savage and his ways we may fairly assume that they were no mere
outbursts of unbridled passion, but that in the minds of those who
practised them they had a definite significance and served a definite
purpose. The one thing that seems fairly clear about them is that in
some way they were associated with the worship or propitiation of the
dead. At all events we are told on good authority that the _Nanga_, or
sacred enclosure of stones, in which the severed foreskins were offered,
was "the Sacred Place where the ancestral spirits are to be found by
their worshippers, and thither offerings are taken on all occasions when
their aid is to be invoked. Every member of the _Nanga_ has the
privilege of approaching the ancestors at any time. When sickness visits
himself or his kinsfolk, when he wishes to invoke the aid of the spirits
to avert calamity or to secure prosperity, or when he deems it advisable
to present a thank-offering, he may enter the _Nanga_ with proper
reverence and deposit on the dividing wall his whale's tooth, or bundle
of cloth, or dish of toothsome eels so highly prized by the elders, and
therefore by the ancestors whose living representatives they are: or he
may drag into the Sacred _Nanga_ his fattened pig, or pile up there his
offering of the choicest yams. And, having thus recommended himself to
the dead, he may invoke their powerful aid, or express his thankfulness
for the benefits they have conferred, and beg for a continuance of their
goodwill."[692] The first-fruits of the yam harvest were presented with
great ceremony to the ancestors in the _Nanga_ before the bulk of the
crop was dug for the people's use, and no man might taste of the new
yams until the presentation had been made. The yams so offered were
piled up in the sacred enclosure and left to rot there. If any one were
impious enough to appropriate them to his own use, it was believed that
he would be smitten with madness. Great feasts were held at the
presentation of the first-fruits; and the sacred enclosure itself was
often spoken of as the _Mbaki_ or Harvest.[693]
[Sidenote: Periodical initiation of young men in the _Nanga_.]
But the most characteristic and perhaps the most important of the rites
performed in the _Nanga_ or sacred stone enclosure was the periodical
initiation of young men, who by participation in the ceremony were
admitted to the full privileges of manhood. According to one account the
ceremony of initiation was performed as a rule only once in two years;
according to another account it was observed annually in October or
November, when the _ndrala_ tree (_Erythrina_) was in flower. The
flowering of the tree marked the beginning of the Fijian year; hence the
novices who were initiated at this season bore the title of _Vilavou_,
that is, "New Year's Men." As a preparation for the feasts which
attended the ceremony enormous quantities of yams were garnered and
placed under a strict taboo; pigs were fattened in large numbers, and
bales of native cloth stored on the tie-beams of the house-roofs. Spears
of many patterns and curiously carved clubs were also provided against
the festival. On the day appointed the initiated men went first into the
sacred enclosure and made their offerings, the chief priest having
opened the proceedings by libation and prayer. The heads of the novices
were clean shaven, and their beards, if they had any, were also removed.
Then each youth was swathed in long rolls of native cloth, and taking a
spear in one hand and a club in the other he marched with his comrades,
similarly swathed and armed, in procession into the sacred enclosure,
though not into its inner compartment, the Holy of Holies. The
procession was headed by a priest bearing his carved staff of office,
and it was received on the holy ground by the initiates, who sat
chanting a song in a deep murmuring tone, which occasionally swelled to
a considerable volume of sound and was thought to represent the muffled
roar of the surf breaking on a far-away coral reef. On entering the
enclosure the youths threw down their weapons before them, and with the
help of the initiated men divested themselves of the huge folds of
native cloth in which they were enveloped, each man revolving slowly on
his axis, while his attendant pulled at the bandage and gathered in the
slack. The weapons and the cloth were the offerings presented by the
novices to the ancestral spirits for the purpose of rendering themselves
acceptable to these powerful beings. The offerings were repeated in like
manner on four successive days; and as each youth was merely, as it
were, the central roller of a great bale of cloth, the amount of cloth
offered was considerable. It was all put away, with the spears and
clubs, in the sacred storehouse by the initiated men. A feast concluded
each day and was prolonged far into the night.
[Sidenote: Ceremony of death and resurrection.]
On the fifth day, the last and greatest of the festival, the heads of
the young men were shaven again and their bodies swathed in the largest
and best rolls of cloth. Then, taking their choicest weapons in their
hands, they followed their leader as before into the sacred enclosure.
