Note 305.1 — Chapter XIII · FUNERAL RITES.

The meal at the grave, then, or in the death-chamber, may be a meal at which the dead man is one of the convives. Instances are numerous in the lower culture. Some of them, like that of the Tcheremiss Tartars, have been mentioned; and I select a few more, out of many, further to illustrate the practice. It will be convenient to begin with the Tchuvash, whose seats are on the middle reaches of the Volga, because their customs, if correctly reported, seem, like those of the Tcheremiss, to show the eating of the dead passing over into the eating with the dead. After burial in the public cemetery the relatives deposit on the grave some cakes and a piece of cooked fowl, saying, like the Tcheremiss: “This is for thee.” The old clothes of the deceased are thrown over the tomb; and the rest of the cakes are eaten by the funeral escort, by whom the repast is regarded as taken in company with the dead. On the fortieth day after burial an animal, designated by the deceased in his lifetime for that purpose, is killed. Libations are made, and half the flesh with other food is deposited on the grave. This is devoured, amid lamentations of the relatives, by dogs; “for it is believed that the dogs become the dwelling-place of the souls of the dead. The feasting then begins, and eating and drinking continue until all the supplies are exhausted.”305.1 The Tchuvash appear to be the same people of whom Hanway, in the middle of the last century, relates that they throw their dead into the open field to be devoured by dogs, of which many run wild, and some are kept for the purpose.305.2 If the dogs become the dwelling-place of the souls of the dead by eating of the memorial banquet, we are presented with a result comparable with that obtained by the Bavarian Highlanders and the Tariánas; and we may conjecture that in earlier times the deceased was eaten by the kin.