The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead Part 8

Whenever the sacred store-house is visited and its contents examined, the old men explain to the younger men the marks incised on the sticks and stones, and recite the traditions a.s.sociated with the dead men to whom they belonged;[130] so that these rude objects of wood and stone, with the lines and dots scratched on them, serve the savages as memorials of the past; they are in fact rudimentary archives as well as, we may almost say, rudimentary idols; for a stone or stick which represents a revered ancestor and is supposed to be endowed with some portion of his spirit, is not far from being an idol. No wonder, therefore, that they are guarded and treasured by a tribe as its most precious possession. When a group of natives have been robbed of them by thoughtless white men and have found the sacred store-house empty, they have tried to kill the traitor who betrayed the hallowed spot to the strangers, and have remained in camp for a fortnight weeping and wailing for the loss and plastering themselves with pipeclay, which is their token of mourning for the dead.[131] Yet, as a great mark of friends.h.i.+p, they will sometimes lend these sacred sticks and stones to a neighbouring group; for believing that the sticks and stones are a.s.sociated with the spiritual parts of their former and present owners, they naturally wish to have as many of them as possible and regard their possession as a treasure of great price, a sort of reservoir of spiritual force,[132] which can be turned to account not only in battle by worsting the enemy, but in various other ways, such as by magically increasing the food supply. For instance, when a man of the gra.s.s-seed totem wishes to increase the supply of gra.s.s-seed in order that it may be eaten by people of other totems, he goes to the sacred store-house, clears the ground all around it, takes out a few of the holy sticks and stones, smears them with red ochre and decorates them with birds' down, chanting a spell all the time. Then he rubs them together so that the down flies off in all directions; this is supposed to carry with it the magical virtue of the sticks or stones and so to fertilise the gra.s.s-seed.[133]

[Sidenote: Elements of a wors.h.i.+p of the dead. Marvellous powers attributed by the Central Australians to their remote ancestors of the _alcheringa_ or dream time.]

On the whole, when we survey these practices and beliefs of the Central Australian aborigines, we may perhaps conclude that, if they do not amount to a wors.h.i.+p of the dead, they at least contain the elements out of which such a wors.h.i.+p might easily be developed. At first sight, no doubt, their faith in the transmigration of souls seems and perhaps really is a serious impediment to a wors.h.i.+p of the dead in the strict sense of the word. For if they themselves are the dead come to life again, it is difficult to see how they can wors.h.i.+p the spirits of the dead without also wors.h.i.+pping each other, since they are all by hypothesis simply these wors.h.i.+pful spirits reincarnated. But though in theory every living man and woman is merely an ancestor or ancestress born again and therefore should be his or her equal, in practice they appear to admit that their forefathers of the remote _alcheringa_ or dream time were endowed with many marvellous powers which their modern reincarnations cannot lay claim to, and that accordingly these ancestral spirits were more to be reverenced, were in fact more wors.h.i.+pful, than their living representatives. On this subject Messrs. Spencer and Gillen observe: "The Central Australian native is firmly convinced, as will be seen from the accounts relating to their _alcheringa_ ancestors, that the latter were endowed with powers such as no living man now possesses.

They could travel underground or mount into the sky, and could make creeks and water-courses, mountain-ranges, sand-hills, and plains. In very many cases the actual names of these natives are preserved in their traditions, but, so far as we have been able to discover, there is no instance of any one of them being regarded in the light of a 'deity.'

Amongst the Central Australian natives there is never any idea of appealing for a.s.sistance to any one of these Alcheringa ancestors in any way, nor is there any attempt made in the direction of propitiation, with one single exception in the case of the mythic creature called Wollunqua, amongst the Warramunga tribe, who, it may be remarked, is most distinctly regarded as a snake and not as a human being."[134] Thus far Messrs. Spencer and Gillen. From their testimony it appears that with a single possible exception, to which I will return immediately, the Central Australian aborigines are not known to wors.h.i.+p any of their dead ancestors; they indeed believe their remote forefathers of the _alcheringa_ age to have been endowed with marvellous powers which they themselves do not possess; but they do not regard these ancestral spirits as deities, nor do they pray and sacrifice to them for help and protection. The single possible exception to this general rule known to Messrs. Spencer and Gillen is the case of the mythical water-snake called Wollunqua, who is in a sense revered and propitiated by the Warramunga tribe. The case is interesting and instructive as indicative of an advance from magic towards religion in the strict sense of the word. Accordingly I propose to consider it somewhat fully.

