Note 311.5 — Chapter XIII · FUNERAL RITES.

The drink bestowed on the dead in some of the foregoing instances perhaps represents blood; and blood, it will be remembered, was the share of the totem-god in the sacrificial feasts. Nothing could, therefore, more plainly bespeak the meaning of these funeral rites. In some cases, indeed, as we have seen, the blood is sprinkled upon the grave. So among the Wanyika the corpse when buried holds in its hand a piece of skin taken from the head of a goat or cow which has been killed for the feast, and the grave is sprinkled with the blood before it is filled up.311.5 The dead body of a Yoruba is spattered with the blood of a he-goat slain to propitiate the phallic deity, Elegba; but whether the mourners partake of the flesh we are not told: most likely they do.311.6 In the same way wine was sprinkled on a Roman’s grave—a ceremony of which we find the relic, after cremation began to be practised, in the formal extinction of the ashes by the outpouring of wine. The rites of the Todas and Kotas of the Neilgherry Hills are complicated; and only a portion of them need be noticed in this connection. The corpse is burnt; but a piece of the scalp and some of the finger-nails are first cut off and preserved between two strips of bark as relics. On the anniversary, or some other suitable day, buffaloes are sacrificed; the relics are rubbed with their blood and ceremonially burnt; and their flesh is eaten by the Kotas.312.1