Sacrifices to the dead

Where the souls of ancestors held the front place as objects of veneration, sacrifice and prayer were devoted to them; elsewhere spirits were the objects of these. But prayers of themselves reckoned as oblations - traditional forms, of which the meaning had often been long forgotten, but which had always passed by inheritance, and were even imparted for payment to the ignorant. Intercessory hymns, well composed and often very long, were distinguished from short invocations, the productions of the moment. They were held pleasing to the god, and even replaced the sacrifice. Fison notices, with regard to Fijian prayers, that petitions to the prejudice of an enemy as a rule balanced those for the suppliant's own profit.

Child-mummy on the bier used for burial, from Torres Straits. Approx. 960mm high (Berlin Museum)

Stay of the soul near the body and about the grave

Graves and funeral customs

In funeral customs the main underlying thought is the sacredness of the corpse by reason of the neighbourhood of the soul, even after its departure. But this only holds good for the relatives; strangers have no scruple about injuring a dead body. All dealings with the soul, which has been taken up to the gods, are most easily carried out in the neighbourhood of the body. For this reason, in New Zealand the priests sing over the body to assist the passage of the soul upwards at least to the eighth heaven; and on the assumption that the soul must be invited, if not compelled, by prayer or magic to leave the corpse, they stroke this with a whisk, and shake it. Visits paid by souls of living people are often hindered by putting on a mask, which would cut off the soul's return. Souls which neither remain united with the deity, nor can be propitiated by sacrifices, roam about the houses at night as ghosts. These wandering souls may be heard in the rustle of the leaves and the surge of the waves, or seen by moonlight as white phantoms. Souls of persons who had died at a distance were enticed by spreading a white cloth, and if a grasshopper or an ant came to the call, it was deemed that the end had been attained.

Old age often obtained reverence from a wish to be on good terms with the soul which was soon to depart. The deeper meaning of the widespread custom of sending wives and servants to accompany the dead into eternity, lay in the wish to give the departed soul an escort, or to send at least one soul as protection, in case it stood in need thereof. In this way a mother, grandmother, or aunt was strangled when a child died, that the infant soul might not be unprotected. Provision also had to be made for the fights which, as we have seen, take place on the road to Hades. It is only after several days, when it may be assumed that the soul of the corpse has been turned into a spirit, that the mourning begins; its object being even to this day to start the spirit upon the road into the next world, which it is perhaps unwilling to take. In view of the possibility of a periodic return, care is taken to renew the noise at stated times.

Various forms of interment

Great variety prevails in modes of interment. In the west the body is kept at hand as long as possible; and at least portions of it, especially the skull, and above all the lower jaw, are prepared for permanent conservation. On the Maclay coast of New Guinea the corpse has usually to be dried before the fire in the hut. In other islands it is hung up in mats between the branches of trees until the soft parts have decayed away, after which it is laid symmetrically with other skeletons in a cave on the seashore. Children's bodies are merely hung up in basket under the roof. Burial within the hut is customary in Fiji.

Among the Motus of Port Moresby the only sign of mourning is the incessant beating of drums for three days. When this is over, the grave is dug in front of the house, the dead body laid in a mat, and a little hut built over the grave. After a time the grave is opened, the corpse taken out and smeared on the elbows and knees with red ochre, while the widow smears herself with the decaying flesh. Then the dead man is put by again, and the little sepulchral house is gradually pulled to pieces, so that no trace of the grave is left. All these proceedings are accompanied by carousals.

In Tonga the corpses of eminent persons were washed, ornamented and oiled, and watched by women. At the actual interment the relations, clad in torn mats and wearing chaplets of the leaves of the ifi-tree, carried the body into its house, and buried it there in its clothes, often in a chest or little boat, and its most valuable possession with it. Then all, loudly singing, went to the shore, made baskets of coco-palm leaves, and poured white sand therein, with which they filled the upper part of the grave. The men remained for twenty days in lightly constructed huts near the house of mourning, the women within, both occupied in sacred offices. On the twentieth day, all went again to the shore, fetched black and white pebbles in newly-made baskets, and paved the sepulchral house therewith.

In Tahiti the entrails were removed and the cavity filled with cloths dipped in essential oils. The body was then kept till it fell to pieces, when the bones were buried, and the skull set up among the family.

In the Marquesas, the notables were buried in the marais, in a sitting posture, with the knees drawn up, and the head pressed down between the legs, and the hands passed under the knees. Funeral feasts were held, the invitations to which were carried by richly-clothed messengers.

There is an immediate relation between the dignity of the soul of a dead person and the treatment of his body. The lower classes seem often to have taken little trouble about their dead. In Hawaii a common man buried his dead in a crouching posture, wrapped in cloth, in a cave or in the ground; sometimes in a house. Food was put beside him. In New Zealand the slaves were thinly covered with earth; or in many cases thrown to the dogs or cast into the sea. In some districts it is said to have been usual to burn them. In Mangaia the custom obtained of wrapping the dead in white stuff and throwing them into one of two deep holes, according to their rank in society, the entrance to the nether world being different for persons of high degree and for the common herd.

But in the higher classes the corpse was generally mummified, and exposed to view for a certain time in the temple or the dead-house. For the purposes of embalmment the entrails were removed. In Hawaii the flesh was carefully separated from the bones and burnt; while of the bones themselves part were deposited in the family heiau as objects of divine honours, part distributed among friends. A kind of embalming also took place in Hawaii, and was not unknown in New Zealand, where burial customs most resembled those of Tahiti. There people's own houses often served as graves, the remains of the dead being allowed to stand in chests; otherwise they were interred. Children's bodies were also hung up in chests among the boughs of a tree. Indispensable articles were the kehui - the word means "forbidden," and passes into "taboo" - wooden posts, painted red, with carved faces, which stood round like sentinels.