Thus the idea that the soul may be deposited for a longer or shorter time in some place of security outside the body, or at all events in the hair, is found in the popular tales of many races. It remains to show that the idea is not a mere figment devised to adorn a tale, but is a real article of primitive faith, which has given rise to a corresponding set of customs.
We have seen that in the tales the hero, as a preparation for battle, sometimes removes his soul from his body, in order that his body may be invulnerable and immortal in the combat. With a like intention the savage removes his soul from his body on various occasions of real or imaginary danger. Thus we have seen that among the Minahassa of Celebes, when a family moves into a new house, a priest collects the souls of the whole family in a bag, and afterwards restores them to their owners, because the moment of entering a new house is supposed to be fraught with supernatural danger.860 In Southern Celebes when a woman is brought to bed the messenger who fetches the doctor or the midwife always carries with him a piece of iron, which he delivers to the doctor. The doctor must keep it in his house till the confinement is over, when he gives it back, receiving a fixed sum of money for doing so. The piece of iron represents the woman's soul, which at this critical time is believed to be safer out of her body than in it. Hence the doctor must take great care of [pg 328] the piece of iron; for if it were lost, the woman's soul would assuredly, it is supposed, be lost with it.861
Again, we have seen that in folk-tales a man's soul or strength is sometimes represented as bound up with his hair, and that when his hair is cut off he dies or grows weak. So the natives of Amboina used to think that their strength was in their hair and would desert them if it were shorn. A criminal under torture in a Dutch Court of that island persisted in denying his guilt till his hair was cut off, when he immediately confessed. One man who was tried for murder endured without flinching the utmost ingenuity of his torturers till he saw the surgeon standing with a pair of shears. On asking what this was for, and being told that it was to cut his hair, he begged they would not do it, and made a clean breast. In subsequent cases, when torture failed to wring a confession from a prisoner, the Dutch authorities made a practice of cutting off his hair.862 In Ceram it is still believed that if young people have their hair cut they will be weakened and enervated thereby.863 In Zacynthus people think that the whole strength of the ancient Greeks resided in three hairs on their breasts, and vanished whenever these hairs were cut; but if the hairs were allowed to grow again, their strength returned.864
Again, we have seen that in folk-tales the life of a person is sometimes so bound up with the life of a plant that the withering of the plant will immediately follow or be followed by the death of the person.865 Similarly among the M'Bengas in Western Africa, about the [pg 329] Gaboon, when two children are born on the same day, the people plant two trees of the same kind and dance round them. The life of each of the children is believed to be bound up with the life of one of the trees; and if the tree dies or is thrown down, they are sure that the child will soon die.866 In the Cameroons, also, the life of a person is believed to be sympathetically bound up with that of a tree.867 Some of the Papuans unite the life of a new-born child sympathetically with that of a tree by driving a pebble into the bark of the tree. This is supposed to give them complete mastery over the child's life; if the tree is cut down, the child will die.868 After a birth the Maoris used to bury the navel-string in a sacred place and plant a young sapling over it. As the tree grew, it was a tohu oranga or sign of life for the child; if it flourished, the child would prosper; if it withered and died, the parents augured the worst for their child.869 In Southern Celebes, when a child is born, a cocoa-nut is planted, and is watered with the water in which the after-birth and navel-string have been washed. As it grows up, the tree is called the “contemporary” of the child.870 So in Bali a cocoa-palm is planted at the birth of a child. It is believed to grow up equally with the child, and is called its “life-plant.”871 On certain occasions the Dyaks of Borneo plant a palm-tree, which is believed to be a complete index of their fate. If it flourishes, they reckon on good fortune; but if it withers or dies, they [pg 330] expect misfortune.872 It is said that there are still families in Russia, Germany, England, France, and Italy who are accustomed to plant a tree at the birth of a child. The tree, it is hoped, will grow with the child, and it is tended with special care.873 The custom is still pretty general in the canton of Aargau in Switzerland; an apple-tree is planted for a boy and a pear-tree for a girl, and the people think that the child will flourish or dwindle with the tree.874 In Mecklenburg the after-birth is thrown out at the foot of a young tree, and the child is then believed to grow with the tree.875 In England persons are sometimes passed through a cleft tree as a cure for rupture, and thenceforward a sympathetic connection is believed to exist between them and the tree. “Thomas Chillingworth, son of the owner of an adjoining farm, now about thirty-four years of age, was, when an infant of a year old, passed through a similar tree, now perfectly sound, which he preserves with so much care that he will not suffer a single branch to be touched, for it is believed that the life of the patient depends on the life of the tree; and the moment that it is cut down, be the patient ever so distant, the rupture returns, and a mortification ensues.”876 When Lord Byron first visited his ancestral estate of Newstead “he planted, it seems, a young oak in some part of the grounds, and had an idea that as it flourished so should he.”877
