The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead Part 32

[Sidenote: Ghosts driven away from the village. Expulsion of the ghosts of persons who suffered from sores and ulcers.]

In these islands the ghost does not at once leave the neighbourhood of his old body; he shews no haste to depart to the nether world. Indeed he commonly loiters about the house and the grave for five or ten days, manifesting his presence by noises in the house and by lights upon the grave. By the fifth day his relations generally think that they have had quite enough of him, and that it is high time he should set out for his long home. Accordingly they drive him away with shouts and the blowing of conch-sh.e.l.ls or the booming sound of bull-roarers.[576] At Ureparapara the mode of expelling the ghost from the village is as follows. Missiles to be hurled at the lingering spirit are collected in the shape of small stones and pieces of bamboo, which have been charmed by wizards so as to possess a ghost-expelling virtue. The artillery having been thus provided, the people muster at one end of the village, armed with bags of enchanted stones and pieces of enchanted bamboos. The signal to march is given by two men, who sit in the dead man's house, one on either side, holding two white stones in their hands, which they clink together. At the sound of the clinking the women begin to wail and the men to march; tramp, tramp they go like one man through the village from end to end, throwing stones into the houses and all about and beating the bamboos together. Thus they drive the reluctant ghost step by step from the village into the forest, where they leave him to find his own way down to the land of the dead. Till that time the widow of the deceased was bound to remain on his bed without quitting it for a moment except on necessity; and if she had to leave it for a few minutes she always left a coco-nut on the bed to represent her till she came back. The reason for this was that her husband's ghost was believed to be lingering in the house all these days, and he would naturally expect to see his wife in the nuptial chamber. At Motlav the people are not so hard upon the poor ghosts: they do not drive away all ghosts from their old homes, but only the ghosts of such as had in their lifetime the misfortune to be afflicted with grievous sores and ulcers. The expulsion of such ghosts may therefore be regarded as a sanitary precaution designed to prevent the spirits from spreading the disease. When a man who suffers severely from sores or ulcers lies dying, the people of his village, taking time by the forelock, send word to the inhabitants of the next village westwards, warning them to be in readiness to give the ghost a warm reception. For it is well known that at their departure from the body ghosts always go westward towards the setting sun. So when the poor man is dead, they bury his diseased body in the village and devote all their energies to the expulsion of his soul. By blowing blasts on sh.e.l.l-trumpets and beating the ground with the stalks of coco-nut fronds they chase the ghost clean away from their own village and on to the next. The inhabitants of that village meantime are ready to receive their unwelcome visitor, and beating their bounds in the most literal sense they soon drive him onwards to the land of their next neighbours. So the chase goes on from village to village, till the ghost has been finally hunted into the sea at the point of the sh.o.r.e which faces the setting sun. There at last the beaters throw away the stalks which have served to whack the ghost, and return home in the perfect a.s.surance that he has left the island and gone to his own place down below, so that he cannot afflict anybody with the painful disease from which he suffered. But as for his ulcerated corpse rotting in the grave, they do not give a thought to it. Their concern is with the spiritual and the unseen; they do not stoop to regard the material and carnal.[577]

[Sidenote: Special treatment of the ghosts of women who died in childbed.]

A special treatment is accorded to the ghosts of women who died in childbed. If the mother dies and the child lives, her ghost will not go away to the nether world without taking the infant with her. Hence in order to deceive the ghost, they wrap a piece of a banana-trunk loosely in leaves and lay it on the bosom of the dead mother when they lower her into the grave. The ghost clasps the bundle to her breast, thinking it is her baby, and goes away contentedly to the spirit land. As she walks, the banana-stalk slips about in the leaves and she imagines it is the infant stirring; for she has not all her wits about her, ghosts being naturally in a dazed state at first on quitting their familiar bodies.

But when she arrives in deadland and finds she has been deceived, and when perhaps some heartless ghosts even jeer at her wooden baby, back she comes tearing to earth in grief and rage to seek and carry off the real infant. However, the survivors know what to expect and have taken the precaution of removing the child to another house where the mother will never find it; but she keeps looking for it always, and a sad and angry ghost is she.[578]

[Sidenote: Funeral feasts.]

