The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead Part 36

[Sidenote: Disposal of the dead among the Moa.n.u.s of the Admiralty Islands. Prayers offered to the skull of a dead chief.]

Among the Moa.n.u.s of the Admiralty Islands the dead are kept in the houses unburied until the flesh is completely decayed and nothing remains but the bones. Old women then wash the skeleton carefully in sea-water, after which it is disjointed and divided. The backbone, together with the bones of the legs and upper arms, is deposited in one basket and put away somewhere; the skull, together with the ribs and the bones of the lower arms, is deposited in another basket, which is sunk for a time in the sea. When the bones are completely cleaned and bleached in the water, they are laid with sweet-smelling herbs in a wooden vessel and placed in the house which the dead man inhabited during his life. But the teeth have been previously extracted from the skull and converted into a necklace for herself by the sister of the deceased. After a time the ribs are distributed by the son among the relatives. The princ.i.p.al widow gets two, other near kinsfolk get one apiece, and they wear these relics under their arm-bands. The distribution of the ribs is the occasion of a great festival, and it is followed some time afterwards by a still greater feast, for which extensive preparations are made long beforehand. All who intend to be present at the ceremony send vessels of coco-nut oil in advance; and if the deceased was a great chief the number of the oil vessels and of the guests may amount to two thousand. Meantime the giver of the feast causes a scaffold to be erected for the reception of the skull, and the whole art of the wood-carver is exhausted in decorating the scaffold with figures of turtles, birds, and so forth, while a wooden dog acts as sentinel at either end. When the mult.i.tude has a.s.sembled, and the orchestra of drums, collected from the whole neighbourhood, has sent forth a far-sounding crash of music, the giver of the feast steps forward and p.r.o.nounces a florid eulogium on the deceased, a warm panegyric on the guests who have honoured him by their presence, and a fluent invective against his absent foes. Nor does he forget to throw in some delicate allusions to his own n.o.ble generosity in providing the a.s.sembled visitors with this magnificent entertainment. For this great effort of eloquence the orator has been primed in the morning by the sorcerer. The process of priming consists in kneeling on the orator's shoulders and tugging at the hair of his head with might and main, which is clearly calculated to promote the flow of his rhetoric. If none of the hair comes out in the sorcerer's hands, a masterpiece of oratory is confidently looked forward to in the afternoon. When the speech, for which such painful preparations have been made, is at last over, the drums again strike up. No sooner have their booming notes died away over land and sea, than the sorcerer steps up to the scaffold, takes from it the bleached skull, and holds it in both his hands. Then the giver of the feast goes up to him, dips a bunch of dracaena leaves in a vessel of oil, and smites the skull with it, saying, "Thou art my father!" At that the drums again beat loudly. Then he strikes the skull a second time with the leaves, saying, "Take the food that has been made ready in thine honour!" And again there is a crash of drums. After that he smites the skull yet again and prays saying, "Guard me! Guard my people! Guard my children!" And every prayer of the litany is followed by the solemn roll of the drums. When these impressive invocations to the spirit of the dead chief are over, the feasting begins. The skull is thenceforth carefully preserved.[639]

[Sidenote: Disposal of the dead in the Kaniet Islands. Preservation of the skull.]

In the Kaniet Islands, a small group to the north-west of the Admiralty Islands, the dead are either sunk in the sea or buried in shallow graves, face downward, near the house. All the movable property of the deceased is piled on the grave, left there for three weeks, and then burnt. Afterwards the skull is dug up, placed in a basket, and having been decorated with leaves and feathers is hung up in the house. Thus adorned it not only serves to keep the dead in memory, but is also employed in many conjurations to defeat the nefarious designs of other ghosts, who are believed to work most of the ills that afflict humanity.[640] Apparently these islanders employ a ghost to protect them against ghosts on the principle of setting a thief to catch a thief.

[Sidenote: Death attributed to witchcraft.]