But the outer compartment of the holy place, where on the previous days
they had been received by the grand chorus of initiated men, was now
silent and deserted. The procession stopped. A dead silence prevailed.
Suddenly from the forest a harsh scream of many parrots broke forth, and
then followed a mysterious booming sound which filled the souls of the
novices with awe. But now the priest moves slowly forward and leads the
train of trembling novices for the first time into the inner shrine, the
Holy of Holies, the _Nanga tambu-tambu_. Here a dreadful spectacle meets
their startled gaze. In the background sits the high priest, regarding
them with a stony stare; and between him and them lie a row of dead men,
covered with blood, their bodies seemingly cut open and their entrails
protruding. The leader steps over them one by one, and the awestruck
youths follow him until they stand in a row before the high priest,
their very souls harrowed by his awful glare. Suddenly he utters a great
yell, and at the cry the dead men start to their feet, and run down to
the river to cleanse themselves from the blood and filth with which they
are besmeared. They are initiated men, who represent the departed
ancestors for the occasion; and the blood and entrails are those of many
pigs that have been slaughtered for that night's revelry. The screams of
the parrots and the mysterious booming sound were produced by a
concealed orchestra, who screeched appropriately and blew blasts on
bamboo trumpets, the mouths of which were partially immersed in water.
[Sidenote: Sacrament of food and water.]
The dead men having come to life again, the novices offered their
weapons and the bales of native cloth in which they were swathed. These
were accordingly removed to the storehouse and the young men were made
to sit down in front of it. Then the high priest, cheered perhaps by the
sight of the offerings, unbent the starched dignity of his demeanour.
Skipping from side to side he cried in stridulous tones, "Where are the
people of my enclosure? Are they gone to Tongalevu? Are they gone to the
deep sea?" He had not called long when an answer rang out from the river
in a deep-mouthed song, and soon the singers came in view moving
rhythmically to the music of their solemn chant. Singing they filed in
and took their places in front of the young men; then silence ensued.
After that there entered four old men of the highest order of initiates;
the first bore a cooked yam carefully wrapt in leaves so that no part of
it should touch the hands of the bearer; the second carried a piece of
baked pork similarly enveloped; the third held a drinking-cup of
coco-nut shell or earthenware filled with water and wrapt round with
native cloth; and the fourth bore a napkin of the same material.
Thereupon the first elder passed along the row of novices putting the
end of the yam into each of their mouths, and as he did so each of them
nibbled a morsel of the sacred food; the second elder did the same with
the sacred pork; the third elder followed with the holy water, with
which each novice merely wetted his lips; and the rear was brought up by
the fourth elder, who wiped all their mouths with his napkin. Then the
high priest or one of the elders addressed the young men, warning them
solemnly against the sacrilege of divulging to the profane any of the
high mysteries they had seen and heard, and threatening all such
traitors with the vengeance of the gods.
[Sidenote: Presentation of the pig.]
That ceremony being over, all the junior initiated men (_Lewe ni Nanga_)
came forward, and each man presented to the novices a yam and a piece of
nearly raw pork; whereupon the young men took the food and went away to
cook it for eating. When the evening twilight had fallen, a huge pig,
which had been specially set aside at a former festival, was dragged
into the sacred enclosure and there presented to the novices, together
with other swine, if they should be needed to furnish a plenteous
repast.
[Sidenote: Acceptance of the novices by the ancestral spirits.]
The novices were now "accepted members of the _Nanga_, qualified to take
their place among the men of the community, though still only on
probation. As children--their childhood being indicated by their shaven
heads--they were presented to the ancestors, and their acceptance was
notified by what (looking at the matter from the natives' standpoint) we
might, without irreverence, almost call the _sacrament_ of food and
water, too sacred even for the elders' hands to touch. This acceptance
was acknowledged and confirmed on the part of all the _Lewe ni Nanga_
[junior initiated men] by their gift of food, and it was finally
ratified by the presentation of the Sacred Pig. In like manner, on the
birth of an infant, its father acknowledges it as legitimate, and
otherwise acceptable, by a gift of food; and his kinsfolk formally
signify approval and confirmation of his decision on the part of the
clan by similar presentations."