After the funeral follows a series, sometimes a long series, of funeral feasts, which form indeed one of the princ.i.p.al inst.i.tutions of these islands. The number of the feasts and the length of time during which they are repeated vary much in the different islands, and depend also on the consideration in which the deceased was held. The days on which the feasts are celebrated are the fifth and the tenth after the death, and afterwards every tenth day up to the hundredth or even it may be, in the case of a father, a mother, or a wife, up to the thousandth day. These feasts appear now to be chiefly commemorative, but they also benefit the dead; for the ghost is naturally gratified by seeing that his friends remember him and do their duty by him so handsomely. At these banquets food is put aside for the dead with the words "This is for thee." The practice of thus setting aside food for the ghost at a series of funeral feasts appears at first sight, as Dr. Codrington observes, inconsistent with the theory that the ghosts live underground.[579] But the objection thus suggested is rather specious than real; for we must always bear in mind that, to judge from the accounts given of them in all countries, ghosts experience no practical difficulty in obtaining temporary leave of absence from the other world and coming to this one, so to say, on furlough for the purpose of paying a surprise visit to their sorrowing friends and relations. The thing is so well known that it would be at once superfluous and tedious to ill.u.s.trate it at length; many examples have incidentally met us in the course of these lectures.

[Sidenote: Funeral customs in Vate or Efat. Old people buried alive.]

The natives of Vate or Efat, one of the New Hebrides, set up a great wailing at a death and scratched their faces till they streamed with blood. Bodies of the dead were buried. When a corpse was laid in the grave, a pig was brought to the place and its head was chopped off and thrown into the grave to be buried with the body. This, we are told, "was supposed to prevent disease spreading to other members of the family." Probably, in the opinion of the natives, the pig's head was a sop thrown to the ghost to keep him from coming and fetching away other people to deadland. With the same intention, we may take it, they buried with the dead the cups, pillows, and other things which he had used in his lifetime. On the top of the grave they kindled a fire to enable the soul of the deceased to rise to the sun. If that were not done, the soul went to the wretched regions of Pakasia down below. The old were buried alive at their own request. It was even deemed a disgrace to the family of an aged chief if they did not bury him alive. When an old man felt sick and weak and thought that he was dying, he would tell his friends to get all ready and bury him. They yielded to his wishes, dug a deep round pit, wound a number of fine mats round his body, and lowered him into the grave in a sitting posture. Live pigs were then brought to the brink of the grave, and each of them was tethered by a cord to one of the old man's arms. When the pigs had thus, as it were, been made over to him, the cords were cut, and the animals were led away to be killed, baked, and eaten at the funeral feast; but the souls of the pigs the old man took away with him to the spirit land, and the more of them he took the warmer and more gratifying was the reception he met with from the ghosts. Having thus ensured his eternal welfare by the pig strings which dangled at his arms, the old man was ready; more mats were laid over him, the earth was shovelled in, and his dying groans were drowned amid the weeping and wailing of his affectionate kinsfolk.[580]

[Sidenote: Burial and mourning customs in Aurora, one of the New Hebrides. Behaviour of the soul at death.]

At Maewo in Aurora, one of the New Hebrides, when a death has taken place, the body is buried in a grave near the village clubhouse. For a hundred days afterwards the female mourners may not go into the open and their faces may not be seen; they stay indoors and in the dark and cover themselves with a large mat reaching to the ground. But the widow goes every day, covered with her mat, to weep at the grave; this she does both in the morning and in the afternoon. During this time of mourning the next of kin may not eat certain succulent foods, such as yams, bananas, and caladium; they eat only the gigantic caladium, bread-fruit, coco-nuts, mallows, and so forth; "and all these they seek in the bush where they grow wild, not eating those which have been planted." They count five days after the death and then build up great heaps of stones over the grave. After that, if the deceased was a very great man, who owned many gardens and pigs, they count fifty days and then kill pigs, and cut off the point of the liver of each pig; and the brother of the deceased goes toward the forest and calls out the dead man's name, crying, "This is for you to eat." They think that if they do not kill pigs for the benefit of their departed friend, his ghost has no proper existence, but hangs miserably on tangled creepers. After the sacrifice they all cry again, smear their bodies and faces all over with ashes, and wear cords round their necks for a hundred days in token that they are not eating good food.[581] They imagine that as soon as the soul quits the body at death, it mounts into a tree where there is a bird's nest fern, and sitting there among the fronds it laughs and mocks at the people who are crying and making great lamentations over his deserted tabernacle. "There he sits, wondering at them and ridiculing them. 'What are they crying for?' he says; 'whom are they sorry for? Here am I.' For they think that the real thing is the soul, and that it has gone away from the body just as a man throws off his clothes and leaves them, and the clothes lie by themselves with nothing in them."[582] This estimate of the comparative value of soul and body is translated from the words of a New Hebridean native; it singularly resembles that which is sometimes held up to our admiration as one of the finest fruits of philosophy and religion. So narrow may be the line that divides the meditations of the savage and the sage.

