[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.]
[Footnote 579: R. H. Codrington, _The Melanesians_, pp. 271 _sq._]
[Footnote 580: G. Turner, _Samoa a Hundred Years Ago and long before_
(London, 1884), pp. 335 _sq._ This account is based on information
furnished by Sualo, a Samoan teacher, who lived for a long time on the
island. The statement that the fire kindled on the grave was intended
"to enable the soul of the departed to rise to the sun" may be doubted;
it may be a mere inference of Dr. Turner's Samoan informant. More
probably the fire was intended to warm the shivering ghost. I do not
remember any other evidence that the souls of the Melanesian dead ascend
to the sun; certainly it is much more usual for them to descend into the
earth.]
[Footnote 581: R. H. Codrington, _op. cit._ pp. 281 _sq._]
[Footnote 582: R. H. Codrington, _op. cit._ pp. 278 _sq._]
[Sidenote: Journey of the ghost to the other world.]
[Footnote 583: R. H. Codrington, _op. cit._ pp. 279 _sq._]
[Footnote 584: R. H. Codrington, _The Melanesians_, pp. 124 _sq._]
[Footnote 585: R. H. Codrington, _The Melanesians_, p. 121.]
[Footnote 586: R. H. Codrington, _The Melanesians_, pp. 125 _sqq._]
[Footnote 587: R. H. Codrington, _The Melanesians_, pp. 127, 128.]
[Footnote 588: R. H. Codrington, _The Melanesians_, pp. 129 _sq._]
[Footnote 589: Rev. J. Roscoe, "Kibuka, the War God of the Baganda,"
_Man_, vii. (1907) pp. 161-166; _id._, _The Baganda_ (London, 1911), pp.
301 _sqq._ The history of this African war-god is more or less mythical,
but his personal relics, which are now deposited in the Ethnological
Museum at Cambridge, suffice to prove his true humanity.]
LECTURE XVII
THE BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY AMONG THE NATIVES OF CENTRAL MELANESIA
(_concluded_)
[Sidenote: Public sacrifices to ghosts in the Solomon Islands.]
At the close of last lecture I described the mode in which sacrifices
are offered to a martial ghost in San Cristoval, one of the Solomon
Islands. We saw that the flesh of a pig is burned in honour of the ghost
and that the victim's blood is poured on the flames. Similarly in
Florida, another of the Solomon Islands, food is conveyed to worshipful
ghosts by being burned in the fire. Some ghosts are known by name to
everybody, others may be known only to individuals, who have found out
or been taught how to approach them, and who accordingly regard such
ghosts as their private property. In every village a public ghost is
worshipped, and the chief is the sacrificer. He has learned from his
predecessor how to throw or heave the sacrifice, and he imparts this
knowledge to his son or nephew, whom he intends to leave as his
successor. The place of sacrifice is an enclosure with a little house or
shrine in which the relics are kept; it is new or old according as the
man whose ghost is worshipped died lately or long ago. When a public
sacrifice is performed, the people assemble near but not in the sacred
place; boys but not women may be present. The sacrificer alone enters
the shrine, but he takes with him his son or other person whom he has
instructed in the ritual. Muttering an incantation he kindles a fire of
sticks, but may not blow on the holy flame. Then from a basket he takes
some prepared food, such as a mash of yams, and throws it on the fire,
calling out the name of the ghost and bidding him take his food, while
at the same time he prays for whatever is desired. If the fire blazes up
and consumes the food, it is a good sign; it proves that the ghost is
present and that he is blowing up the flame. The remainder of the food
the sacrificer takes back to the assembled people; some of it he eats
himself and some of it he gives to his assistant to eat. The people
receive their portions of the food at his hands and eat it or take it
away. While the sacrificing is going on, there is a solemn silence. If a
pig is killed, the portion burned in the sacrificial fire is the heart
in Florida, but the gullet at Bugotu. One ghost who is commonly known
and worshipped is called Manoga. When the sacrificer invokes this ghost,
he heaves the sacrifice round about and calls him, first to the east,
where rises the sun, saying, "If thou dwellest in the east, where rises
the sun, Manoga! come hither and eat thy _tutu_ mash!" Then turning he
lifts it towards where sets the sun, and says, "If thou dwellest in the
west, where sets the sun, Manoga! come hither and eat thy _tutu_!" There
is not a quarter to which he does not lift it up. And when he has
finished lifting it he says, "If thou dwellest in heaven above, Manoga!