Amongst the natives of the Bismarck Archipelago few persons, if any, are believed to die from natural causes alone; if they are not killed in war they are commonly supposed to perish by witchcraft or sorcery, even when the cause of death might seem to the uninstructed European to be sufficiently obvious in such things as exposure to heavy rain, the carrying of too heavy a burden, or remaining too long a time under water. So when a man has died, his friends are anxious to discover who has bewitched him to death. In this enquiry the ghost is expected to lend his a.s.sistance. Thus on the night after the decease the friends will a.s.semble outside the house, and a sorcerer will address the ghost and request him to name the author of his death. If the ghost, as sometimes happens, makes no reply, the sorcerer will jog his memory by calling out the name of some suspected person; and should the ghost still be silent, the wizard will name another and another, till at the mention of one name a tapping sound is heard like the drumming of fingers on a board or on a mat The sound may proceed from the house or from a pearl sh.e.l.l which the sorcerer holds in his hand; but come from where it may, it is taken as a certain proof that the man who has just been named did the deed, and he is dealt with accordingly. Many a poor wretch in New Britain has been killed and eaten on no other evidence than that of the fatal tapping.[641]

[Sidenote: Burial customs in the Duke of York Island. Preservation of the skull.]

When a man of mark is buried in the Duke of York Island, the masters of sorcery take leaves, spit on them, and throw them, with a number of poisonous things, into the grave, uttering at the same time loud imprecations on the wicked enchanter who has killed their friend. Then they go and bathe, and returning they fall to cursing again; and if the miscreant survived the first imprecations, it is regarded as perfectly certain that he will fall a victim to the second. Sometimes, when the deceased was a chief distinguished for bravery and wisdom, his corpse would be exposed on a high platform in front of his house and left there to rot, while his relatives sat around and inhaled the stench, conceiving that with it they absorbed the courage and skill of the departed worthy. Some of them would even anoint their bodies with the drippings from the putrefying corpse for the same purpose. The women also made fires that the ghost might warm himself at them. When the head became detached from the trunk, it was carefully preserved by the next of kin, while the other remains were buried in a shallow grave in the house. All the female relatives blackened their dusky faces for a long time, after which the skull was put on a platform, a great feast was held, and dances were performed for many nights in its honour. Then at last the spirit of the dead man, which till that time was supposed to be lingering about his old abode, took his departure, and his friends troubled themselves about him no more.[642]

[Sidenote: Prayers to the spirits of the dead.]

The souls of the dead are always regarded by these people as beings whose help can be invoked on special occasions, such as fighting or fis.h.i.+ng or any other matter of importance; and since the spirits whom they invoke are always those of their own kindred they are presumed to be friendly to the pet.i.tioners. The objects for which formal prayers are addressed to the souls of ancestors appear to be always temporal benefits, such as victory over enemies and plenty of food; prayers for the promotion of moral virtue are seemingly unknown. For example, if a woman laboured hard in childbirth, she was thought to be bewitched, and prayers would be offered to the spirits of dead ancestors to counteract the spell. Again, young men are instructed by their elders in the useful art of cursing the enemies of the tribe; and among a rich variety of imprecations an old man will invoke the spirit of his brother, father, or uncle, or all of them, to put their fingers into the ears of the enemy that he may not hear, to cover his eyes that he may not see, and to stop his mouth that he may not cry for help, but may fall an easy prey to the curser and his friends.[643] More amiable and not less effectual are the prayers offered to the spirits of the dead over a sick man. At the mention of each name in the prayer the supplicants make a chirping or hissing sound, and rub lime over the patient. Before administering medicine they pray over it to the spirits of the dead; then the patient gulps it down, thus absorbing the virtue of the medicine and of the prayer in one. In New Britain they reinforce the prayers to the dead in time of need by wearing the jawbone of the deceased; and in the Duke of York Island people often wear a tooth or some hair of a departed relative, not merely as a mark of respect, but as a magical means of obtaining supernatural help.[644]

[Sidenote: North Melanesian views as to the land of the dead.]

Sooner or later the souls of all the North Melanesian dead take their departure for the spirit land. But the information which has reached the living as to that far country is at once vague and inconsistent. They call it _Matana nion_, but whereabout it lies they cannot for the most part precisely tell. All they know for certain is that it is far away, and that there is always some particular spot in the neighbourhood from which the souls take their departure; for example, the Duke of York ghosts invariably start from the little island of Nuruan, near Mioko.