But in practice, as in folk-tales, it is not merely [pg 331] with trees and plants that the life of an individual is occasionally believed to be united by a bond of physical sympathy. The same bond, it is supposed, may exist between a man and an animal or a thing, so that the death or destruction of the animal or thing is immediately followed by the death of the man. The Emperor Romanus Lecapenus was once informed by an astronomer that the life of Simeon prince of Bulgaria was bound up with a certain column in Constantinople, so that if the capital of the column were removed Simeon would immediately die. The Emperor took the hint and removed the capital, and at the same hour, as the emperor learned by inquiry, Simeon died of heart disease in Bulgaria.878 Amongst the Karens of Burma “the knife with which the navel-string is cut is carefully preserved for the child. The life of the child is supposed to be in some way connected with it, for if lost or destroyed it is said the child will not be long-lived.”879 The Malays believe that “the soul of a person may pass into another person or into an animal, or rather that such a mysterious relation can arise between the two that the fate of the one is wholly dependent on that of the other.”880 In the Banks Islands “some people connect themselves with an object, generally an animal, as a lizard or a snake, or with a stone, which they imagine to have a certain very close natural relation to themselves. This, at Mota, is called tamaniu—likeness. This word at Aurora is used for the ‘atai’ [i.e. soul] of Mota. Some fancy dictates the choice of a tamaniu; or it may be [pg 332] found by drinking the infusion of certain herbs and heaping together the dregs. Whatever living thing is first seen in or upon the heap is the tamaniu. It is watched, but not fed or worshipped. The natives believe that it comes at call. The life of the man is bound up with the life of his tamaniu. If it dies, gets broken or lost, the man will die. In sickness they send to see how the tamaniu is, and judge the issue accordingly. This is only the fancy of some.”881
But what among the Banks Islanders and the Malays is irregular and occasional, among other peoples is systematic and universal. The Zulus believe that every man has his ihlozi, a kind of mysterious serpent, “which specially guards and helps him, lives with him, wakes with him, sleeps and travels with him, but always under ground. If it ever makes its appearance, great is the joy, and the man must seek to discover the meaning of its appearance. He who has no ihlozi must die. Therefore if any one unintentionally kills an ihlozi serpent, the man whose ihlozi it was dies, but the serpent comes to life again.”882 Amongst the Zapotecs of Central America, when a woman was about to be confined, her relations assembled in the hut, and began to draw on the floor figures of different animals, rubbing each one out as soon as it was completed. This went on till the moment of birth, and the figure that then remained sketched upon the ground was called the child's tona or second self. “When the child grew old enough he procured the animal that represented him and took care of it, as it [pg 333] was believed that health and existence were bound up with that of the animal's, in fact that the death of both would occur simultaneously,” or rather that when the animal died the man would die.883 Among the Indians of Guatemala the nagual or naual is an “animate or inanimate object, generally an animal, which stands in a parallel relation to a particular man, so that the weal and woe of the man depend on the fate of the animal.” Among the Chontal Indians who inhabit the part of Honduras bordering on Guatemala and in point of social culture stand very close to the Pipil Indians of Guatemala, the nagual used to be obtained as follows. The young Indian went into the forest to a lonely place by a river or to the top of a mountain, and prayed with tears to the gods that they would vouchsafe to him what his forefathers had possessed before him. After sacrificing a dog or a bird he laid himself down to sleep. Then in a dream or after awakening from sleep there appeared to him a jaguar, puma, coyote (prairie-wolf), crocodile, serpent, or bird. To this visionary animal the Indian offered blood drawn from his tongue, his ears, and other parts of his body, and prayed for an abundant yield of salt and cacao. Then the animal said to him, “On such and such a day you shall go out hunting, and the first animal that meets you will be myself, who will always be your companion and nagual.” A man who had no nagual could never grow rich. The Indians were persuaded that the death of their nagual would entail their own. Legend affirms that in the first battles with the Spaniards on [pg 334] the plateau of Quetzaltenango the naguals of the Indian chiefs fought in the form of serpents. The nagual of the highest chief was especially conspicuous, because it had the form of a great bird, resplendent in green plumage. The Spanish general Pedro de Alvarado killed the bird with his lance, and at the same moment the Indian chief fell dead to the ground.884
In many of the Australian tribes each sex regards a particular species of animals in the same way that a Central American Indian regards his nagual, but with this difference, that whereas the Indian apparently knows the individual animal with which his life is bound up, the Australians only know that each of their lives is bound up with some one animal of the species, but they cannot say with which. The result naturally is that every man spares and protects all the animals of the species with which the lives of the men are bound up; and every woman spares and protects all the animals of the species with which the lives of the women are bound up; because no one knows but that the death of any animal of the respective species might entail his or her own; just as the killing of the green bird was immediately followed by the death of the Indian chief, and the killing of the parrot by the death of Punchkin in the fairy tale. Thus, for example, the Wotjobaluk tribe of South Eastern Australia “held that ‘the life of Ngŭnŭngŭnŭt (the Bat) is the life of a man and the life of Yártatgŭrk (the Nightjar) is the life of a woman,’ and that when either of these creatures is killed the life of some man or of some woman is shortened. In such a case every man or every woman [pg 335] in the camp feared that he or she might be the victim, and from this cause great fights arose in this tribe. I learn that in these fights, men on one side