[Sidenote: The initiation followed by a period of sexual license. Sacred
pigs.]
Next morning the women, their hair dyed red and wearing waistbands of
hibiscus or other fibre, came to the sacred enclosure and crawled
through it on hands and knees into the Holy of Holies, where the elders
were singing their solemn chant. The high priest then dipped his hands
into the water of the sacred bowl and prayed to the ancestral spirits
for the mothers and for their children. After that the women crawled
back on hands and feet the way they had come, singing as they went and
creeping over certain mounds of earth which had been thrown up for the
purpose in the sacred enclosure. When they emerged from the holy ground,
the men and women addressed each other in the vilest language, such as
on ordinary occasions would be violently resented; and thenceforth to
the close of the ceremonies some days later very great, indeed almost
unlimited, licence prevailed between the sexes. During these days a
number of pigs were consecrated to serve for the next ceremony. The
animals were deemed sacred, and had the run of the fleshpots in the
villages in which they were kept. Indeed they were held in the greatest
reverence. To kill one, except for sacrifice at the rites in the
_Nanga_, would have been a sacrilege which the Fijian mind refused to
contemplate; and on the other hand to feed the holy swine was an act of
piety. Men might be seen throwing down basketfuls of food before the
snouts of the worshipful pigs, and at the same time calling the
attention of the ancestral spirits to the meritorious deed. "Take
knowledge of me," they would cry, "ye who lie buried, our heads! I am
feeding this pig of yours." Finally, all the men who had taken part in
the ceremonies bathed together in the river, carefully cleansing
themselves from every particle of the black paint with which they had
been bedaubed. When the novices, now novices no more, emerged from the
water, the high priest, standing on the river bank, preached to them an
eloquent sermon on the duties and responsibilities which devolved on
them in their new position.[694]
[Sidenote: The intention of the initiatory rites seems to be to
introduce the young men to the ancestral spirits. The drama of death and
resurrection. The Fijian rites of initiation seem to have been imported
by Melanesian immigrants from the west.]
The general intention of these initiatory rites appears to be, as Mr.
Fison has said in the words which I have quoted, to introduce the young
men to the ancestral spirits at their sanctuary, to incorporate them, so
to say, in the great community which embraces all adult members of the
tribe, whether living or dead. At all events this interpretation fits in
very well with the prayers which are offered to the souls of departed
kinsfolk on these occasions, and it is supported by the analogy of the
New Guinea initiatory rites which I described in former lectures; for in
these rites, as I pointed out, the initiation of the youths is closely
associated with the conceptions of death and the dead, the main feature
in the ritual consisting indeed of a simulation of death and subsequent
resurrection. It is, therefore, significant that the very same
simulation figures prominently in the Fijian ceremony, nay it would seem
to be the very pivot on which the whole ritual revolves. Yet there is an
obvious and important difference between the drama of death and
resurrection as it is enacted in New Guinea and in Fiji; for whereas in
New Guinea it is the novices who pretend to die and come to life again,
in Fiji the pretence is carried out by initiated men who represent the
ancestors, while the novices merely look on with horror and amazement at
the awe-inspiring spectacle. Of the two forms of ritual the New Guinea
one is probably truer to the original purpose of the rite, which seems
to have been to enable the novices to put off the old, or rather the
young, man and to put on a higher form of existence by participating in
the marvellous powers and privileges of the mighty dead. And if such was
really the intention of the ceremony, it is obvious that it was better
effected by compelling the young communicants, as we may call them, to
die and rise from the dead in their own persons than by obliging them to
assist as mere passive spectators at a dramatic performance of death and
resurrection. Yet in spite of this difference between the two rituals,
the general resemblance between them is near enough to justify us in
conjecturing that there may be a genetic connexion between the one and
the other. The conjecture is confirmed, first, by the very limited and
definite area of Fiji in which these initiatory rites were practised,
and, second, by the equally definite tradition of their origin. With
regard to the first of these points, the _Nanga_ or sacred stone
enclosure with its characteristic rites was known only to certain
tribes, who occupied a comparatively small area, a bare third of the
island of Viti Levu. These tribes are the Nuyaloa, Vatusila, Mbatiwai,
and Mdavutukia. They all seem to have spread eastward and southward from
a place of origin in the western mountain district. Their physical type
is pure Melanesian, with fewer traces of Polynesian admixture than can
be detected in the tribes on the coast.[695] Hence it is natural to
enquire whether the ritual of the _Nanga_ may not have been imported
into Fiji by Melanesian immigrants from the west. The question appears
to be answered in the affirmative by native tradition. "This is the word
of our fathers concerning the _Nanga_," said an old Wainimala grey-beard