Wherever it may be, the land of souls is divided into compartments; people who have died of sickness or witchcraft go to one place, and people who have been killed in battle go to another. They do not go unattended; for when a man dies two friends sleep beside his corpse the first night, one on each side, and their spirits are believed to accompany the soul of the dead man to the spirit land. They say that on their arrival in the far country, betel-nut is presented to them all, but the two living men refuse to partake of it, because they know that were they to eat it they would return no more to the land of the living.

When they do return, they have often, as might be expected, strange tales to tell of what they saw among the ghosts. The princ.i.p.al personage in the other world is called the "keeper of souls." It is said that once on a time the masterful ghost of a dead chief attempted to usurp the post of warden of the dead; in pursuance of this ambitious project he attacked the warden with a tomahawk and cut off one of his legs, but the amputated limb immediately reunited itself with the body; and a second amputation was followed by the same disappointing result. Life in the other world is reported to be very like life in this world. Some people find it very dismal, and others very beautiful. Those who were rich here will be rich there, and those who were poor on earth will be poor in Hades. As to any moral retribution which may overtake evil-doers in the life to come, their ideas are very vague; only they are sure that the ghosts of the n.i.g.g.ardly will be punished by being dumped very hard against the b.u.t.tress-roots of chestnut-trees. They say, too, that all breaches of etiquette or of the ordinary customs of the country will meet with certain appropriate punishments in the spirit land. When the soul has thus done penance, it takes possession of the body of some animal, for instance, the flying-fox. Hence a native is much alarmed if he should be sitting under a tree from which a flying-fox has been frightened away. Should anything drop from the bat or from the tree on which it was hanging, he would look on it as an omen of good or ill according to the nature of the thing which fell on or near him. If it were useless or dirty, he would certainly apprehend some serious misfortune. Sometimes when a man dies and his soul arrives in the spirit land, his friends do not want him there and drive him back to earth, so he comes to life again. That is the explanation which the natives give of what we call the recovery of consciousness after a faint or swoon.[645]

[Sidenote: The land of the dead. State of the dead in the other world supposed to depend on the amount of money they left in this one.]

Some of the natives of the Gazelle Peninsula in New Britain imagine that the home of departed spirits is in Nakanei, the part of the coast to which they sail to get their sh.e.l.l money. Others suppose that it is in the islands off Cape Takes. So when they are sailing past these islands they dip the paddles softly in the water, and observe a death-like stillness, cowering down in the canoes, lest the ghosts should spy them and do them a mischief. At the entrance to these happy isles is posted a stern watchman to see that no improper person sneaks into them. To every ghost that arrives he puts three questions, "Who are you? Where do you come from? How much sh.e.l.l money did you leave behind you?" On his answers to these three questions hangs the fate of the ghost. If he left much money, he is free to enter the realm of bliss, where he will pa.s.s the time with other happy souls smoking and eating and enjoying other sensual delights. But if he left little or no money, he is banished the earthly paradise and sent home to roam like a wild beast in the forest, battening on leaves and filth. With bitter sighs and groans he prowls about the villages at night and seeks to avenge himself by scaring or plaguing the survivors. To stay his hunger and appease his wrath relatives or friends will sometimes set forth food for him to devour.

Yet even for such an impecunious soul there is hope; for if somebody only takes pity on him and gives a feast in his honour and distributes sh.e.l.l money to the guests, the ghost may return to the islands of the blest, and the door will be thrown open to him.[646]

[Sidenote: Fiji and the Fijians.]

So much for the belief in immortality as it is reported to exist among the Northern Melanesians of New Britain and the Bismarck Archipelago. We now pa.s.s to the consideration of a similar belief among another people of the same stock, who have been longer known to Europe, the Fijians.

