CHAPTER XV: THE IDEAS OF ANOTHER WORLD.

§ 109. While describing in the last chapter, the ideas of another life, I have quoted passages which imply ideas of another world. The two sets of ideas are so closely connected, that the one cannot be treated without occasional reference to the other. I have, however, reserved the second for separate treatment; both because the question of the locality in which another life is supposed to be passed, is a separate question, and because men’s conceptions of that locality undergo modifications which it will be instructive to trace.

We shall find that by a process akin to the processes lately contemplated, the place of residence for the dead diverges slowly from the place of residence for the living.

§ 110. Originally the two coincide: the savage imagines his dead relatives are close at hand. If he renews the supplies of food at their graves, and otherwise propitiates them, the implication is that they are not far away, or that they will soon be back. This implication he accepts.

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 said to frequent their tombs. The Guiana Indians believe “every place is haunted where any have died.” So, too, is it throughout Africa. On the Gold Coast, “the spirit is supposed to remain near Edition: current; Page: [202] 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. In the country 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, “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 Kamschadales “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. Among the Balonda, a man abandons the hut where a favourite wife died; and if he revisits the place, “it is to pray to her or make an offering.” In some cases a more extensive desertion takes place. The Hottentots remove their kraal “when an inhabitant dies in it.” After a death the Boobies of Fernando Po forsake the village in which it occurred. And of the Bechuanas we read that “on the death of Mallahawan, . . . the town [Lattakoo] was removed, according to the custom of the country.”

In these cases the consistency is complete. From the other primitive ideas we have traced, arises this primitive idea that the second life is passed in the locality in which the first life was passed.

§ 111. Elsewhere we trace small modifications: the region said to be haunted by the souls 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 in Eromanga “spirits are also thought 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 funeral customs generate the idea that the world of the dead is an adjacent mountain. The Caribs buried their chiefs on hills; the Comanches on “the highest hill in the neighbourhood;” the Patagonians, too, interred on the summits of the highest hills; and in Western Arabia, 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 mountain in sight as the abode of their departed friends.” Many more peoples have mountain other-worlds. In Tahiti, “the heaven most familiar . . . was situated near . . . glorious Tamahani, the resort of departed spirits, a celebrated mountain on the north-west side of Raiatea.” As we lately saw (§ 97), a like belief prevails in Madagascar. And I may add the statement quoted by Sir John Lubbock from Dubois, that the “seats of happiness are represented by some Hindu writers to be vast mountains on the north of India.”

Where caves are used for interments, they become the supposed places of abode for the dead; and hence develops Edition: current; Page: [204] the notion of a subterranean other-world. Ordinary burial, joined with the belief in a double who continually wanders and returns to the grave, 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 will.” But, obviously, cave-burial tends to give a more developed form to this conception. Professor Nilsson, 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 reminding us that along with living in caves there went burial in caves; remarks that “this custom, like all religious customs, . . . survived long after people had commenced to inhabit proper houses.” This connexion of practices is especially conspicuous in America, from Terra del Fuego to Mexico, as indicated in § 87. And along with it we find 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 deities reside.

§ 112. To understand fully the genesis of this last belief, we must, however, join with it the genesis of the belief in more distant localities inhabited by the departed. What changes the idea of another world close at hand, to the idea of another world comparatively remote? The answer is simple—migration.