and women on the other, it was not at all certain which would be victorious, for at times the women gave the men a severe drubbing with their yamsticks while often women were injured or killed by spears.”885 The particular species of animals with which the lives of the sexes were believed to be respectively bound up varied somewhat from tribe to tribe. Thus whereas among the Wotjobaluk the bat was the animal of the men, at Gunbower Creek on the lower Murray the bat seems to have been the animal of the women, for the natives would not kill it for the reason that “if it was killed, one of their lubras [women] would be sure to die in consequence.”886 But the belief itself and the fights to which it gave rise are known to have extended over a large part of South Eastern Australia, and probably they extended much farther.887 The belief is a very serious one, and so consequently are the fights which spring from it. Thus where the bat is the men's animal they “protect it against injury, even to the half-killing of their wives for its sake;” and where the fern owl or large goatsucker (a night bird) is the women's animal, “it is jealously protected by them. If a man kills one, they are as much enraged as if it was one of their children, and will strike him with their long poles.”888
The jealous protection thus afforded by Australian men and women to bats and owls respectively (for bats [pg 336] and owls seem to be the creatures usually allotted to men and women respectively) is not based upon purely selfish considerations. For each man believes that not only his own life, but the lives of his father, brothers, sons, etc., are bound up with the lives of particular bats, and that therefore in protecting the bat species he is protecting the lives of all his male relations as well as his own. Similarly, each woman believes that the lives of her mother, sisters, daughters, etc., equally with her own, are bound up with the lives of particular owls, and that in guarding the owl species she is guarding the lives of all her female relations in addition to her own. Now, when men's lives are thus supposed to be contained in certain animals, it is obvious that the animals can hardly be distinguished from the men, or the men from the animals. If my brother John's life is in a bat, then, on the one hand, the bat is my brother as well as John; and, on the other hand, John is in a sense a bat, since his life is in a bat. Similarly, if my sister Mary's life is in an owl, then the owl is my sister and Mary is an owl. This is a natural enough conclusion, and the Australians have not failed to draw it. When the bat is the man's animal, it is called his brother; and when the owl is the woman's animal, it is called her sister. And conversely a man addresses a woman as an owl, and she addresses him as a bat.889 So with the other animals allotted to the sexes respectively in other tribes. For example, among the Kurnai all Emu Wrens were “brothers” of the men, and all the men were Emu Wrens; all Superb Warblers were “sisters” of the women, and all the women were Superb Warblers.890
[pg 337]But when a savage names himself after an animal, calls it his brother, and refuses to kill it, the animal is said to be his totem. Accordingly the bat and the owl, the Emu Wren and the Superb Warbler, may properly be described as totems of the sexes. But the assignation of a totem to a sex is comparatively rare, and has hitherto been discovered nowhere but in Australia. Far more commonly the totem is appropriated not to a sex, but to a tribe or clan, and is hereditary either in the male or female line. The relation of an individual to the tribal totem does not differ in kind from his relation to the sex totem; he will not kill it, he speaks of it as his brother, and he calls himself by its name.891 Now if the relations are similar, the explanation which holds good of the one ought equally to hold good of the other. Therefore the reason why a tribe revere a particular species of animals or plants (for the tribal totem may be a plant) and call themselves after it, must be a belief that the life of each individual of the tribe is bound up with some one animal or plant of the species, and that his or her death would be the consequence of killing that particular animal, or destroying that particular plant. This explanation of totemism squares very well with Sir George Grey's definition of a totem or kobong in Western Australia. He says, “A certain mysterious connection exists between a family and its kobong, so that a member of the family will never kill an animal of the species to which his kobong belongs, should he find it asleep; indeed he always kills it reluctantly, and never without affording it a chance to escape. This arises from the family belief that some one individual of the species is their nearest friend, to [pg 338] kill whom would be a great crime, and to be carefully avoided. Similarly, a native who has a vegetable for his kobong may not gather it under certain circumstances, and at a particular period of the year.”892 Here it will be observed that though each man spares all the animals or plants of the species, they are not all equally precious to him; far from it, out of the whole species there is only one which is specially dear to him; but as he does not know which the dear one is, he is obliged to spare them all from fear of injuring the one. Again, this explanation of the tribal totem harmonises with the supposed effect of killing one of the totem species. “One day one of the blacks killed a crow. Three or four days afterwards a Boortwa (crow) [i.e. a man of the Crow clan or tribe] named Larry died. He had been ailing for some days, but the killing of his wingong [totem] hastened his death.”893 Here the killing of the crow caused the death of a man of the Crow clan, exactly as, in the case of the sex totems, the killing of a bat causes the death of a Bat man, or the killing of an owl causes the death of an Owl woman. Similarly, the killing of his nagual causes the death of a Central American Indian, the killing of his ihlozi causes the death of a Zulu, the killing of his tamaniu causes the death of a Banks Islander, and the killing of the animal in which his life is stowed away causes the death of the giant or warlock in the fairy tale.