The archipelago which they occupy lies to the east of the New Hebrides and forms in fact the most easterly outpost of the black Melanesian race in the Pacific. Beyond it to the eastward are situated the smaller archipelagoes of Samoa and Tonga, inhabited by branches of the brown Polynesian race, whose members are scattered over the islands of the Pacific Ocean from Hawaii in the north to New Zealand in the south. Of all the branches of the Melanesian stock the Fijians at the date of their discovery by Europeans appear to have made the greatest advance in culture, material, social, and political. "The Fijian," says one who knew him long and intimately, "takes no mean place among savages in the social scale. Long before the white man visited his sh.o.r.es he had made very considerable progress towards civilisation. His inters.e.xual code had advanced to the 'patriarchal stage': he was a skilful and diligent husbandman, who carried out extensive and laborious agricultural operations: he built good houses, whose interior he ornamented with no little taste, carved his weapons in graceful and intricate forms, manufactured excellent pottery, beat out from the inner bark of a tree a serviceable papyrus-cloth, upon which he printed, from blocks either carved or ingeniously pieced together, elegant and elaborate patterns in fast colours; and, with tools no better than a stone hatchet, a pointed sh.e.l.l, and a firestick, he constructed large canoes capable of carrying more than a hundred warriors across the open sea."[647]

[Sidenote: Political superiority of the Fijians over the other Melanesians.]

Politically the Fijians shewed their superiority to all the other Melanesians in the advance they had made towards a regular and organised government. While among the other branches of the same race government can hardly be said to exist, the power of chiefs being both slender and precarious, in Fiji the highest chiefs exercised despotic sway and received from Europeans the t.i.tle of kings. The people had no voice in the state; the will of the king was generally law, and his person was sacred. Whatever he touched or wore became thereby holy and had to be made over to him; n.o.body else could afterwards touch it without danger of being struck dead on the spot as if by an electric shock. One king took advantage of this superst.i.tion by dressing up an English sailor in his royal robes and sending him about to throw his sweeping train over any article of food, whether dead or alive, which he might chance to come near. The things so touched were at once conveyed to the king without a word of explanation being required or a single remonstrance uttered. Some of the kings laid claim to a divine origin and on the strength of the claim exacted and received from their subjects the respect due to deities. In these exorbitant pretensions they were greatly strengthened by the inst.i.tution of taboo, which lent the sanction of religion to every exertion of arbitrary power.[648]

Corresponding with the growth of monarchy was the well-marked gradation of social ranks which prevailed in the various tribes from the king downwards through chiefs, warriors, and landholders, to slaves. The resulting political const.i.tution has been compared to the old feudal system of Europe.[649]

[Sidenote: Means of subsistence of the Fijians. Ferocity and depravity of the Fijians.]

Like the other peoples of the Melanesian stock the Fijians subsist chiefly by agriculture, raising many sorts of esculent fruits and roots, particularly yams, taro, plantains, bread-fruit, sweet potatoes, bananas, coco-nuts, ivi nuts, and sugar-cane; but the chief proportion of their food is derived from yams (_Dioscorea_), of which they cultivate five or six varieties.[650] It has been observed that "the increase of cultivated plants is regular on receding from the Hawaiian group up to Fiji, where roots and fruits are found that are unknown on the more eastern islands."[651] Yet the Fijians in their native state, like all other Melanesian and Polynesian peoples, were entirely ignorant of the cereals; and in the opinion of a competent observer the consequent defect in their diet has contributed to the serious defects in their national character. The cereals, he tells us, are the staple food of all races that have left their mark in history; and on the other hand "the apathy and indolence of the Fijians arise from their climate, their diet and their communal inst.i.tutions. The climate is too kind to stimulate them to exertion, their food imparts no staying power. The soil gives the means of existence for every man without effort, and the communal inst.i.tutions destroy the instinct of acc.u.mulation."[652] Nor are apathy and indolence the only or the worst features in the character of these comparatively advanced savages. Their ferocity, cruelty, and moral depravity are depicted in dark colours by those who had the best opportunity of knowing them in the old days before their savagery was mitigated by contact with a milder religious faith and a higher civilisation. "In contemplating the character of this extraordinary portion of mankind," says one observer, "the mind is struck with wonder and awe at the mixture of a complicated and carefully conducted political system, highly finished manners, and ceremonious politeness, with a ferocity and practice of savage vices which is probably unparalleled in any other part of the world."[653] One of the first civilised men to gain an intimate acquaintance with the Fijians draws a melancholy contrast between the baseness and vileness of the people and the loveliness of the land in which they live.[654]

[Sidenote: Scenery of the Fijian islands.]