The dreams of those who have lately migrated, initiate beliefs in future abodes which the dead reach by long journeys. Having attachments to relatives left behind, and being subject to home-sickness (sometimes in extreme degrees, as shown by Livingstone’s account of some negroes who died from it), uncivilized men, driven by war or famine Edition: current; Page: [205] 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. First one and then another dreams thus: rendering familiar the notion of visiting the father-land during sleep. What, naturally, happens at death; interpreted as it is by the primitive man? The other-self is long absent—where has he gone? 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 cases stated, and in others implied. Among the Peruvians, when an Ynca died, it was said that he “was called home to the mansions of his father the Sun.” “When the Mandans die they expect to return to the original seats of their forefathers.” In Mangaia “when a man died, his spirit was supposed to return to Avaiki, i. e., the ancient home of their ancestors in the region of sunset.” “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, “his nearest kinsman carries a little relic . . . and places it in the current, to be conveyed to the far off eastern land from which his ancestors came:” an avowed purpose which, in adjacent regions, dictates the placing of the entire body in the stream. Similarly, “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 Edition: current; Page: [206] 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, “trace their descent from western nations across the ocean;” and they anticipate going in that direction ofter death. The adjacent Araucanians believe that “after death they go towards the west beyond the sea.” Expecting to go to the east, whence they came, Peruvians of the Ynca race turned the face of the corpse to the east; but not so those of the aboriginal race living on the coast. The paradise of the Ottomacks of Guiana, is in the west; while that of the Central Americans was “where the sun rises.” In North America the Chinooks, inhabiting high latitudes, have their heaven in the south, as also have the Chippewas; while the tribes inhabiting the more southerly parts of the continent, have their “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 beliefs 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 Loeha.” As is shown by one of the above cases, the position of the corpse has reference, obviously implied and in some cases avowed, to the road which the deceased is expected to take. By the Mapuchés the body is placed sitting “with the face turned towards the west—the direction of the spirit-land.” The Damaras place the corpse with the face towards the north, “to remind them (the natives) whence they originally came;” and the corpses of the neighbouring Bechuanas are made to face to the same point of the compass.

Along with these different conceptions there go different ideas of the journey to be taken after death; with correspondingly-different Edition: current; Page: [207] 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.

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 represent that man was first created under the ground, or in the rocky caverns of the mountains,” says Catlin. This is a notion which could scarcely fail to arise among those whose forefathers dwelt in caves. Having no language capable of expressing the difference between begetting and creating, their traditions 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 inhabited 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 first case, there will arise stories such as that current in the Basuto-country, where exists a cavern whence the natives say they all proceeded; or such 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 second case, there will arise such ideas as those still existing among the Todas, who think of their ancestors as having risen from the ground; and such 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 rejoin their ancestors. Without dwelling on the effects produced 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 Edition: current; Page: [208] that in limestone-formations all over the globe, water has formed long ramifying passages (in this direction bringing the explorer to an impassable chasm, in that to an underground river) to see that the belief in an indefinitely-extended under-world is almost certain to 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.*

Where the journey thus ending, or otherwise ending, is a long one, preparations have to be made. 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 a New Caledonian’s corpse; hence the “hell-shoon” provided by the Scandinavians; hence the sacrificed 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. The heaven of the Gold Coast Negroes, is an “inland country called Bosmanque:” a river having to be crossed on the Edition: current; Page: [209] way. This is naturally a leading event in the description of the journey, among inhabitants of continents. An overland migration can rarely have occurred without some large river being met with. The passing of such a river will, in the surviving tradition, figure as a chief obstacle overcome; and the re-passing it will be considered a chief obstacle on the journey back, made by the dead. Sometimes inability to pass the river is the assigned reason for a supposed return of the soul. By a North American tribe, the revival from trance is thus explained: the other-self, failing to get across, 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 habitat by an overland 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. Humboldt tells us that in South America, tribes spread along the rivers and their branches: the intervening forests being impenetrable. In Borneo, too, where the invading races are located about the shores and rivers, the rivers have clearly been the channels up which the interior had been reached. Hence certain funeral rites which occur in Borneo. The Kanowits send much of a deceased chief’s goods adrift in a frail canoe on the river. The Malanaus used “to drift the deceased’s sword, eatables, cloths, jars—and often in former days a slave woman accompanied these articles, chained to the boat—out to sea, with a strong ebb tide running.” Describing this as a custom of the past, Brooke 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 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 break 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.” The entrance to the Samoan Hades is “at the west-end of Savaii,” and to reach this entrance the spirit (if belonging to a person living on another island) journeyed partly by land and partly swimming the intermediate sea or seas. Moreover 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. Sometimes a part of a canoe is found near a grave in the Sandwich Islands. In New Zealand, undoubtedly peopled by immigrant Polynesians, Angas says a canoe, sometimes 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 put into canoe-shaped boxes, shows us a modification which explains other such modifications. Already we have seen that the Chonos, 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. Among the Chinooks “all excepting slaves, are laid in canoes Edition: current; Page: [211] or wooden sepulchres;” the Ostyaks “bury in boats;” and there were kindred usages among the ancient Scandinavians.

