Note (return) — LECTURE XIX

A curious sacrifice offered in honour of a dead chief consisted in the foreskins of all the boys who had arrived at a suitable age; the lads were circumcised on purpose to furnish them. Many boys had their little fingers chopped off on the same occasion, and the severed foreskins and fingers were placed in the chief's grave. When this bloody rite had been performed, the chief's relatives presented young bread-fruit trees to the mutilated boys, whose friends were bound to cultivate them till the boys could do it for themselves.689 Women as well as boys had their fingers cut off in mourning. We read of a case when after the death of a king of Fiji sixty fingers were amputated and being each inserted in a slit reed were stuck along the eaves of the king's house.690 Why foreskins and fingers were buried with a dead chief or stuck up on the roof of his house, we are not informed, and it is not easy to divine. Apparently we must suppose that, when they were buried with the body, they were thought to be of some assistance to the departed spirit in the land of souls. At all events it deserves to be noted that according to a very good authority a similar sacrifice of foreskins used to be made not only for the dead but for the living. When a man of note was dangerously ill, a family council would be held, at which it might be agreed that a circumcision should take place as a propitiatory measure. Notice having been given to the priests, an uncircumcised lad, the sick man's own son or the son of one of his brothers, was then taken by his kinsman to the Vale tambu or God's House, and there presented as a soro, or offering of atonement, in order that his father or father's brother might be made whole. His escort at the same time made a present of valuable property at the shrine and promised much more in future, should their prayers be answered. The present and the promises were graciously received by the priest, who appointed a day on which the operation was to be performed. In the meantime no food might be taken from the plantations except what was absolutely required for daily use; no pigs or fowls might be killed, and no coco-nuts plucked from the trees. Everything, in short, was put under a strict taboo; all was set apart for the great feast which was to follow the performance of the rite. On the day appointed the son or nephew of the sick chief was circumcised, and with him a number of other lads whose friends had agreed to take advantage of the occasion. Their foreskins, stuck in the cleft of a split reed, were taken to the sacred enclosure (Nanga) and presented to the chief priest, who, holding the reeds in his hand, offered them to the ancestral gods and prayed for the sick man's recovery. Then followed a great feast, which ushered in a period of indescribable revelry and licence. All distinctions of property were for the time being suspended. Men and women arrayed themselves in all manner of fantastic garbs, addressed one another in the foulest language, and practised unmentionable abominations openly in the public square of the town. The nearest relationships, even that of own brother and sister, seemed to be no bar to the general licence, the extent of which was indicated by the expressive phrase of an old Nandi chief, who said, "While it lasts, we are just like the pigs." This feasting and orgy might be kept up for several days, after which the ordinary restraints of society and the common decencies of life were observed once more. The rights of private property were again respected; the abandoned revellers and debauchees settled down into staid married couples; and brothers and sisters, in accordance with the regular Fijian etiquette, might not so much as speak to one another. It should be added that these extravagances in connexion with the rite of circumcision appear to have been practised only in certain districts of Viti Levu, the largest of the Fijian Islands, where they were always associated with the sacred stone enclosures which went by the name of Nanga.691