CHAPTER III: PRIESTLY DUTIES OF DESCENDANTS.
§ 594. As we have before seen (§ 87), it is in some cases the custom to destroy corpses for the purpose of preventing resurrection of them and consequent annoyance by them; and in other cases where no such measure of protection is taken, the dead are, without discrimination between relatives and others, dreaded as causers of misfortunes and diseases. Illustrations of this belief as existing among various savages were given in Part I, Chaps. XVI, XVII. Here is another from New Britain.
The Matukanaputa natives “bury their dead underneath the hut which was lately inhabited by the deceased, after which the relatives go for a long canoe journey, staying away some months . . . they say . . . the spirit of the departed stays in his late residence for some time after his death, and eventually finding no one to torment goes away for good; the surviving relatives then return and remain there as formerly.”
Even where ghosts are regarded as generally looking on their descendants with goodwill, they are apt to take offence and to need propitiation. We read of the Santals that from the silent gloom of the adjacent grove—
“the byegone generations watch their children and children’s children playing their several parts in life, not altogether with an unfriendly eye. Nevertheless the ghostly inhabitants of the grove are sharp critics, and deal out crooked limbs, cramps and leprosy, unless duly appeased.”
But while recognizing the fact that ghosts in general are usually held to be more or less malicious, we find, as might Edition: current; Page: [45] be expected, that the smallest amount of enmity and the greatest amount of amity are supposed to be felt by the ghosts of relatives. Indeed by some races such ghosts are considered purely beneficent; as by the Karens, who think their meritorious ancestors “exercise a general watch care over their children on earth.”
Though among various peoples there is propitiation chiefly of bad spirits, while good spirits are ignored as not likely to do mischief; yet wherever ancestor-worship preserves its original lineaments, we find the chief attention paid to the spirits of kindred. Prompted as offerings on graves originally are by affection for the deceased, and called forth as praises are by actual regrets for his or her departure, it naturally happens that these propitiations are made more by relatives than by others.
§ 595. Hence then the truth, everywhere illustrated, that those who perform the offices of the primitive cult are, at the outset, children or other members of the family. Hence then the fact that in Samoa—
“Prayers at the grave of a parent or brother or chief were common. Some, for example, would pray for health in sickness and might or might not recover.”
Hence the fact that the people of Banks’ Island, setting out on a voyage, would say—
“ ‘Uncle! Father! plenty of pigs for you, plenty of money, kava for your drinking, twenty bags of food for your eating in the canoe. I pray you look upon me; let me go safe on the sea.’ ”
And hence once more the fact that among the Blantyre negroes—
“If they pray for a successful hunting expedition and return laden with venison or ivory, they know that it is their old relative that has done it, and they give him a thank-offering. If the hunting party get nothing, they may say ‘the spirit has been sulky with us,’ . . . and refuse the thank-offering.”
Unquestionably these cases, re-inforcing many before given, show us the beginnings of a family-religion. Along Edition: current; Page: [46] with that fear of a supernatural being which forms the central element of every religion, we see sacrifice and prayer, gratitude and hope, as well as the expectation of getting benefits proportionate to propitiations.
§ 596. An interpretation is thus furnished of the fact that in undeveloped societies the priestly function is generally diffused.
We find this to be the case at present among the uncivilized; as in New Caledonia, where “almost every family has its priest;” as in Madagascar, where other worships have arisen “long subsequently to the prevalence of the worship of household gods;” and as among the aborigines of India, who, though they propitiate ancestors, have not “in general, a regular and established priesthood.” So, too, was it with the people who made the first advances in civilization—the Egyptians. Each family maintained the sacrifices to its own dead; and the greater deities had a semi-private worship, carried on by actual or nominal descendants. The like held of the Greeks and Romans, who joined sacrifices made to their public gods, chiefly by priests, with sacrifices made by private persons to their household gods who were dead relatives. And it is the same at the present time in China, where priesthoods devoted to wider worships, have not supplanted the primitive worship of departed progenitors by their offspring.
Having thus observed that in the earliest stage, propitiation of the double of a dead man by offerings, praises, etc., is carried on by surviving relatives, we have now to observe that this family-cult acquires a more definite form by the devolution of its functions on one member of the family.