For the Fijian islands are exceedingly beautiful. They are of volcanic origin, mostly high and mountainous, but intersected by picturesque valleys, clothed with woods, and festooned with the most luxuriant tropical vegetation. "Among their attractions," we are told, "are high mountains, abrupt precipices, conical hills, fantastic turrets and crags of rock frowning down like olden battlements, vast domes, peaks shattered into strange forms; native towns on eyrie cliffs, apparently inaccessible; and deep ravines, down which some mountain stream, after long murmuring in its stony bed, falls headlong, glittering as a silver line on a block of jet, or spreading like a sheet of gla.s.s over bare rocks which refuse it a channel. Here also are found the softer features of rich vales, cocoa-nut groves, clumps of dark chestnuts, stately palms and bread-fruit, patches of graceful bananas or well-tilled taro-beds, mingling in unchecked luxuriance, and forming, with the wild reef-scenery of the girdling sh.o.r.e, its beating surf, and far-stretching ocean beyond, pictures of surpa.s.sing beauty."[655] Each island is encircled by a reef of white coral, on which the sea breaks, with a thunderous roar, in curling sheets of foam; while inside the reef stretches the lagoon, a calm lake of blue crystalline water revealing in its translucent depths beautiful gardens of seaweed and coral which fill the beholder with delighted wonder. Great and sudden is the contrast experienced by the mariner when he pa.s.ses in a moment from the tossing, heaving, roaring billows without into the unbroken calm of the quiet haven within the barrier reef.[656]

[Sidenote: Fijian doctrine of souls.]

Like most savages, the Fijians believed that man is animated by a soul which quits his body temporarily in sleep and permanently at death, to survive for a longer or a shorter time in a disembodied state thereafter. Indeed, they attributed souls to animals, vegetables, stones, tools, houses, canoes, and many other things, allowing that all of them may become immortal.[657] On this point I will quote the evidence of one of the earliest and best authorities on the customs and beliefs of the South Sea Islanders. "There seems," says William Mariner, "to be a wide difference between the opinions of the natives in the different cl.u.s.ters of the South Sea islands respecting the future existence of the soul. Whilst the Tonga doctrine limits immortality to chiefs, _matabooles_, and at most, to _mooas_, the Fiji doctrine, with abundant liberality, extends it to all mankind, to all brute animals, to all vegetables, and even to stones and mineral substances. If an animal or a plant die, its soul immediately goes to Bolotoo; if a stone or any other substance is broken, immortality is equally its reward; nay, artificial bodies have equal good luck with men, and hogs, and yams. If an axe or a chisel is worn out or broken up, away flies its soul for the service of the G.o.ds. If a house is taken down, or any way destroyed, its immortal part will find a situation on the plains of Bolotoo; and, to confirm this doctrine, the Fiji people can show you a sort of natural well, or deep hole in the ground, at one of their islands, across the bottom of which runs a stream of water, in which you may clearly perceive the souls of men and women, beasts and plants, of stocks and stones, canoes and houses, and of all the broken utensils of this frail world, swimming or rather tumbling along one over the other pell-mell into the regions of immortality. Such is the Fiji philosophy, but the Tonga people deny it, unwilling to think that the residence of the G.o.ds should be enc.u.mbered with so much useless rubbish. The natives of Otaheite entertain similar notions respecting these things, viz. that brutes, plants, and stones exist hereafter, but it is not mentioned that they extend the idea to objects of human invention."[658]

[Sidenote: Reported Fijian doctrine of two human souls, a light one and a dark one.]

