[Sidenote: North Melanesian views as to the land of the dead.]

Sooner or later the souls of all the North Melanesian dead take their departure for the spirit land. But the information which has reached the living as to that far country is at once vague and inconsistent. They call it Matana nion, but whereabout it lies they cannot for the most part precisely tell. All they know for certain is that it is far away, and that there is always some particular spot in the neighbourhood from which the souls take their departure; for example, the Duke of York ghosts invariably start from the little island of Nuruan, near Mioko. Wherever it may be, the land of souls is divided into compartments; people who have died of sickness or witchcraft go to one place, and people who have been killed in battle go to another. They do not go unattended; for when a man dies two friends sleep beside his corpse the first night, one on each side, and their spirits are believed to accompany the soul of the dead man to the spirit land. They say that on their arrival in the far country, betel-nut is presented to them all, but the two living men refuse to partake of it, because they know that were they to eat it they would return no more to the land of the living. When they do return, they have often, as might be expected, strange tales to tell of what they saw among the ghosts. The principal personage in the other world is called the "keeper of souls." It is said that once on a time the masterful ghost of a dead chief attempted to usurp the post of warden of the dead; in pursuance of this ambitious project he attacked the warden with a tomahawk and cut off one of his legs, but the amputated limb immediately reunited itself with the body; and a second amputation was followed by the same disappointing result. Life in the other world is reported to be very like life in this world. Some people find it very dismal, and others very beautiful. Those who were rich here will be rich there, and those who were poor on earth will be poor in Hades. As to any moral retribution which may overtake evil-doers in the life to come, their ideas are very vague; only they are sure that the ghosts of the niggardly will be punished by being dumped very hard against the buttress-roots of chestnut-trees. They say, too, that all breaches of etiquette or of the ordinary customs of the country will meet with certain appropriate punishments in the spirit land. When the soul has thus done penance, it takes possession of the body of some animal, for instance, the flying-fox. Hence a native is much alarmed if he should be sitting under a tree from which a flying-fox has been frightened away. Should anything drop from the bat or from the tree on which it was hanging, he would look on it as an omen of good or ill according to the nature of the thing which fell on or near him. If it were useless or dirty, he would certainly apprehend some serious misfortune. Sometimes when a man dies and his soul arrives in the spirit land, his friends do not want him there and drive him back to earth, so he comes to life again. That is the explanation which the natives give of what we call the recovery of consciousness after a faint or swoon.[645]

[Sidenote: The land of the dead. State of the dead in the other world supposed to depend on the amount of money they left in this one.]

Some of the natives of the Gazelle Peninsula in New Britain imagine that the home of departed spirits is in Nakanei, the part of the coast to which they sail to get their shell money. Others suppose that it is in the islands off Cape Takes. So when they are sailing past these islands they dip the paddles softly in the water, and observe a death-like stillness, cowering down in the canoes, lest the ghosts should spy them and do them a mischief. At the entrance to these happy isles is posted a stern watchman to see that no improper person sneaks into them. To every ghost that arrives he puts three questions, "Who are you? Where do you come from? How much shell money did you leave behind you?" On his answers to these three questions hangs the fate of the ghost. If he left much money, he is free to enter the realm of bliss, where he will pass the time with other happy souls smoking and eating and enjoying other sensual delights. But if he left little or no money, he is banished the earthly paradise and sent home to roam like a wild beast in the forest, battening on leaves and filth. With bitter sighs and groans he prowls about the villages at night and seeks to avenge himself by scaring or plaguing the survivors. To stay his hunger and appease his wrath relatives or friends will sometimes set forth food for him to devour. Yet even for such an impecunious soul there is hope; for if somebody only takes pity on him and gives a feast in his honour and distributes shell money to the guests, the ghost may return to the islands of the blest, and the door will be thrown open to him.[646]

[Sidenote: Fiji and the Fijians.]

So much for the belief in immortality as it is reported to exist among the Northern Melanesians of New Britain and the Bismarck Archipelago. We now pass to the consideration of a similar belief among another people of the same stock, who have been longer known to Europe, the Fijians. The archipelago which they occupy lies to the east of the New Hebrides and forms in fact the most easterly outpost of the black Melanesian race in the Pacific. Beyond it to the eastward are situated the smaller archipelagoes of Samoa and Tonga, inhabited by branches of the brown Polynesian race, whose members are scattered over the islands of the Pacific Ocean from Hawaii in the north to New Zealand in the south. Of all the branches of the Melanesian stock the Fijians at the date of their discovery by Europeans appear to have made the greatest advance in culture, material, social, and political. "The Fijian," says one who knew him long and intimately, "takes no mean place among savages in the social scale. Long before the white man visited his shores he had made very considerable progress towards civilisation. His intersexual code had advanced to the 'patriarchal stage': he was a skilful and diligent husbandman, who carried out extensive and laborious agricultural operations: he built good houses, whose interior he ornamented with no little taste, carved his weapons in graceful and intricate forms, manufactured excellent pottery, beat out from the inner bark of a tree a serviceable papyrus-cloth, upon which he printed, from blocks either carved or ingeniously pieced together, elegant and elaborate patterns in fast colours; and, with tools no better than a stone hatchet, a pointed shell, and a firestick, he constructed large canoes capable of carrying more than a hundred warriors across the open sea."[647]

[Sidenote: Political superiority of the Fijians over the other Melanesians.]