[Sidenote: The Wollunqua, a mythical water-snake, one of the Warramunga totems.]

The Wollunqua is one of the many totems of the Warramunga tribe. It is to be borne in mind that, though every Australian tribe has many totems which are most commonly animals or plants and more rarely other natural objects, all the totems are not respected by all the members of the tribe; each totem is respected only by a particular group of men and women in the tribe, who believe themselves to be descended from the same totemic ancestor. Thus the whole tribe is broken up into many groups or bodies of men and women, each group knit together by a belief in a common descent from the totem, by a common respect for the totemic species, whether it be a species of animals or plants, or what not, and finally by the possession of a common name derived from the totem. Thus, for example, we have a group of men and women who believe themselves descended from an ancestor who had the bandicoot for his totem; they all respect bandicoots; and they are all called bandicoot people. Similarly with all the other totemic groups within the tribe. It is convenient to have a name for these totemic groups or tribal subdivisions, and accordingly we may call them clans, provided we remember that a totemic clan in this sense is not an independent political community such as the Scottish Highland clans used to be; it is merely a subdivision of the tribe, and the members of it do not usually keep to themselves but live more or less interfused with members of all the other totemic clans which together compose the tribe. Now amongst the Warramunga the Wollunqua or mythical water-snake is the totem of such a clan or tribal subdivision, the members of which believe themselves to be descended from the creature and call themselves by its name. So far, therefore, the Wollunqua is merely a totem of the ordinary sort, an object of respect for a particular section of the tribe. Like other totemic ancestors the Wollunqua is supposed to have wandered about the country leaving supplies of spirit individuals at various points, individuals who are constantly undergoing reincarnation. But on the other hand the Wollunqua differs from almost all other Australian totems in this, that whereas they are real objects, such as animals, plants, water, wind, the sun and moon, and so on, the Wollunqua is a purely mythical creature, which exists only in the imagination of the natives; for they believe it to be a water-snake so huge that if it were to stand up on its tail, its head would reach far up into the sky. It now lives in a large pool called Thapauerlu, hidden away in a lonely valley of the Murchison Range; but the Warramunga fear that it may at any moment sally out and do some damage. They say that it actually killed a number of them on one of its excursions, though happily they at last succeeded in beating it off. So afraid are they of the creature, that in speaking of it amongst themselves they will not use its proper name of Wollunqua but call it instead _urkulu nappaurinnia_, because, as they told Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, if they were to name it too often by its real name they would lose control over the beast and it would rush forth and devour them.[135] Thus the natives do not distinguish the Wollunqua from the rest of their actually existing totems, as we do: they have never beheld him with their bodily eyes, yet to them he is just as real as the kangaroos which they see hopping along the sands, as the flies which buzz about their heads in the suns.h.i.+ne, or as the c.o.c.katoos which flap screaming past in the thickets. How real this belief in the mythical snake is with these savages, was brought vividly home to Messrs. Spencer and Gillen when they visited, in company with some natives, the deep and lonely pool among the rocky hills in which the awful being is supposed to reside. Before they approached the spot, the natives had been talking and laughing freely, but when they drew near the water their voices were hushed and their demeanour became solemn. When all stood silent on the brink of the deep still pool, enclosed by a sandy margin on one side and by a line of red rocks on the other, two old men, the leaders of the totemic group of the Wollunqua, went down to the edge of the water and, with bowed heads, addressed the Wollunqua in whispers, asking him to remain quiet and do them no harm, for they were mates of his, and had brought two great white men to see where he lived and to tell them all about him. "We could plainly see," add Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, "that it was all very real to them, and that they implicitly believed that the Wollunqua was indeed alive beneath the water, watching them, though they could not see him."[136]

[Sidenote: Religious character of the belief in the Wollunqua.]

