acquire virtue alone as a means of testifying to the affection and the grief of the survivor, without bringing the survivor into ritual union with the departed.
In the closest connection with wounding and mutilation for the dead, is the cutting, tearing or shaving of the hair. We have already studied gifts of hair to the dead; and if our conclusions as to them be correct, we must also conclude that the cutting or tearing of the hair as an expression of mourning is a relic of that custom which led Hecuba to lay her grey locks upon Hector’s grave and Achilles to bestrew the body of Patroklos with his shorn tresses. Dr. Wilken contends that the intention alike of wounding, of mutilation and of the gift of hair is the dedication of oneself to the dead, a consecration of the entire person, a pledge of ultimate reunion. That it is so in some cases seems clear. But this dedication must in a far greater number of instances be made repeatedly to quite different personages who have stood during life in a variety of relations to the mourner. Where only wives devote their hair to their dead husbands and are not allowed to marry a second time, things would arrange themselves easily in the next world. But if they shed their blood, or shear their locks also for fathers and brothers, for kindred and friends all round—nay, perhaps for another husband or two,—then one would imagine that even savages might anticipate awkward contingencies yonder. The truth is that the practice has sprung from a lower plane of culture than is supposed in a theory of self-dedication andfuture reunion. We know little of the belief in a future life entertained by the Tasmanian aborigines. From what little we do know it is safe to say that the Tasmanian woman who threw her hair upon the grave of her mother or her child, had no thought of self-consecration to the dead or of meeting again in another world. But she cherished the belief that by means of her hair she could still be in some sort of union with one she had loved. In short, the radical idea of all the practices we have discussed in the present chapter is the same, however much it may be modified with rising civilisation and the gradual evolution of the conception of deity and spirit and the life after death. It is grounded in the conviction of the continued, though mysterious, oneness of a body with its severed parts, and the absence of any conception of spirit apart from a visible and tangible material existence.
Other funeral rites point in the same direction. We will confine our attention to one. The custom of burial in a common grave or at least in one general cemetery, is very widespread. It is found in all quarters of the globe. The reason is given by Sir Richard Burton in describing the practices in Sindh. “They believe that by interring corpses close to the dust of their forefathers, theruha, or souls of the departed, will meet and commune together after death.”326.1This is a belief that could not have arisen, save at a time when no sharp division had been drawn between body and spirit. Mr. Crawfurd says: “When a Javanese peasant claims to be allowed to cultivate the fields occupied by his forefathers, his chief argument always is that near them are the tombs of his progenitors. A Javanese, as I have remarked in another place, cannot endure to be removedfrom these objects of his reverence and affection: and when he is taken ill at a distance, begs to be carried home, at all the hazards of the journey, that he may ‘sleep with his fathers.’ The bodies of some of the princes who died in banishment at Ceylon, I perceive, were, at their dying request, conveyed to their native island.”327.1I need not dwell on the practice itself of burying the kindred in one place. It is well known, and even among ourselves is not destitute of force, appealing as it does to our most sacred feelings. As little need I dwell upon the belief underlying it. But some of the modes of giving effect to it may detain us for a few moments.
Even if already buried in another place the Sindhi and their neighbours, the Yusufzais of Afghanistan, will exhume the bones and bring them home for a fresh burial.327.2So do the natives of the Gold Coast, even though years have elapsed since the death.327.3Dr. Brinton tells us that “the custom of common ossuaries for each gens appears to have prevailed among the Lenâpe”; and he quotes Gabriel Thomas as relating that “if a person of note dies very far away from his place of residence, they will convey his bones home some considerable time after, to be buried there.” The Nanticokes buried their corpses for some months, and then, taking up the bones, they cleaned them and deposited them in a common ossuary. When they removed to another place these bones were carried with them.327.4Common ossuaries were very usual among the North American tribes; and in the Ohio mounds is evidence that thecustom dates back to a considerable antiquity.328.1These are only a few of the examples that might be given. It is thus by no means necessary that the entire body should be buried in the common ground: the bones only were sufficient. But sometimes it is not practicable to bury the whole skeleton; nor is it necessary. If what is done to a detached portion of the body be done to the whole, all that is necessary is to make a selection. The bones usually chosen are those of the skull; the reasons for the choice being probably those which determine the choice of the skull as a keepsake, according to a custom considered a few pages back. When the Samoans made war at a distance from their homes, they brought back, in returning, the skulls of their dead to the ancestral graves.328.2Among the villagers of the Wanyika, in the highlands of Eastern Africa, the head is dug up some time after interment and sent to the capital to be buried, for there was formerly the general cemetery of the whole tribe, and there still its councils are held.328.3It is the custom of the Greeks and the Orthodox Albanians, as of the Bretons and other European peoples, to dig up the bones after a certain period of burial, wash them in wine, and deposit them in an ossuary. But, because the Albanians lead a migratory life, a large proportion of the male population dies abroad. “The bones of these wanderers are afterwards collected and sent home; or, at any rate, a portion of them—a skull or a single bone—is brought back to their native place.”328.4Among theancient Romans a bone of such as died abroad or in war was sent home to the relatives for burial. This usage was expressly recognised by a law of the Twelve Tables which abolished in all other cases the pre-existing custom of cutting out a bone in order to bury it when the rest of the body was burnt.329.1At the cremation the hot ashes were extinguished in wine, collected by the relatives and deposited in an urn in the grave-chamber. At Kalna, near Calcutta, is a place called Samáj Bati, where a bone of every deceased member of the family of the Rajah of Bardwan is deposited.329.2Various tribes of Bengal, among which are the Santals, Oraons and Garos, ultimately commit some of the burnt fragments of bone to the river, where they are carried down by the current to the far-off eastern land whence, if we may trust the national traditions, their ancestors originally came, thus “uniting the dead with the fathers.” Instances, we are told, have been known of a Santal “son following up the traces of a wild beast which had carried off his parent, and watching, without food or sleep, during several days for an opportunity to kill the animal, and secure one of his father’s bones to carry to theriver.”330.1The Khási of Assam, on the other hand, place the ashes in the family bone-receptacle; and it is worthy of note that those of husband and wife are never placed in the same, because they belong to different clans, and the ashes of the children are put in that of their mother. Major Godwin-Austen says “that the collection of the bones into one vault, as it may be termed, is done under the impression that the souls of the departed may all mingle together again in one large family without trouble or suffering. The idea of a member of a family being a wanderer in the other world, cut off from, and unable to join, the circle of the spirits of his own clan is most repugnant to the feelings of a Khási or Sinteng.” Consequently great efforts are made to recover, even after the lapse of many years, the calcined bones of any member of the gens who may have died at a distance.330.2Some of the Garos, neighbours of the Khási, seem to follow this custom, while others put the ashes into the river like the Santals.330.3The Bhumij of Bengal inter some of the unconsumed fragments of bone at the foot of a tulsi-plant in the courtyard of the dead man’s house, and the rest in the original cemetery of the family. “The theory is that the bones should be taken to the village in which the ancestors of the deceased had the status ofbhuinhárs, or first clearers of the soil; but this is not invariably acted up to, and the rule is held to be sufficiently complied with if a man’s bones are buried in a village where he or his ancestors have been settled for a tolerably long time.”330.4