Ellis tells us that the Sandwich Islanders think ''the spirit of the departed hovers about the places of its former resort;'' and in Madagascar, the ghosts of ancestors are supposed to frequent their tombs. Bemau tells us of the Ghiiana tribes, that they suppose '' every place is haunted THE IDEAS or ANOTHER WOULD. 217 where any hare died." So, too, is it throughout Africa. On the Gk>ld Coast, according to Craickahank, *^ the spirit is supposed to remain near the spot where the body has been buried ''; and the East Africans '^ appear to imagine the souls to be always near the places of sepulture/' Nay, this assumed identity of habitat is, in some cases, even closer. Liringstone says that in the coantry north of the Zambesi, ''all believe that the souls of the departed still mingle among the living, and partake in some way of the food they consume." So, likewise, according to Bastian, " on the Aleutian Islands the invisible souls or shades of the departed wander about among their children.'^ Certain funeral customs lead to the belief in a special place of residence near at hand; namely, the deserted house or village in which the deceased lived. The Kamtschadales ''frequently remove to some other place when any one has died in the hut, without dragging the corpse along with them." Among the Lepchas, the house where there has been a death " is almost always forsaken by the surviving inmates." The motive, sufficiently obvious, is in some cases assigned. If a deceased Creek Indian " has been a man of eminent character, the family immediately remove from the house in which he is buried, and erect a new one, with a belief that where the bones of their dead are deposited, the place is always attended by goblins.^' Various African peoples have the same practice. In Balonda, a man abandons the hut and garden where a favourite wife has died; and if he revisits the place, " it is to pray to her or make an ofEering." In some cases a more extensive desertion takes place. Kolben says that the Hottentots remove their kraal " when an inhabitant dies in it." Concerning the Boobies of Fernando Po, Bastian tells us that when a person dies they forsake the village. And in ThoQipson's account of the Bechuanas, we read that " on the death of Mallahawan, the town [Lattakoo] was removed, according to the custom of the country."
218 THS DATA Of 80CI0L00T.
In these oases the oonsisteuoy is oomplete. From the other primitire ideas we hare traoed, arises this primitiTe idea that the second life is passed in the locality in which the first life was passed.
§ 111. Elsewhere we trace small modifications: the re- gion said to be hannted by the sonls of the dead^ becomes wider. Though they revisit their old homes^ yet commonly they keep at some distance.
In New Caledonia^ ''the spirits of the departed are supposed to go to the. bush '*; and Turner says that " in Samoa, spirits were supposed to roam the bush.'' We find^ with a difference, this belief among some Africans. The Coast Negroes think there are wild people in the bush who summon their souls to make slaves of them; and the notion of the Bulloms is that the inferior order of demons reside in the bush near the town, and the superior further off.
In other cases the world of the dead, still near at hand, ia an adjacent mountain. The genesis of this belief is clear. The Caribs buried their chiefs on hills; the Comanches on ''the highest hill in the neighbourhood;'' the Patagonians, too, Fitasroy says, interred on the summits of the highest hills; and in Western Arabia, according to Burckhardt, the burial grounds " are generally on or near the summits of mountains." This practice and the accompanying belief, have sometimes an unmistakable connexion. We saw that in Borneo they deposit the bones of their dead on the least accessible peaks and ridges. Hence the Hill-Dyaks' belief, given by Low, that the summits of the higher hills are peopled with spirits; or, as St. John says, " with regard to a future state the (Land) Dyaks point to the highest moun- tain in sight as the abode of their departed friends." In many more places there are mountain other-worlds. Ellis tells us that in Tahiti, " the heaven most familiar * * * was situated near ^ * * glorious Tamahani, the resort of de- parted spirits, a celebrated mountain on the north-west side TBI IDSA8 Of AirOTBKB WOBLD. 219 of Baiatea/' As we lately saw (§ 97), a like belief preyaila in Madagascar. And I may add the Btafeement qaoted by Sir John Ijabbock from Dabois, that the ^' seats of happiness are represented by some Hinda writers to be vast moontains on thenoiih of India/' One more adjacent habitat for the departed mnst be named. "Where cares are nsed for interments, they become the supposed places of abode for the dead; and hence deve* kps the notion of a subterranean other-world. Ordinary borial, joined with the belief in a double who continually wanders and returns to the grare, may perhaps suggest an idea like that of the Khonds, whose divinities [ancestral spirits] are all confined to the limits of the earth: '' within it they are believed to reside, emerging and retiring at wHl/^ But, obviously, cave-burial tends to give a more developed form to this