Chapter I · CONSECRATED ACTIONS. (continued 2)

Elsewhere on the same continent, there are three stages to be passed on the road from boyhood to manhood. At the age of twelve or fifteen the boys are removed to a place apart from the women, whom they are not permitted to see, and then blindfolded. Among some other ceremonies their faces are blackened, and they are told to whisper, an injunction peculiarly characteristic of the mysteriousness which is so constant a feature of the rites of puberty. For several months this whispering continues, and it is noteworthy, as a sign of the sexual nature of these proceedings, that the place where the whispers have been "is carefully avoided by the women and children." In the second ceremony, which occurs two or three years later, "the glans penis is slit open underneath, from the extremity to the scrotum, and circumcision is also performed." After this second stage, the Partnapas, as the youths are now styled, "are permitted to take a wife." In the third ceremony each man has a sponsor, by whom he is tatooed with a sharp quartz. These sponsors, moreover, bestow on each lad a new name, which he retains during the remainder of his life. Certain other performances are gone through, such as putting an instrument termed a witarna round the lads' necks, and then "the ceremony concludes by the men all clustering round the initiated ones, enjoining them again to whisper for some months, and bestowing upon them their advice as regards hunting, fighting, and contempt of pain. All these ceremonies are carefully kept from the sight of the women and the children; who, when they hear the sound of the witarna, hide their heads and exhibit every outward sign of terror" (S. L. A., vol. i. p. 113-116).

Leaving Australia, let us pass to Africa, and call Mr. Reade as a witness to some of the rites of puberty existing among the savages of that continent. The following extract is doubly interesting, as furnishing some account of the application to girls of the general principles involved in these rites, and also as supplying, in the author's opinion, that they are of a Phallic nature, a confirmation of the conclusions we had reached from a survey of the evidence as a whole:

"Before they are permitted to wear clothes, marry, and rank in society as men and women, the young have to be initiated into certain mysteries. I received some information upon this head from Mongilomba, after he had made me promise that I would not put it into a book: a promise which I am compelled to break by the stern duties of my vocation. He told me that he was taken into a fetich-house, stripped, severely flogged, and plastered with goat-dung; this ceremony, like those of Masonry, being conducted to the sound of music. Afterwards there came from behind a kind of screen or shrine uncouth and terrible sounds such as he had never heard before. These, he was told, emanated from a spirit called Ukuk. He afterwards brought to me the instrument with which the fetich-man makes this noise. It is a kind of whistle made of hollowed mangrove wood, about two inches in length, and covered at one end with a scrap of bat's wing. For a period of five days after initiation the novice wears an apron of dry palm leaves, which I have frequently seen.

"The initiation of the girls is performed by elderly females who call themselves Ngembi. They go into the forest, clear a place, sweep the ground carefully, come back to the town, and build a sacred hut which no male may enter. They return to the clearing in the forest, taking with them the Igonji, or novice. It is necessary that she should have never been to that place before, and that she fast during the whole of the ceremony, which lasts three days. All this time a fire is kept burning in the wood. From morning to night, and from night to morning, a Ngembi sits beside it and feeds it, singing, with a cracked voice, The fire will never die out! The third night is passed in the sacred hut; the Igonji is rubbed with black, red, and white paints, and as the men beat drums outside, she cries, Okanda, yo! yo! yo! which reminds one of the Evohe! of the ancient Bacchantes. The ceremonies which are performed in the hut and in the wood are kept secret from the men, and I can say but little of them. Mongilomba had evidently been playing the spy, but was very reserved upon the subject. Should it be known, he said, that he had told me what he had missing, the women would drag him into a fetich-house, and would flog him, perhaps till he was dead.

"It is pretty certain, however, that these rites, like those of the Bona Dea, are essentially of a Phallic nature; for Mongilomba once confessed, that having peeped through the chinks of the hut, he saw a ceremony like that which is described in Petronius Arbiter....

"During the novitiate which succeeds initiation, the girls are taught religious dances—the men are instructed in science of fetich" (S. A., p. 245-247).