I need hardly point out what a near approach all this is to religion in the proper sense of the word. Here we have a firm belief in a purely imaginary being who is necessarily visible to the eye of faith alone, since I think we may safely a.s.sume that a water-snake, supposed to be many miles long and capable of reaching up to the sky, has no real existence either on the earth or in the waters under the earth. Yet to these savages this invisible being is just as real as the actually existing animals and men whom they perceive with their bodily senses; they not only pray to him but they propitiate him with a solemn ritual; and no doubt they would spurn with scorn the feeble attempts of shallow sceptics to question the reality of his existence or the literal truth of the myths they tell about him. Certainly these savages are far on the road to religion, if they have not already pa.s.sed the Rubicon which divides it from the common workaday world. If an unhesitating faith in the unseen is part of religion, the Warramunga people of the Wollunqua totem are unquestionably religious.

[Footnote 108: On the zoological peculiarities of Australia regarded as effects of its geographical isolation, see Alfred Newton, _Dictionary of Birds_ (London, 1893-96), pp. 317-319. He observes (p. 318) that "the isolation of Australia is probably the next oldest in the world to that of New Zealand, having possibly existed since the time when no mammals higher than marsupials had appeared on the face of the earth."]

[Footnote 109: For details see _Totemism and Exogamy_, i. 314 _sqq._]

[Footnote 110: Baldwin Spencer and F. J. Gillen, _Northern Tribes of Central Australia_ (London, 1904), p. 491.]

[Footnote 111: Spencer and Gillen, _Northern Tribes of Central Australia_, p. xi.]

[Footnote 112: Spencer and Gillen, _op. cit._ p. 545.]

[Footnote 113: Spencer and Gillen, _op. cit._ p. 546.]

[Footnote 114: Baldwin Spencer and F. J. Gillen, _Native Tribes of Central Australia_ (London, 1899), pp. 119-127, 335-338, 552; _id., Northern Tribes of Central Australia_, pp. 145-153, 162, 271, 330 _sq._, 448-451, 512-515. Compare _Totemism and Exogamy_, i. 188 _sqq._]

[Footnote 115: Spencer and Gillen, _Northern Tribes of Central Australia_, p. 147.]

[Footnote 116: See _Totemism and Exogamy_, i. 155 _sqq._, iv. 40 _sqq._]

[Footnote 117: Spencer and Gillen, _Native Tribes of Central Australia_, pp. 123, 126.]

[Footnote 118: Spencer and Gillen, _Native Tribes of Central Australia_, pp. 119-127, 128 _sqq._, 513; _id., Northern Tribes of Central Australia_, pp. 145 _sqq._, 257 _sqq._]

[Footnote 119: Spencer and Gillen, _Native Tribes of Central Australia_, pp. 132-135; _id._, _Northern Tribes of Central Australia_, pp. 258, 268 _sqq._]

[Footnote 120: Spencer and Gillen, _Native Tribes of Central Australia_, pp. 128, 134.]

[Footnote 121: Spencer and Gillen, _Native Tribes of Central Australia_, pp. 134 _sq._]

[Footnote 122: Spencer and Gillen, _Native Tribes of Central Australia_, pp. 133, 135; _id._, _Northern Tribes of Central Australia_, p. 269.]

[Footnote 123: Spencer and Gillen, _Northern Tribes of Central Australia_, p. 267.]

[Footnote 124: Spencer and Gillen, _Native Tribes of Central Australia_, pp. 139 _sq._]

[Footnote 125: Spencer and Gillen, _Northern Tribes of Central Australia_, p. 273.]

[Footnote 126: Spencer and Gillen, _Native Tribes of Central Australia_, p. 141.]

[Footnote 127: Spencer and Gillen, _op. cit._ p. 140]

[Footnote 128: Spencer and Gillen, _Native Tribes_, pp. 144, 145.]

[Footnote 129: Spencer and Gillen, _Native Tribes_, pp. 164, _sq._; _id._, _Northern Tribes_, pp. 261, 264.]

[Footnote 130: Spencer and Gillen, _Native Tribes_, p. 145.]

[Footnote 131: Spencer and Gillen, _Native Tribes_, p. 136.]

