example.[1] In Tonquin, even wild animals have been customarily drowned at funeral ceremonies of princes, to be at the service of the departed in the next world.[2] Among Semitic tribes, an instance of the custom may be found in the Arab sacrifice of a camel on the grave, for the dead man's spirit to ride upon.[3] Among the nations of the Aryan race in Europe, the prevalence of such rites is deep, wide, and full of purpose. Thus, warriors were provided in death with horses and housings, with hounds and falcons. Customs thus described in chronicle and legend, are vouched for in our own time by the opening of old barbaric burial-places. How clear a relic of savage meaning lies here may be judged from a Livonian account as late as the fourteenth century, which relates how men and women slaves, sheep and oxen, with other things, were burnt with the dead, who, it was believed, would reach some region of the living, and find there, with the multitude of cattle and slaves, a country of life and happiness.[4] As usual, these rites may be traced onward in survival. The Mongols, who formerly slaughtered camels and horses at their owner's burial, have been induced to replace the actual sacrifice by a gift of the cattle to the Lamas.[5] The Hindus offer a black cow to the Brahmans, in order to secure their passage across the Vaitarani, the river of death, and will often die grasping the cow's tail as if to swim across in herdsman's fashion, holding on to a cow.[6] It is mentioned as a belief in Northern Europe that he who has given a cow to the poor will find a cow to take
- ↑ Georgi, 'Reise im Russ. R.' vol. i. p. 312.
- ↑ Baron, 'Tonquin,' in Pinkerton, vol. ix. p. 704.
- ↑ W. G. Palgrave, 'Arabia,' vol. i. p. 10; Bastian, 'Mensch,' vol. ii. p. 334; Waitz, vol. ii. p. 519 (Gallas).
- ↑ Grimm, 'Verbrennen der Leichen.' A curious correspondence in the practice of cutting off a fowl's head as a funeral rite is to be noticed among the Yorubas of W. Africa (Burton, 'W. and W.' p. 220), Chuwashes of Siberia (Castrén, 'Finn. Myth.' p. 120), old Russians (Grimm, 'Verbrennen,' p. 254).
- ↑ Bastian, 'Mensch,' vol. ii. p. 335.
- ↑ Colebrooke, 'Essays,' vol. i. p. 177; Ward, 'Hindoos,' vol. ii. pp. 62, 284. 331.