Thus it appears that the story of “The giant who had no heart in his body” furnishes the key to the religious aspect of totemism, that is, to the relation which is supposed to subsist between a man and his totem. The totem, if I am right, is simply the receptacle [pg 339] in which a man keeps his life, as Punchkin kept his life in a parrot, and Bidasari kept her soul in a golden fish. It is no valid objection to this view that when a savage has both a sex totem and a tribal totem his life must be bound up with two different animals, the death of either of which would entail his own. If a man has more vital places than one in his body, why, the savage may think, should he not have more vital places than one outside it? Why, since he can externalise his life, should he not transfer one portion of it to one animal and another to another? The divisibility of life, or, to put it otherwise, the plurality of souls, is an idea suggested by many familiar facts, and has commended itself to philosophers like Plato as well as to savages. It is only when the notion of a soul, from being a quasi-scientific hypothesis, becomes a theological dogma that its unity and indivisibility are insisted upon as essential. The savage, unshackled by dogma, is free to explain the facts of life by the assumption of as many souls as he thinks necessary. Hence, for example, the Caribs supposed that there was one soul in the head, another in the heart, and other souls at all the places where an artery is felt pulsating.894 Some of the Hidatsa Indians explain the phenomena of gradual death, when the extremities appear dead first, by supposing that man has four souls, and that they quit the body, not simultaneously, but one after the other, dissolution being only complete when all four have departed.895 The Laos suppose that the body is the seat of thirty spirits, which reside in the hands, the feet, the mouth, the eyes, etc.896 Hence, [pg 340] from the primitive point of view, it is perfectly possible that a savage should have one soul in his sex totem, and another in his tribal totem. However, as I have observed, sex totems occur nowhere but in Australia; so that as a rule the savage who practises totemism need not have more than one soul out of his body at a time.
If this explanation of the totem as a receptacle in which a man keeps his soul or one of his souls is correct, we should expect to find some totemistic tribes of whom it is expressly stated that every man amongst them is believed to keep at least one soul permanently out of his body, and that the destruction of this external soul is supposed to entail the death of its owner. Such a tribe are the Battas of Sumatra. The Battas are divided into exogamous clans (margas) with descent in the male line; and each clan is forbidden to eat the flesh of a particular animal. One clan may not eat the tiger, another the ape, another the crocodile, another the dog, another the cat, another the dove, another the white buffalo. The reason given by members of a clan for abstaining from the flesh of the particular animal is either that they are descended from animals of that species, and that their souls after death may transmigrate into the animals, or that they or their forefathers have been under certain obligations to the animals. Sometimes, but not always, the clan bears the name of the animal.897 Thus the Battas have [pg 341] totemism in full. But, further, each Batta believes that he has seven or, on a more moderate computation, three souls. One of these souls is always outside the body, but nevertheless whenever it dies, however far away it may be at the time, that same moment the man dies also.898 The writer who mentions this belief says nothing about the Batta totems; but on the analogy of the Australian and Central American evidence we can scarcely avoid concluding that the external soul, whose death entails the death of the man, must be housed in the totem animal or plant.
Against this view it can hardly be thought to militate that the Batta does not in set terms affirm his external soul to be in his totem, but alleges other, though hardly contradictory, grounds for respecting the sacred animal or plant of his clan. For if a savage seriously believes that his life is bound up with an external object, it is in the last degree unlikely that he will let any stranger into the secret. In all that touches his inmost life and beliefs the savage is exceedingly suspicious and reserved; Europeans have resided among savages for years without discovering some of their capital articles of faith, and in the end the discovery has often been the result of accident. Above all, the savage lives in an intense and perpetual dread of assassination by sorcery; the most trifling relics of his person—the clippings of his hair and nails, his spittle, the remnants of his food, his very name—all these may, he fancies, be turned by the sorcerer to his destruction, and he is therefore anxiously careful to conceal or destroy them. But if in matters such as [pg 342] these, which are but the outposts and outworks of his life, he is shy and secretive to a degree, how close must be the concealment, how impenetrable the reserve in which he enshrouds the inner keep and citadel of his being! When the princess in the fairy tale asks the giant where he keeps his soul, he generally gives false or evasive answers, and it is only after much coaxing and wheedling that the secret is at last wrung from him. In his jealous reticence the giant resembles the timid and furtive savage; but whereas the exigencies of the story demand that the giant should at last reveal his secret, no such obligation is laid on the savage; and no inducement that can be offered is likely to tempt him to imperil his soul by revealing its hiding-place to a stranger. It is therefore no matter for surprise that the central mystery of the savage's life should so long have remained a secret, and that we should be left to piece it together from scattered hints and fragments and from the recollections of it which linger in fairy tales.