Politically the Fijians shewed their superiority to all the other Melanesians in the advance they had made towards a regular and organised government. While among the other branches of the same race government can hardly be said to exist, the power of chiefs being both slender and precarious, in Fiji the highest chiefs exercised despotic sway and received from Europeans the title of kings. The people had no voice in the state; the will of the king was generally law, and his person was sacred. Whatever he touched or wore became thereby holy and had to be made over to him; nobody else could afterwards touch it without danger of being struck dead on the spot as if by an electric shock. One king took advantage of this superstition by dressing up an English sailor in his royal robes and sending him about to throw his sweeping train over any article of food, whether dead or alive, which he might chance to come near. The things so touched were at once conveyed to the king without a word of explanation being required or a single remonstrance uttered. Some of the kings laid claim to a divine origin and on the strength of the claim exacted and received from their subjects the respect due to deities. In these exorbitant pretensions they were greatly strengthened by the institution of taboo, which lent the sanction of religion to every exertion of arbitrary power.[648] Corresponding with the growth of monarchy was the well-marked gradation of social ranks which prevailed in the various tribes from the king downwards through chiefs, warriors, and landholders, to slaves. The resulting political constitution has been compared to the old feudal system of Europe.[649]

[Sidenote: Means of subsistence of the Fijians. Ferocity and depravity of the Fijians.]

Like the other peoples of the Melanesian stock the Fijians subsist chiefly by agriculture, raising many sorts of esculent fruits and roots, particularly yams, taro, plantains, bread-fruit, sweet potatoes, bananas, coco-nuts, ivi nuts, and sugar-cane; but the chief proportion of their food is derived from yams (Dioscorea), of which they cultivate five or six varieties.[650] It has been observed that "the increase of cultivated plants is regular on receding from the Hawaiian group up to Fiji, where roots and fruits are found that are unknown on the more eastern islands."[651] Yet the Fijians in their native state, like all other Melanesian and Polynesian peoples, were entirely ignorant of the cereals; and in the opinion of a competent observer the consequent defect in their diet has contributed to the serious defects in their national character. The cereals, he tells us, are the staple food of all races that have left their mark in history; and on the other hand "the apathy and indolence of the Fijians arise from their climate, their diet and their communal institutions. The climate is too kind to stimulate them to exertion, their food imparts no staying power. The soil gives the means of existence for every man without effort, and the communal institutions destroy the instinct of accumulation."[652] Nor are apathy and indolence the only or the worst features in the character of these comparatively advanced savages. Their ferocity, cruelty, and moral depravity are depicted in dark colours by those who had the best opportunity of knowing them in the old days before their savagery was mitigated by contact with a milder religious faith and a higher civilisation. "In contemplating the character of this extraordinary portion of mankind," says one observer, "the mind is struck with wonder and awe at the mixture of a complicated and carefully conducted political system, highly finished manners, and ceremonious politeness, with a ferocity and practice of savage vices which is probably unparalleled in any other part of the world."[653] One of the first civilised men to gain an intimate acquaintance with the Fijians draws a melancholy contrast between the baseness and vileness of the people and the loveliness of the land in which they live.[654]

[Sidenote: Scenery of the Fijian islands.]

For the Fijian islands are exceedingly beautiful. They are of volcanic origin, mostly high and mountainous, but intersected by picturesque valleys, clothed with woods, and festooned with the most luxuriant tropical vegetation. "Among their attractions," we are told, "are high mountains, abrupt precipices, conical hills, fantastic turrets and crags of rock frowning down like olden battlements, vast domes, peaks shattered into strange forms; native towns on eyrie cliffs, apparently inaccessible; and deep ravines, down which some mountain stream, after long murmuring in its stony bed, falls headlong, glittering as a silver line on a block of jet, or spreading like a sheet of glass over bare rocks which refuse it a channel. Here also are found the softer features of rich vales, cocoa-nut groves, clumps of dark chestnuts, stately palms and bread-fruit, patches of graceful bananas or well-tilled taro-beds, mingling in unchecked luxuriance, and forming, with the wild reef-scenery of the girdling shore, its beating surf, and far-stretching ocean beyond, pictures of surpassing beauty."[655] Each island is encircled by a reef of white coral, on which the sea breaks, with a thunderous roar, in curling sheets of foam; while inside the reef stretches the lagoon, a calm lake of blue crystalline water revealing in its translucent depths beautiful gardens of seaweed and coral which fill the beholder with delighted wonder. Great and sudden is the contrast experienced by the mariner when he passes in a moment from the tossing, heaving, roaring billows without into the unbroken calm of the quiet haven within the barrier reef.[656]

[Sidenote: Fijian doctrine of souls.]