conception. Professor Nilsson, in his Stone Age, after pointing out how the evidence yielded by remains in caves verifies the traditions and allusions current throughout Europe and Asia; after referring to the villages of artificial mountain-caves, which men made when they became too numerous for natural caves; and after remind- ing us that along with living in caves there went burial in caves; remarks that 'Hhis custom, like all religious customs, * * * survived long after people had com- menced to inhabit proper houses.'' This relation of prac- tices, traceable in many parts of the globe, is especially conspicuous in America, from Terra del Fuego northward to Mexico, as indicated in § 87. And along with it we find, in sundry cases, the conception of an under-ground region to which the dead betake themselves. As, for instance, among the Patagonians; who believe ''that some of them after death are to return to those divine caverns where they were created, and where their particular deity resides/' § 112. To understand fully the genesis of this last belief, we must, however, join with it the genesis of the belief in 220 THE DATA OF SOCIOLOQT.
more distant localities inhabited by the departed. What changes the idea of another world close at hand^ to the idea of another world comparatiTcly remote f The answer is simple — ^migration.
On considering the forms which dreams are likely to take among those who have lately migrated^ we shall see that there will arise beliefs in future abodes which the dead reach by long journeys. Having attachments to rela- tives left behind^ and being subject to home*sickness (some- times in an extreme degree^ as shown by Livingstone's account of some negroes who died from it)^ uncivilized men, driven by war or &mine to other habitats, must often dream of the places and persons they have left. Their dreams, narrated and accepted in the original way as actual experiences, make it appear that during sleep they have been to their old abodes. Now one and now another dreams thus: rendering familiar the notion of visiting the father-land during sleep. What, then, happens at death; interpreted as it is by the primitive manf The other-self is long absent — ^where has he gonef Obviously to the place which he often went to, and from which at other times he returned. Now he has not returned. He longed to go back, and frequently said he would go back. Now he has done as he said he would.
This interpretation we meet with everywhere: in some oases definitely stated, and in others unmistakably implied. Among the Peruvians, when an Ynca died, it was said that he '^ was called home to the mansions of his father the Sun.'' Lewis and Clarke tell us that " when the Mandans die they expect to return to the original seats of their fore&thers." "Think not," said a New Zealand chief, " that my origin is of the earth. I come from the heavens; my ancestors are all there; they are gods, and I shall return to them." If the death of a Santal occurs at a distance from the river, a kinsman brings some portion of him "and places it in the current, to be conveyed to the far-ofE esistein land from THE IDEAS OF ANOTHEB WOBLD. 221 wbicli bis ancestors came:'' an avowed purpose wUch^ in adjacent regions^ dictates tlie placing of the entire body in the stream. Similarly^ it is alleged that ''the Teutonic tribes so conceived the future as to reduce death to a * home-going ' — ^a return to the Father/' Let us observe how the implications of this belief correspond with the facts.
Migrations have been made in all directions; and hence^ on this hypothesis^ there must have arisen many different beliefs respecting the direction of the other world. These we find. I do not mean only that the beliefs differ in widely-separated parts of the world. They differ within each considerable area; and often in such ways as might be expected from the probable routes through which the habitats were reached^ and in such ways as to agree with traditions. Thus in South America the Chonos, according to Snow, " trace their descent from western nations across the ocean;'' and they anticipate going in that direction after death. Of the adjacent Araucanians, Thom- son tells us that ''after death they go towards the west beyond the sea." The Peruvians of the dominant raoe^ expecting to go to the east, turned the face of the corpse to the east; but not so those of the inferior aboriginal race living on the coast. The paradise of the Ottomacks of Goiana, is in the west; while that of the Central Ameri- cans was "where the sun rises." In North America the Ghinooks, inhabiting high latitudes, have their heaven in the south, as also have the Chippewas; while the tribes inhabiting the more soatherly parts of the continent, have Iheir "happy hunting-grounds" in the west. Again, in Asia the paradise of the Kalmucks is in the west; that of ■ the Kookies in the north; that of the Todas " where the sun goes down." And there are like differences among the belieb of the Polynesian Islanders. In Eromanga " the spirits of the dead are supposed to go eastward "; while in Lifu, " the spirit is supposed to go westward at death, to a place called Locha." As is shown by one of the 222 THE DATA Of BOCIOLOGT.
