172 G. ROHEIM
came from trees and to trees they shall return". ^ After the heavy toils of life, man finds repose in a return to bygone times and if the living Pithecanthropus has been compelled by circumstances to change his habits the dead at least can indulge in the luxury of conservativism and hover like the coffin of Mohammed "bet- ween Heaven and Earth" on the tree-tops ^ According to the Arunta the dead go to an island which lies northwards and is called "country of the dead". Here they live chiefly on lizards, rats, birds' eggs, berries and roots. * It is almost certain that the island in the north (New Guinea or a continent which has become submerged in the ocean) is really the country from where the Arunta came to their present hunting grounds in Central Australia, and if the dead return to a previous state of things in this case we may perhaps suppose that the agreement between the above mentioned diet and the food of our pithecoid ancestors is not due to chance either.* In New Guinea we have a more realistic survival of simian life: tree houses are used as strongholds in case of danger. ^ In the initiation rites of men it is true that we do not
is too complicated to be discussed in a note). Other burial customs also present traces of a return to a previous state of existence: to a migratory condition of the tribe (canoe), to the home of the ancestors. Rivers: Melanesian Society, II, p. 270; W. J. Perry: "The Orientation of the Dead in Indonesia." Joum, Anthr. Inst. 1914. A similar explanation may, in conjunction with what we have said above on the part played by caves in the history of humanity, help us to understand the practice of cave-burial as well as the SUeping Hero in the hill. For cave-burial see Preuss: Begrabnisarten, 1894, p. 171; Ferry: The Megalithic Culture of Indonesia, 1918, pp. 22—5; W. H. R. Rivers: The History of Melanesian Society, 1914, II, pp. 271, 286. Myths which connect the origin of mankind with trees are very frequent; Cf. Mannhardt: Wald- und Feldkulte, 1904, I, II; Frobenius: Zeitalter des Sonnengottes, 1904; P. W. Schmidt: "Grundlinien einer Vergleichung der Religionen und Mythologien der austronesischen V5lker Benkschripen' der Kais. Akademie der Wissensckaften in Wien, Bd. LIII, 1910, "Fictions yet truths; for caverns and hollow trees were in fact the houses and temples of our first parents." (Brinton: Myths of the New World, 1905, p. 265.)
» W. J. Perry: Myths of Origin and the Home of the Dead in Indonesia. Folk-Lore, 1915, p. 145.
- Cf. J. G. Frazer: Balder the Beautiful, 1913, I, p. 1. "Between Heaven
and Earth."
' Strehlow und Leonluirdi: Die Aranda- und Loritjastamme ia Zentral- Australien. VerSff. aus dem St&dtischen V5lker-Museum, 1907, I, S. 15.
- Large mammals are conspicuous by their absence in both cases.
- Ch.Keysser: Aus demLebenderKaileute; Neuhauss: Deutsch-Neu-Guinea,
lU, 1911, S. 12, 26; Seligmann: The Melanesians of British New Guinea, 1910, p. 44.