This view of totemism throws light on a class of religious rites of which no adequate explanation, so far as I am aware, has yet been offered. Amongst many savage tribes, especially such as are known to practise totemism, it is customary for lads at puberty to undergo certain initiatory rites, of which one of the commonest is a pretence of killing the lad and bringing him to life again. Such rites become intelligible if we suppose that their substance consists in extracting the youth's soul in order to transfer it to his totem. For the extraction of his soul would naturally be supposed to kill the youth or, at least, to throw him into a death-like trance, which the savage hardly distinguishes from death. His recovery would then be attributed either [pg 343] to the gradual recovery of his system from the violent shock which it had received, or, more probably, to the infusion into him of fresh life drawn from the totem. Thus the essence of these initiatory rites, so far as they consist in a simulation of death and resurrection, would be an exchange of life or souls between the man and his totem. The primitive belief in the possibility of such an exchange of souls comes clearly out in the story of the Basque hunter who affirmed that he had been killed by a bear, but that the bear had, after killing him, breathed its own soul into him, so that the bear's body was now dead, but he himself was a bear, being animated by the bear's soul.899 This revival of the dead hunter as a bear is exactly analogous to what, if I am right, is supposed to take place in the totemistic ceremony of killing a lad at puberty and bringing him to life again. The lad dies as a man and comes to life again as an animal; the animal's soul is now in him, and his human soul is in the animal. With good right, therefore, does he call himself a Bear or a Wolf, etc., according to his totem; and with good right does he treat the bears or the wolves, etc., as his brethren, since in these animals are lodged the souls of himself and his kindred.
Examples of this supposed death and resurrection at initiation are the following. Among some of the Australian tribes of New South Wales, when lads are initiated, it is thought that a being called Thuremlin takes each lad to a distance, kills him, and sometimes cuts him up, after which he restores him to life and knocks out a tooth.900 In one part of Queensland the [pg 344] humming sound of the Bullroarer, which is swung at the initiatory rites, is said to be the noise made by the wizards in swallowing the boys and bringing them up again as young men. “The Ualaroi of the Upper Darling River say that the boy meets a ghost which kills him and brings him to life again as a man.”901 This resurrection appears to be represented at the initiatory rites by the following ceremony. An old man, disguised with stringy bark fibre, lies down in a grave, and is lightly covered up with sticks and earth, and as far as possible the natural appearance of the ground is restored, the excavated earth being carried away. The buried man holds a small bush in his hand; it appears to be growing in the soil, and other bushes are stuck in the soil to heighten the effect. The novices are then brought to the edge of the grave, and a song is sung, in which the only words used are the “class-name” of the buried man and the word for stringy bark fibre. Gradually, as the song continues, the bush held by the buried man begins to quiver and then to move more and more, and finally the man himself starts up from the grave.902 Similarly, Fijian lads at initiation were shown a row of apparently dead men, covered with blood, their bodies seemingly cut open, and their entrails protruding. But at a yell from the [pg 345] priest the pretended dead men sprang to their feet and ran to the river to cleanse themselves from the blood and entrails of pigs with which they had been besmeared.903
In the valley of the Congo initiatory rites of this sort are common. In some places they are called Ndembo. “In the practice of Ndembo the initiating doctors get some one to fall down in a pretended fit, and in that state he is carried away to an enclosed place outside the town. This is called ‘dying Ndembo.’ Others follow suit, generally boys and girls, but often young men and women.... They are supposed to have died. But the parents and friends supply food, and after a period varying, according to custom, from three months to three years, it is arranged that the doctor shall bring them to life again.... When the doctor's fee has been paid, and money (goods) saved for a feast, the Ndembo people are brought to life. At first they pretend to know no one and nothing; they do not even know how to masticate food, and friends have to perform that office for them. They want everything nice that any one uninitiated may have, and beat them if it is not granted, or even strangle and kill people. They do not get into trouble for this, because it is thought that they do not know better. Sometimes they carry on the pretence of talking gibberish, and behaving as if they had returned from the spirit-world. After this they are known by another name, peculiar to those who have ‘died Ndembo.’ ... We hear of the custom far along on the upper river, as well as in the cataract region.”904 The following account of [pg 346] the rites, as practised in this part of Africa, was given to Bastian by an interpreter. “In the land of Ambamba every one must die once, and when the fetish priest shakes his calabash against a village, all the men and lads whose hour is come fall into a state of lifeless torpidity, from which they generally awake after three days. But if the fetish loves a man he carries him away into the bush and buries him in the fetish house, often for many years. When he comes to life again, he begins to eat and drink as before, but his understanding is gone and the fetish man must teach him and direct him in every motion, like the smallest child. At first this can only be done with a stick, but gradually his senses return, so that it is possible to talk with him, and when his education is complete, the priest brings him back to his parents. They would seldom recognise their son but for the express assurances of the fetish priest, who moreover recalls previous events to their memory. He who has not gone through the ceremony of the new birth in Ambamba is universally looked down upon and is not admitted to the dances.” During the period of initiation the novice is sympathetically united to the fetish by which his life is henceforward determined.905 The novice, plunged in the magic sleep or death-like trance within the sacred hut, “beholds a bird or other object with which his existence is thenceforward sympathetically bound up, just as the life of the young Indian is bound up with the animal which he sees in his dreams at puberty.”906