above cases, the position of the corpse has reference^ obyiously implied and in some cases ayowed, to the direc- tion the dead are supposed to take. Thus Smith tells us that by the Araucanians^ the body is placed sitting with the &ce turned toward the west — ^the direction of the spirit- land. Andersson says the Damaras place the corpse with the face toward the north, '^to remind them (the natives) whence they originally came ''; and the corpses of the neighbour- ing Bechuanas are made to face in the same direction.
Along with these conceptions, differing as do the different antecedents of these migrating tribes, there go different ideas of the journey to be taken after death; with cor- respondingly-different preparations for it. There is the journey to an under-world; the journey over land; the journey down a river; and the journey across the sea. Each of these has its attendant ideas and observances.
As said above, the descent from troglodytes, alike shown by remains and surviving in traditions, generates a group of beliefs respecting man's origin; and (when joined with this expectation of returning at death to the ancestral home) a further group of beliefs respecting the locality of the other world. '' At least one-half of the tribes in America repre- sent that man was first created under the ground, or in the rocky caverns of the mountains,^' says Gatlin. This is a notion which could scarcely fail to arise among those whose forefathers dwelt in caves. Without knowledge, or power of thought, and having no language capable of expressing the difference between begetting and creating, their traditions will inevitably represent them as having been made in caves, or, more vaguely, as having come out of the earth. According as the legends remain special (which - they are likely to do where the particular caves once in- habited are in the neighbourhood) or become general (which they are likely to do where the tribe migrates to other regions) the belief may assume the one or the other form. In the one case there will arise stories such as that THE IDKAB Of ANOTHXB WOBLD. 22S « carreat in the Basuto-conntry^ where there is a cavern whence the natiyes say they all proceeded; or snch as that named by Livingstone concerning a cave near the village of Sechele^ which is said to be " the habitation of the Deity/' In the other case there will arise snch ideas as those still existing among the Todas, who think of their ancestors as having risen from the ground; and snch ideas as those of the ancient historic races^ who regarded *' mother Earth'' as the source of all beings. Be this as it may^ however^ we do actually find along with the belief in a subterranean origin^ the belief in a subterranean world, where the departed re- join their ancestors. Without dwelling on the effects pro- duced in primitive minds by such vast branching caverns as the Mammoth-cave of Kentucky, or the cave of Bellamar in Florida, it suffices to remember that in limestone-forma- tions all over the globe, water has formed long ramify- ing passages (in this direction bringing the explorer' to an impassable chasm, in that to an under-ground river, and in others to narrow crevices) to see that the belief in an in- definitely-extended under- world is almost certain te arise. On recalling the credulity shown by our own rustics in every locality where some neighbouring deep pool or tarn is pointed out as bottomless, it will be manifest that caves of no great extent, remaining unexplored to their terminations, readily come to be regarded as endless — as leading by murky ways to gloomy infernal regions. And where any such cave, originally inhabited, was then or afterwards used for purposes of sepulture, and was consequently considered as peopled by the souls of ancestors, there would result the belief that the journey after death to the ancestral home, ended in a descent to Hades.* • A confirmation has been pointed out to me since tbe abore passage was put in type. If with the primitive Hebrew practice of cave-burial (shown by Abraham's purchase) we join the fact tliat Skfol literallj means *< cave;" we may infer that along with development of the ghost into a permanently* existing sonl, there went development of the cave into an under-world.
224 THfi DATA OF SOGIOLOGT.
Wliere the journey thus ending, or otherwise ending, is a long one, fit preparations have to be naade. Hence one use for the things left with the corpse — ^hence the club put into the hand of the dead Fijian to be ready for self-defence; hence the spear-thrower fastened to the finger of the deceased New Caledonian; hence the ^'hell- shoon '' provided by the Scandinavians; hence the sacri- ficed horse or camel on which to pursue the weary way; hence the passports by which the Mexicans warded off some of the dangers; hence the dog's head laid by the Esquimaux on the grave of a child to serve as a guide to the land of souls; hence the ferry-money, and the presents for appeasing the demons met.
