The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead Volume I Part 39

[Footnote 651: Th. Williams, _op. cit._ i. 60 _sq._]

[Footnote 652: Basil Thomson, _The Fijians_, pp. 338, 389 _sq._ The Fijians are in the main vegetarians, but the vegetables which they cultivate "contain a large proportion of starch and water, and are deficient in proteids. Moreover, the supply of the princ.i.p.al staples is irregular, being greatly affected by variable seasons, and the attacks of insects and vermin. Very few of them will bear keeping, and almost all of them must be eaten when ripe. As the food is of low nutritive value, a native always eats to repletion. In times of plenty a full-grown man will eat as much as ten pounds' weight of vegetables in the day; he will seldom be satisfied with less than five. A great quant.i.ty, therefore, is required to feed a very few people, and as everything is transported by hand, a disproportionate amount of time is spent in transporting food from the plantation to the consumer. The time spent in growing native food is also out of all proportion to its value"

(Basil Thomson, _op. cit._ pp. 334 _sq._). The same writer tells us (p.

335) that it has never occurred to the Fijians to dry any of the fruits they grow and to grind them into flour, as is done in Africa.]

[Footnote 653: Capt. J. E. Erskine, _Journal of a Cruise among the Islands of the Western Pacific_ (London, 1853), pp. 272 _sq._]

[Footnote 654: Ch. Wilkes, _op. cit._ iii. 46, 363. As to the cruelty and depravity of the Fijians in the old days see further Lorimer Fison, _Tales from Old Fiji_ (London, 1904), pp. xv. _sqq._]

[Footnote 655: Th. Williams, _Fiji and the Fijians_, i. 6 _sq._ As to the scenery of the Fijian archipelago see further _id._, i. 4 _sqq._; Ch. Wilkes, _op. cit._ iii. 46, 322; _Stanford's Compendium of Geography and Travel, Australasia_, vol. ii. _Malaysia and the Pacific Archipelago_, edited by F. H. H. Guillemard (London, 1894), pp. 467 _sqq._; Miss Beatrice Grimshaw, _From Fiji to the Cannibal Islands_ (London, 1907), pp. 43 _sq._, 54 _sq._, 76-78, 106, 109 _sq._]

[Footnote 656: Th. Williams, _Fiji and the Fijians_, i. 5 _sq._, 11; Ch.

Wilkes, _op. cit._ iii. 46 _sq._ However, there is a remarkable difference not only in climate but in appearance between the windward and the leeward sides of these islands. The windward side, watered by abundant showers, is covered with luxuriant tropical vegetation; the leeward side, receiving little rain, presents a comparatively barren and burnt appearance, the vegetation dying down to the grey hues of the boulders among which it struggles for life. Hence the dry leeward side is better adapted for European settlement. See Ch. Wilkes, _op. cit._ iii. 320 _sq._; Th. Williams, _op. cit._ i. 10; B. Seeman, _Viti, an Account of a Government Mission to the Vitian or Fijian Islands in the years 1860-1861_ (Cambridge, 1862), pp. 277 _sq._]

[Footnote 657: Th. Williams, _op. cit._ i. 241; J. E. Erskine, _op.

cit._ p. 249; B. Seeman, _Viti_ (Cambridge, 1862), p. 398.]

[Footnote 658: William Mariner, _An Account of the Natives of the Tonga Islands_, Second Edition (London, 1818), ii. 129 _sq._ The _matabooles_ were a sort of honourable attendants on chiefs and ranked next to them in the social hierarchy; the _mooas_ were the next cla.s.s of people below the _matabooles_. See W. Mariner, _op. cit._ ii. 84, 86. Bolotoo or Bulu was the mythical land of the dead.]

[Footnote 659: Th. Williams, _Fiji and the Fijians_, i. 241.]

[Footnote 660: This is the opinion of my late friend, the Rev. Lorimer Fison, which he communicated to me in a letter dated 26th August, 1898.]

[Footnote 661: Communication of the late Rev. Lorimer Fison in a letter to me dated 3rd November, 1898. I have already published it in _Taboo and the Perils of the Soul_, pp. 29 _sq._]

[Footnote 662: Th. Williams, _op. cit._ i. 242; Lorimer Fison, _Tales from Old Fiji_, pp. 163 _sq._; _Taboo and the Perils of the Soul_, pp.

39 _sq._]

[Footnote 663: Th. Williams, _op. cit._ i. 250.]

[Footnote 664: Th. Williams, _op. cit._ i. 248.]

[Footnote 665: Lorimer Fison, _op. cit._ p. x.x.xii.]

[Footnote 666: Th. Williams, _op. cit._ i. 248 _sq._; Lorimer Fison, _op. cit._ pp. x.x.xi. _sq._]

[Footnote 667: Th. Williams, _op. cit._ i. 249.]