Like most savages, the Fijians believed that man is animated by a soul which quits his body temporarily in sleep and permanently at death, to survive for a longer or a shorter time in a disembodied state thereafter. Indeed, they attributed souls to animals, vegetables, stones, tools, houses, canoes, and many other things, allowing that all of them may become immortal.[657] On this point I will quote the evidence of one of the earliest and best authorities on the customs and beliefs of the South Sea Islanders. "There seems," says William Mariner, "to be a wide difference between the opinions of the natives in the different clusters of the South Sea islands respecting the future existence of the soul. Whilst the Tonga doctrine limits immortality to chiefs, matabooles, and at most, to mooas, the Fiji doctrine, with abundant liberality, extends it to all mankind, to all brute animals, to all vegetables, and even to stones and mineral substances. If an animal or a plant die, its soul immediately goes to Bolotoo; if a stone or any other substance is broken, immortality is equally its reward; nay, artificial bodies have equal good luck with men, and hogs, and yams. If an axe or a chisel is worn out or broken up, away flies its soul for the service of the gods. If a house is taken down, or any way destroyed, its immortal part will find a situation on the plains of Bolotoo; and, to confirm this doctrine, the Fiji people can show you a sort of natural well, or deep hole in the ground, at one of their islands, across the bottom of which runs a stream of water, in which you may clearly perceive the souls of men and women, beasts and plants, of stocks and stones, canoes and houses, and of all the broken utensils of this frail world, swimming or rather tumbling along one over the other pell-mell into the regions of immortality. Such is the Fiji philosophy, but the Tonga people deny it, unwilling to think that the residence of the gods should be encumbered with so much useless rubbish. The natives of Otaheite entertain similar notions respecting these things, viz. that brutes, plants, and stones exist hereafter, but it is not mentioned that they extend the idea to objects of human invention."[658]

[Sidenote: Reported Fijian doctrine of two human souls, a light one and a dark one.]

According to one account, the Fijians imagined that every man has two souls, a dark soul, consisting of his shadow, and a light soul, consisting of his reflection in water or a looking-glass: the dark soul departs at death to Hades, while the light soul stays near the place where he died or was killed. "Probably," says Thomas Williams, "this doctrine of shadows has to do with the notion of inanimate objects having spirits. I once placed a good-looking native suddenly before a mirror. He stood delighted. 'Now,' said he, softly, 'I can see into the world of spirits.'"[659] However, according to another good authority this distinction of two human souls rests merely on a misapprehension of the Fijian word for shadow, yaloyalo, which is a reduplication of yalo, the word for soul.[660] Apparently the Fijians pictured to themselves the human soul as a miniature of the man himself. This may be inferred from the customs observed at the death of a chief among the Nakelo tribe. When a chief dies, certain men who are the hereditary undertakers call him, as he lies, oiled and ornamented, on fine mats, saying, "Rise, sir, the chief, and let us be going. The day has come over the land." Then they conduct him to the river side, where the ghostly ferryman comes to ferry Nakelo ghosts across the stream. As they attend the chief on his last journey, they hold their great fans close to the ground to shelter him, because, as one of them explained to a missionary, "His soul is only a little child."[661]

[Sidenote: Absence of the soul in sleep. Catching the soul of a rascal in a scarf.]

The souls of some men were supposed to quit their bodies in sleep and enter into the bodies of other sleepers, troubling and disturbing them. A soul that had contracted this bad habit was called a yalombula. When any one fainted or died, his vagrant spirit might, so the Fijians thought, be induced to come back by calling after it. Sometimes, on awaking from a nap, a stout man might be seen lying at full length and bawling out lustily for the return of his own soul.[662] In the windward islands of Fiji there used to be an ordeal called yalovaki which was much dreaded by evil-doers. When the evidence was strong against suspected criminals, and they stubbornly refused to confess, the chief, who was also the judge, would call for a scarf, with which "to catch away the soul of the rogue." A threat of the rack could not have been more effectual. The culprit generally confessed at the sight and even the mention of the light instrument; but if he did not, the scarf would be waved over his head until his soul was caught in it like a moth or a fly, after which it would be carefully folded up and nailed to the small end of a chief's canoe, and for want of his soul the suspected person would pine and die.[663]

[Sidenote: Fijian dread of sorcery and witchcraft.]