According to one account, the Fijians imagined that every man has two souls, a dark soul, consisting of his shadow, and a light soul, consisting of his reflection in water or a looking-gla.s.s: the dark soul departs at death to Hades, while the light soul stays near the place where he died or was killed. "Probably," says Thomas Williams, "this doctrine of shadows has to do with the notion of inanimate objects having spirits. I once placed a good-looking native suddenly before a mirror. He stood delighted. 'Now,' said he, softly, 'I can see into the world of spirits.'"[659] However, according to another good authority this distinction of two human souls rests merely on a misapprehension of the Fijian word for shadow, _yaloyalo_, which is a reduplication of _yalo_, the word for soul.[660] Apparently the Fijians pictured to themselves the human soul as a miniature of the man himself. This may be inferred from the customs observed at the death of a chief among the Nakelo tribe. When a chief dies, certain men who are the hereditary undertakers call him, as he lies, oiled and ornamented, on fine mats, saying, "Rise, sir, the chief, and let us be going. The day has come over the land." Then they conduct him to the river side, where the ghostly ferryman comes to ferry Nakelo ghosts across the stream. As they attend the chief on his last journey, they hold their great fans close to the ground to shelter him, because, as one of them explained to a missionary, "His soul is only a little child."[661]

[Sidenote: Absence of the soul in sleep. Catching the soul of a rascal in a scarf.]

The souls of some men were supposed to quit their bodies in sleep and enter into the bodies of other sleepers, troubling and disturbing them.

A soul that had contracted this bad habit was called a _yalombula_. When any one fainted or died, his vagrant spirit might, so the Fijians thought, be induced to come back by calling after it. Sometimes, on awaking from a nap, a stout man might be seen lying at full length and bawling out l.u.s.tily for the return of his own soul.[662] In the windward islands of Fiji there used to be an ordeal called _yalovaki_ which was much dreaded by evil-doers. When the evidence was strong against suspected criminals, and they stubbornly refused to confess, the chief, who was also the judge, would call for a scarf, with which "to catch away the soul of the rogue." A threat of the rack could not have been more effectual. The culprit generally confessed at the sight and even the mention of the light instrument; but if he did not, the scarf would be waved over his head until his soul was caught in it like a moth or a fly, after which it would be carefully folded up and nailed to the small end of a chief's canoe, and for want of his soul the suspected person would pine and die.[663]

[Sidenote: Fijian dread of sorcery and witchcraft.]

Further, the Fijians, like many other savages, stood in great terror of witchcraft, believing that the sorcerer had it in his power to kill them by the practice of his nefarious art. "Of all their superst.i.tions," says Thomas Williams, "this exerts the strongest influence on the minds of the people. Men who laugh at the pretensions of the priest tremble at the power of the wizard; and those who become christians lose this fear last of all the relics of their heathenism."[664] Indeed "native agents of the mission who, in the discharge of their duty, have boldly faced death by open violence, have been driven from their posts by their dread of the sorcerer; and my own observation confirms the statement of more than one observer that savages not unfrequently die of fear when they think themselves bewitched."[665] Professed pract.i.tioners of witchcraft were dreaded by all cla.s.ses, and by destroying mutual confidence they annulled the comfort and shook the security of society. Almost all sudden deaths were set down to their machinations. A common mode of effecting their object was to obtain a shred of the clothing of the man they intended to bewitch, some refuse of his food, a lock of his hair, or some other personal relic; having got it they wrapped it up in certain leaves, and then cooked or buried it or hung it up in the forest; whereupon the victim was supposed to die of a wasting disease.

Another way was to bury a coco-nut, with the eye upward, beneath the hearth of the temple, on which a fire was kept constantly burning; and as the life of the nut was destroyed, so the health of the person whom the nut represented would fail till death put an end to his sufferings.

"The native imagination," we are told, "is so absolutely under the control of fear of these charms, that persons, hearing that they were the object of such spells, have lain down on their mats, and died through fear."[666] To guard against the fell craft of the magician the people resorted to many precautions. A man who suspected another of plotting against him would be careful not to eat in his presence or at all events to leave no morsel of food behind, lest the other should secrete it and bewitch him by it; and for the same reason people disposed of their garments so that no part could be removed; and when they had their hair cut they generally hid the clippings in the thatch of their own houses. Some even built themselves a small hut and surrounded it with a moat, believing that a little water had power to neutralise the charms directed against them.[667]

[Sidenote: The fear of sorcery has had the beneficial effect of enforcing habits of personal cleanliness.]