come hither and eat thy _tutu_! If thou dwellest in the Pleiades or
Orion's belt; if below in Turivatu; if in the distant sea; if on high in
the sun, or in the moon; if thou dwellest inland or by the shore,
Manoga! come hither and eat thy _tutu_!"[590]
[Sidenote: First-fruits of the canarium nuts sacrificed to ghosts.]
Twice a year there are general sacrifices in which the people of a
village take part. One of these occasions is when the canarium nut, so
much used in native cookery, is ripe. None of the nuts may be eaten till
the first-fruits have been offered to the ghost. "Devil he eat first;
all man he eat behind," is the lucid explanation which a native gave to
an English enquirer. The knowledge of the way in which the first-fruits
must be offered is handed down from generation to generation, and the
man who is learned in this lore has authority to open the season. He
observes the state of the crop, and early one morning he is heard to
shout. He climbs a tree, picks some nuts, cracks them, eats, and puts
some on the stones in his sacred place for the ghost. Then the rest of
the people may gather the nuts for themselves. The chief himself
sacrifices the new nuts, mixed with other food, to the public ghost on
the stones of the village sanctuary; and every man who has a private
ghost of his own does the same in his own sacred place. About two months
afterwards there is another public sacrifice when the root crops
generally have been dug; pig or fish is then offered; and a man who digs
up his yams, or whatever it may be, offers his private sacrifice
besides.[591]
[Sidenote: Sacrifice of first-fruits to ancestral spirits in Tanna.]
In like manner the natives of Tanna, one of the Southern New Hebrides,
offered the first-fruits to the deified spirits of their ancestors. On
this subject I will quote the evidence of the veteran missionary, the
Rev. Dr. George Turner, who lived in Tanna for seven months in 1841. He
says: "The general name for gods seemed to be _aremha_; that means a
_dead man_, and hints alike at the origin and nature of their religious
worship. The spirits of their departed ancestors were among their gods.
Chiefs who reach an advanced age were after death deified, addressed by
name, and prayed to on various occasions. They were supposed especially
to preside over the growth of the yams and the different fruit trees.
The first-fruits were presented to them, and in doing this they laid a
little of the fruit on some stone, or shelving branch of the tree, or
some more temporary altar of a few rough sticks from the bush, lashed
together with strips of bark, in the form of a table, with its four feet
stuck in the ground. All being quiet, the chief acted as high priest,
and prayed aloud thus: 'Compassionate father! here is some food for you;
eat it; be kind to us on account of it.' And, instead of an _amen_, all
united in a shout. This took place about mid-day, and afterwards those
who were assembled continued together feasting and dancing till midnight
or three in the morning."[592]
[Sidenote: Private ghosts. Fighting ghosts kept as auxiliaries.]
In addition to the public ghosts, each of whom is revered by a whole
village, many a man keeps, so to say, a private or tame ghost of his own
on leash. The art of taming a ghost consists in knowing the leaves,
bark, and vines in which he delights and in treating him accordingly.