[Footnote 132: Spencer and Gillen, _Native Tribes_, pp. 158 _sq._]

[Footnote 133: Spencer and Gillen, _Northern Tribes_, pp. 271 _sq._]

[Footnote 134: Spencer and Gillen, _Northern Tribes of Central Australia_, pp. 490 _sq._]

[Footnote 135: Spencer and Gillen, _Northern Tribes of Central Australia_, pp. 226 _sq._ Another mythical being in which the Warramunga believe is _the pau-wa_, a fabulous animal, half human and somewhat resembling a dog. See Spencer and Gillen, _op. cit._ pp. 195, 197, 201, 210 _sq._ But the creature seems not to be a totem, for it is not included in the list of totems given by Messrs. Spencer and Gillen (_op.

cit._ pp. 768-773).]

[Footnote 136: Spencer and Gillen, _Northern Tribes of Central Australia_, pp. 252 _sq._]

LECTURE V

THE BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY AMONG THE ABORIGINES OF CENTRAL AUSTRALIA (_continued_)

[Sidenote: Beliefs of the Central Australian aborigines concerning the reincarnation of the dead. The mythical water-snake Wollunqua.]

In the last lecture we began our survey of the belief in immortality and the practices to which it has given rise among the aboriginal tribes of Central Australia. I shewed that these primitive savages hold a very remarkable theory of birth and death. They believe that the souls of the dead do not perish but are reborn in human form after a longer or shorter interval. During that interval the spirits of the departed are supposed to congregate in certain parts of the country, generally distinguished by some conspicuous natural feature, which accordingly the natives account sacred, believing them to be haunted by the souls of the dead. From time to time one of these disembodied spirits enters into a pa.s.sing woman and is born as an infant into the world. Thus according to the Central Australian theory every living person without exception is the reincarnation of a dead man, woman, or child. At first sight the theory seems to exclude the possibility of any wors.h.i.+p of the dead, since it appears to put the living on a footing of perfect equality with the dead by identifying the one with the other. But I pointed out that as a matter of fact these savages do admit, whether logically or not, the superiority of their remote ancestors to themselves: they acknowledge that these old forefathers of theirs did possess many marvellous powers to which they themselves can lay no claim. In this acknowledgment, accordingly, we may detect an opening or possibility for the development of a real wors.h.i.+p of ancestors. Indeed, as I said at the close of last lecture, something closely approaching to ancestor wors.h.i.+p has actually grown up in regard to the mythical ancestor of the Wollunqua clan in the Warramunga tribe. The Wollunqua is a purely fabulous water-snake, of gigantic dimensions, which is supposed to haunt the waters of a certain lonely pool called Thapauerlu, in the Murchison Range of mountains. Unlike the ancestors of the other totemic clans, this mythical serpent is never reborn in human form; he always lives in his solitary pool among the barren hills; but the natives think that he has it in his power to come forth and do them an injury, and accordingly they pray to him to remain quiet and not to harm them. Indeed so afraid of him are they that speaking of the creature among themselves they avoid using his proper name of Wollunqua and call him by a different name, lest hearing himself called by his true name he should rush forth and devour them. More than that they even endeavour to propitiate him by the performance of certain rites, which, however childish and absurd they may seem to us, are very solemn affairs for these simple folk. The rites were witnessed by Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, whose description I will summarise. It offers an interesting and instructive example of a ritual observed by primitive savages, who are clearly standing on, if they have not already crossed, the threshold of religion.

[Sidenote: Wanderings of the Wollunqua. Dramatic ceremonies in honour of the Wollunqua.]

Like all other totemic ancestors the Wollunqua is said to have arisen at a particular spot, to have wandered about the country, and finally to have gone down into the ground. Starting from the deep rocky pool in the Murchison Range he travelled at first underground, coming up, however, at various points where he performed ceremonies and left many spirit children, who issued from his body and remained behind, forming local totemic centres when he had pa.s.sed on. It is these spirit children who have formed the Wollunqua clan ever since, undergoing an endless series of reincarnations. Now the ceremonies which the clan perform in honour of their mythical ancestor the Wollunqua all refer to his wanderings about the country. Thus there is a particular water-hole called Pitingari where the great old water-snake is said to have emerged from the ground and looked about him. Here, accordingly, two men performed a ceremony. Each of them was decorated with a broad band of red down, which curved round both the front and the back of the performer and stood sharply out from the ma.s.s of white down with which all the rest of the upper part of his body was covered. These broad red bands represented the Wollunqua. Each man also wore a tall, conical helmet adorned with a curved band of red down, which, no doubt, likewise symbolised the mythical serpent. When the two actors in the little drama had been attired in this quaint costume of red and white down, they retired behind a bush, which served for the side scenes of a theatre.

