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tribes and nations. There was placed the Babylonian "Land-of-no-Return," for the most part the Egyptian home of
the dead, the Greek Hades, the resting place of natives of Hood Peninsula and other places in New Guinea, in
Oceanica
[6. For convenient collections of cases, cf. Harrison, Prolegomena, passim, and Miles, Christmas, iii. pp. 161 ff.]
(Samoa)--to name only a few representative peoples.[7] On the other hand, it frequently happens that the place of
souls is otherwise located: on a distant mountain, as with some natives of British New Guinea;[8] or where the sun
sets (compare Egyptian ideas); or on an island far away;[9] or under the sea;[10] or in the heavens, either in some
defintitely designated luminary or in some indefinite locality (Omahas regard the Milky Way as the path to this
home by which spirits pass in turn to and through seven spirit worlds).[11] At times the information is quite definite,
as for example in parts of New Guinea.
"About Wedau and Wamira the spirits of the dead go eventually to some place to the eastward of Cape Frere, in a
valley in the mountains called Iola, the approach to the abode of the spirits being through a hole in the ground. When
the spirit arrives it is questioned at once, 'Where have you come
[7. JAI, xxviii (1899), 216 ff.; Neuhass, Deutsch Neu-Guinea, iii. 149 ff.; Westervelt, Legends of Maui, p. 129.
8. Seligmann, Melanesians, p. 192.
9. Westervelt, Legends of Maui, pp. 129 ff.; Codrington, Melanesians, pp. 255 ff.; Frazer, Immortality, p. 192.
10. Lambert, MS
urs et superstitions, pp. 13 ff.; Seligmann, Melanesians, pp. 655 ff.; Turner, Samoa, pp. 257-258.
11. Fletcher and La Flesche, 27th Report, etc., pp. 588-589.]
from?' 'What have you come for?' just as every time you go into a village every one you meet asks you, 'Where are
you going?' 'What are you after?' The newly arrived one says, 'I have come from Wedau'or 'Wamira,' as the case
may be, or the answer may state more explicitly the section of the village, and 'Where else should I go except to my
own people?' Then the question is asked, 'Who sent you?' and for answer the name of some sorcerer or witch is
given, the one responsible for the death. The spirit is admitted to its new home, where it finds feasting and dancing,
plenty of food, and apparently also some fighting, and should the spirit be killed, as some seem to think possible,
during such fighting, then it is the end, there is no more life of such."[12]
It would be expected that ideas differ greatly as to the character of the spirit world. A wide group of unrelated
peoples have looked on the place of the soul as melancholy and mournful, fitting the soul's unsubstantial character.
The saying of Hezekiah, king of Israel, after he had recovered from a dangerous illness, here leaps into the mind:
[12. Newton, In Far New Guinea, p.219.]
"For the grave cannot praise thee, death cannot celebrate thee:
They that go down into the pit cannot hope for thy truth.
The living, the living, he shall praise thee, As I do this day."[13]
Such were the conceptions of Babylonians, Hebrews, Greeks, and Romans. A noted Greek hero is made to declare
that he would rather be a lowly laborer on earth than have an exalted station among the dead. Adversely to this, not a
few peoples patterned their ideas of future life on the present world. Such is the content of the notion in cases
already cited[14] where primitive tribes mutilated foes to prevent the shades from taking revenge in the other world.
And in many other instances the imagination has compassed only similar conceptions.[15] The Thay of Indo-China
look on the next life as the counterpart of this.[16] The African Bakongo bury their dead late in the day so that the
spirits may
[13. Isa. 38:18-19.
14. Above, pp. 166 ff.
15 Lambert, MS
urs et superstitions, pp. 13 ff.; Seligmann, Melanesians, pp. 65S ff.; Gomes, Sea Dyaks of Borneo,
p. 208.
16. Anthropos, ii (1907), 619.]
arrive when the ghosts who preceded the present dead are home from their labor in the fields and may welcome the
newcomer.[17] Other Africans know of ghost towns where the dead live and congregate as they did while on
earth.[18] The Hausa ghosts have a city of their own, which has at least once been seen by a man who returned to
tell the tale. A traveler saw four caravans crossing the desert in different directions, and followed one which seemed
to him best. Suddenly he saw the ghost city in front of him, and in some way became cognizant of its nature. He
hurriedly turned about and escaped. This was almost miraculous, for the spirits summon travelers from a caravan,
and he who follows them to the ghost city never returns.[19] The ancient Egyptians conceived the land of the
departed and their life as duplicating under happier conditions life on the Nile; indeed there was a celestial Nile land,
where the social conditions which environed life on earth continued, even to the institution of slavery and subjection
of the peasant to the noble. And exactly on a par with this state of expectation
[17. Weeks, Primitive Bakongo, p. 270.
18. Talbot, In the Shadow of the Bush, passim.
19. Tremearne, Ban of The Bori, pp. 155-156.]
is the set of ideas regarding the "other side" entertained by South Sea people.[20] The custom in old Egypt, Japan,
and elsewhere, and in modern Africa, of slaughtering wives, servants, slaves, and cattle to provide a retinue and a
living for the dead in the spirit world is too well known to need substantiation here. We have already had before
us[21] the curious custom of providing Ushabtiu in Egypt, and have seen the record of the institution of a similar
custom in Japan, while the explanation given in China and Korea of the figures around the grave-mounds in those
countries has also been cited. We have to remember in taking note of these customs in the Far East that the practice
of magic there has for ages been almost as common and as inveterate as in Egypt.
We may further note that in parts of Fiji and New Guinea the souls of the departed are supposed to dwell in a great
community, and the puberty ceremonies are by some construed as having reference to introduction to ancestral
spirits in preparation for final union with them.[22]
[20. Williamson, South Sea Savage, p. 75.
21. Above, pp. 130 ff.
22. Frazer, Belief in Immortality, i. 434.]
In some regions the golden age of man is placed beyond the grave. Some British New Guinea tribes think of the
future life as a paradise, with no old age, sickness, crime, fighting, death, or evil spirits; where first marriages are
reëstablished and children are born who reach maturity and maintain that condition with unabated strength and
virility; and so it is with other South Sea islanders.[23]
The means of approach to this final abode varies, of course, with the grade of civilization, the location of the soul's
home, and many other circumstances usually dependent on local conditions. If the home is on an island or across a
river, a ferry may be conceived--thus Melanesians reproduce in part the ideas of the Greeks with their Charon and
the Styx.[24] Others conceive the entrance to be through well-known caves or holes, and exploration of these by the
reckless or foolhardy is discouraged by the belief that attempts at entrance will be punished by severe [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]