This knowledge a man may acquire by the exercise of his natural
faculties or he may learn it from somebody else. However he may obtain
the knowledge, he uses it for his own personal advantage, sacrificing to
the ghost in order to win his favour and get something from him in
return. The mode of sacrificing to a private ghost is the same as to a
public ghost. The owner has a sacred place or private chapel of his own,
where he draws near to the ghost in prayer and burns his bit of food in
the fire. A man often keeps a fighting ghost (_keramo_), who helps him
in battle or in slaying his private enemy. Before he goes out to commit
homicide, he pulls up his ginger-plant and judges from the ease or
difficulty with which the plant yields to or resists his tug, whether he
will succeed in the enterprise or not. Then he sacrifices to the ghost,
and having placed some ginger and leaves on his shield, and stuffed some
more in his belt and right armlet, he sallies forth. He curses his enemy
by his fighting ghost, saying, "Siria (if that should be the name of the
ghost) eats thee, and I shall slay thee"; and if he kills him, he cries
to the ghost, "Thine is this man, Siria, and do thou give me
supernatural power!" No prudent Melanesian would attempt to commit
manslaughter without a ghost as an accomplice; to do so would be to
court disaster, for the slain man's ghost would have power over the
slayer; therefore before he imbrues his hands in blood he deems it
desirable to secure the assistance of a valiant ghost who can, if need
be, overcome the ghost of his victim in single combat. If he cannot
procure such a useful auxiliary in any other way, he must purchase him.
Further, he fortifies himself with some personal relic, such as a tooth
or lock of hair of the deceased warrior, whose ghost he has taken into
his service; this relic he wears as an amulet in a little bag round the
neck, when he is on active service; at other times it is kept in the
house.[593]
[Sidenote: Garden ghosts.]
Different from these truculent spirits are the peaceful ghosts who cause
the garden to bear fruit. If the gardener happens to know such a ghost,
he can pray and sacrifice to him on his own account; but if he has no
such friend in the spirit world, he must employ an expert. The man of
skill goes into the midst of the garden with a little mashed food in his
left hand, and smiting it with his right hand he calls on the ghost to
come and eat. He says: "This produce thou shall eat; give supernatural
power (_mana_) to this garden, that food may be good and plentiful." He
digs holes at the four corners of the garden, and in them he buries such
leaves as the ghost loves, so that the garden may have ghostly power and
be fruitful. And when the yams sprout, he twines them with the
particular creeper and fastens them with the particular wood to which
the ghost is known to be partial. These agricultural ghosts are very
sensitive; if a man enters the garden, who has just eaten pork or cuscus
or fish or shell-fish, the ghost of the garden manifests his displeasure
by causing the produce of the garden to droop; but if the eater lets
three or four days go by after his meal, he may then enter the garden
with impunity, for the food has left his stomach. For a similar reason,
apparently, when the yam vines are being trained, the men sleep near the
gardens and never approach their wives; for should they tread the garden
after conjugal intercourse, the yams would be blighted.[594]
[Sidenote: Human sacrifices to ghosts.]
Sometimes the favour of a ghost is obtained by human sacrifices. On
these occasions the flesh of the victim does not, like the flesh of a
pig, furnish the materials of a sacrificial banquet; but little bits of
it are eaten by young men to improve their fighting power and by elders
for a special purpose. Such sacrifices are deemed more effectual than
the sacrifices of less precious victims; and advantage was sometimes
taken of a real or imputed crime to offer the criminal to some ghost.
So, for example, within living memory Dikea, chief of Ravu, convicted a
certain man of stealing tobacco, and sentenced him to be sacrificed; and
the grown lads ate pieces of him cooked in the sacrificial fire. Again,
the same chief offered another human sacrifice in the year 1886. One of
his wives had proved false, and he sent her away vowing that she should
not return till he had offered a human sacrifice to Hauri. Also his son
died, and he vowed to kill a man for him. The vow was noised abroad, and
everybody knew that he would pay well for somebody to kill. Now the Savo
people had bought a captive boy in Guadalcanar, but it turned out a bad
bargain, for the boy was lame and nearly blind. So they brought him to
Dikea, and he gave them twenty coils of shell money for the lad. Then
the chief laid his hand on the victim's breast and cried, "Hauri! here
is a man for you," and his followers killed him with axes and clubs. The
cripple's skull was added to the chief's collection, and his legs were
sent about the country to make known what had been done. In Bugotu of
Ysabel, when the people had slain an enemy in fight, they used to bring
back his head in triumph, cut slices off it, and burn them in sacrifice.