Of course, a certain family-likeness among alleged difficulties of this return-journey after death, is to be expected where the migrations have had similar difficulties. Bosnian tells us that the heaven of the Gk)ld Coast Ne- groes, is an '' inland country called Bosmanque ": a river having to be crossed on the way. This crossing a river is naturally a leading event in the description of the journey, among continental peoples. An overland migration can rarely have occurred without some large river being met with. Having no boats with them, the passing of such a river will, in the surviving tradition, figure as a chief ob- stacle overcome; and the re-passing it will be regarded as a chief obstacle on the journey made by the dead. Some- times, as by one of the North American tribes, inability to pass the river is the assigned reason for a supposed return of the soul. The revival from trance is thus explained: the other-self, failing to get across the river, came back. It is not impossible that the conceived danger of this river-crossing — a danger so great that, having once escaped, the deceased will not encounter it again — leads to the idea that spirits cannot pass over running streams.
Where a migrating tribe, instead of reaching the new THE n>8AS or ANOTHER WOBLD. 225 babitat hj an over-land route, has reached it by ascending a river^ the tradition, and the consequent notion of the journey back to the ancestral home, take other shapes and entail other preparations. In some regions, where vegetation is extremely luxuriant, rivers afford, if nob the only means of access to the interior, still, by far the easiest means. Humboldt tells us that in South America, tribes spread along the rivers and their branches: the intervening forests being impenetrable. A kindred dis* tribution occurs in Borneo; where the more civilized invad- ing races are located about the rivers and shores, and where the country has obviously been penetrated by ascending the rivers. Hence certain funeral rites which occur in Borneo. St. John says that the Kanawits have a custom of sending much of a deceased chief ^s goods adrift in a frail canoe on the river. Bajah Brooke tells us that " the Malanans used to drift the corpse of their chiefs out to sea in a boat, along with his sword, eatables, clothes, etc., and often with a slave woman chained to the boat.^' It is worth remarking that, describing this as a custom of the past, he says that at present " these crafts are placed near their graves ": an example of the way in which observances become modified and their meanings obscured. A kindred example which I may here add, is furnished by the Chinooks, who, putting the body in a canoe near the river-side, place the canoe with its head pointing down the stream.
The journey to the other-world down a river, brings us with scarcely a transition to the remaining kind of journey — ^that over the sea. We habitually find it where there has been an over-sea migration. The heaven of the Tongans is a distant island. Though it is not clear where Bulu, the Fijian abode of bliss, is situated, yet ''the fact that it cannot be reached except in a canoe, shows that it is separated from this world by water.'' Describing the en- trance to the Samoan Hades as " at the west-end of Savaii,'' Turner says that " to reach this entrance the spirit (if be- et 226 THE DiLTA. OF SOCIOLOOT.
longing to a porson living on another island) joumejed partly by land and partly swimming the intermediate sea or seas/' He also tells us that the Samoans " say of a chief who has died^ 'he has sailed/ '^ Along with, or instead of, these distinct statements, we have, in other cases, practices sufficiently significant. Ellis tells us that sometimes a part of a canoe is found near a grave in the Sandwich Islands. In New Zealand, which has been peopled by these immigrant Polynesians, Angas says a canoe, some- times with sails and paddles, or part of a canoe, is placed beside or in their graves; while the statement of Thompson that the bodies of New Zealand chiefs were wrapped in mats and put into canoe-shaped boxes, shows us a modification which throws light upon other such modifications. After meeting with these observances in habitats that have necessarily been reached by boats, we cannot doubt the meanings of similar observances elsewhere. Already it has been pointed out that the Ghonos, of western Patagonia, who trace their descent from western people across the ocean, expect to go back to them after death; and here it is to be added that " they bury their dead in canoes, near the sea.'' Of the Araucanians, too, with like traditions and like expectations, we read that a chief is sometimes buried in a boat. Bonwick alleges of the Australians that formerly, in Port Jackson, the body was put adrift in a bark canoe; and Angas, again showing us how an observance having at first an unmistakable meaning passes into a form of which the meaning is less distinct, says the New South Wales people sometimes bury the dead in a bark canoe.
