Chapter 127

186Teit,loc. cit.p. 329.

187Smith,Myths of the Iroquois, inAnn. Rep. Bur. Ethn.ii. 69.

188Monrad,op. cit.p. 26.

189Burrows,op. cit.p. 103.

190von Brenner,op. cit.p. 234sqq.

191Castrén,op. cit.iii. 123sq.

192von Wlislocki,Volksglaube der Zigeuner, p. 100.

193Fawcett,op. cit.p. 47.

194Kidd,The Essential Kafir, p. 83.

195Southey,op. cit.i. 248.Cf.von den Steinen,Unter den Naturvölkern Zentral-Brasiliens, p. 502 (Bororó).

196Mindeleff, ‘Navaho Houses,’ inAnn. Rep. Bur. Ethn.xvii. 487.

197Cranz,op. cit.i. 217.

The fear of the dead has also taught men to abstain from robbing or violating their tombs. The Omahas believe that, if anybody touched an article of food exposed at a grave, “the ghost would snatch away the food and paralyse the mouth of the thief, and twist his face out of shape for the rest of his life; or else he would be pursued by the ghost, and food would lose its taste, and hunger ever after haunt the offender.”198The Brazilian Coroados “avoid disturbing the repository of the dead, for fear they should appear to them and torment them.”199The Maoris suppose that the violation of a burial place would bring disease and death on the criminal.200The extreme dislike of the Chinese to disturbing a grave is based on the supposition that the spirit of the person buried will haunt and cause ill-luck or death to the disturber.201According to the popular beliefs of the Magyars, he who seizes upon anything belonging to a tomb, even if it were only a flower, will be unhappy for the rest of his life.202The Rumanians of Transylvania think that a person who picks a flower which grows on a grave will die in consequence, and that he who smells at such a flower will lose his sense of smell.203

198La Flesche, ‘Death and Funeral Customs among the Omahas,’ inJour. American Folk-Lore, ii. 11.Cf.Reid, inJour. Anthr. Inst.iii. 112 (Chippewas).

199von Spix and von Martius,Travels in Brazil, ii. 251.

200Polack,op. cit.i. 112.

201Dennys,op. cit.p. 26. de Groot,op. cit.(vol. iv. book) ii. 446sq.

202von Wlislocki,Volksglaube der Magyaren, p. 135.Cf.Idem,Volksglaube der Zigeuner, p. 96sq.

203Prexl, ‘Geburts- und Todtengebräuche der Rumänen in Siebenbürgen,’ inGlobus, lvii. 30.

The transgression of ancestral custom, as we have already seen, is supposed to be punished by the spirits of the dead; and the sacredness of a will largely springs from superstitious fear. The South Slavonian belief that, if a son does not fulfil the last will of his father the soul of the father will curse him from the grave,204has its counterpart in the denunciatory clause in Anglo-Saxon landbooks, which usually curses all and singular who attack the donee’s title.205

204Supra,i. 624.

205Pollock and Maitland,History of English Law before the Time of Edward I.ii. 251sq.

The custom of praising the dead, again, is mainly flattery, and the lamentations over them are not altogether sincere.206By their excessive demonstrations of grief the Andaman Islanders hope to conciliate the spirits of the departed, and to be preserved from many misfortunes which might otherwise befall them.207The Central Australian native fears “that, unless a sufficient amount of grief be displayed, he will be harmed by the offendedUlthanaor spirit of the dead man.”208The Angmagsalikson the East Coast of Greenland say that they cry and groan and perform other mourning rites “in order to prevent the dead from getting angry.”209But the loud wailing of mourners may also, like the shouting after a death,210be intended to drive away the ghost, or perhaps death itself.

206See Gibbs,loc. cit.p. 205 (tribes of Western Washington and North-western Oregon); Wied-Neuwied,Reise nach Brasilien, ii. 56 (Botocudos).

207Man, inJour. Anthr. Inst.xii. 145.

208Spencer and Gillen,Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 510.