And if they took a prisoner alive, they would bring him to the sacred
place, the grave of the man whose ghost was to be honoured. There they
bound him hand and foot and buffeted him till he died, or if he did not
die under the buffets they cut his throat. As they beat the man with
their fists, they called on the ghost to take him, and when he was dead,
they burned a bit of him in the fire for the ghost.[595]
[Sidenote: Sacrifices to ghosts in Saa.]
At Saa in Malanta, one of the Solomon Islands, sacrifices are offered to
ghosts on various occasions. Thus on his return from a voyage a man will
put food in the case which contains the relics of his dead father; and
in the course of his voyage, if he should land in a desert isle, he will
throw food and call on father, grandfather, and other deceased friends.
Again, when sickness is ascribed to the anger of a ghost, a man of skill
is sent for to discover what particular ghost is doing the mischief.
When he has ascertained the culprit, he is furnished by the patient's
relatives with a little pig, which he is to sacrifice to the ghost as a
substitute for the sick man. Provided with this vicarious victim he
repairs to the haunt of the ghost, strangles the animal, and burns it
whole in a fire along with grated yam, coco-nut, and fish. As he does
so, he calls out the names of all the ghosts of his family, his
ancestors, and all who are deceased, down even to children and women,
and he names the man who furnished the pig for the ghostly repast. A
portion of the mixed food he preserves unburnt, wraps it in a dracaena
leaf, and puts it beside the case which contains the relics of the man
to whose ghost the sacrifice has been offered. Sometimes, however,
instead of burning a pig in the fire, which is an expensive and wasteful
form of sacrifice, the relatives of the sick man content themselves with
cooking a pig or a dog in the oven, cutting up the carcase, and laying
out all the parts in order. Then the sacrificer comes and sits at the
animal's head, and calls out the names of all the dead members of the
ghost's family in order downwards, saying, "Help, deliver this man, cut
short the line that has bound him." Then the pig is eaten by all present
except the women; nothing is burnt.[596]
[Sidenote: Sacrifices of first-fruits to ghosts in Saa.]
The last sort of sacrifices to ghosts at Saa which we need notice is the
sacrifice of first-fruits. Thus, when the yams are ripe the people fetch
some of them from each garden to offer to the ghosts. All the male
members of the family assemble at the holy place which belongs to them.
Then one of them enters the shrine, lays a yam beside the skull which
lies there, and cries with a loud voice to the ghost, "This is yours to
eat." The others call quietly on the names of all the ancestors and give
their yams, which are very many in number, because one from each garden
is given to each ghost. If any man has besides a relic of the dead, such
as a skull, bones, or hair, in his house, he takes home a yam and sets
it beside the relic. Again, the first flying-fish of the season are
sacrificed to ghosts, who may take the form of sharks; for we shall see
presently that Melanesian ghosts are sometimes supposed to inhabit the
bodies of these ferocious monsters. Some ghost-sharks have sacred places
ashore, where figures of sharks are set up. In that case the first
flying-fish are cooked and set before the shark images. But it may be
that a shark ghost has no sacred place on land, and then there is
nothing for it but to take the flying-fish out to sea and shred them
into the water, while the sacrificer calls out the name of the
particular ghost whom he desires to summon to the feast.[597]
[Sidenote: Vicarious sacrifices for the sick.]
Vicarious sacrifices for the sick are offered in San Cristoval to a
certain malignant ghost called Tapia, who is believed to seize a man's
soul and tie it up to a banyan tree. When that has happened, a man who
knows how to manage Tapia intercedes with him. He takes a pig or fish to
the sacred place and offers it to the grim ghost, saying, "This is for
you to eat in place of that man; eat this, don't kill him." With that he
can loose the captive soul and take it back to the sick man, who
thereupon recovers.[598]
[Sidenote: Sacrifices to ghosts in Santa Cruz. The dead represented by a
stock.]
