LECTURE XII
Reading edition
THE BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY AMONG THE NATIVES OF GERMAN NEW GUINEA (continued)
The Bukaua of German New Guinea.
Means of subsistence of the Bukaua. Men's clubhouses.
Beliefs of the Bukaua concerning the souls of the dead. Sickness and disease attributed to ghostly agency.
Sickness and death often ascribed by the Bukaua to sorcery.
Fear of the ghosts of the slain.
Ghosts of ancestors appealed to for help, especially in the cultivation of the ground. First-fruits offered to the spirits of the dead.
Burial and mourning customs of the Bukaua.
Initiation of young men among the Bukaua. Lads at circumcision supposed to be swallowed by a monster.
Novices at circumcision supposed to be killed and then restored to a new and higher life.
The Kai tribe of Saddle Mountain in German New Guinea. The land of the Kai. Their mode of cultivation. Their villages.
Observations of a German missionary on the animistic beliefs of the Kai.
The essential rationality of the savage.
The Kai theory of the soul.
Two kinds of human souls.
Death thought by the Kai to be commonly caused by sorcery.
Danger incurred by the sorcerer.
Many hurts and maladies attributed by the Kai to the action of ghosts. In other cases the sickness is traced to witchcraft. Capturing a lost soul.
Extracting ghosts from a sick man.
But suppose that the result of the diagnosis is different, and that on mature consideration the doctor should decide that a ghost and not a sorcerer is at the bottom of the mischief. The question then naturally arises whether the sick man has not of late been straying on haunted ground and infected himself with the very dangerous soul-stuff or spiritual essence of the dead. If he remembers to have done so, some leaves are fetched from the place in the forest where the mishap occurred, and with them the whole body of the sufferer or the wound, as the case may be, is stroked or brushed down. The healing virtue of this procedure is obvious. The ghosts who are vexing the patient are attracted by the familiar smell of the leaves which come from their old home; and yielding in a moment of weakness to the soft emotions excited by the perfume they creep out of the body of the sick man and into the leaves. Quick as thought the doctor now whisks the leaves away with the ghosts in them; he belabours them with a cudgel, he hangs them up in the smoke, or he throws them into the fire. Such powerful disinfectants have their natural results; if the ghosts are not absolutely destroyed they are at least disarmed, and the sick is made whole.
Scraping ghosts from the patient's body.
Extravagant demonstrations of grief at the death of a sick man.
Hypocritical character of these demonstrations, which are intended to deceive the ghost.
Burial and mourning customs of the Kai. Preservation of the lower jawbone.
Mourning costume. Widows strangled to accompany their dead husbands.
House or village deserted after a death.