strangled wives.[1] The funeral rites of the Karens complete the present group. They kept up what seems a clear survival from actual human and animal sacrifice, fastening up near an important person's grave a slave and a pony; these invariably released themselves, and the slave became henceforth a free man. Moreover, the practice of placing food, implements and utensils, and valuables of gold and silver, near the remains of the deceased, was general among them.[2]
Now the sacrifice of property for the dead is one of the great religious rites of the world; are we then justified in asserting that all men who abandon or destroy property as a funeral ceremony believe the articles to have spirits, which spirits are transmitted to the deceased? Not so; it is notorious that there are people who recognize no such theory but who nevertheless deposit offerings with the dead. Affectionate fancy or symbolism, a horror of the association of death leading the survivors to get rid of anything that even suggests the dreadful thought, a desire to abandon the dead man's property, an idea that the hovering ghost may take pleasure in or make use of the gifts left for him, all these are or may be efficient motives.[3] Yet, having made full
- ↑ Williams, 'Fiji,' vol. i. pp. 188, 243, 246; Alger, p. 82; Seemann, 'Viti,' p. 229.
- ↑ 'Journ. Ind. Archip.' new series, vol. ii. p. 421.
- ↑ For some cases in which horror or abnegation are assigned as motives for abandonment of the dead man's property, see Humboldt and Bonpland, vol. v. p. 626; Dalton in 'Journ. As. Soc. Bengal,' 1866, part ii. p. 191, &c.; Earl, 'Papuans,' p. 108; Callaway, 'Rel. of Amazulu,' p. 13; Egede, 'Greenland,' p. 151; Cranz, p. 301; Loskiel, 'Ind. N. A.' part i. p. 64, but see p. 76. The destruction or abandonment of the whole property of the dead may plausibly, whether justly or not, be explained by horror or abnegation; but these motives do not generally apply to cases where only part of the property is sacrificed, or new objects are provided expressly, and here the service of the dead seems the reasonable motive. Thus, at the funeral of a Garo girl, earthen vessels were broken as they were thrown in above the buried ashes. 'They said, the spirit of the girl would not benefit by them if they were given unbroken, but for her the fragments would unite again.' (Dalton, 'Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal,' p. 67.) The mere fact of breaking or destruction of objects at funerals does not carry its own explanation, for it is equally applicable to sentimental abandonment and to practical transmission of the spirit of the object, as a man is killed to liberate his soul.