"In the face of such instances as these," says one who knows the Fijians well, "it demands some courage to a.s.sert that upon the whole the belief in witchcraft was formerly a positive advantage to the community. It filled, in fact, the place of a system of sanitation. The wizard's tools consisting in those waste matters that are inimical to health, every man was his own scavenger. From birth to old age a man was governed by this one fear; he went into the sea, the graveyard or the depths of the forest to satisfy his natural wants; he burned his cast-off _malo_; he gave every fragment left over from his food to the pigs; he concealed even the clippings of his hair in the thatch of his house. This ever-present fear even drove women in the western districts out into the forest for the birth of their children, where fire destroyed every trace of their lying-in. Until Christianity broke it down, the villages were kept clean; there were no festering rubbish-heaps nor filthy _raras_."[668]

[Sidenote: Fijian dread of ghosts. Uproar made to drive away ghosts.]

Of apparitions the Fijians used to be very much afraid. They believed that the ghosts of the dead appeared often and afflicted mankind, especially in sleep. The spirits of slain men, unchaste women, and women who died in childbed were most dreaded. After a death people have been known to hide themselves for a few days, until they supposed the soul of the departed was at rest. Also they shunned the places where people had been murdered, particularly when it rained, because then the moans of the ghost could be heard as he sat up, trying to relieve his pain by resting his poor aching head on the palms of his hands. Some however said that the moans were caused by the soul of the murderer knocking down the soul of his victim, whenever the wretched spirit attempted to get up.[669] When Fijians pa.s.sed a spot in the forest where a man had been clubbed to death, they would sometimes throw leaves on it as a mark of homage to his spirit, believing that they would soon be killed themselves if they failed in thus paying their respects to the ghost.[670] And after they had buried a man alive, as they very often did, these savages used at nightfall to make a great din with large bamboos, trumpet-sh.e.l.ls, and so forth, in order to drive away his spirit and deter him from loitering about his old home. "The uproar is always held in the late habitation of the deceased, the reason being that as no one knows for a certainty what reception he will receive in the invisible world, if it is not according to his expectations he will most likely repent of his bargain and wish to come back. For that reason they make a great noise to frighten him away, and dismantle his former habitation of everything that is attractive, and clothe it with everything that to their ideas seems repulsive."[671]

[Sidenote: Killing a ghost.]

However, stronger measures were sometimes resorted to. It was believed to be possible to kill a troublesome ghost. Once it happened that many chiefs feasted in the house of Tanoa, King of Ambau. In the course of the evening one of them related how he had slain a neighbouring chief.

That very night, having occasion to leave the house, he saw, as he believed, the ghost of his victim, hurled his club at him, and killed him stone dead. On his return to the house he roused the king and the rest of the inmates from their slumbers, and recounted his exploit. The matter was deemed of high importance, and they all sat on it in solemn conclave. Next morning a search was made for the club on the scene of the murder; it was found and carried with great pomp and parade to the nearest temple, where it was laid up for a perpetual memorial. Everybody was firmly persuaded that by this swas.h.i.+ng blow the ghost had been not only killed but annihilated.[672]

[Sidenote: Dazing the ghost of a grandfather.]