209Holm, ‘Ethnologisk Skizze af Angmagsalikerne,’ inMeddelelser om Grønland, x. 107.

210Spencer and Gillen,op. cit.p. 506.Cf.Robertson Smith,Religion of the Semites, p. 432, n. 2.

Fear is certainly a very common motive for funeral and mourning rites which have been interpreted as duties to the dead. This is the case with the various methods of disposing of the corpse. Thus the custom of leaving it as food for beasts of prey211is, in some instances at least, deliberately practised for the purpose of preventing the ghost from walking. The Herero who accompanied Chapman said of two of their sick comrades who formed part of the company, “You must throw them away, and let the wolves eat them; then they won’t come and bother us.”212Cremation, also, has frequently been resorted to as a means of protecting the living from unwelcome visits of the dead, or, as the case may be, of effectually getting rid of the contagion of death.213The Vedic people, while burning the corpses of their dead, cried aloud, “Away, go away, O Death! injure not our sons and our men.”214In Northern India the corpses of all low caste people are either cremated or buried face downwards, in order to prevent the evil spirit from escaping and troubling its neighbours.215The Nâyars of Malabar not only believe that the collection and careful disposal of the ashes of the dead man gives peace to his spirit, but, “what is more important, the pacified spirit will not thereafter injure the living members of the Taravâd (house or family), cause miscarriageto the women, possess the men, as with an evil spirit, and so on.”216In Tibet a ghost which makes its presence felt in dreams or by causing deliriousness or temporary insanity is disposed of by cremation.217In his description of the Savage Islanders, Mr. Thomson tells us of a mother who destroyed her own daughter’s grave by fire in order to burn the spirit which was afflicting her.218Among the ancient Scandinavians the bodies of persons who were believed to walk after death were dug up from their graves and burned.219And exactly the same is done in Albania to this day.220

211For this custom see also Murdoch, inAnn. Rep. Bur. Ethn.ix. 424sq.(Point Barrow Eskimo); Nordenskiöld,Vegas färd kring Asien och Europa, ii. 93 (Chukchi); Andersson,Notes on Travel in South Africa, p. 234 (Ovambo).

212Chapman,Travels in the Interior of South Africa, ii. 282.

213Cf.Rohde,op. cit.p. 28sqq.(ancient Greeks); Preuss,op. cit.p. 294.

214Rig-Veda, x. 18. 1.

215Crooke,Popular Religion of Northern India, i. 269.

216Fawcett, in the Madras Government Museum’sBulletin, iii. 251. See also Iyer, ‘Nayādis of Malabar,’ibid.iv. 71.

217Waddell,op. cit.p. 498.

218Thomson,Savage Island, p. 134.

219Kålund,loc. cit.p. 227.

220von Hahn,Albanesische Studien, i. 163.

Burial itself has served a similar purpose.221According to the Danish traveller Monrad, the Negroes of Accra expressly believe that by covering the body of a dead person with earth they keep the ghost from walking and causing trouble to the survivors; and he adds that exactly the same superstition prevails in Jutland in Denmark.222This belief is also preserved in the Swedish word for committing a corpse to the earth,jordfästa, which literally means “to fasten to the earth.” In Gothland, in Sweden, there was an old tradition of a man called Takstein who in his lifetime was overbearing and cruel and after his death haunted the living, in consequence of which “a wizard finally earth-fastened him in such a manner that he afterwards lay quiet.”223But burial has often been supplemented by other precautions against the return of the ghost. Högström says that the Laplanders carefully wrapped up their dead in cloth so as to prevent the soul from slipping away.224The practice of placing logs or stones immediately over the corpse may have a similar origin; in some Queensland tribes, when an individual has been killed by the whole tribe in punishment for someserious crime, boomerangs are substituted for the ordinary logs, evidently for fear of the ghost.225The Chuvashes, again, put two stakes across the coffin of a dead man for the purpose of preventing him from lifting up the cover.226Graves are often provided with mounds, tombstones, or enclosures in order to keep the dead from walking.227The Omahas raise no mound over a man who has been killed by lightning, but bury him face downwards and with the soles of his feet split, in the belief that he will then go to the spirit-land without giving further trouble to the living.228The Savage Islanders pile heavy stones upon the grave to keep the ghost down.229The Cheremises believe that the ghosts cannot step over the fence-poles with which they surround the graves.230When ceremonies like that of striking the air at a funeral or the ringing of bells are represented as means of keeping off evil spirits from the dead, we have reason to suspect that their original object was to keep off the ghost from the living. At Central Australian funerals women beat the air with the palms of their hands for the express purpose of driving the spirit away from the old camp which it is supposed to haunt, and the men beat the air with their spear-throwers.231The Bondeis of East Africa frighten the ghosts by beating drums.232And at Port Moresby, in New Guinea, when the church bell was first used, the natives thanked the missionaries for having driven off numerous bands of ghosts.233

