3 man to sacrifice to a spirit which does not belong to him is flattery." The distinction between a tribesman or fellow countryman and a stranger also applies to the dead. In Greenland a stranger without relatives or friends was generally suffered to lie unburied. Among North American Indians it is permitted to scalp warriors of a hostile tribe, whereas "there is no example of Indian having taken the scalp of a man of his own tribe, or of one belonging to a nation in alliance with his own, and whom he may have killed in a quarrel or a fit of anger"; and an Indian who would never think of desecrating the grave of a tribesman may have "no such scruple in regard to the graves of another tribe." 4 Yet already from early times we hear of the recognition of certain duties even to strangers and enemies. The Greeks of the post-Homeric age made it a rule to deliver up a slain enemy so that he should receive the proper funeral rites. It was considered a disgraceful act of Lysander not to accord burial to Philocles, the Athenian general at Aegospotami, together with about four thousand prisoners whom he put to the sword; and the Athenians themselves boasted that their ancestors had with their own hands buried the Persians who had fallen in the battle of Marathon, holding it to be "a sacred and imperative duty to cover with earth a human corpse. According to the Chinese penal code, destroying, mutilating, or throwing into the water the unenclosed and unburied corpse of a stranger," though a much less serious crime than the same injury inflicted upon the corpse of a relative, is yet an offence punishable with 100 blows, and perpetual banishment to the distance of 3,000 lee.s 6 The duties to the dead also vary according to the age, Griechen, ii. 100 sqq. Rohde, op. cit. p. 200 sq. 1 Lun Yü, ii. 24. I. 2 Cranz, op. cit. i. 218. 3 Domenech, Seven Years' Residence in the Great Deserts of North America, ii. 357. Dodge, Our Wild Indians, p. 162. 5 Schmidt, Die Ethik der alten 6 Pausanias, ix. 32. 9. 8 Fa Ising Len Lee, sec. cclxxvi. p. 295. Some sex, and social position of the departed. Among the natives of Australia children and women are interred with but scant ceremony.i In the tribes of North-WestCentral Queensland nobody paints his body in mourning for a young child. In Eastern Central Africa the spirit of a child which dies when about four or five days of age gets nothing of the attention usually bestowed on the dead. Among the Wadshagga married persons are buried in their huts, whilst the bodies of unmarried ones and especially children are put in some hidden place, where they are left to rot or be devoured by beasts. Siberian tribes were formerly accustomed to inhume adults only, whereas the corpses of children were exposed on trees. The natives of Port Jackson, in New South Wales, consigned their young people to the grave, but burned those who had passed middle age." The Kondayamkottai Maravars, a Dravidian tribe of Tinnevelly in Southern India, bury the corpses of unmarried persons, whilst those of married ones are cremated. some other tribes in India burial is practised in the case of young children only, and this has long been a rule of Brahmanism." Among the Andaman Islanders, again, infants are buried within the encampment, whereas all other dead are carried to some distant and secluded spot in the jungle." We meet with a kindred custom in the neighbourhood of Victoria Nyanza in Central Africa: in Karagwe and Nkole "children are buried in the huts themselves, grown-up people outside, generally in cultivated fields, or in such as are going to be cultivated." "1 The bodies of women are sometimes disposed of in a In Thus among the different way from those of men. Blackfeet Indians the latter were fastened in the branches of trees so high as to be beyond the reach of wolves, and then left to slowly waste in the dry winds; whilst the body of a woman or child was thrown into the underbush or jungle, where it soon became the prey of the wild animals.1 Among the Tuski (Chukchi), who cremate or rather boil the bodies of good men, women are not usually burned, on account of the scarcity of wood.2 Class distinctions likewise influence the disposal of the dead. In some American tribes cremation seems to be reserved for persons of higher rank. Among the pagans of Obubura Hill district in Southern Nigeria "the bodies of ordinary people are buried in the bush, sometimes being merely thrown on the ground, but those of chiefs. and important men and women are buried in their huts or in the adjoining verandah." The Masai throw away the corpses of ordinary persons to be eaten by hyenas, whereas medicine-men and influential people are buried. The Nandi do not bury their dead unless they have been very important persons. Among the Waganda, when a chief dies, he is buried in a wooden coffin, whilst the bodies of slaves are thrown into the jungle. Some other African peoples throw the corpses of slaves into a morass or the nearest pool of water. The Thlinkets committed them to the tender mercies of the sea." Among the Maoris a slave would not be greatly bewailed after death, nor have his bones ceremonially scraped.10 The Roman 'Law of the Twelve Tables' prohibited the bodies of slaves from being embalmed. Moral distinctions, also, are noticeable in 1 Yarrow, Introduction to the Study of Mortuary Customs among the North American Indians, p. 67. Dall, op. cit. p. 382. 