§ 113. Yet a further explanation is thus afforded. We see how, in the same society, there arise beliefs in two or more other-worlds. When with migration there is joined conquest, invaders and invaded will naturally 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 governed classes, there is a belief in unlike other-worlds for them. The Samoan chiefs “were supposed to have a separate place allotted to them, called Pulotu.” We have seen that in Peru, the Ynca race and the aborigines went after death to different regions. In the opinion of some Tongans, only the chiefs have souls, and go to Bolotoo, their heaven: the probability being that the traditions of the more recent conquering immigrants, 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, 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 noble was at first indicative only of high social position; we cannot question the tendency of early opinion to identify subjection with badness and supremacy with goodness. On also remembering that victors become the military class, while vanquished 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 upper and lower classes, though originally their respective ancestral homes, come to be regarded as places for worthy and unworthy. Naturally, therefore, where indigenous descendants from cave-dwellers have been subjugated by an invading race, Edition: current; Page: [212] 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 the 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.

Thus then, the noteworthy fact is that a supposed infernal abode like the Greek Hades, not undesirable as conceived by proximate descendants of troglodytes, may differentiate into a dreary place, and at length into a place of punishment, mainly because of the contrast with the better places to which the 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 the remaining conception of another world, above or outside of this world. The transition from a mountain abode to Edition: current; Page: [213] an abode in the sky, conceived as the sky is by primitive men, presents no difficulties.

Burial on hills is practised by many peoples; and we have already seen that there are places, as Borneo, where, along with the custom of depositing a chief’s remains on some peak difficult of access, there goes the belief that the spirits of the departed inhabit the mountain-tops. That the custom causes the belief, is in this case probable; though, as we shall presently see, an apparently-similar belief arises otherwise. Here, however, it concerns us only to observe that “the highest mountain in sight” is regarded as a world peopled by the departed; and that in the undeveloped speech of savages, living on a peak up in the heavens is readily confounded with living in the heavens. Remembering that, originally, the firmament is considered as a dome supported by these loftiest peaks, the conclusion that those who live on them have access to it, is a conclusion certain to be drawn.