In Santa Cruz the sacrifices offered to ghosts are very economical; for
if the offering is of food, the living eat it up after a decent
interval; if it is a valuable, they remove it and resume the use of it
themselves. The principle of this spiritual economy probably lies in the
common belief that ghosts, being immaterial, absorb the immaterial
essence of the objects, leaving the material substance to be enjoyed by
men. When a man of mark dies in Santa Cruz, his relations set up a stock
of wood in his house to represent him. This is renewed from time to
time, till after a while the man is forgotten or thrown into the shade
by the attractions of some newer ghost, so that the old stock is
neglected. But when the stock is first put up, a pig is killed and two
strips of flesh from the back bone are set before the stock as food for
the ghost, but only to be soon taken away and eaten by the living.
Similar offerings may be repeated from time to time, as when the stock
is renewed. Again, when a garden is planted, they spread feather-money
and red native cloth round it for the use of the ghost; but his
enjoyment of these riches is brief and precarious.[599]
[Sidenote: Native account of sacrifices to ghosts in Santa Cruz.]
To supplement the foregoing account of sacrifices to ghosts in Santa
Cruz, I will add a description of some of them which was given by a
native of Santa Cruz in his own language and translated for us by a
missionary. It runs thus: "When anyone begins to fall sick he seeks a
doctor (_meduka_), and when the doctor comes near the sick man he
stiffens his body, and all those in the house think a ghost has entered
into the doctor, and they are all very quiet. Some doctors tell the sick
man's relatives to kill a pig for the ghost who has caused the sickness.
When they have killed the pig they take it into the ghost-house and
invite some other men, and they eat with prayers to the ghost; and the
doctor takes a little piece and puts it near the base of the ghost-post,
and says to it: 'This is thy food; oh, deliver up again the spirit of
thy servant, that he may be well again.' The little portion they have
offered to the ghost is then eaten; but small boys may not eat of
it."[600] "Every year the people plant yams and tomagos; and when they
begin to work and have made ready the place and begun to plant, first,
they offer to the ghost who they think presides over foods. There is an
offering place in the bush, and they go there and take much food, and
also feather money. Men, women, and children do this, and they think the
ghost notices if there are many children, and gives much food at
harvest; and the ghost to whom they offer is named Ilene. When the
bread-fruit begins to bear they take great care lest anyone should light
a fire near the bole of the tree, or throw a stone at the tree. The
ghost, who they think protects the bread-fruit, is called Duka-Kane or
Kae Tuabia, who has two names; they think this ghost has four
eyes."[601] "The heathen thinks a ghost makes the sun to shine and the
rain. If it is continual sunshine and the yams are withering the people
assemble together and contribute money, and string it to the man with
whom the rain-ghost abides, and food also, and beseech him not to do the
thing he was doing. That man will not wash his face for a long time, he
will not work lest he perspire and his body be wet, for he thinks that
if his body be wet it will rain. Then this man, with whom the rain-ghost
is, takes water and goes into the ghost-house and sprinkles it at the
head of the ghost-post (_duka_), and if there are many ghost-posts in
the house he pours water over them all that it may rain."[602]
[Sidenote: Combination of magic with religion.]
In these ceremonies for the making of rain we see a combination of magic
with religion. The appeal to the rain-ghost is religious; but the
pouring of the water on the ghost-post is magical, being an imitation of
the result which the officiating priest or magician, whichever we choose
to call him, desires to produce. The taboos observed by the owner of the
rain-ghost so long as he wishes to prevent the rain from falling are
also based on the principle of homoeopathic or imitative magic: he
abstains from washing his face or working, lest the water or the sweat
trickling down his body should mimick rain and thereby cause it to
fall.[603]
[Sidenote: Prayers to the dead.]