Further, the Fijians, like many other savages, stood in great terror of witchcraft, believing that the sorcerer had it in his power to kill them by the practice of his nefarious art. "Of all their superstitions," says Thomas Williams, "this exerts the strongest influence on the minds of the people. Men who laugh at the pretensions of the priest tremble at the power of the wizard; and those who become christians lose this fear last of all the relics of their heathenism."[664] Indeed "native agents of the mission who, in the discharge of their duty, have boldly faced death by open violence, have been driven from their posts by their dread of the sorcerer; and my own observation confirms the statement of more than one observer that savages not unfrequently die of fear when they think themselves bewitched."[665] Professed practitioners of witchcraft were dreaded by all classes, and by destroying mutual confidence they annulled the comfort and shook the security of society. Almost all sudden deaths were set down to their machinations. A common mode of effecting their object was to obtain a shred of the clothing of the man they intended to bewitch, some refuse of his food, a lock of his hair, or some other personal relic; having got it they wrapped it up in certain leaves, and then cooked or buried it or hung it up in the forest; whereupon the victim was supposed to die of a wasting disease. Another way was to bury a coco-nut, with the eye upward, beneath the hearth of the temple, on which a fire was kept constantly burning; and as the life of the nut was destroyed, so the health of the person whom the nut represented would fail till death put an end to his sufferings. "The native imagination," we are told, "is so absolutely under the control of fear of these charms, that persons, hearing that they were the object of such spells, have lain down on their mats, and died through fear."[666] To guard against the fell craft of the magician the people resorted to many precautions. A man who suspected another of plotting against him would be careful not to eat in his presence or at all events to leave no morsel of food behind, lest the other should secrete it and bewitch him by it; and for the same reason people disposed of their garments so that no part could be removed; and when they had their hair cut they generally hid the clippings in the thatch of their own houses. Some even built themselves a small hut and surrounded it with a moat, believing that a little water had power to neutralise the charms directed against them.[667]

[Sidenote: The fear of sorcery has had the beneficial effect of enforcing habits of personal cleanliness.]

"In the face of such instances as these," says one who knows the Fijians well, "it demands some courage to assert that upon the whole the belief in witchcraft was formerly a positive advantage to the community. It filled, in fact, the place of a system of sanitation. The wizard's tools consisting in those waste matters that are inimical to health, every man was his own scavenger. From birth to old age a man was governed by this one fear; he went into the sea, the graveyard or the depths of the forest to satisfy his natural wants; he burned his cast-off malo; he gave every fragment left over from his food to the pigs; he concealed even the clippings of his hair in the thatch of his house. This ever-present fear even drove women in the western districts out into the forest for the birth of their children, where fire destroyed every trace of their lying-in. Until Christianity broke it down, the villages were kept clean; there were no festering rubbish-heaps nor filthy raras."[668]

[Sidenote: Fijian dread of ghosts. Uproar made to drive away ghosts.]

Of apparitions the Fijians used to be very much afraid. They believed that the ghosts of the dead appeared often and afflicted mankind, especially in sleep. The spirits of slain men, unchaste women, and women who died in childbed were most dreaded. After a death people have been known to hide themselves for a few days, until they supposed the soul of the departed was at rest. Also they shunned the places where people had been murdered, particularly when it rained, because then the moans of the ghost could be heard as he sat up, trying to relieve his pain by resting his poor aching head on the palms of his hands. Some however said that the moans were caused by the soul of the murderer knocking down the soul of his victim, whenever the wretched spirit attempted to get up.[669] When Fijians passed a spot in the forest where a man had been clubbed to death, they would sometimes throw leaves on it as a mark of homage to his spirit, believing that they would soon be killed themselves if they failed in thus paying their respects to the ghost.[670] And after they had buried a man alive, as they very often did, these savages used at nightfall to make a great din with large bamboos, trumpet-shells, and so forth, in order to drive away his spirit and deter him from loitering about his old home. "The uproar is always held in the late habitation of the deceased, the reason being that as no one knows for a certainty what reception he will receive in the invisible world, if it is not according to his expectations he will most likely repent of his bargain and wish to come back. For that reason they make a great noise to frighten him away, and dismantle his former habitation of everything that is attractive, and clothe it with everything that to their ideas seems repulsive."[671]

[Sidenote: Killing a ghost.]

However, stronger measures were sometimes resorted to. It was believed to be possible to kill a troublesome ghost. Once it happened that many chiefs feasted in the house of Tanoa, King of Ambau. In the course of the evening one of them related how he had slain a neighbouring chief. That very night, having occasion to leave the house, he saw, as he believed, the ghost of his victim, hurled his club at him, and killed him stone dead. On his return to the house he roused the king and the rest of the inmates from their slumbers, and recounted his exploit. The matter was deemed of high importance, and they all sat on it in solemn conclave. Next morning a search was made for the club on the scene of the murder; it was found and carried with great pomp and parade to the nearest temple, where it was laid up for a perpetual memorial. Everybody was firmly persuaded that by this swashing blow the ghost had been not only killed but annihilated.[672]

[Sidenote: Dazing the ghost of a grandfather.]