But, as already hinted, besides the above origin, carrying with it the belief that departed souls of men live on the mountain-tops, or in the heavens, there is another possible, and indeed probable, origin, not carrying such a conclusion; but, contrariwise, restricting this heavenly abode to a different race of beings. Observe how this other belief is suggested. The choice of high places for purposes of defence, we may trace back through civilized times into barbarous times. What many of our own castles show us—what we are shown by modern and ancient fortresses on the Rhine—what we are shown by mediæval towns and villages capping the hills in Italy, and by scattered fastnesses perched on scarcely accessible peaks throughout the East; we are shown wherever primitive savagery has been outgrown in regions affording fit sites. A fortress on an elevation in ancient Mexico, is described by Godoi; the Panches made entrenchments on high spots; and the Peruvians fortified the tops of mountains by ranges of walled Edition: current; Page: [214] moats. Both invaded and invaders have thus utilized commanding eminences. The remains of Roman encampments on our own hills, remind us of this last use. Clearly then, during the conflicts and subjugations which have been ever going on, the seizing of an elevated stronghold by a conquering race, has been a not infrequent occurrence; and the dominance of this race has often gone along with the continued habitation of this stronghold. An account given by Brooke of his long contest with a mountain-chief in Borneo, shows what would be likely to happen when the stronghold was in the possession of the superior race. His antagonist had fortified an almost inaccessible crag on the top of Sadok—a mountain about 5,000 feet high, surrounded by lower mountains. Described by Brooke as “grim and grand,” it figures in Dyak legends and songs as “the Grand Mount, towards which no enemy dare venture.” The first attempt to take this fastness failed utterly; the second, in which a small mortar was used, also failed; and only by the help of a howitzer, dragged up by the joint strength of hundreds of yelling Dyaks, did the third attempt succeed. This chieftain, who had many followers and was aided by subordinate chiefs, Layang, Nanang, and Loyioh, holding secondary forts serving as outposts, was unconquerable by the surrounding tribes, and was naturally held in dread by them. “Grandfather Rentap,” as he was commonly called, was dangerously violent; occasionally killed his own men; was regardless of established customs; and, among other feats, took a second wife from a people averse to the match, carried her off to his eyrie, and, discarding the old one, made the young one Ranee of Sadok. Already there were superstitions about him. “Snakes were supposed to possess some mysterious connection with Rentap’s forefathers, or the souls of the latter resided in these loathsome creatures.” Now if, instead of a native ruler thus living up in the clouds (which hindered the last attack), keeping the country around in fear, occasionally Edition: current; Page: [215] coming down to fulfil a threat of vengeance, and giving origin to stories already growing into superstitions, we suppose a ruler belonging to an invading race which, bringing knowledge, skill, arts and implements, unknown to the natives, were regarded as beings of superior kind, just as civilized men now are by savages; we shall see that there would inevitably arise legends concerning this superior race seated in the sky. Considering that among these very Dyaks, divine beings are conceived as differing so little from men, that the supreme god and creator, Tapa, is supposed to dwell “in a house like that of a Malay, . . . himself being clothed like a Dyak;” we shall see that the ascription of a divine character to a conqueror thus placed, would be certain. And if the country was one in which droughts had fostered the faith in rain-makers and “heaven-herds”—if, among the Zulus, there was a belief in weather-doctors able to “contend with the lightning and hail,” and to “send the lightning to another doctor to try him;” this ruler, living on a peak round which the clouds formed and whence the storms came, would, without hesitation, be regarded as the causer of these changes—as a thunderer holding the lightnings in his hand.* Joined with which ascribed powers, there would nevertheless be stories of his descents from this place up in the heavens, appearances among men, and amours with their daughters. Grant a little time for such legends to be exaggerated and idealized—let the facts be magnified as was the feat of Samson with the ass’s jawbone, or the prowess of Achilles making “the earth flow with blood,” or the achievement of Ramses II in slaying 100,000 Edition: current; Page: [216] foes single-handed; and there would be reached the idea that heaven was the abode of superhuman beings commanding the powers of nature and punishing men.*

I am aware that this interpretation will be called Euhemeristic; and that having so called it, the mythologists whose views are now in fashion will consider it disposed of. Only incidentally implied as this view here is, I must leave it for the present unsupported. By-and-by, after showing that it is congruous with all the direct evidence we have respecting primitive modes of thought, I hope further to show that the multitudinous facts which existing uncivilized and semi-civilized races furnish, yield no support to the current theories of mythologists, and that these theories are equally at variance with the laws of mental evolution.

§ 115. The general conclusion to which we are led is that the ideas of another world pass through stages of development. The habitat of the dead, originally conceived as coinciding with that of the living, gradually diverges—here to the adjacent forest, there to the remoter forest, and elsewhere to distant hills and mountains. The belief that the dead rejoin their ancestors, leads to further divergences, which vary according to the traditions. Stationary descendants of troglodytes think they return to a subterranean other-world, whence they emerged; while immigrant races have for their other-worlds the abodes of their fathers, to which they journey after death: over land, down a river, or across the sea, as the case may be. Societies consisting of conquerors and conquered, having separate traditions of origin, have separate other-worlds; which differentiate into superior and inferior places, in correspondence with the respective Edition: current; Page: [217] positions of the two races. Conquests of these mixed peoples by more powerful immigrants, bring further complications—additional other-worlds, more or less unlike in their characters. Finally, where the places for the departed, or for superior classes of beings, are mountain-tops, there is a transition to an abode in the heavens; which, at first near and definite, passes into the remote and indefinite. So that the supposed residence for the dead, originally coinciding with the residence of the living, is little by little removed in thought: distance and direction grow increasingly vague, and finally the localization disappears in space.

All these conceptions, then, which have their root in the primitive idea of death, simultaneously undergo like progressive modifications. Resurrection, once looked for as immediate, is postponed indefinitely; the ghost, originally conceived as quite substantial, fades into ethereality; the other-life, which at first repeated this exactly, becomes more and more unlike it; and its place, from a completely-known adjacent spot, passes to a somewhere unknown and unimagined.