Note (return) — LECTURE IX

We now pass to that branch of the Papuo-Melanesian race which occupies the extreme south-eastern part of British New Guinea, and to which Dr. Seligmann gives the name of Massim. These people have been observed more especially at three places, namely Bartle Bay, Wagawaga, and Tubetube, a small island of the Engineer group lying off the south-eastern extremity of New Guinea. Among them the old custom was to bury the dead on the outskirts of the hamlet and sometimes within a few yards of the houses, and apparently the remains were afterwards as a rule left undisturbed; there was no general practice of exhuming the bones and depositing them elsewhere.338 At Wagawaga the name for the spirit or soul of a dead person is arugo, which also signifies a man's shadow or reflection in a glass or in water; and though animals and trees are not supposed to have spirits, their reflections bear the same name arugo.339 The souls of the dead are believed to depart to the land of Hiyoyoa, which is under the sea, near Maivara, at the head of Milne Bay. The land of the dead, as usual, resembles in all respects the land of the living, except that it is day there when it is night at Wagawaga, and the dead speak of the upper world in the language of Milne Bay instead of in that of Wagawaga. A certain being called Tumudurere receives the ghosts on their arrival and directs them where to make their gardens. The souls of living men and women can journey to the land of the dead and return to earth; indeed this happens not unfrequently. There is a man at Wagawaga who has often gone thither and come back; whenever he wishes to make the journey, he has nothing to do but to smear himself with a magical stuff and to fall asleep, after which he soon wakes up in Hiyoyoa. At first the ghosts whom he met in the other world did not invite him to partake of their food, because they knew that if he did so he could not return to the land of the living; but apparently practice has rendered him immune to the usually fatal effects of the food of the dead.340 Though Hiyoyoa, at the head of Milne Bay, lies to the west of Wagawaga, the dead are buried in a squatting posture with their faces turned to the east, in order that their souls may depart to the other world.341 Immediately after the funeral the relations who have taken part in the burial go down to the sea and bathe, and so do the widow and children of the deceased because they supported the dying husband and father in his extremity. After bathing in the sea the widow and children shave their heads.342 Both the bathing and the shaving are doubtless forms of ceremonial purification; in other words, they are designed to rid the survivors of the taint of death, or perhaps more definitely to remove the ghost from their persons, to which he may be supposed to cling like a burr. At Bartle Bay the dead are buried on their sides with their heads pointing in the direction from which the totem clan of the deceased is said to have come originally; and various kinds of food, of which the dead man had partaken in his last illness, are deposited, along with some paltry personal ornaments, in the grave. Apparently the food is intended to serve as provision for the ghost on his journey to the other world. Curiously enough, the widow is forbidden to eat of the same kinds of food of which her husband ate during his last illness, and the prohibition is strictly observed until after the last of the funeral feasts.343 The motive of the prohibition is not obvious; perhaps it may be a fear of attracting the ghost back to earth through the savoury food which he loved in the body. At Wagawaga, after the relatives who took part in the burial have bathed in the sea, they cut down several of the coco-nut trees which belonged to the deceased, leaving both nuts and trees to rot on the ground. During the first two or three weeks after the funeral these same relatives may not eat boiled food, but only roast; they may not drink water, but only the milk of young coco-nuts made hot, and although they may eat yams they must abstain from bananas and sugar-cane.344 A man may not eat coco-nuts grown in his dead father's hamlet, nor pigs and areca-nuts from it during the whole remainder of his life.345 The reasons for these dietary restrictions are not mentioned, but no doubt the abstinences are based on a fear of the ghost, or at all events on a dread of the contagion of death, to which all who had a share in the burial are especially exposed.