[pg 347]Rites of this sort were formerly observed in Quoja, on the west coast of Africa, to the north of the Congo. They are thus described by an old writer:—“They have another ceremony which they call Belli-Paaro, but it is not for everybody. For it is an incorporation in the assembly of the spirits, and confers the right of entering their groves, that is to say, of going and eating the offerings which the simple folk bring thither. The initiation or admission to the Belli-Paaro is celebrated every twenty or twenty-five years. The initiated recount marvels of the ceremony, saying that they are roasted, that they entirely change their habits and life, and that they receive a spirit quite different from that of other people and quite new lights. The badge of membership consists in some lines traced on the neck between the shoulders; the lines seem to be pricked with a needle. Those who have this mark pass for persons of spirit, and when they have attained a certain age they are allowed a voice in all public assemblies; whereas the uninitiated are regarded as profane, impure, and ignorant persons, who dare not express an opinion on any subject of importance. When the time for the ceremony has come, it is celebrated as follows: By order of the king a place is appointed in the forest, whither they bring the youths who have not been marked, not without much crying and weeping; for it is impressed upon the youths that in order to undergo this change it is necessary to suffer death. So they dispose of their property, as if it were all over with them. There are always some of the initiated beside the novices to instruct them. They teach them to dance a certain dance called killing, and to sing verses in praise of Belli. Above all, they are very careful not to let them die of hunger, [pg 348] because if they did so, it is much to be feared that the spiritual resurrection would profit them nothing. This manner of life lasts five or six years, and is comfortable enough, for there is a village in the forest, and they amuse themselves with hunting and fishing. Other lads are brought thither from time to time, so that the last comers have not long to stay. No woman or uninitiated person is suffered to pass within four or five leagues of the sacred wood. When their instruction is completed, they are taken from the wood and shut up in small huts made for the purpose. Here they begin once more to hold communion with mankind and to talk with the women who bring them their food. It is amusing to see their affected simplicity. They pretend to know no one, and to be ignorant of all the customs of the country, such as the customs of washing themselves, rubbing themselves with oil, etc. When they enter these huts, their bodies are all covered with the feathers of birds, and they wear caps of bark which hang down before their faces. But after a time they are dressed in clothes and taken to a great open place, where all the people of the neighbourhood are assembled. Here the novices give the first proof of their capacity by dancing a dance which is called the dance of Belli. After the dance is over, the novices are taken to the houses of their parents by their instructors.”907
Among the Indians of Virginia, an initiatory ceremony, called Huskanaw, took place every sixteen or twenty years, or oftener, as the young men happened to grow up. The youths were kept in solitary confinement in the woods for several months, [pg 349] receiving no food but an infusion of some intoxicating roots, so that they went raving mad, and continued in this state eighteen or twenty days. “Upon this occasion it is pretended that these poor creatures drink so much of the water of Lethe that they perfectly lose the remembrance of all former things, even of their parents, their treasure, and their language. When the doctors find that they have drank sufficiently of the Wysoccan (so they call this mad potion), they gradually restore them to their senses again by lessening the intoxication of their diet; but before they are perfectly well they bring them back into their towns, while they are still wild and crazy through the violence of the medicine. After this they are very fearful of discovering anything of their former remembrance; for if such a thing should happen to any of them, they must immediately be Huskanaw'd again; and the second time the usage is so severe that seldom any one escapes with life. Thus they must pretend to have forgot the very use of their tongues, so as not to be able to speak, nor understand anything that is spoken, till they learn it again. Now, whether this be real or counterfeit, I don't know; but certain it is that they will not for some time take notice of any body nor any thing with which they were before acquainted, being still under the guard of their keepers, who constantly wait upon them everywhere till they have learnt all things perfectly over again. Thus they unlive their former lives, and commence men by forgetting that they ever have been boys.”908