The Suzees and the Mandingoes, tribes of Western Africa, are distinguished by a rite which, so far as I know, is peculiar—the circumcision of women. Both sexes, indeed, are circumcised on reaching puberty, and in the case of the girls it is done "by cutting off the exterior part of the clitoris." With a view to this ceremony, "the girls of each town who are judged marriageable are collected together, and in the night preceding the day on which the ceremony takes place, are conducted by the women of the village into the inmost recesses of a wood." Surrounded by charms to guard every approach to the "consecrated spot," they are kept here in entire seclusion for a month and a day, visited only by the old woman who performs the operation. During this close confinement they are instructed in the religion of their country, which hitherto they have not been thought fit to learn. A most singular scene is enacted at its close. They return to their homes by night, "where they are received by all the women of the village, young and old, quite naked." In this condition they go about till morning, with music playing; and should any man be indiscreet enough to imitate Peeping Tom, he is punished by death or the forfeiture of a slave. After another month of parading and marching in procession (no longer nude) the women are given to their destined husbands;—another plain indication of the nature of these rites. In such veneration is this ceremony held among the women of the country, that those who have come from other parts, and are already in years, frequently submit to it to avoid the reproaches to which uncircumcision exposes them. Indeed, "the most vilifying term they can possibly use" is applied by the circumcised female population to those who do not enjoy their religious privileges (S. L., p. 70-83).

Puberty is recognized in much the same way among the South Sea Islanders. Thus, in Tanna "circumcision is regularly practised about the seventh year" (N. Y., p. 87). In Samoa "a modified form of circumcision prevailed," which boys of their own accord, would get performed upon themselves about the eighth or tenth year (Ib., p. 177). It may be a faint beginning of the religious ceremonies of this period of life that, in the same island, when girls are entering into womanhood, their parents invite all the unmarried women of the settlement to a feast, at which presents are distributed among them. At least it is worthy of remark that "none but females are present" on these occasions (Ib., p. 184).

When we rise higher in the scale of culture, we no longer find the painful rites by which savage nations mark the appearance of the sexual instinct. The sacred ceremony of investiture with the thread, which distinguished the twice-born classes among the Hindus, was performed at this age. The code of Manu is explicit on the subject. "In the eighth year from the conception of a Brahman, in the eleventh from that of Kshatriya, and in the twelfth from that of a Vaisya, let the father invest the child with the mark of his class." In the case of children who desire to advance more rapidly than usual in their vocation, "the investiture may be made in the fifth, sixth, or eighth years respectively. The ceremony of investiture hallowed by the gayatri must not be delayed, in the case of a priest, beyond the sixteenth year; nor in that of a soldier beyond the twenty-second; nor in that of a merchant beyond the twenty-fourth." Further postponement would render those who were guilty of it outcasts, impure, and unfit to associate with Brahmans (Manu, ii. 36-40).

Members of the kindred Parsee religion become responsible human beings after they have been girt with the kosti, or sacred girdle. The age at which this took place was formerly fifteen; and after they had once put them on, the Parsees might not remove their girdles, except in bed, without incurring serious guilt. This regulation applied equally to both sexes. Modern usage has advanced the investiture with the kosti to a much earlier period. It takes place in India at seven, and in Kirman at nine. In India, the child is held responsible in the eighth or tenth year for one half of its sins, the parents bearing the burden of the other half (Av., vol. i. p. 9; vol. ii. pp. 21, 22).

The young Jew "is looked upon as a man" at the age of thirteen, and is then bound "to observe all the commandments of the law." At this age he becomes "Bar-mizva," or a son of the law; that is, he enters on his spiritual majority (Picard, vol. i. ch. x. p. 82). Christian nations signalize the advent of the corresponding epoch by admitting those who attain it to the Sacrament of the Lord's supper, and to confirmation. At puberty they are considered, like the young Parsees, responsible for the sins which at their birth their sponsors took upon themselves, and at puberty they are admitted, like the Jews, to the full privileges of their faith, by being allowed to partake in the mystic benefits conferred by the celebration of the death of Christ in the Holy Communion.

After puberty the two sexes enter on a new relation towards one another; and though the instinct by which this relation is established is extremely apt to break loose from the control of religion, yet the latter always attempts more or less energetically to bring it within its grasp. This it does by confining the irregular indulgences to which the sexual passion is prone within the legalized forms of matrimony. To matrimony, and matrimony alone, it gives its sanction; and accordingly it confers a peculiar sacredness upon this form of cohabitation, by the performance of ceremonies at its outset. Such ceremonies are not indeed equally universal with those of birth and puberty. Among savage and slightly civilized communities we do not find them. But in all the great religions of the world they are firmly established.

Little of a distinctively religious character is perceptible in Major Forbes's account of marriage rites in the island of Ceylon. Yet it is plain that Singhalese marriages do stand under a religious sanction, for in the first place an astrologer must examine the horoscopes of the two parties, to discover whether they correspond, and then the same functionary is called upon to name an auspicious time for the wedding. On the day of its occurrence a feast is given at the bride's house, and "on the astrologer notifying that the appointed moment is approaching, a half-ripe cocoa-nut, previously placed near the board with some mystical ceremonies, is cloven in two at one blow" (E. Y., vol. i. p. 326-332).

