Mutilation a Sign of Mourning.
Perhaps the only distinct survival of the ceremonial mutilation so common among savages as a sign of mourning, is the shaving which is compulsory on all the clansmen who shared in the death pollution. In the Odyssey, at the death of Antilochus, Peisistratus says, “This is now the only due we pay to miserable men, to cut the hair and let the tear fall from the cheek,” and at the burial rites of Patroklus “they heaped all the corpse with their hair which they cut off and threw thereon.” The cutting of the hair is always a serious matter. “Amongst the Maoris many spells were uttered at hair-cutting; one, for example, was spoken to consecrate the obsidian knife with which the hair was cut; another was pronounced to avert the thunder and lightning which hair-cutting was believed to cause.”183 This ceremonial shaving is also perhaps the only survival in Northern India of puberty initiation ceremonies. In some cases the hair cut appears to be regarded as a sacrifice. Thus between the ages of two and five the Bhîls shave the heads of their children. The child’s aunt takes the hair in her lap, and wrapping it in her clothes, receives a cow, buffalo, or other present from the child’s parent.184