Among some of the Indian tribes of North America there are certain religious associations which are only open to candidates who have gone through a pretence [pg 350] of being killed and brought to life again. Captain Carver witnessed the admission of a candidate to an association called “the friendly society of the Spirit” among the Naudowessies. The candidate knelt before the chief, who told him that “he himself was now agitated by the same spirit which he should in a few moments communicate to him; that it would strike him dead, but that he would instantly be restored again to life.... As he spoke this, he appeared to be greatly agitated, till at last his emotions became so violent that his countenance was distorted and his whole frame convulsed. At this juncture he threw something that appeared both in shape and colour like a small bean at the young man, which seemed to enter his mouth, and he instantly fell as motionless as if he had been shot.” For a time the man lay like dead, but under a shower of blows he showed signs of consciousness, and finally, discharging from his mouth the bean, or whatever it was the chief had thrown at him, he came to life.909 In other tribes the instrument by which the candidate is apparently slain is the medicine-bag. The bag is made of the skin of an animal (such as the otter, wild cat, serpent, bear, raccoon, wolf, owl, weasel), of which it roughly preserves the shape. Each member of the society has one of these bags, in which he keeps the odds and ends that make up his “medicine” or charms. “They believe that from the miscellaneous contents in the belly of the skin bag or animal there issues a spirit or breath, which has the power, not only to knock down and kill a man, but also to set him up and restore him to life.” The mode of killing a man with one of these medicine-bags is to thrust it at him; [pg 351] he falls like dead, but a second thrust of the bag restores him to life.910
A ceremony witnessed by Jewitt during his captivity among the Indians of Nootka Sound doubtless belongs to this class of customs. The Indian king or chief “discharged a pistol close to his son's ear, who immediately fell down as if killed, upon which all the women of the house set up a most lamentable cry, tearing handfuls of hair from their heads, and exclaiming that the prince was dead; at the same time a great number of the inhabitants rushed into the house armed with their daggers, muskets, etc., inquiring the cause of their outcry. These were immediately followed by two others dressed in wolf skins, with masks over their faces representing the head of that animal. The latter came in on their hands and feet in the manner of a beast, and taking up the prince, carried him off upon their backs, retiring in the same manner as they entered.”911 In another place Jewitt mentions that the young prince—a lad of about eleven years of age—wore a mask in imitation of a wolf's head.912 Now, as the Indians of this part of America are divided into totem clans, of which the Wolf clan is one of the principal, and as the members of each clan are in the habit of wearing some portion of the totem animal about their person,913 it is probable that the prince belonged to the Wolf clan, and that the ceremony described by Jewitt represented the killing [pg 352] of the lad in order that he might be born anew as a wolf, much in the same way that the Basque hunter supposed himself to have been killed and to have come to life again as a bear. The Toukaway Indians of Texas, one of whose totems is the wolf, have a ceremony in which men, dressed in wolf skins, run about on all fours, howling and mimicking wolves. At last they scratch up a living tribesman, who has been buried on purpose, and putting a bow and arrows in his hands, bid him do as the wolves do—rob, kill, and murder.914 The ceremony probably forms part of an initiatory rite like the resurrection from the grave of the old man in the Australian rites.
The people of Rook, an island east of New Guinea, hold festivals at which one or two disguised men, their heads covered with wooden masks, go dancing through the village, followed by all the other men. They demand that the circumcised boys who have not yet been swallowed by Marsaba (the devil) shall be given up to them. The boys, trembling and shrieking, are delivered to them, and must creep between the legs of the disguised men. Then the procession moves through the village again, and announces that Marsaba has eaten up the boys, and will not disgorge them till he receives a present of pigs, taro, etc. So all the villagers, according to their means, contribute provisions, which are then consumed in the name of Marsaba.915 In New Britain all males are members [pg 353] of an association called the Duk-duk. The boys are admitted to it very young, but are not fully initiated till their fourteenth year, when they receive from the Tubuvan a terrible blow with a cane, which is supposed to kill them. The Tubuvan and the Duk-duk are two disguised men who represent cassowaries. They dance with a short hopping step in imitation of the cassowary. Each of them wears a huge hat like an extinguisher, woven of grass or palm-fibres; it is six feet high, and descends to the wearer's shoulders, completely concealing his head and face. From the neck to the knees the man's body is hidden by a crinoline made of the leaves of a certain tree fastened on hoops, one above the other. The Tubuvan is regarded as a female, the Duk-duk as a male. No woman may see these disguised men. The institution of the Duk-duk is common to the neighbouring islands of New Ireland and the Duke of York.916
Amongst the Galela and Tobelorese of Halmahera, an island to the west of New Guinea, boys go through a form of initiation, part of which seems to consist in a pretence of begetting them anew. When a number of boys have reached the proper age, their parents agree to celebrate the ceremony at their common expense, and they invite others to be present at it. A shed is erected, and two long tables are placed in it, with [pg 354] benches to match, one for the men and one for the women. When all the preparations have been made for a feast, a great many skins of the rayfish, and some pieces of a wood which imparts a red colour to water, are taken to the shed. A priest or elder causes a vessel to be placed in the sight of all the people, and then begins, with significant gestures, to rub a piece of the wood with the ray-skin. The powder so produced is put in the vessel, and at the same time the name of one of the boys is called out. The same proceeding is repeated for each boy. Then the vessels are filled with water, after which the feast begins. At the third cock-crow the priest smears the faces and bodies of the boys with the red water, which represents the blood shed at the perforation of the hymen. Towards daybreak the boys are taken to the wood, and must hide behind the largest trees. The men, armed with sword and shield, accompany them, dancing and singing. The priest knocks thrice on each of the trees behind which a boy is hiding. All day the boys stay in the wood, exposing themselves to the heat of the sun as much as possible. In the evening they bathe and return to the shed, where the women supply them with food.917