Turning from southern to northern Buddhism, we find Köppen asserting that in Thibet and the surrounding countries, marriage consists solely in the private contract, yet adding that none the less the lamaist clergy find business to do in regard to engagements and weddings. The priests alone know whether the nativity of the bride stands in a favorable relation to that of the bridegroom, and if not, by what ceremonies and sacrifices misfortune may be averted; they alone know the day that is most suitable and propitious for the wedding; they give the bond its consecration and its blessing by burning incense and by prayer (R. B., vol. ii. p. 321).

The Code of Manu is not very clear as to the sort of marriages sanctioned by religion; some irregular connections apparently receiving a formal recognition, though regarded with moral disapprobation. The system of caste, moreover, introduces a confusing element, since the nuptial rites are permitted, by some authorities, to become less and less solemn as the grade of the contracting parties becomes lower. This opinion having been mentioned, however, the legislator adds, that "in this Code, three of the five last [forms of marriage] are held legal, and two illegal: the ceremonies of Pisachas and Asuras must never be performed." Of the two prohibited forms, the first is merely an embrace when the damsel is asleep, drunk, or of disordered intellect; the second is when the bride's family, and the bride herself, have been enriched by large gifts on the part of the bridegroom. Strangely enough, this regulation does not exclude the marriage called Gandharva, which is "the reciprocal connection of a youth and a damsel, with mutual desire," and is "contracted for the purpose of amorous embraces, and proceeding from sexual inclination." Nor does it forbid forcible capture. But a little further on, the code encourages the more regular modes of marrying by promising intelligent, beautiful, and virtuous sons to those who observe them; and threatening those who do not with bad and cruel sons. It is then stated that "the ceremony of joining hands is appointed for those who marry women of their own class, but with women of a different class" certain ceremonies, enumerated in the Code, are to be performed (Manu, iii. i. 44). It is probable that this Code was never actually the law of any part of India; but it is none the less interesting to see the legislator striving to bring the lawless passions with which he is dealing under the supervision of religion.

An elaborate blessing and exhortation, beginning with the words "In the name of God," is appointed in the Zend-Avesta for the nuptial ceremonial. While marriages among Jews and Christians are, as is well known, inaugurated by solemn religious rites, and all unions not thus consecrated are, at least by the formal judgment of their respective creeds, pronounced unholy, sinful, and impure.

Death, like marriage, is held among all religions but the lowest to call for the performance of befitting rites. In these it is usually noticeable that much regard is paid to the manner in which the deceased is placed in the grave, this circumstance indicating as a general rule some form of the belief in his continued existence. Thus, Lieut.-Colonel Collins, describing the burial of a boy in New South Wales, observes that "on laying the body in the grave, great care was taken so to place it that the sun might look at it as it passed, the natives cutting down for that purpose every shrub that could obstruct the view. He was placed on his right side, with his head to the N. W." (N. S. W., p. 387-390).

If there is little trace among the rude population of this colony of a religious ceremony at the interment, we find the position of religion distinctly recognized by the natives of some parts of Africa. Oldendorp tells us of the tribes with which he was acquainted, that the funeral rites are performed by the priests, who are richly rewarded for the service. Not only are animals sacrificed at the graves, but in the case of men of rank their wives and servants are (as is well known) slaughtered to attend them (G. d. M., p. 313-317). In Sierra Leone, where "every town or village, which has been long inhabited, has a common burial-place," there is the usual attention to position in the grave. "The head of the corpse, if a man, lies either east or west; if a woman, it is turned either to the north or south. An occasional prayer is pronounced over the grave, importing a wish that God may receive the deceased, and that no harm may happen to him." Moreover, there is a ceremony which appears to be a sort of sacrifice to the manes. "A fowl is fastened by the leg upon the grave, and a little rice placed near it; if it refuse to eat the rice, it is not killed; but if it eat, the head is cut off, and the blood sprinkled upon the grave; after which it is cooked, and a part placed on the grave, the remainder being eaten by the attendants." A tribe called the Soosoos "bury their dead with their faces to the west" (S. L., vol. i. pp. 238, 239).

Sometimes we meet with the opinion that the entire removal of the deceased from his accustomed place of abode on earth depends upon due attention to the rites of interment. A primitive form of this wide-spread belief—which lingers as a survival even in Christendom—is observable in Polynesia. In Samoa, "in order to secure the admission of a departed spirit to future joys, the corpse was dressed in the best attire the relatives could provide, the head was wreathed with flowers, and other decorations were added. A pig was then baked whole, and placed upon the body of the deceased, surrounded by a pile of vegetable food." The corpse is then addressed by a near relation, who desires it with the property thus bestowed to make its way into "the palace of Tiki," and not to return to alarm the survivors. If nothing happened within a few days, the deceased was supposed to have got in; but a cricket being heard on the premises was taken as an ill omen, and led to the repetition of the offering.