221Cf.Frazer, inJour. Anthr. Inst.xv. 64sq.; Preuss,op. cit.p. 292sq.

222Monrad,op. cit.p. 13.

223Läffler,Den gottländska Taksteinar-sägnen, p. 5.

224Högström,Beskrifning öfver de til Sveriges Krona lydande Lapmarker, p. 207.

225Roth,op. cit.p. 165.

226Castrén,op. cit.iii. 121.

227Cf.Frazer, inJour. Anthr. Inst.xv. 65sq.; Preuss,op. cit.p. 293.

228Dorsey, inAnn. Rep. Bur. Ethn.xi. 420. La Flesche, inJour. American Folk-Lore, ii. 11.

229Thomson,Savage Island, p. 52.

230Castrén,op. cit.iii. 122.

231Spencer and Gillen,Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 506.

232Dale, inJour. Anthr. Inst.xxv. 238.

233Chalmers and Gill,Work and Adventure in New Guinea, p. 260.

That the mourning fast is essentially a precaution taken by the survivors, and not a tribute to the dead, is obvious from what has been said in a previous chapter.234When mourners mutilate, cut, or beat themselves, the original object of their doing so seems often to be to ward off thecontagion of death.235Among the Bedouins of Morocco women at funerals not only scratch their faces, but also rub the wounds with cow-dung, and cow-dung is regarded as a means of purification. The mourning customs of painting the body and of assuming a special costume have been explained as attempts on the part of the survivors to disguise themselves;236but the latter custom may also have originated in the idea that a mourner is more or less polluted for a certain period and that therefore a dress worn by him then, being a seat of contagion, could not be used afterwards. Egede writes of the Greenlanders, “If they have happened to touch a corpse, they immediately cast away the clothes they have then on; and for this reason they always put on their old clothes when they go to a burying, in which they agree with the Jews.”237There can, finally, be no doubt that the widespread prohibition of mentioning the name of a dead person238does not in the first instance arise from respect for the departed, but from fear. To name him is to summon him; the Indians of Washington Territory even change their own names when a relative dies, because “they think the spirits of the dead will come back if they hear the same name called that they were accustomed to hearbefore death.”239But apart from this, a dead man’s name itself is probably felt to be defiling, or at all events produces an uncanny association of thought, which even among ourselves makes many people reluctant to mention it.240And to do so may also be a wrong to other persons who would be endangered thereby. Among the Goajiro Indians of Colombia, to mention a dead man before his relatives is a dreadful offence, which is often punished even with death.241

234Supra,ii. 302sqq.

235Cf.Frazer,Golden Bough, i. 302.

236Frazer, inJour. Anthr. Inst.73.Idem, ‘Folk-Lore in the Old Testament,’ inAnthropological Essays presented to E. B. Tylor, p. 110.

237Egede,op. cit.p. 197.