A more humane method of dealing with an importunate ghost used to be adopted in Vanua-levu, the largest but one of the Fijian islands. In that island, as a consequence, it is said, of reckoning kinship through the mother, a child was considered to be more closely related to his grandfather than to his father. Hence when a grandfather died, his ghost naturally desired to carry off the soul of his grandchild with him to the spirit land. The wish was creditable to the warmth of his domestic affection, but if the survivors preferred to keep the child with them a little longer in this vale of tears, they took steps to baffle grandfather's ghost. For this purpose when the old man's body was stretched on the bier and raised on the shoulders of half-a-dozen stout young fellows, the mother's brother would take the grandchild in his arms and begin running round and round the corpse. Round and round he ran, and grandfather's ghost looked after him, craning his neck from side to side and twisting it round and round in the vain attempt to follow the rapid movements of the runner. When the ghost was supposed to be quite giddy with this unwonted exercise, the mother's brother made a sudden dart away with the child in his arms, the bearers fairly bolted with the corpse to the grave, and before he could collect his scattered wits grandfather was safely landed in his long home.[673]

[Sidenote: Special relation of grandfather to grandchild. Soul of a grandfather reborn in his grandchildren.]

Mr. Fison, who reports this quaint mode of bilking a ghost, explains the special attachment of the grandfather to his grandchild by the rule of female descent which survives in Vanua-levu; and it is true that where exogamy prevails along with female descent, a child regularly belongs to the exogamous class of its grandfather and not of its father and hence may be regarded as more closely akin to the grandfather than to the father. But on the other hand it is to be observed that exogamy at present is unknown in Fiji, and at most its former prevalence in the islands can only be indirectly inferred from relics of totemism and from the existence of the classificatory system of relationship.[674] Perhaps the real reason why in Vanua-levu a dead grandfather is so anxious to carry off the soul of his living grandchild lies nearer to hand in the apparently widespread belief that the soul of the grandfather is actually reborn in his grandchild. For example, in Nukahiva, one of the Marquesas Islands, every one "is persuaded that the soul of a grandfather is transmitted by nature into the body of his grandchildren; and that, if an unfruitful wife were to place herself under the corpse of her deceased grandfather, she would be sure to become pregnant."[675] Again, the Kayans of Borneo "believe in the reincarnation of the soul, although this belief is not clearly harmonised with the belief in the life in another world. It is generally believed that the soul of a grandfather may pass into one of his grandchildren, and an old man will try to secure the passage of his soul to a favourite grandchild by holding it above his head from time to time. The grandfather usually gives up his name to his eldest grandson, and reassumes the original name of his childhood with the prefix or title Laki, and the custom seems to be connected with this belief or hope."[676]

[Sidenote: A dead grandfather may reasonably reclaim his own soul from his grandchild.]

Now where such a belief is held, it seems reasonable enough that a dead grandfather should reclaim his own soul for his personal use before he sets out for the spirit land; else how could he expect to be admitted to that blissful abode if on arriving at the portal he were obliged to explain to the porter that he had no soul about him, having left that indispensable article behind in the person of his grandchild? "Then you had better go back and fetch it. There is no admission at this gate for people without souls." Such might very well be the porter's retort; and foreseeing it any man of ordinary prudence would take the precaution of recovering his lost spiritual property before presenting himself to the Warden of the Dead. This theory would sufficiently account for the otherwise singular behaviour of grandfather's ghost in Vanua-levu. At the same time it must be admitted that the theory of the reincarnation of a grandfather in a grandson would be suggested more readily in a society where the custom of exogamy was combined with female descent than in one where the same custom coexisted with male descent; since, given exogamy and female descent, grandfather and grandson regularly belong to the same exogamous class, whereas father and son never do so.[677] Thus Mr. Fison may after all be right in referring the partiality of a Fijian grandfather for his grandson in the last resort to a system of exogamy and female kinship.

[Footnote 627: G. Brown, D.D., Melanesians and Polynesians (London, 1910), pp. 23 sq., 125, 320 sqq.]

[Footnote 628: G. Brown, op. cit. pp. 294 sqq.; P. A. Kleintitschen, Die Kuestenbewohner der Gazellehalbinsel (Hiltrup bei Muenster, N.D.), pp. 90 sqq. The shell money is called tambu in New Britain, diwara in the Duke of York Island, and aringit in New Ireland.]

[Footnote 629: Rev. G. Brown, op. cit. pp. 307, 313, 435, 436.]

[Footnote 630: Rev. G. Brown, op. cit. pp. 270 sq., compare pp. 127, 200.]

[Footnote 631: Rev. G. Brown, op. cit. pp. v., 18.]

[Footnote 632: G. Brown, op. cit. pp. 141 sq., 144, 145, 190-193.]

[Footnote 633: G. Brown, op. cit. pp. 142, 192, 385, 386 sq.]

[Footnote 634: G. Brown, op. cit. p. 390. The custom of cremating the dead in New Ireland is described more fully by Mr. R. Parkinson, who says that the life-sized figures which are burned with the corpse represent the deceased (Dreissig Jahre in der Suedsee, pp. 273 sqq.). In the central part of New Ireland the dead are buried in the earth; afterwards the bones are dug up and thrown into the sea. See Albert Hahl, "Das mittlere Neumecklenburg," Globus, xci. (1907) p. 314.]

