collecting the ashes to re-extract the tin from them in this.[1] Again, when the modern Hindu offers to his dead parent funeral cakes with flowers and betel, he presents a woollen yarn which he lays across the cake, and naming the deceased says, 'May this apparel, made of woollen yarn, be acceptable to thee.'[2] Such facts as these suggest a symbolic meaning in the practically useless offerings which Sir John Lubbock groups together—the little models of kayaks and spears in Esquimaux graves, the models of objects in Egyptian tombs, and the flimsy unserviceable jewelry buried with the Etruscan dead.[3]
Just as people in Borneo, after they had become Mohammedans, still kept up the rite of burying provisions for the dead man's journey, as a mark of respect,[4] so the rite of interring funeral offerings survived in Christian Europe. The ancient Greek burial of the dead with the obolus in his mouth for Charon's toll is represented in the modern Greek. world, where Charon and the funeral coin are both familiar. As the old Prussians furnished the dead with spendingmoney to buy refreshment on his weary journey, so to this day German peasants bury a corpse with money in his mouth or hand, a fourpenny-piece or so. Similar little funeral offerings of coin are recorded in the folklore books elsewhere in Europe.[5] Christian funeral offerings of this kind are mostly trifling in value, and doubtful as to the meaning with which they were kept up. The early Christians retained the heathen custom of placing in the tomb such things as articles of the toilette and children's playthings; modern Greeks would place oars on a shipman's grave, and
- ↑ Davis, 'Chinese,' vol. i. p. 276; Doolittle, vol. i. p. 193; vol. ii. p. 275; Bastian, 'Mensch,' vol. ii. p. 334; see Marco Polo, book ii. ch. lxviii.
- ↑ Colebrooke, 'Essays,' vol. i. pp. 161, 169.
- ↑ Lubbock, 'Prehistoric Times,' p. 142; Wilkinson, ' Ancient Eg.' vol. ii. p. 319.
- ↑ Beeckmann, 'Voy. to Borneo,' in Pinkerton, vol. xi. p. 110.
- ↑ Politis, 'Neohellen. Mythologia,' vol. i. part i. p. 266; Hartknoch, 'Alt. und Neues Preussen,' part i. p. 181; Grimm, 'D. M.' pp. 791-5; Wuttke, 'Deutsche Volksaberglaube,' p. 212; Rochholz, 'Deutscher Glaube,' &c. vol. i. p. 187, &c.; Maury, 'Magie,' &c. p. 158 (France).