When a Maewo ghost has done chuckling at the folly of his surviving relatives, who sorrow as those who have no hope, he turns his back on his old home and runs along the line of hills till he comes to a place where there are two rocks with a deep ravine between them. He leaps the chasm, and if he lands on the further side, he is dead indeed; but if he falls short, he returns to life. At the land's end, where the mountains descend into the sea, all the ghosts of the dead are gathered to meet him. If in his lifetime he had slain any one by club or arrow, or done any man to death by magic, he must now run the gauntlet of the angry ghosts of his victims, who beat and tear him and stab him with daggers such as people stick pigs with; and as they do so, they taunt him, saying, "While you were still in the world you thought yourself a valiant man; but now we will take our revenge on you." At another point in the path there is a deep gully, where if a ghost falls he is inevitably dashed to pieces; and if he escapes this peril, there is a ferocious pig waiting for him further on, which devours the ghosts of all persons who in their life on earth omitted to plant panda.n.u.s trees, from which mats are made. But the wise man, who planted panda.n.u.s betimes, now reaps the fruit of his labours; for when the pig makes a rush at his departed spirit, the ghost nimbly swarms up the panda.n.u.s tree and so escapes his pursuer. That is why everybody in Maewo likes to plant panda.n.u.s trees. And if a man's ears were not pierced in his life, his ghost will not be allowed to drink water; if he was not tattooed, his ghost may not eat good food. A thoughtful father will provide for the comfort of his children in the other world by building a miniature house for each of them in his garden when the child is a year old; if the infant is a boy, he puts a bow, an arrow, and a club in the little house; if the child is a girl, he plants panda.n.u.s for her beside the tiny dwelling.[583]

[Sidenote: Only ghosts of powerful men are wors.h.i.+pped.]

So much for the fate of common ghosts in Central Melanesia. We have now to consider the position of the more powerful spirits, who after death are believed to exercise great influence over the living, especially over their surviving relations, and who have accordingly to be propitiated with prayer and sacrifice. This wors.h.i.+p of the dead, as we saw, forms the princ.i.p.al feature in the religion of the Solomon Islanders. "But it must not be supposed," says Dr. Codrington, "that every ghost becomes an object of wors.h.i.+p. A man in danger may call upon his father, his grandfather, or his uncle: his nearness of kin is sufficient ground for it. The ghost who is to be wors.h.i.+pped is the spirit of a man who in his lifetime had _mana_ [supernatural or magical power] in him; the souls of common men are the common herd of ghosts, n.o.bodies alike before and after death. The supernatural power abiding in the powerful living man abides in his ghost after death, with increased vigour and more ease of movement. After his death, therefore, it is expected that he should begin to work, and some one will come forward and claim particular acquaintance with the ghost; if his power should shew itself, his position is a.s.sured as one worthy to be invoked, and to receive offerings, till his cultus gives way before the rising importance of one newly dead, and the sacred place where his shrine once stood and his relics were preserved is the only memorial of him that remains; if no proof of his activity appears, he sinks into oblivion at once."[584]

[Sidenote: Wors.h.i.+p paid chiefly to the recent and well-remembered dead.]