Then, when the orchestra, composed of adult men, struck up the music on the ceremonial ground by chanting and beating boomerangs and sticks together, the performers ran in, stopping every now and then to shake themselves in imitation of the snake. Finally, they sat down close together with their heads bowed down on a few green branches of gum-trees. A man then stepped up to them, knocked off their head-dresses, and the simple ceremony came to an end.[137]

[Sidenote: Ceremony in honour of the Wollunqua.]

The next ceremony was performed on the following day at another place called Antipataringa, where the mythical snake is said to have halted in his wanderings. The same two men acted as before, but this time one of them carried on his head a curious curved bundle shaped like an enormous boomerang. It was made of gra.s.s-stalks bound together with human hair-string and decorated with white down. This sacred object represented the Wollunqua himself.[138] From this spot the snake was believed to have travelled on to another place called Tjunguniari, where he popped up his head among the sand-hills, the greater part of his body remaining underground. Indeed, of such an enormous length was the serpent, that though his head had now travelled very many miles his tail still remained at the starting-point and had not yet begun to take part in the procession. Here accordingly the third ceremony, perhaps we may say the third act in the drama, was performed on the third day. In it one of the actors personated the snake himself, while the other stood for a sand-hill.[139]

[Sidenote: Further ceremony in honour of the Wollunqua: the white mound with the red wavy band to represent the mythical snake.]

After an interval of three days a fourth ceremony was performed of an entirely different kind. A keel-shaped mound was made of wet sand, about fifteen feet long by two feet high. The smooth surface of the mound was covered with a ma.s.s of little dots of white down, except for a long wavy band of red down which ran all along both sides of the mound. This wavy red band represented the Wollunqua, his head being indicated by a small round swelling at one end and his tail by a short prolongation at the other. The mound itself represented a sand-hill beside which the snake is said to have stood up and looked about. The preparation of this elaborate emblem of the Wollunqua occupied the greater part of the day, and it was late in the afternoon before it was completed. When darkness fell, fires were lighted on the ceremonial ground, and as the night grew late more fires were kindled, and all of the men sat round the mound singing songs which referred to the mythical water-snake. This went on for hours. At last, about three o'clock in the morning, a ring of fires was lit all round the ceremonial ground, in the light of which the white trunks of the gum-trees and the surrounding scrub stood out weird and ghastly against the blackness of darkness beyond. Amid the wildest excitement the men of the Wollunqua totem now ranged themselves in single file on their knees beside the mound which bore the red image of their great mythical forefather, and with their hands on their thighs surged round and round it, every man bending in unison first to one side and then to the other, each successive movement being accompanied by a loud and simultaneous shout, or rather yell, while the other men, who were not of the Wollunqua totem, stood by, clanging their boomerangs excitedly, and one old man, who acted as a sort of ch.o.r.egus, walked backwards at the end of the kneeling procession of Wollunqua men, swaying his body about and lifting high his knees at every step. In this way, with shouts and clangour, the men of the totem surged twice round the mound on their knees. After that, as the fires died down, the men rose from their knees, and for another hour every one sat round the mound singing incessantly. The last act in the drama was played at four o'clock in the morning at the moment when the first faint streaks of dawn glimmered in the east. At sight of them every man jumped to his feet, the smouldering fires were rekindled, and in their blaze the long white mound stood out in strong relief. The men of the totem, armed with spears, boomerangs, and clubs, ranged themselves round it, and encouraged by the men of the other totems attacked it fiercely with their weapons, until in a few minutes they had hacked it to pieces, and nothing was left of it but a rough heap of sandy earth. The fires again died down and for a short time silence reigned. Then, just as the sun rose above the eastern horizon, the painful ceremony of subincision was performed on three youths, who had recently pa.s.sed through the earlier stages of initiation.[140]