Elsewhere in the same group of islands "more costly sacrifices" were presented to the gods of the celestial regions. At least at the interment of a chief it was customary for his wives to sit down severally near his body, to be strangled, and then buried along with him. "The reasons assigned for this are, that the spirit of the chief may not be lonely in its passage to the invisible world, and that by such an offering its happiness may be at once secured" (N. M. E., pp. 145, 146).

Funeral ceremonies in Mexico were performed by priests and monks, and varied in splendor according to the rank of the deceased. Offices were chanted at the graves, and at the burial of persons of quality slaves were killed to serve them in the next world. Moreover, so sensible were the Mexicans to the importance of religion in all states of being, that even the domestic chaplain was not omitted; a priest being slaughtered to accompany his lord in that capacity (H. I., b. v. ch. viii).

In Ceylon, a dying relative is taken to a detached apartment, where he is placed with his head towards the East. After death the body is turned with the head towards the West, and in the grave this position is preserved. Bodies of priests, and persons of the highest rank, are burned, and during the process of cremation the officiating priest "repeats certain forms of prayer." The same functionary returns to deliver "some moral admonitions" after seven days, when the friends revisit the pyre to collect the ashes (E. Y., pp. 334, 335).

Notwithstanding the fact that in countries professing the lamaistic form of Buddhism dead bodies are unceremoniously exposed to the open air, and left as a prey to birds or dogs, the mortality of the laity "forms, with their sicknesses, the richest source of income for the priests." A great deal, says the author from whom we draw this information, depends on the separation of soul and body taking place according to rule; and it is important that the spirit should not injure those who are left, and should meet with a happy re-birth. The Lama therefore attends the death-bed, takes care to place the deceased in the correct position, and observes the hour of departure. An operation is then performed on the skin of the head, which is supposed to liberate the soul. What rites are now to be performed, how the body is to be disposed of, towards what quarter it is to be turned, and various other details, depend on astrological combinations known only to the clergy. But their most important and profitable business is the repetition of masses, for the dead, which are designed to pacify the avenging deities, and to help the soul towards as favorable a career as is possible for it. The length of time during which these masses are said varies with the wealth of the survivors; poor people obtaining them for a few days only; the richer classes for seven weeks; and princes being able to assist the spirits of their relations for a whole year (R. B., vol. ii. p. 323-325).

Among the Parsees the cemeteries consist of desolate, open places, on which the corpses are deposited and left exposed to the air. These places are called Dakhmas, and are carefully consecrated by the priests with an elaborate ceremonial. The position of the dead in the Dakhmas is fixed by the religious law. Their dying moments and those that succeed upon death are watched over by the Parsee faith, which has determined the prayers to be repeated during the last hour of life; before the body is placed upon the bier; when it is carried out; on the way to the Dakhma, and at the Dakhma itself. The ceremonies required on these occasions must be performed by the Maubads, or priests. But the due disposal of the body by no means concludes the duties of relations towards the dead. The welfare of the soul also demands numerous prayers. Being supposed to linger for three days in the immediate neighborhood of the corpse, it is the object during that time of especial attention, and the rites then performed may be of use to it in the judgment which takes place on the fourth day. Prayers are to be recited, and offerings made on the 30th and 31st day after death, and even then the ceremonies attending the close of mortal existence are not concluded, for it is necessary after the lapse of a year again to celebrate the memory of the departed. Moreover, the 26th chapter of the Yasna, a hymn of praise and blessing, is to be said every day during the year before eating (Av. vol. ii. p. xxxii-xlii).

Masses for the dead are no less common in Christian countries (save where the Protestant faith is professed), than among Buddhists and Parsees. Their object also is precisely the same; namely, the welfare of the soul which has quitted its earthly home to enter on a new form of being. And although no such prayers are repeated in Protestant communities, yet there can be no doubt that interment in due form, and with due solemnity, is held by the people, even in England, to benefit the soul in some undefined way. Nor is any portion of the ritual of the English Church more impressive than that passage in the Burial Service where the officiating priest consigns "earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, in sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life, through our Lord Jesus Christ."

But it is not only the due performance of these last rites which popular opinion associates with the prospect of salvation in the world to come. As in other religions, so in that of our own country, the position of the body in the tomb is deemed to be of vast importance. The head must be westward and the feet eastward, the nominal reason being that the dead person should rise from his temporary abode with his face to the east, whence Christ will come; the real reason being in all probability the survival of a much older custom, in which that venerable divinity, the Sun, stood in the place of the Savior of mankind.