[Footnote 635: R. Parkinson, Dreissig Jahre in der Suedsee (Stuttgart, 1907) p. 78; P. A. Kleintitschen, Die Kuestenbewohner der Gazellehalbinsel (Hiltrup bei Muenster, N.D.), p. 222.]

[Footnote 636: Mgr. Couppe, "En Nouvelle-Pomeranie," Les Missions Catholiques, xxiii. (1891) pp. 364 sq.; J. Graf Pfeil, Studien und Beobachtungen aus der Suedsee (Brunswick, 1899), p. 79.]

[Footnote 637: R. Parkinson, op. cit. p. 81.]

[Footnote 638: P. Rascher, M.S.C., "Die Sulka, ein Beitrag zur Ethnographic Neu-Pommern," Archiv fuer Anthropologie, xxix. (1904) pp. 214 sq., 216; R. Parkinson, Dreissig Jahre in der Suedsee, pp. 185-187.]

[Footnote 639: R. Parkinson, Dreissig Jahre in der Suedsee, pp. 404-406.]

[Footnote 640: R. Parkinson, op. cit. pp. 441 sq.]

[Footnote 641: G. Brown, op. cit. pp. 176, 183, 385 sq. As to the wide-spread belief in New Britain that what we call natural deaths are brought about by sorcery, see further P. Rascher, M.S.C., "Die Sulka, ein Beitrag zur Ethnographic Neu-Pommern," Archiv fuer Ethnographie, xxix. (1904) pp. 221 sq.; R. Parkinson, Dreissig Jahre in der Suedsee, pp. 117 sq. 199-201; P. A. Kleintitschen, Die Kuesten-bewohner der Gazellehalbinsel (Hiltrup bei Muenster, N.D.), p. 215.]

[Footnote 642: G. Brown, op. cit. pp. 387-390.]

[Footnote 643: G. Brown, op. cit. pp. 35, 89, 196, 201.]

[Footnote 644: G. Brown, op. cit. pp. 177, 183, 184.]

[Footnote 645: G. Brown, op. cit. pp. 192-195.]

[Footnote 646: P. A. Kleintitschen, Die Kuestenbewohner der Gazellehalbinsel, pp. 225 sq. Compare R. Parkinson, Dreissig Jahre in der Suedsee, p. 79.]

[Footnote 647: Lorimer Fison, Tales from Old Fiji (London, 1904), p. xiv.]

[Footnote 648: Thomas Williams, Fiji and the Fijians, Second Edition (London, 1860), i. 22-26.]

[Footnote 649: Charles Wilkes, Narrative of the United States Exploring Expedition, New Edition (New York, 1851), iii. 77; Th. Williams, op. cit. i. 18.]

[Footnote 650: Charles Wilkes, Narrative of the United States Exploring Expedition, New Edition (New York, 1851), iii. 332 sqq.; Thomas Williams Fiji and the Fijians, Second Edition (London, 1860), i. 60 sqq.; Berthold Seeman, Viti (Cambridge, 1862), pp. 279 sqq.; Basil Thomson, The Fijians (London, 1908), pp. 335 sq.]

[Footnote 651: Th. Williams, op. cit. i. 60 sq.]

[Footnote 652: Basil Thomson, The Fijians, pp. 338, 389 sq. The Fijians are in the main vegetarians, but the vegetables which they cultivate "contain a large proportion of starch and water, and are deficient in proteids. Moreover, the supply of the principal staples is irregular, being greatly affected by variable seasons, and the attacks of insects and vermin. Very few of them will bear keeping, and almost all of them must be eaten when ripe. As the food is of low nutritive value, a native always eats to repletion. In times of plenty a full-grown man will eat as much as ten pounds' weight of vegetables in the day; he will seldom be satisfied with less than five. A great quantity, therefore, is required to feed a very few people, and as everything is transported by hand, a disproportionate amount of time is spent in transporting food from the plantation to the consumer. The time spent in growing native food is also out of all proportion to its value" (Basil Thomson, op. cit. pp. 334 sq.). The same writer tells us (p. 335) that it has never occurred to the Fijians to dry any of the fruits they grow and to grind them into flour, as is done in Africa.]

[Footnote 653: Capt. J. E. Erskine, Journal of a Cruise among the Islands of the Western Pacific (London, 1853), pp. 272 sq.]

[Footnote 654: Ch. Wilkes, op. cit. iii. 46, 363. As to the cruelty 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.]

The meaning of such orgies is very obscure, but from what we know of the 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.]

