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 class 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. xxxii.]
[Footnote 666: Th. Williams, _op. cit._ i. 248 _sq._; Lorimer Fison,
_op. cit._ pp. xxxi. _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 Institute_, 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 illustrated the unquestioning belief
which the Fijians entertain with regard to the survival of the human
soul after death. "The native superstitions 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 passage 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 illustrated 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 god
was, knowing it to be no use talking to him about Providence, a thing he
had never heard of. He said his god 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 god, 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 god to give you an appetite?' 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 god 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 relationship 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 assisted 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 superstitions 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 pass 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 principally 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 assented, 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 passed 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 entitled 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 principal
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 assisted 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
massacre of the Namena people at Viwa in 1839 eighty women were
strangled to accompany the spirits of their murdered husbands.[685]
[Sidenote: Human "grass" 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 cushion for the
dead husband to lie upon; in this capacity they were called grass
(_thotho_), being compared to the dried grass 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 grass in their graves, it does not transpire that husbands
were ever sacrificed at the death of their wives for the sake of serving
as grass to their dead spouses in the grave. The great truth that all
flesh is grass 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 shirked 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]
[Sidenote: Sacrifices of foreskins and fingers in honour of the dead.
Circumcision performed on a lad as a propitiatory sacrifice to save the
life of his father or father's brother. The rite of circumcision
followed by a licentious orgy.]
A curious sacrifice offered in honour of a dead chief consisted in the
foreskins of all the boys who had arrived at a suitable age; the lads
were circumcised on purpose to furnish them. Many boys had their little
fingers chopped off on the same occasion, and the severed foreskins and
fingers were placed in the chief's grave. When this bloody rite had been
performed, the chief's relatives presented young bread-fruit trees to
the mutilated boys, whose friends were bound to cultivate them till the
boys could do it for themselves.[689] Women as well as boys had their
fingers cut off in mourning. We read of a case when after the death of a
king of Fiji sixty fingers were amputated and being each inserted in a
slit reed were stuck along the eaves of the king's house.[690] Why
foreskins and fingers were buried with a dead chief or stuck up on the
roof of his house, we are not informed, and it is not easy to divine.
Apparently we must suppose that, when they were buried with the body,
they were thought to be of some assistance to the departed spirit in the
land of souls. At all events it deserves to be noted that according to a
very good authority a similar sacrifice of foreskins used to be made not
only for the dead but for the living. When a man of note was dangerously
ill, a family council would be held, at which it might be agreed that a
circumcision should take place as a propitiatory measure. Notice having
been given to the priests, an uncircumcised lad, the sick man's own son
or the son of one of his brothers, was then taken by his kinsman to the
_Vale tambu_ or God's House, and there presented as a _soro_, or
offering of atonement, in order that his father or father's brother
might be made whole. His escort at the same time made a present of
valuable property at the shrine and promised much more in future, should
their prayers be answered. The present and the promises were graciously
received by the priest, who appointed a day on which the operation was
to be performed. In the meantime no food might be taken from the
plantations except what was absolutely required for daily use; no pigs
or fowls might be killed, and no coco-nuts plucked from the trees.
Everything, in short, was put under a strict taboo; all was set apart
for the great feast which was to follow the performance of the rite. On
the day appointed the son or nephew of the sick chief was circumcised,
and with him a number of other lads whose friends had agreed to take
advantage of the occasion. Their foreskins, stuck in the cleft of a
split reed, were taken to the sacred enclosure (_Nanga_) and presented
to the chief priest, who, holding the reeds in his hand, offered them to
the ancestral gods and prayed for the sick man's recovery. Then followed
a great feast, which ushered in a period of indescribable revelry and
licence. All distinctions of property were for the time being suspended.
Men and women arrayed themselves in all manner of fantastic garbs,
addressed one another in the foulest language, and practised
unmentionable abominations openly in the public square of the town. The
nearest relationships, even that of own brother and sister, seemed to be
no bar to the general licence, the extent of which was indicated by the
expressive phrase of an old Nandi chief, who said, "While it lasts, we
are just like the pigs." This feasting and orgy might be kept up for
several days, after which the ordinary restraints of society and the
common decencies of life were observed once more. The rights of private
property were again respected; the abandoned revellers and debauchees
settled down into staid married couples; and brothers and sisters, in
accordance with the regular Fijian etiquette, might not so much as speak
to one another. It should be added that these extravagances in connexion
with the rite of circumcision appear to have been practised only in
certain districts of Viti Levu, the largest of the Fijian Islands, where
they were always associated with the sacred stone enclosures which went
by the name of _Nanga_.[691]
[Sidenote: These orgies were apparently associated with the worship of
the dead, to whom offerings were made in the _Nanga_ or sacred enclosure
of stones.]