From this instructive account we learn that wors.h.i.+p is paid chiefly to the recent and well-remembered dead, to the men whom the wors.h.i.+ppers knew personally and feared or respected in their lifetime. On the other hand, when men have been long dead, and all who knew them have also been gathered to their fathers, their memory fades away and with it their wors.h.i.+p gradually falls into complete desuetude. Thus the spirits who receive the homage of these savages were real men of flesh and blood, not mythical beings conjured up by the fancy of their wors.h.i.+ppers, which some legerdemain of the mind has foisted into the shrine and encircled with the halo of divinity. Not that the Melanesians do not also wors.h.i.+p beings who, so far as we can see, are purely mythical, though their wors.h.i.+ppers firmly believe in their reality. But "they themselves make a clear distinction between the existing, conscious, powerful disembodied spirits of the dead, and other spiritual beings that never have been men at all. It is true that the two orders of beings get confused in native language and thought, but their confusion begins at one end and the confusion of their visitors at another; they think so much and constantly of ghosts that they speak of beings who were never men as ghosts; Europeans take the spirits of the lately dead for G.o.ds; less educated Europeans call them roundly devils."[585]

[Sidenote: Way in which a dead warrior came to be wors.h.i.+pped as a martial ghost.]

As an example of the way in which the ghost of a real man who has just died may come to be wors.h.i.+pped Dr. Codrington tells us the story of Ganindo, which he had from Bishop Selwyn. This Ganindo was a great fighting man of Honggo in Florida, one of the Solomon Islands. He went with other warriors on a head-hunting expedition against Gaeta; but being mortally wounded with an arrow near the collar-bone he was brought back by his comrades to the hill of Bonipari, where he died and was buried. His friends cut off his head, put it in a basket, built a house for it, and said that he was a wors.h.i.+pful ghost (_tindalo_). Afterwards they said, "Let us go and take heads." So they embarked on their canoe and paddled away to seek the heads of enemies. When they came to quiet water, they stopped paddling and waited till they felt the canoe rock under them, and when they felt it they said, "That is a ghost." To find out what particular ghost it was they called out the names of several, and when they came to the name of Ganindo, the canoe rocked again. So they knew that it was he who was making the canoe to rock. In like manner they learned what village they were to attack. Returning victorious with the heads of the foe they threw a spear into the roof of Ganindo's house, blew conch-sh.e.l.ls, and danced round it, crying, "Our ghost is strong to kill!" Then they sacrificed fish and other food to him. Also they built him a new house, and made four images of him for the four corners, one of Ganindo himself, two of his sisters, and another. When it was all ready, eight men translated the relics to the new shrine. One of them carried Ganindo's bones, another his betel-nuts, another his lime-box, another his sh.e.l.l-trumpet. They all went into the shrine crouching down, as if burdened by a heavy weight, and singing in chorus, "Hither, hither, let us lift the leg!" At that the eight legs went up together, and then they sang, "Hither, hither!" and at that the eight legs went down together. In this solemn procession the relics were brought and laid on a bamboo platform, and sacrifices to the new martial ghost were inaugurated. Other warlike ghosts revered in Florida are known not to have been natives of the island but famous warriors of the western isles, where supernatural power is believed to be stronger.[586]

[Sidenote: Offerings to the dead.]

Throughout the islands of Central Melanesia prayers and offerings are everywhere made to ghosts or spirits or to both. The simplest and commonest sacrificial act is that of throwing a small portion of food to the dead; this is probably a universal practice in Melanesia. A morsel of food ready to be eaten, for example of yam, a leaf of mallow, or a bit of betel-nut, is thrown aside; and where they drink kava, a libation is made of a few drops, as the share of departed friends or as a memorial of them with which they will be pleased. At the same time the offerer may call out the name of some one who either died lately or is particularly remembered at the time; or without the special mention of individuals he may make the offering generally to the ghosts of former members of the community. To set food on a burial-place or before some memorial image is a common practice, though in some places, as in Santa Cruz, the offering is soon taken away and eaten by the living.[587]

[Sidenote: Sacrificial ritual in the Solomon Islands.]

In the Solomon Islands the sacrificial ritual is more highly developed.