[Footnote 691: Rev. Lorimer Fison, "The Nanga, or Sacred Stone Enclosure, of Wainimala, Fiji," Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xiv. (1885) pp. 27 sq. On the other hand Mr. Basil Thomson's enquiries, made at a later date, did not confirm Mr. Fison's statement that the rite of circumcision was practised as a propitiation to recover a chief from sickness. "I was assured," he says, "on the contrary, that while offerings were certainly made in the Nanga for the recovery of the sick, every youth was circumcised as a matter of routine, and that the rite was in no way connected with sacrifice for the sick" (Basil Thomson, The Fijians, pp. 156 sq.). However, Mr. Fison was a very careful and accurate enquirer, and his testimony is not to be lightly set aside.]

[Footnote 692: Rev. Lorimer Fison, "The Nanga, or Sacred Stone Enclosure, of Wainimala, Fiji," Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xiv. (1885) p. 26. Compare Basil Thomson, The Fijians, p. 147: "The Nanga was the 'bed' of the Ancestors, that is, the spot where their descendants might hold communion with them; the Mbaki were the rites celebrated in the Nanga, whether of initiating the youths, or of presenting the first-fruits, or of recovering the sick, or of winning charms against wounds in battle."]

[Footnote 693: Rev. Lorimer Fison, op. cit. p. 27.]

[Footnote 694: Rev. Lorimer Fison, "The Nanga, or Sacred Stone Enclosure, of Wainimala, Fiji," Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xiv. (1885) pp. 14-26. The Nanga and its rites have also been described by Mr. A. B. Joske ("The Nanga of Viti-levu," Internationales Archiv fuer Ethnographie, ii. (1889) pp. 254-266), and Mr. Basil Thomson (The Fijians, pp. 146-156). As to the interval between the initiatory ceremonies Mr. Fison tells us that it was normally two years, but he adds: "This period, however, is not necessarily restricted to two years. There are always a number of youths who are growing to the proper age, and the length of the interval depends upon the decision of the elders. Whenever they judge that there is a sufficient number of youths ready for admission, a Nanga is appointed to be held; and thus the interval may be longer or shorter, according to the supply of novices" (op. cit. p. 19). According to Mr. Basil Thomson the rites were celebrated annually. Mr. Fison's evidence as to the gross license which prevailed between the sexes after the admission of the women to the sacred enclosure is confirmed by Mr. Basil Thomson, who says, amongst other things, that "a native of Mbau, who lived for some years near the Nanga, assured me that the visit of the women to the Nanga resulted in temporary promiscuity; all tabus were defied, and relations who could not speak to one another by customary law committed incest" (op. cit. p. 154).]

[Footnote 695: Rev. Lorimer Fison, "The Nanga, or Sacred Stone Enclosure, of Wainimala, Fiji," Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xiv. (1885) pp. 14 sqq.; Basil Thomson, The Fijians, pp. 147, 149.]

[Footnote 696: Rev. Lorimer Fison, op. cit. p. 30.]

[Footnote 697: Rev. Lorimer Fison, op. cit. pp. 15, 17, with Plate I.; Basil Thomson, The Fijians, pp. 147 sq. Mr. Fison had not seen a Nanga; his description is based on information received from natives. Mr. Basil Thomson visited several of these structures and found them so alike that one description would serve for all. He speaks of only two inner compartments, which he calls the Holy of Holies (Nanga tambu-tambu) and the Middle Nanga (Loma ni Nanga), but the latter name appears to imply a third compartment, which is explicitly mentioned and named by Mr. Fison. The bell-shaped hut or temple to the west of the sacred enclosure is not noticed by Mr. Thomson.]

[Footnote 698: Rev. Lorimer Fison, op. cit. p. 17.]

[Footnote 699: Basil Thomson, The Fijians, p. 147.]

[Footnote 700: As to these monuments see Sir John Lubbock (Lord Avebury), Prehistoric Times, Fifth Edition (London, 1890), p. 127.]



LECTURE XX

THE BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY AMONG THE NATIVES OF EASTERN MELANESIA (FIJI) (concluded)

[Sidenote: Worship of ancestors in Fiji.]

In the last lecture I described the rites of ancestor worship which in certain parts of Fiji used to be celebrated at the sacred enclosures of stones known as Nangas. But the worship of ancestral spirits was by no means confined to the comparatively small area in Fiji where such sacred enclosures were erected, nor were these open-air temples the only structures where the homage of the living was paid to the dead. On the contrary we are told by one who knew the Fijians in the old heathen days that among them "as soon as beloved parents expire, they take their place amongst the family gods. Bures, or temples, are erected to their memory, and offerings deposited either on their graves or on rudely constructed altars—mere stages, in the form of tables, the legs of which are driven into the ground, and the top of which is covered with pieces of native cloth. The construction of these altars is identical with that observed by Turner in Tanna, and only differs in its inferior finish from the altars formerly erected in Tahiti and the adjacent islands. The offerings, consisting of the choicest articles of food, are left exposed to wind and weather, and firmly believed by the mass of Fijians to be consumed by the spirits of departed friends and relations; but, if not eaten by animals, they are often stolen by the more enlightened class of their countrymen, and even some of the foreigners do not disdain occasionally to help themselves freely to them. However, it is not only on tombs or on altars that offerings are made; often, when the natives eat or drink anything, they throw portions of it away, stating them to be for their departed ancestors. I remember ordering a young chief to empty a bowl containing kava, which he did, muttering to himself, 'There, father, is some kava for you. Protect me from illness or breaking any of my limbs whilst in the mountains.'"[701]

[Sidenote: Fijian notion of divinity. Two classes of gods, namely, gods strictly so called, and deified men.]