3 Preuss, op. cit. p. 301. 4 Partridge, Cross River Natives, p. 237. 5 Hollis, op. cit. pp. 304, 305, 307; Eliot, ibid. p. xx. "Johnston, Uganda, ii. 880. 7 Wilson and Felkin, Uganda, i. 188. 8 Denham and Clapperton, Travels in Northern and Central Africa, ii. 64 (natives of Kano). Pogge, Im Reiche des Muata Jamwo, p. 243 (Kalunda). "Holmberg, "Ethnographische Skizzen über die Völker des russischen Amerika,' in Acta Soc. Scient. Fennica, iv. 323. Dall, op. cit. pp. 417, 420. 10 Colenso, op. cit. p. 30. 11 Lex Duodecim Tabularum, x. 6. the treatment of the dead. In some parts of Central America the bodies of men of high standing who had committed a crime were, like those of the common people, exposed to be devoured by wild beasts.' Among the Tuski the corpses of bad men were simply left to rot. In Greenland the body of a dead malefactor was dismembered, and the separate limbs were thrown apart." To the same class of facts belong the punishments which were inflicted upon the corpses of criminals in classical antiquity and formerly in Christian Europe. From this survey of facts we shall now pass to a consideration of the causes from which the duties to the dead have sprung. In the first place, there can be no doubt that these duties to a considerable extent are based upon the feeling of sympathetic resentment, in the same way as is the case with duties to living persons. Death does not entirely extinguish the affection which was felt for a person whilst he was alive. The rites and customs connected with a death are very largely similar to or identical with natural expressions of grief, and in spite of their ceremonial character it is impossible to believe that they are altogether counterfeit. We are told by trustworthy eye-witnesses that, although the self-inflicted pain and the loud lamentations which form part of a funeral among the Australian blacks are not to be taken as a measure of the grief actually felt, this expression of despair "is not all artificial or professional"; and Mr. Man believes that among the Andaman Islanders "in the majority of cases the display of grief is thoroughly sincere." " But the dead also inspire other feelings than sympathy and sorrow, and the duties towards them have consequently a complex origin. The souls of the dead are not generally supposed to lead a merely passive existence. They are conceived as 1 Preuss, op. cit. p. 301. 2 Dall, op. cit. p. 382. Rink, Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo, p. 64. 4 Ayrault, Des procez faicts au cadaver, p. 5 sqq. Trummer, Vorträge über Tortur, &c. i. 455 sqq. Supra, ii. 254. 5 Fraser, Aborigines of New South Wales, p. 44. Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 510 sq. 145. Man, in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xii. capable of acting upon the living, of conferring upon them benefits, or at all events of inflicting upon them harm. Death has in some respects enhanced their powers. They know what is going on upon earth, what those whom they have left behind are doing. Their power of acting, also, is greater than that which they possessed when they were tied to the flesh. They are raised to a higher sphere of influence; magic properties are ascribed even to their corpses. Their character may remain on the whole unchanged, and so, too, their affection for their surviving friends. Hence they often become guardians of their descendants. Among the Amazulu the head of each house is worshipped by his children; remembering his kindness to them while he was living, they say, "He will still treat us in the same way now he is dead.' The Herero invoke the blessings of their deceased friends or relatives, praying for success against their enemies, an abundance of cattle, numerous wives, and prosperity in their undertakings. On the West African Slave Coast the head of a family, after death, often becomes its protector, and is sometimes regarded as the guardian of a whole community or village. The Mpongwe teach the child "to look up to the parent not only as its earthly protector, but as a friend in the spirit-land."+ The Gournditch-mara in Australia believed that "the spirit of the deceased father or grandfather occasionally visited the male descendant in dreams, and imparted to him charms (songs) against disease or against witchcraft." " The Veddah of Ceylon invokes the spirits of his departed relatives "as sympathetic and kindred, though higher powers than man, to direct him to a life pleasing to the gods, through which he may gain their protection or favour."6 The Nayadis of Malabar, on certain ceremonial Callaway, Religious System of the Amazulu, p. 144 sq. 2 Andersson, Lake Ngami, p. 222. Ellis, Ewe-speaking Peoples, p See also ibid. p. 24 (Slave and Gold Coast natives). 104. VOL. II + Wilson, Western Africa, p. 394. 5 Fison and Howitt, Kamilaroi and Kurnai, p. 278. 6 Nevill, Vaeddas of Ceylon,' in Taprobanian, i. 194. M M |