LECTURE XIII
Reading edition
THE BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY AMONG THE NATIVES OF GERMAN NEW GUINEA (continued)
Offerings to appease ghosts.
Mode of discovering the sorcerer who caused a death.
Another way of detecting the sorcerer.
Cross-questioning the ghost by means of fire.
Necessity of destroying the sorcerer who caused a death.
Slayers dread the ghosts of the slain.
Seclusion of man-slayers from fear of their victims' ghosts.
Feigned indignation of a man who has connived at the murder of a relative.
Comedy acted to deceive the ghost of a murdered kinsman.
Pretence of avenging the ghost of a murdered sorcerer.
The Kai afraid of ghosts.
Services rendered to the living by ghosts of the dead.
Ghosts help Kai hunters to kill game.
Ill-treatment of a ghost who fails to help hunters.
The journey of ghosts to the spirit land.
Such an outcast ghost, if he does not seek his revenge by prowling in the neighbourhood and preying on society at large, will naturally bethink himself of repairing to his long home in the under world. For sooner or later the spirits of the dead congregate there. It is especially when the flesh has quite mouldered away from his bones that the ghost packs up his little traps and sets out for the better land. The entrance to the abode of bliss is a cave to the west of Saddle Mountain. Here in the gully there is a projecting tree-stump on which the ghosts perch waiting for a favourable moment to jump into the mouth of the cavern. When a slight earthquake is felt, a Kai man will often say, "A ghost has just leaped from the tree into the cave; that is why the earth is shaking." Down below the ghosts are received by Tulmeng, lord of the nether world. Often he appears in a canoe to ferry them over to the further shore. "Blood or wax?" is the laconic question which he puts to the ghost on the bank. He means to say, "Were you killed or were you done to death by magic?" For it is with wax that the sorcerer stops up the fatal little tubes in which he encloses the souls of his enemies. And the reason why the lord of the dead puts the question to the newcomer is that the ghosts of the slain and the ghosts of the bewitched dwell in separate places. Right in front of the land of souls rises a high steep wall, which cannot be climbed even by ghosts. The spirits have accordingly to make their way through it and thereupon find themselves in their new abode. According to some Kai, before the ghosts are admitted to ghost land they must swing to and fro on a rope and then drop into water, where they are washed clean of bloodstains and all impurity; after which they ascend, spick and span, the last slope to the village of ghosts.
Life of ghosts in the other world.
Ghosts die and turn into animals.
Ghosts of persons eminent for good or evil in their lives are remembered and appealed to for help long after their deaths. Prayers to ghosts for rain, a good crop of yams, and so forth.
Possible development of departmental gods out of ghosts.
From this it appears that men and women who impressed their contemporaries by their talents, their virtues, or their vices in their lifetime, are sometimes remembered long after their death and continue to be invoked by their descendants for help in the particular department in which they had formerly rendered themselves eminent either for good or for evil. Such powerful and admired or dreaded ghosts might easily grow in time into gods and goddesses, who are worshipped as presiding over the various departments of nature and of human life. There is good reason to think that among many tribes and nations of the world the history of a god, if it could be recovered, would be found to be the history of a spirit who served his apprenticeship as a ghost before he was promoted to the rank of deity.
Kai lads at circumcision supposed to be swallowed by a monster. Bull-roarers.
The Tami Islanders of Huon Gulf.
The long soul and the short soul.
Departure of the short soul to Lamboam, the nether world.
Dilemma of the Tami.
Funeral and mourning customs of the Tami.
Bones of the dead dug up and kept in the house for a time.