after a death, the corpse being still in the house, the Chinese abstain from the use of knives and needles, and even of chopsticks, eating their food with their fingers.[1] Amongst the Innuit (Eskimos) of Alaska for four days after a death the women in the village do no sewing, and for five days the men do not cut wood with an axe.[2] On the third, sixth, ninth, and fortieth days after the funeral the old Prussians and Lithuanians used to prepare a meal, to which, standing at the door, they invited the soul of the deceased. At these meals they sat silent round the table and used no knives, and the women who served up the food were also without knives. If any morsels fell from the table they were left lying there for the lonely souls that had no living relations or friends to feed them. When the meal was over the priest took a broom and swept the souls out of the house, saying, “Dear souls, ye have eaten and drunk. Go forth, go forth.”[3] In cutting the nails and combing the hair of a dead prince in South Celebes only the back of the knife and of the comb may be used.[4] The Germans say that a knife should not be left edge upwards, because God and the spirits dwell there, or because it will cut the face of God and the angels.[5] We can now understand why no cutting instrument may be taken into the house of the Burmese pontiff. Like so many priestly kings, he is probably regarded as divine,
- ↑ J. H. Gray, China, i. 288.
- ↑ W. H. Dall, Alaska and its Resources, p. 146 ; id. in American Naturalist, xii. 7.
- ↑ Jo. Meletius, “De religione et sacrificiis veterum Borussorum,” in De Russorum Muscovitarum et Tartarorum religione, sacrificiis, nuptiarum, funerum ritu (Spires, 1582), p. 263; Hartknoch, Alt und neues Preussen (Frankfort and Leipzig, 1684), p. 187 sq.
- ↑ B. F. Matthes, Bijdragen tot de Ethnologie van Zuid-Celebes, p. 136.
- ↑ Tettay und Temme, Die Volkssagen Ostpreussens, Litthauens und Westpreussens, p. 285; Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie,4 iii. 454; cp. id. pp. 441, 469; Grohmann, Aberglauben und Gebräuche aus Böhmen und Mähren, p. 198.