[Footnote 668: Basil Thomson, _The Fijians_ (London, 1908), p. 166. A _rara_ is a public square (Rev. Lorimer Fison, in _Journal of the Anthropological Inst.i.tute_, xiv. (1885) p. 17).]

[Footnote 669: Th. Williams, _op. cit._ i. 241.]

[Footnote 670: Ch. Wilkes, _op. cit._ iii. 50.]

[Footnote 671: Narrative of John Jackson, in Capt. J. E. Erskine's _Journal of a Cruise among the Islands of the Western Pacific_ (London, 1853), p. 477.]

[Footnote 672: Ch. Wilkes, _op. cit._ iii. 85.]

[Footnote 673: Lorimer Fison, _op. cit._ pp. 168 _sq_.]

[Footnote 674: W. H. R. Rivers, "Totemism in Fiji," _Man_, viii. (1908) pp. 133 _sqq._; _Totemism and Exogamy_, ii. 134 _sqq._]

[Footnote 675: U. Lisiansky, _A Voyage Round the World_ (London, 1814), p. 89.]

[Footnote 676: Ch. Hose and W. McDougall, _The Pagan Tribes of Borneo_ (London, 1912), ii. 47.]

[Footnote 677: Compare _Totemism and Exogamy_, iii. 297-299.]

LECTURE XIX

THE BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY AMONG THE NATIVES OF EASTERN MELANESIA (FIJI) (_continued_)

[Sidenote: Fijian indifference to death.]

At the close of last lecture I ill.u.s.trated the unquestioning belief which the Fijians entertain with regard to the survival of the human soul after death. "The native superst.i.tions with regard to a future state," we are told, "go far to explain the apparent indifference of the people about death; for, while believing in an eternal existence, they shut out from it the idea of any moral retribution in the shape either of reward or punishment. The first notion concerning death is that of simple rest, and is thus contained in one of their rhymes:--

"Death is easy: Of what use is life?

To die is rest."[678]

Again, another writer, speaking of the Fijians, says that "in general, the pa.s.sage from life to death is considered as one from pain to happiness, and I was informed that nine out of ten look forward to it with anxiety, in order to escape from the infirmities of old age, or the sufferings of disease."[679]

[Sidenote: John Jackson's account of the burying alive of a young Fijian man. Son buried alive by his father.]

The cool indifference with which the Fijians commonly regarded their own death and that of other people might be ill.u.s.trated by many examples. I will give one in the words of an English eye-witness, who lived among these savages for some time like one of themselves. At a place on the coast of Viti Levu, the largest of the Fijian Islands, he says, "I walked into a number of temples, which were very plentiful, and at last into a _bure theravou_ (young man's _bure_), where I saw a tall young man about twenty years old. He appeared to be somewhat ailing, but not at all emaciated. He was rolling up the mat he had been sleeping upon, evidently preparing to go away somewhere. I addressed him, and asked him where he was going, when he immediately answered that he was going to be buried. I observed that he was not dead yet, but he said he soon should be dead when he was put under ground. I asked him why he was going to be buried? He said it was three days since he had eaten anything, and consequently he was getting very thin; and that if he lived any longer he would be much thinner, and then the women would call him a _lila_ (skeleton), and laugh at him. I said he was a fool to throw himself away for fear of being laughed at; and asked him what or who his private G.o.d was, knowing it to be no use talking to him about Providence, a thing he had never heard of. He said his G.o.d was a shark, and that if he were cast away in a canoe and was obliged to swim, the sharks would not bite him. I asked him if he believed the shark, his G.o.d, had any power to act over him? He said yes. 'Well then,' said I, 'why do you not live a little longer, and trust to your G.o.d to give you an appet.i.te?' Finding that he could not give me satisfactory answers, and being determined to get buried to avoid the jeers of the ladies, which to a Feejeean are intolerable, he told me I knew nothing about it, and that I must not compare him to a white man, who was generally insensible to all shame, and did not care how much he was laughed at. I called him a fool, and said the best thing he could do was to get buried out of the way, because I knew that most of them work by the rules of contrary; but it was all to no purpose. By this time all his relations had collected round the door. His father had a kind of wooden spade to dig the grave with, his mother a new suit of _tapa_ [bark-cloth], his sister some vermilion and a whale's tooth, as an introduction to the great G.o.d of Rage-Rage. He arose, took up his bed and walked, not for life, but for death, his father, mother, and sister following after, with several other distant relations, whom I accompanied. I noticed that they seemed to follow him something in the same way that they follow a corpse in Europe to the grave (that is, as far as relations.h.i.+p and acquaintance are concerned), but, instead of lamenting, they were, if not rejoicing, acting and chatting in a very unconcerned way. At last we reached a place where several graves could be seen, and a spot was soon selected by the man who was to be buried. The old man, his father, began digging his grave, while his mother a.s.sisted her son in putting on a new _tapa_ [bark-cloth], and the girl (his sister) was besmearing him with vermilion and lamp-black, so as to send him decent into the invisible world, he (the victim) delivering messages that were to be taken by his sister to people then absent. His father then announced to him and the rest that the grave was completed, and asked him, in rather a surly tone, if he was not ready by this time. The mother then _nosed_ him, and likewise the sister. He said, 'Before I die, I should like a drink of water.' His father made a surly remark, and said, as he ran to fetch it in a leaf doubled up, 'You have been a considerable trouble during your life, and it appears that you are going to trouble us equally at your death.' The father returned with the water, which the son drank off, and then looked up into a tree covered with tough vines, saying he should prefer being strangled with a vine to being smothered in the grave. His father became excessively angry, and, spreading the mat at the bottom of the grave, told the son to die _faka tamata_ (like a man), when he stepped into the grave, which was not more than four feet deep, and lay down on his back with the whale's tooth in his hands, which were clasped across his belly. The spare sides of the mats were lapped over him so as to prevent the earth from getting to his body, and then about a foot of earth was shovelled in upon him as quickly as possible. His father stamped it immediately down solid, and called out in a loud voice, '_Sa tiko, sa tiko_ (You are stopping there, you are stopping there),'