238Tylor,Researches into the Early History of Mankind, p. 144. Nyrop, ‘Navnets magt,’ inMindre afhandlinger udgivne af det philologisk-historiske samfund, pp. 147-151, 190sq.andpassim. Frazer,Golden Bough, i. 421sqq.Clodd,Tom Tit Tot, p. 166sqq.Nansen,Eskimo Life, p. 230sq.(Greenlanders). Müller,Geschichte der Amerikanischen Urreligionen, p. 84 (North American Indians). Bourke, ‘Medicine-Men of the Apache,’ inAnn. Rep. Bur. Ethn.ix. 462. Batchelor,Ainu and their Folk-Lore, p. 242. Georgi,op. cit.iii. 27, 28, 262sq.(Samoyedes and shamanistic peoples in Siberia). Jackson, inJour. Anthr. Inst.xxiv. 406 (Samoyedes). Rivers,Todas, p. 625sqq.Crooke,Tribes and Castes of the North-Western Provinces, i. 11 (Agariya, a Dravidian tribe), von Wlislocki,Volksglaube der Zigeuner, p. 96 (Gypsies). Yseldijk, inGlimpses of the Eastern Archipelago, p. 42. (Kotting, in the island of Flores). Roth,North-West-Central Queensland Aborigines, p. 164. Spencer and Gillen,Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 498. Fraser,Aborigines of New South Wales, p. 82. Thornton, in Hill and Thornton,Aborigines of New South Wales, p. 7. Fison and Howitt,op. cit.p. 249 (Kurnai). Curr,Squatting in Victoria, p. 272 (Bangerang). Hinde,op. cit.p. 50 (Masai). Duveyrier,Exploration du Sahara, p. 415 (Touareg). Werner, ‘Custom of “Hlonipa,”’ inJour. African Soc.1905, April, p. 346 (Zulus).

239Swan,Residence in Washington Territory, p. 189.

240I had much difficulty in inducing my teacher in Shelḥa, a Berber from the Great Atlas Mountains, to tell me the equivalent for “illness” in his own language; and when he finally did so, he spat immediately afterwards. Among the Central Australian Arunta the older men will not look at the photograph of a deceased person (Gillen, ‘Aborigines of the McDonnell Ranges,’ inReport of the Horn Expedition, iv. ‘Anthropology,’ p. 168).

241Simons, ‘Exploration of the Goajira Peninsula,’ inProceed. Roy. Geograph. Soc.N. S. vii. 791.

By all this I certainly do not mean to assert that the funeral and mourning customs to which I have just referred have exclusively or in every case originated in fear of the dead or of the pollution of death. Burial may also be genuinely intended to protect the body from beasts or birds; and the same may be the case with mounds, tombstones, and enclosures.242Some savages are reported to burn the dead in order to prevent their bodies from falling into the hands of enemies,243which might be bad both for the dead and for their friends, as charms might be made from the corpses.244Moreover, cremation does away with the slow process of transformation to which a dead body is naturally subject, and this process is regarded not only as a danger to the living but also as painful to the deceased himself.245The same object may be achieved by exposing the corpse to wild animals. And we should also remember that the putrefactive processitself, whether accompanied by any superstitious ideas or not, is a sufficient motive for disposing of the dead body in some way or other—either by burial or cremation or exposure; and if one method is held objectionable another will be resorted to. Among the Masai the custom of throwing away corpses is said to spring from the notion that to bury them would be to poison the soil;246and the Zoroastrian law enjoining the exposure of the dead was closely connected with the sacredness ascribed to fire and earth and the consequent dread of polluting them.

242Cranz,op. cit.i. 217 (Greenlanders). Turner, inAnn. Rep. Bur. Ethn.xi. 192 (Hudson Bay Eskimo). Yarrow,ibid.i. 102 (Wichita Indians). Dunbar, inMagazine of American History, viii. 734 (Pawnee Indians). Curr,The Australian Race, i. 87.

243Hyades and Deniker,op. cit.vii. 379 (Fuegians). Preuss,op. cit.p. 310 (Seminole Indians of Florida).

244Ralph, quoted by Hartland,Legend of Perseus, ii. 437 (Haidahs of British Columbia).

245See Hertz,loc. cit.p. 71.

246Thomson,Through Masai Land, p. 259.

