Note (return) — LECTURE VII

I would call your attention particularly to the different modes of burial thus accorded by these two tribes to different classes of persons. It is too commonly assumed that each tribe has one uniform way of disposing of all its dead, say either by burning or by burying, and on that assumption certain general theories have been built as to the different views taken of the state of the dead by different tribes. But in point of fact the assumption is incorrect. Not infrequently the same tribe disposes of different classes of dead people in quite different ways; for instance, it will bury some and burn others. Thus amongst the Angoni of British Central Africa the corpses of chiefs are burned with all their household belongings, but the bodies of commoners are buried with all their belongings in caves.254 In various castes or tribes of India it is the custom to burn the bodies of married people but to bury the bodies of the unmarried.255 With some peoples of India the distinction is made, not between the married and the unmarried, but between adults and children, especially children under two years old; in such cases the invariable practice appears to be to burn the old and bury the young. Thus among the Malayalis of Malabar the bodies of men and women are burned, but the bodies of children under two years are buried, and so are the bodies of all persons who have died of cholera or small-pox.256 The same distinctions are observed by the Nayars, Kadupattans, and other castes or tribes of Cochin.257 The old rule laid down in the ancient Hindoo law-book The Grihya-Sutras was that children who died under the age of two should be buried, not burnt.258 The Bhotias of the Himalayas bury all children who have not yet obtained their permanent teeth, but they burn all other people.259 Among the Komars the young are buried, and the old cremated.260 The Coorgs bury the bodies of women and of boys under sixteen years of age, but they burn the bodies of men.261 The Chukchansi Indians of California are said to have burned only those who died a violent death or were bitten by snakes, but to have buried all others.262 The Minnetaree Indians disposed of their dead differently according to their moral character. Bad and quarrelsome men they buried in the earth that the Master of Life might not see them; but the bodies of good men they laid on scaffolds, that the Master of Life might behold them.263 The Kolosh or Tlingit Indians of Alaska burn their ordinary dead on a pyre, but deposit the bodies of shamans in large coffins, which are supported on four posts.264 The ancient Mexicans thought that all persons who died of infectious diseases were killed by the rain-god Tlaloc; so they painted their bodies blue, which was the rain-god's colour, and buried instead of burning them.265