to Mr. Fison. "Long, long ago their fathers were ignorant of it; but one
day two strangers were found sitting in the _rara_ (public square), and
they said they had come up from the sea to give them the _Nanga_. They
were little men, and very dark-skinned, and one of them had his face and
bust painted red, while the other was painted black. Whether these two
were gods or men our fathers did not tell us, but it was they who taught
our people the _Nanga_. This was in the old old times when our fathers
were living in another land--not in this place, for we are strangers
here. Our fathers fled hither from Navosa in a great war which arose
among them, and when they came there was no _Nanga_ in the land. So they
built one of their own after the fashion of that which they left behind
them." "Here," says Mr. Basil Thomson, "we have the earliest
tradition of missionary enterprise in the Pacific. I do not doubt that
the two sooty-skinned little men were castaways driven eastward by one
of those strong westerly gales that have been known to last for three
weeks at a time. By Fijian custom the lives of all castaways were
forfeit, but the pretence to supernatural powers would have saved men
full of the religious rites of their Melanesian home, and would have
assured them a hearing. The Wainimala tribes can name six generations
since they settled in their present home, and therefore the introduction
of the _Nanga_ cannot have been less than two centuries ago. During that
time it has overspread one third of the large island."
[Sidenote: The general licence associated with the ritual of the _Nanga_
may be a temporary revival of primitive communism.]
A very remarkable feature in the _Nanga_ ritual consists in the
temporary licence accorded to the sexes and the suspension of
proprietary rites in general. What is the meaning of this curious and to
the civilised mind revolting custom? Here again the most probable,
though merely conjectural, answer is furnished by Mr. Fison. "We cannot
for a moment believe," he says, "that it is a mere licentious outbreak,
without an underlying meaning and purpose. It is part of a religious
rite, and is supposed to be acceptable to the ancestors. But why should
it be acceptable to them unless it were in accordance with their own
practice in the far-away past? There may be another solution of this
difficult problem, but I confess myself unable to find any other which
will cover all the corroborating facts."[696] In other words, Mr. Fison
supposes that in the sexual licence and suspension of the rights of
private property which characterise these festivals we have a
reminiscence of a time when women and property were held in common by
the community, and the motive for temporarily resuscitating these
obsolete customs was a wish to propitiate the ancestral spirits, who
were thought to be gratified by witnessing a revival of that primitive
communism which they themselves had practised in the flesh so long ago.
Truly a religious revival of a remarkable kind!
[Sidenote: Description of the _Nanga_ or sacred enclosure of stones.]
To conclude this part of my subject I will briefly describe the
construction of a _Nanga_ or sacred stone enclosure, as it used to exist
in Fiji. At the present day only ruins of these structures are to be
seen, but by an observation of the ruins and a comparison of the
traditions which still survive among the natives on the subject it is
possible to reconstruct one of them with a fair degree of exactness. A
_Nanga_ has been described as an open-air temple, and the description is
just. It consisted of a rough parallelogram enclosed by flat stones set
upright and embedded endwise in the earth. The length of the enclosure
thus formed was about one hundred feet and its breadth about fifty feet.
The upright stones which form the outer walls are from eighteen inches
to three feet high, but as they do not always touch they may be
described as alignments rather than walls. The long walls or alignments
run east and west, the short ones north and south; but the orientation
is not very exact. At the eastern end are two pyramidal heaps of stones,
about five feet high, with square sloping sides and flat tops. The
narrow passage between them is the main entrance into the sacred
enclosure. Internally the structure was divided into three separate
enclosures or compartments by two cross-walls of stone running north and
south. These compartments, taking them from east to west, were called
respectively the Little Nanga, the Great Nanga, and the Sacred Nanga or
Holy of Holies (_Nanga tambu-tambu_). The partition walls between them
were built solid of stones, with battering sides, to a height of five
feet, and in the middle of each there was an opening to allow the
worshippers to pass from one compartment to another. Trees, such as the
candlenut and the red-leaved dracaena, and odoriferous shrubs were
planted round the enclosure; and outside of it, to the west of the Holy
of Holies, was a bell-roofed hut called _Vale tambu_, the Sacred House
or Temple. The sacred _kava_ bowl stood in the Holy of Holies.[697] It
is said that when the two traditionary founders of the _Nanga_ in Fiji
were about to erect the first structure of that name in their new home,
the chief priest poured a libation of _kava_ to the ancestral gods,
"and, calling upon those who died long, long ago by name, he prayed that
the people of the tribe, both old and young, might live before
them."[698]
[Sidenote: Comparison of the _Nanga_ with the cromlechs and other
megalithic monuments of Europe.]