It may be described in the words of a native of San Cristoval. "In my country," he wrote, "they think that ghosts are many, very many indeed, some very powerful, and some not. There is one who is princ.i.p.al in war; this one is truly mighty and strong. When our people wish to fight with any other place, the chief men of the village and the sacrificers and the old men, and the elder and younger men, a.s.semble in the place sacred to this ghost; and his name is Harumae. When they are thus a.s.sembled to sacrifice, the chief sacrificer goes and takes a pig; and if it be not a barrow pig they would not sacrifice it to that ghost, he would reject it and not eat of it. The pig is killed (it is strangled), not by the chief sacrificer, but by those whom he chooses to a.s.sist, near the sacred place. Then they cut it up; they take great care of the blood lest it should fall upon the ground; they bring a bowl and set the pig in it, and when they cut it up the blood runs down into it. When the cutting up is finished, the chief sacrificer takes a bit of flesh from the pig, and he takes a cocoa-nut sh.e.l.l and dips up some of the blood. Then he takes the blood and the bit of flesh and enters into the house (the shrine), and calls that ghost and says, 'Harumae! Chief in war! we sacrifice to you with this pig, that you may help us to smite that place; and whatsoever we shall carry away shall be your property, and we also will be yours.' Then he burns the bit of flesh in a fire upon a stone, and pours down the blood upon the fire. Then the fire blazes greatly upwards to the roof, and the house is full of the smell of pig, a sign that the ghost has heard. But when the sacrificer went in he did not go boldly, but with awe; and this is the sign of it; as he goes into the holy house he puts away his bag, and washes his hands thoroughly, to shew that the ghost shall not reject him with disgust." The pig was afterwards eaten.

It should be observed that this Harumae who received sacrifices as a martial ghost, mighty in war, had not been dead many years when the foregoing account of the mode of sacrificing to him was written. The elder men remembered him alive, nor was he a great warrior, but a kind and generous man, believed to be plentifully endowed with supernatural power. His shrine was a small house in the village, where relics of him were preserved.[588] Had the Melanesians been left to themselves, it seems possible that this Harumae might have developed into the war-G.o.d of San Cristoval, just as in Central Africa another man of flesh and blood is known to have developed into the war-G.o.d of Uganda.[589]

[Footnote 552: R. H. Codrington, _The Melanesians_ (Oxford, 1891), pp.

122, 123, 124, 180 _sq._]

[Footnote 553: R. H. Codrington, _The Melanesians_ (Oxford, 1891), pp.

247, 253.]

[Footnote 554: R. H. Codrington, _op. cit._ p. 248.]

[Footnote 555: R. H. Codrington, _op. cit._ pp. 255 _sqq_., 264 _sqq_.]

[Footnote 556: R. H. Codrington, _op. cit._ 253 _sq_.]

[Footnote 557: R. H. Codrington, _op. cit._ pp. 254, 258, 261; compare _id._, pp. 125, 130.]

[Footnote 558: R. H. Codrington, _op. cit._ pp. 120, 254.]

[Footnote 559: R. H. Codrington, _op. cit._ pp. 118 _sqq._]

[Footnote 560: R. H. Codrington, _op. cit._ pp. 254 _sq._]

[Footnote 561: R. H. Codrington, _op. cit._ pp. 258 _sq._]

[Footnote 562: R. H. Codrington, _op. cit._ p. 255.]

[Footnote 563: R. H. Codrington, _op. cit._ p. 259.]

[Footnote 564: G. Brown, D.D., _Melanesians and Polynesians_ (London, 1910), pp. 214, 217.]

[Footnote 565: R. H. Codrington, _op. cit._ p. 255.]

[Footnote 566: R. H. Codrington, _op. cit._ pp. 255 _sq._]

[Footnote 567: R. H. Codrington, _op. cit._ pp. 256 _sq._]

[Footnote 568: R. H. Codrington, _op. cit._ pp. 260 _sq._]

[Footnote 569: R. H. Codrington, _op. cit._ pp. 261 _sq._]

[Footnote 570: R. H. Codrington, _op. cit._ pp. 263 _sq._]

[Footnote 571: R. H. Codrington, _op. cit._ p. 257.]

[Footnote 572: R. H. Codrington, _op. cit._ pp. 264, 273 _sq._, 275-277.]

[Footnote 573: R. H. Codrington, _op. cit._ pp. 274 _sq._]

[Footnote 574: R. H. Codrington, _op. cit._ pp. 266, 276, 277, 286.]

[Footnote 575: R. H. Codrington, _The Melanesians_, pp. 267-270.]

[Footnote 576: R. H. Codrington, _op. cit._ p. 269.]

[Footnote 577: R. H. Codrington, _The Melanesians_, pp. 270 _sq._]

[Footnote 578: R. H. Codrington, _The Melanesians_, p. 275.]