meaning 'Good-bye, good-bye.' The son answered with a very audible grunt, and then about two feet more earth was shovelled in and stamped as before by the loving father, and '_Sa tiko_' called out again, which was answered by another grunt, but much fainter. The grave was then completely filled up, when, for curiosity's sake, I said myself, '_Sa tiko_' but no answer was given, although I fancied, or really did see, the earth crack a little on the top of the grave. The father and mother then turned back to back on the middle of the grave, and, having dropped some kind of leaves from their hands, walked away in opposite directions towards a running stream of water hard by, where they and all the rest washed themselves, and made me wash myself, and then we returned to the town, where there was a feast prepared. As soon as the feast was over (it being then dark), began the dance and uproar which are always carried on either at natural or violent deaths."[680]

[Sidenote: The readiness of the Fijians to die seems to have been partly a consequence of their belief in immortality.]

The readiness with which the Fijians submitted to or even sought death appears to have been to some extent a direct consequence of their belief in immortality and of their notions as to the state of the soul hereafter. Thus we are informed by an early observer of this people that "self-immolation is by no means rare, and they believe that as they leave this life, so will they remain ever after. This forms a powerful motive to escape from decrepitude, or from a crippled condition, by a voluntary death."[681] Or, as another equally early observer puts it more fully, "the custom of voluntary suicide on the part of the old men, which is among their most extraordinary usages, is also connected with their superst.i.tions respecting a future life. They believe that persons enter upon the delights of their elysium with the same faculties, mental and physical, that they possess at the hour of death, in short, that the spiritual life commences where the corporeal existence terminates. With these views, it is natural that they should desire to pa.s.s through this change before their mental and bodily powers are so enfeebled by age as to deprive them of their capacity for enjoyment. To this motive must be added the contempt which attaches to physical weakness among a nation of warriors, and the wrongs and insults which await those who are no longer able to protect themselves. When therefore a man finds his strength declining with the advance of age, and feels that he will soon be unequal to discharge the duties of this life, and to partake in the pleasures of that which is to come, he calls together his relations, and tells them that he is now worn out and useless, that he sees they are all ashamed of him, and that he has determined to be buried." So on a day appointed they met and buried him alive.[682]

[Sidenote: The sick and aged put to death by their relatives.]

The proposal to put the sick and aged to death did not always emanate from the parties princ.i.p.ally concerned; when a son, for example, thought that his parents were growing too old and becoming a burden to him, he would give them notice that it was time for them to die, a notice which they usually accepted with equanimity, if not alacrity. As a rule, it was left to the choice of the aged and infirm to say whether they would prefer to be buried alive or to be strangled first and buried afterwards; and having expressed a predilection one way or the other they were dealt with accordingly. To strangle parents or other frail and sickly relatives with a rope was considered a more delicate and affectionate way of dispatching them than to knock them on the head with a club. In the old days the missionary Mr. Hunt witnessed several of these tender partings. "On one occasion, he was called upon by a young man, who desired that he would pray to his spirit for his mother, who was dead. Mr. Hunt was at first in hopes that this would afford him an opportunity of forwarding their great cause. On inquiry, the young man told him that his brothers and himself were just going to bury her. Mr.