A more humane method of dealing with an importunate ghost used to be adopted in Vanua-levu, the largest but one of the Fijian islands. In that island, as a consequence, it is said, of reckoning kins.h.i.+p through the mother, a child was considered to be more closely related to his grandfather than to his father. Hence when a grandfather died, his ghost naturally desired to carry off the soul of his grandchild with him to the spirit land. The wish was creditable to the warmth of his domestic affection, but if the survivors preferred to keep the child with them a little longer in this vale of tears, they took steps to baffle grandfather's ghost. For this purpose when the old man's body was stretched on the bier and raised on the shoulders of half-a-dozen stout young fellows, the mother's brother would take the grandchild in his arms and begin running round and round the corpse. Round and round he ran, and grandfather's ghost looked after him, craning his neck from side to side and twisting it round and round in the vain attempt to follow the rapid movements of the runner. When the ghost was supposed to be quite giddy with this unwonted exercise, the mother's brother made a sudden dart away with the child in his arms, the bearers fairly bolted with the corpse to the grave, and before he could collect his scattered wits grandfather was safely landed in his long home.[673]

[Sidenote: Special relation of grandfather to grandchild. Soul of a grandfather reborn in his grandchildren.]

Mr. Fison, who reports this quaint mode of bilking a ghost, explains the special attachment of the grandfather to his grandchild by the rule of female descent which survives in Vanua-levu; and it is true that where exogamy prevails along with female descent, a child regularly belongs to the exogamous cla.s.s of its grandfather and not of its father and hence may be regarded as more closely akin to the grandfather than to the father. But on the other hand it is to be observed that exogamy at present is unknown in Fiji, and at most its former prevalence in the islands can only be indirectly inferred from relics of totemism and from the existence of the cla.s.sificatory system of relations.h.i.+p.[674] Perhaps the real reason why in Vanua-levu a dead grandfather is so anxious to carry off the soul of his living grandchild lies nearer to hand in the apparently widespread belief that the soul of the grandfather is actually reborn in his grandchild. For example, in Nukahiva, one of the Marquesas Islands, every one "is persuaded that the soul of a grandfather is transmitted by nature into the body of his grandchildren; and that, if an unfruitful wife were to place herself under the corpse of her deceased grandfather, she would be sure to become pregnant."[675]

Again, the Kayans of Borneo "believe in the reincarnation of the soul, although this belief is not clearly harmonised with the belief in the life in another world. It is generally believed that the soul of a grandfather may pa.s.s into one of his grandchildren, and an old man will try to secure the pa.s.sage of his soul to a favourite grandchild by holding it above his head from time to time. The grandfather usually gives up his name to his eldest grandson, and rea.s.sumes the original name of his childhood with the prefix or t.i.tle _Laki_, and the custom seems to be connected with this belief or hope."[676]

[Sidenote: A dead grandfather may reasonably reclaim his own soul from his grandchild.]

Now where such a belief is held, it seems reasonable enough that a dead grandfather should reclaim his own soul for his personal use before he sets out for the spirit land; else how could he expect to be admitted to that blissful abode if on arriving at the portal he were obliged to explain to the porter that he had no soul about him, having left that indispensable article behind in the person of his grandchild? "Then you had better go back and fetch it. There is no admission at this gate for people without souls." Such might very well be the porter's retort; and foreseeing it any man of ordinary prudence would take the precaution of recovering his lost spiritual property before presenting himself to the Warden of the Dead. This theory would sufficiently account for the otherwise singular behaviour of grandfather's ghost in Vanua-levu. At the same time it must be admitted that the theory of the reincarnation of a grandfather in a grandson would be suggested more readily in a society where the custom of exogamy was combined with female descent than in one where the same custom coexisted with male descent; since, given exogamy and female descent, grandfather and grandson regularly belong to the same exogamous cla.s.s, whereas father and son never do so.[677] Thus Mr. Fison may after all be right in referring the partiality of a Fijian grandfather for his grandson in the last resort to a system of exogamy and female kins.h.i.+p.

[Footnote 627: G. Brown, D.D., _Melanesians and Polynesians_ (London, 1910), pp. 23 _sq._, 125, 320 _sqq._]

[Footnote 628: G. Brown, _op. cit._ pp. 294 _sqq._; P. A. Kleint.i.tschen, _Die Kustenbewohner der Gazellehalbinsel_ (Hiltrup bei Munster, N.D.), pp. 90 _sqq._ The sh.e.l.l money is called _tambu_ in New Britain, _diwara_ in the Duke of York Island, and _aringit_ in New Ireland.]

[Footnote 629: Rev. G. Brown, _op. cit._ pp. 307, 313, 435, 436.]