The sacred enclosures of stones which I have described have been
compared to the alignments of stones at Carnac in Brittany and Merivale
on Dartmoor, and it has been suggested that in the olden time these
ancient European monuments may have witnessed religious rites like those
which were till lately performed in the rude open-air temples of
Fiji.[699] If there is any truth in the suggestion, which I mention for
what it is worth, it would furnish another argument in favour of the
view that our European cromlechs and other megalithic monuments were
erected specially for the worship of the dead. The mortuary character of
Stonehenge, for example, is at least suggested by the burial mounds
which cluster thick around and within sight of it; about three hundred
such tombs have been counted within a radius of three miles, while the
rest of the country in the neighbourhood is comparatively free from
them.[700]
[Footnote 678: Th. Williams, _Fiji and the Fijians_, Second Edition
(London, 1860), i. 242 _sq._]
[Footnote 679: Charles Wilkes, _Narrative of the United States Exploring
Expedition_, New Edition (New York, 1851), iii. 86.]
[Footnote 680: John Jackson's Narrative, in Capt. J. E. Erskine's
_Journal of a Cruise among the Islands of the Western Pacific_ (London,
1853), pp. 475-477. The narrator, John Jackson, was an English seaman
who resided alone among the Fijians for nearly two years and learned
their language.]
[Footnote 681: Ch. Wilkes, _op. cit._ iii. 96.]
[Footnote 682: _United States Exploring Expedition, Ethnology and
Philology_, by H. Hale (Philadelphia, 1846), p. 65. Compare Capt. J. E.
Erskine, _op. cit._ p. 248: "It would also seem that a belief in the
resurrection of the body, in the exact condition in which it leaves the
world, is one of the causes that induce, in many instances, a desire for
death in the vigour of manhood, rather than in the decrepitude of old
age"; Th. Williams, _op. cit._ i. 183: "The heathen notion is, that, as
they die, such will their condition be in another world; hence their
desire to escape extreme infirmity."]
[Footnote 683: Ch. Wilkes, _op. cit._ iii. 94 _sq._ Compare Th.
Williams, _Fiji and the Fijians_, i. 183-186; Lorimer Fison, _Tales from
Old Fiji_ (London, 1904), pp. xxv. _sq._]
[Footnote 684: Ch. Wilkes, _op. cit._ iii. 96. Compare Th. Williams,
_op. cit._ i. 188 _sq._, 193 _sqq._, 200-202; Lorimer Fison, _op. cit._
pp. xxv. _sq._]
[Footnote 685: Th. Williams, _op. cit._ i. 200.]
[Footnote 686: Th. Williams, _op. cit._ i. 189; Lorimer Fison, _op.
cit._ p. xvi.]
[Footnote 687: Th. Williams, _op. cit._ i. 189.]
[Footnote 688: Th. Williams, _op. cit._ i. 197.]
[Footnote 689: Ch. Wilkes, _op. cit._ iii. 100. Williams also says (_op.
cit._ i. 167) that the proper time for performing the rite of
circumcision was after the death of a chief, and he tells us that "many
rude games attend it. Blindfolded youths strike at thin vessels of water
hung from the branch of a tree. At Lakemba, the men arm themselves with
branches of the cocoa-nut, and carry on a sham fight. At Ono, they
wrestle. At Mbau, they fillip small stones from the end of a bamboo with
sufficient force to make the person hit wince again. On Vanua Levu,
there is a mock siege."]
[Footnote 690: Th. Williams, _op. cit._ i. 198.]