Hunt accompanied the young man, telling him he would follow in the procession, and do as he desired him, supposing, of course, the corpse would be brought along; but he now met the procession, when the young man said that this was the funeral, and pointed out his mother, who was walking along with them, as gay and lively as any of those present, and apparently as much pleased. Mr. Hunt expressed his surprise to the young man, and asked him how he could deceive him so much by saying his mother was dead, when she was alive and well. He said, in reply, that they had made her death-feast, and were now going to bury her; that she was old; that his brother and himself had thought she had lived long enough, and it was time to bury her, to which she had willingly a.s.sented, and they were about it now. He had come to Mr. Hunt to ask his prayers, as they did those of the priest. He added, that it was from love for his mother that he had done so; that, in consequence of the same love, they were now going to bury her, and that none but themselves could or ought to do so sacred an office! Mr. Hunt did all in his power to prevent so diabolical an act; but the only reply he received was, that she was their mother, and they were her children, and they ought to put her to death. On reaching the grave, the mother sat down, when they all, including children, grandchildren, relations, and friends, took an affectionate leave of her; a rope, made of twisted _tapa_ [bark-cloth], was then pa.s.sed twice around her neck by her sons, who took hold of it, and strangled her; after which she was put into her grave, with the usual ceremonies. They returned to feast and mourn, after which she was entirely forgotten as though she had not existed."[683]

[Sidenote: Wives strangled or buried alive at their husbands' funerals.]

Again, wives were often strangled, or buried alive, at the funeral of their husbands, and generally at their own instance. Such scenes were frequently witnessed by white residents in the old days. On one occasion a Mr. David Whippy drove away the murderers, rescued the woman, and carried her to his own house, where she was resuscitated. But far from feeling grateful for her preservation, she loaded him with reproaches and ever afterwards manifested the most deadly hatred towards him. "That women should desire to accompany their husbands in death, is by no means strange when it is considered that it is one of the articles of their belief, that in this way alone can they reach the realms of bliss, and she who meets her death with the greatest devotedness, will become the favourite wife in the abode of spirits. The sacrifice is not, however, always voluntary; but, when a woman refuses to be strangled, her relations often compel her to submit. This they do from interested motives; for, by her death, her connexions become ent.i.tled to the property of her husband. Even a delay is made a matter of reproach.

Thus, at the funeral of the late king Ulivou, which was witnessed by Mr.

Cargill, his five wives and a daughter were strangled. The princ.i.p.al wife delayed the ceremony, by taking leave of those around her; whereupon Tanoa, the present king, chid her. The victim was his own aunt, and he a.s.sisted in putting the rope around her neck, and strangling her, a service he is said to have rendered on a former occasion to his own mother."[684] In the case of men who were drowned at sea or killed and eaten by enemies in war, their wives were sacrificed in the usual way. Thus when Ra Mbithi, the pride of Somosomo, was lost at sea, seventeen of his wives were destroyed; and after the news of a ma.s.sacre of the Namena people at Viwa in 1839 eighty women were strangled to accompany the spirits of their murdered husbands.[685]

[Sidenote: Human "gra.s.s" for the grave.]

The bodies of women who were put to death for this purpose were regularly laid at the bottom of the grave to serve as a cus.h.i.+on for the dead husband to lie upon; in this capacity they were called gra.s.s (_thotho_), being compared to the dried gra.s.s which in Fijian houses used to be thickly strewn on the floors and covered with mats.[686] On this point, however, a nice distinction was observed. While wives were commonly sacrificed at the death of their husbands, in order to be spread like gra.s.s in their graves, it does not transpire that husbands were ever sacrificed at the death of their wives for the sake of serving as gra.s.s to their dead spouses in the grave. The great truth that all flesh is gra.s.s appears to have been understood by the Fijians as applicable chiefly to the flesh of women. Sometimes a man's mother was strangled as well as his wives. Thus Ngavindi, a young chief of Lasakau, was laid in the grave with a wife at his side, his mother at his feet, and a servant not far off. However, men as well as women were killed to follow their masters to the far country. The confidential companion of a chief was expected as a matter of common decency to die with his lord; and if he s.h.i.+rked the duty, he fell in the public esteem. When Mbithi, a chief of high rank and greatly esteemed in Mathuata, died in the year 1840, not only his wife but five men with their wives were strangled to form the floor of his grave. They were laid on a layer of mats, and the body of the chief was stretched upon them.[687] There used to be a family in Vanua Levu which enjoyed the high privilege of supplying a hale man to be buried with the king of Fiji on every occasion of a royal decease. It was quite necessary that the man should be hale and hearty, for it was his business to grapple with the Fijian Cerberus in the other world, while his majesty slipped past into the abode of bliss.[688]