"The native word expressive of divinity is kalou, which, while used to denote the people's highest notion of a god, is also constantly heard as a qualificative of any thing great or marvellous, or, according to Hazlewood's Dictionary, 'anything superlative, whether good or bad.'... Often the word sinks into a mere exclamation, or becomes an expression of flattery. 'You are a kalou!' or, 'Your countrymen are gods!' is often uttered by the natives, when hearing of the triumphs of art among civilized nations."[702] The Fijians distinguished two classes of gods: first, kalou vu, literally "Root-gods," that is, gods strictly so called, and second, kalou yalo, literally, "Soul-gods," that is, deified mortals. Gods of the first class were supposed to be absolutely eternal; gods of the second class, though raised far above mere humanity, were thought nevertheless to be subject to human passions and wants, to accidents, and even to death. These latter were the spirits of departed chiefs, heroes, and friends; admission into their number was easy, and any one might secure his own apotheosis who could ensure the services of some one to act as his representative and priest after his death.[703] However, though the Fijians admitted the distinction between the two classes of gods in theory, they would seem to have confused them in practice. Thus we are informed by an early authority that "they have superior and inferior gods and goddesses, more general and local deities, and, were it not an obvious contradiction, we should say they have gods human, and gods divine; for they have some gods who were gods originally, and some who were originally men. It is impossible to ascertain with any degree of probability how many gods the Fijians have, as any man who can distinguish himself in murdering his fellow-men may certainly secure to himself deification after death. Their friends are also sometimes deified and invoked. I have heard them invoke their friends who have been drowned at sea. I need not advert to the absurdity of praying to those who could not save themselves from a watery grave. Tuikilakila, the chief of Somosomo, offered Mr. Hunt a preferment of this sort. 'If you die first,' said he, 'I shall make you my god.' In fact, there appears to be no certain line of demarcation between departed spirits and gods, nor between gods and living men, for many of the priests and old chiefs are considered as sacred persons, and not a few of them will also claim to themselves the right of divinity. 'I am a god,' Tuikilakila would sometimes say; and he believed it too. They were not merely the words of his lips; he believed he was something above a mere man."[704]

Writers on Fiji have given us lists of some of the principal gods of the first class,[705] who were supposed never to have been men; but in their account of the religious ritual they do not distinguish between the worship which was paid to such deities and that which was paid to deified men. Accordingly we may infer that the ritual was practically the same, and in the sequel I shall assume that what is told us of the worship of gods in general holds good of the worship of deified men in particular.

[Sidenote: The Fijian temple (bure).]

Every Fijian town had at least one bure or temple, many of them had several. Significantly enough the spot where a chief had been killed was sometimes chosen for the site of a temple. The structure of these edifices was somewhat peculiar. Each of them was built on the top of a mound, which was raised to the height of from three to twenty feet above the ground and faced on its sloping sides with dry rubble-work of stone. The ascent to the temple was by a thick plank, the upper surface of which was cut into notched steps. The proportions of the sacred edifice itself were inelegant, if not uncouth, its height being nearly twice as great as its breadth at the base. The roof was high-pitched; the ridge-pole was covered with white shells (Ovula cypraea) and projected three or four feet at each end. For the most part each temple had two doors and a fire-place in the centre. From some temples it was not lawful to throw out the ashes, however much they might accumulate, until the end of the year, which fell in November. The furniture consisted of a few boxes, mats, several large clay jars, and many drinking vessels. A temple might also contain images, which, though highly esteemed as ornaments and held sacred, were not worshipped as idols. From the roof depended a long piece of white bark-cloth; it was carried down the angle so as to hang before the corner-post and lie on the floor. This cloth formed the path down which the god was believed to pass in order to enter and inspire his priest. It marked the holy place which few but he dared to approach. However, the temples were by no means dedicated exclusively to the use of religion. Each of them served also as a council-chamber and town-hall; there the chiefs lounged for hours together; there strangers were entertained; and there the head persons of the village might even sleep.[706] In some parts of Viti Levu the dead were sometimes buried in the temples, "that the wind might not disturb, nor the rain fall upon them," and in order that the living might have the satisfaction of lying near their departed friends. A child of high rank having died under the charge of the queen of Somosomo, the little body was placed in a box and hung from the tie-beam of the principal temple. For some months afterwards the daintiest food was brought daily to the dead child, the bearers approaching with the utmost respect and clapping their hands when the ghost was thought to have finished his meal just as a chiefs retainers used to do when he had done eating.[707]