Like evidence is found in the northern hemisphere. Ross tells us that among the Ghinooks " all excepting slaves, are laid in canoes or wooden sepulchres;" we learn from Bastian that the Ostyaks " bury in boats "; and there were kindred usages among our own Scandinavian ancestors.
§ 113. Yet a further explanation is thus afforded. We THE IDXA8 Of ANOTHKB WOBLD. 22?
see how^ in the same society, there can arise, and how, under certain conditions, there will inevitably arise, beliefs in two or more other-worlds. When with migpration there is joined conquest, and peoples having different traditions become organized into one community, they will have different ancestral homes to which their respective dead depart. Habitually, where physical and mental unlikenesses indicate unlike origins of the governing classes and the go- vemed classes, there is a belief in unlike other-worlds for them. The Samoan chiefs " were supposed to have a sepa- rate place allotted to them, called Pulotu.^' We learn from Angas that among the New Zealanders, the burial in a canoe, with the expectation of going back to the father- land^ is confined to the chiefs. In the opinion of some Tongans, though not of all, only the chiefs have souls, and go to Bolotoo, their heaven: the probability being that the traditions of the more recent conquering im- migrants, and the belief in their return journey after death, are relatively distinct and dominant. Using the clue thus furnished, we may see how the different other-worlds for different ranks in the same society, which have originally no ethical applications, may become other-worlds for good and bad respectively. On remembering that our word villain, now so expressive of detestable character, once merely meant a serf, while rioble originally referred simply to the conspicuousness due to high social position; we cannot question the tendency of early opinion to identify subjection with badness and the possession of power with goodness. On also remembering that the conquerors usually form the military class, while the conquered become slaves who do not fight, and that in societies so constituted worth is measured by bravery, we perceive a further reason why the other-worlds of conquering and conquered, though originally their respective ancestral homes, come to be re- garded as places for worthy and unworthy. Naturally, therefore, where indigenous descendants from cave-dwellers 228 THE DiLTA OF SOCIOLOGY.
have been subjugated by an invading race, it will happen that the respective places to which the two expect to return, will differentiate into places for bad and good. There will arise such a belief as that of the Nicaragua-people, who held that the bad (those who died in their houses) went under the earth to Miqtanteot, while the good (who died in battle) went to serve bhe gods where the sun rises, in the country whence the maize came. As the Patagonians show us, the unsubjugated descendants of cave-dwellers do not regard the under-world as a place of misery. Contrariwise, their return after death to the " divine caverns,'' is to bring a pleasurable life with the god who presides in the land of strong drink. But where, as in Mexico, there have been conquests, the under-world is considered, if not as a place of punishment, still as a relatively-uncomfortable place.
Of course, the conceptions thus originating will in every case vary with the antecedents. Eadless modifications and incongruities of beliefs about these respective other-worlds must result. But the noteworthy fact is that a supposed infernal abode like the Qreek Hades, not undesirable as conceived by primitive descendants of troglodytes, may differentiate into a dreary place, and eventually into a place of punishment, mainly by virtue of the contrast with the better places to which other souls go — Isles of the West for the specially brave, or the celestial abode for favourites of the gods. And the further noteworthy fact is, that the most inhospitable regions into which rebels are expelled, yield a kindred origin for a Tartarus or a Gehenna.* § 114. Interpretable after the same general manner, is * While this is in the press, I find in the oldest of all known legends, the Bahylonian account of the flood, evidence that heaven, as then conceived, was the territory whence the conquering race came. The residence of the gods, to which XisithruB is translated for his piety, is ** on the Persian Qulf, near the mouth of the Euphrates "; and Mr. G. Smith points out that this was the BCkcred region whence came the heings who taught the Babylonians the arts, fMid were worshipped by them.
THt IDEAS OF ANOTHIB WORLD. 229 the remaining conception of another worlds above or out- side of this world. The transition from a mountain abode to an abode in the sky, conceired as the sky is hy primitive men, presents no difficulties.