Again, as for the mutilations and self-inflicted wounds which accompany funerals, I have suggested in a previous chapter that they may be partly practised for the purpose of refreshing the departed soul with human blood;247or, as Dr. Hirn observes, they may be instinctive efforts to procure that relief from overpowering feelings which is afforded by pain and the subsequent exhaustion.248The reluctance to name the dead may, in some measure, be traced to a natural unwillingness in his old friends to revive past sorrows.249And with reference to the mourning apparel, Dr. de Groot believes—if rightly or wrongly I am not in a position to decide—that, so far as China is concerned, it originated in the custom of sacrificing to the dead the clothes on one’s own back. He thinks that this explanation is confirmed by the fact that in the age of Confucius it was customary for the mourners to throw off their clothes as far as decency allowed when the corpse was being dressed.250

247Supra,i. 476.

248Hirn,Origins of Art, p. 66sq.

249Fison and Howitt,op. cit.p. 249 (Kurnai). Frazer,Golden Bough, i. 422.

250de Groot,op. cit.(vol. ii. book) i. 475sq.

There are several reasons why practices connected with death which originally sprang from self-regarding motives have come to be enjoined as duties. We have first to remember the various factors mentioned above251which tend to make self-regarding conduct a matter of moral concern.But in this case the transition from the prudential to the obligatory has been much facilitated by the circumstance that all the acts which a person’s self-interest induces him to perform or to abstain from have direct reference to another individual, and, indeed, to an individual who is supposed to reward benefits bestowed upon him or at all events to resent injuries and neglect. These punishments and rewards sent by the departed soul are all the more readily recognised to be well deserved, as the claims of the dead are similar in nature to those of the living and are at the same time in some degree supported by sympathetic feelings in the survivors. Nor is it difficult to explain why even such practices as are not originally supposed to comfort the dead have assumed the character of duties towards them. The dead are not only beings whom it is dangerous to offend and useful to please, but they are also very easily duped. No wonder therefore that the living are anxious to put the most amiable interpretation upon their conduct, trying to persuade the ghost, as also one another, that they do what they do forhisbenefit, not for their own. It is better for him to have rest in his grave than to wander about on earth unhappy and homeless. It is better for him to enjoy the heat of the flames than to suffer from the cold of an arctic climate. It is better for him to be eaten by an animal—say, a beautiful dog or a hyæna sent by God—than to lie and rot in the open air. And all the mourning customs, what are they if not tokens of grief? Moreover, if the corpse is not properly disposed of or any funeral or mourning rite calculated to keep off the ghost is not observed, the dead man will easily do harm to the survivors. And does not this indicate that they have been neglectful of their duties to him?

251Supra,ii. 266sq.

The mixture of sympathy and fear which is at the bottom of the duties to the dead accounts for the fact that these duties are rarely extended to strangers. A departed stranger is not generally an object of either pity or fear. He expects attention from his own people only, he haunts his own home. But he may of course be dangerous toanybody who directly offends him, for instance by inflicting an injury upon his body, or to people who live in the vicinity of his grave. We are told that the Angami Nagas bestow as much care on the tombs of foes who have fallen near their villages as on those of their own warriors.252So also the differences in the treatment of the dead which depend upon age, sex, and social position are no doubt closely connected with variations in the feelings of sympathy, respect, or fear,253although in many cases we are unable to explain those differences in detail. Among the Australian natives women and children are said to be interred with little ceremony because they are held to be very inferior to men while alive and consequently are not much feared after death;254and if in Eastern Central Africa the attention usually bestowed upon the dead is not extended to children which die when four or five days old, the reason seems to be that such children are hardly supposed to possess a soul.255We may assume that the special treatment to which the bodies of criminals are subject is due not only to indignation but, in some instances at least, to fear of their ghosts. And we have noticed above that suicides, murdered persons, and those struck with lightning are sometimes left unburied because no one dares to interfere with their bodies, or perhaps in order to prevent them from mixing with the other dead.256

252Prain, ‘Angami Nagas,’ inRevue coloniale internationale, v. 493.

Back to Index Next