In the west of Ceram boys at puberty are admitted to the Kakian association.918 Modern writers [pg 355] have commonly regarded this association as primarily a political league instituted to resist foreign domination. In reality its objects are purely religious and social, though it is possible that the priests may have occasionally used their powerful influence for political ends. The society is in fact merely one of those widely-diffused primitive institutions, of which a chief object is the initiation of young men. In recent years the true nature of the association has been duly recognised by the distinguished Dutch ethnologist, J. G. F. Riedel. The Kakian house is an oblong wooden shed, situated under the darkest trees in the depth of the forest, and is built to admit so little light that it is impossible to see what goes on in it. Every village has such a house. Thither the boys who are to be initiated are conducted blindfolded, followed by their parents and relations. Each boy is led by the hand by two men, who act as his sponsors or guardians, looking after him during the period of initiation. When all are assembled before the shed, the high priest calls aloud upon the devils. Immediately a hideous uproar is heard to proceed from the shed. It is made by men with bamboo trumpets, who have been secretly introduced into the building by a back door, but the women and children think it is made by the devils, and are much terrified. Then the priests enter the shed, followed by the boys, one at a time. As soon as each boy has disappeared within the precincts, a dull chopping sound is heard, a fearful cry rings out, and a sword or spear, dripping with blood, is thrust [pg 356] through the roof of the shed. This is a token that the boy's head has been cut off, and that the devil has carried him away to the other world, there to regenerate and transform him. So at sight of the bloody sword the mothers weep and wail, crying that the devil has murdered their children. In some places, it would seem, the boys are pushed through an opening made in the shape of a crocodile's jaws or a cassowary's beak, and it is then said that the devil has swallowed them. The boys remain in the shed for five or nine days. Sitting in the dark, they hear the blast of the bamboo trumpets, and from time to time the sound of musket shots and the clash of swords. Every day they bathe, and their faces and bodies are smeared with a yellow dye, to give them the appearance of having been swallowed by the devil. During his stay in the Kakian house each boy has one or two crosses tattooed with thorns on his breast or arm. When they are not sleeping, the lads must sit in a crouching posture without moving a muscle. As they sit in a row cross-legged, with their hands stretched out, the chief takes his trumpet, and placing the mouth of it on the hands of each lad, speaks through it in strange tones, imitating the voice of the spirits. He warns the lads, under pain of death, to observe the rules of the Kakian society, and never to reveal what has passed in the Kakian house. The novices are also told by the priests to behave well to their blood relations, and are taught the traditions and secrets of the tribe.
Meantime the mothers and sisters of the lads have gone home to weep and mourn. But in a day or two the men who acted as guardians or sponsors to the novices return to the village with the glad tidings that the devil, at the intercession of the priests, has restored [pg 357] the lads to life. The men who bring this news come in a fainting state and daubed with mud, like messengers freshly arrived from the nether world. Before leaving the Kakian house, each lad receives from the priest a stick adorned at both ends with cock's or cassowary's feathers. The sticks are supposed to have been given to the lads by the devil at the time when he restored them to life, and they serve as a token that the lads have been in the spirit-land. When they return to their homes they totter in their walk, and enter the house backward, as if they had forgotten how to walk properly; or they enter the house by the back door. If a plate of food is given to them, they hold it upside down. They remain dumb, indicating their wants by signs only. All this is to show that they are still under the influence of the devil or the spirits. Their sponsors have to teach them all the common acts of life, as if they were new-born children. Further, upon leaving the Kakian house the boys are strictly forbidden to eat of certain fruits until the next celebration of the rites has taken place. And for twenty or thirty days their hair may not be combed by their mothers or sisters. At the end of that time the high priest takes them to a lonely place in the forest, and cuts off a lock of hair from the crown of each of their heads. After these initiatory rites the lads are deemed men, and may marry; it would be a scandal if they married before.
The simulation of death and resurrection or of a new birth at initiation appears to have lingered on, or at least to have left traces of itself, among peoples who have advanced far beyond the stage of savagery. Thus, after his investiture with the sacred thread—the symbol of his order—a Brahman is called “twice-born.” [pg 358] Manu says, “According to the injunction of the revealed texts the first birth of an Aryan is from his natural mother, the second happens on the tying of the girdle of Muñga grass, and the third on the initiation to the performance of a Srauta sacrifice.”919 A pretence of killing the candidate appears to have formed part of the initiation to the Mithraic mysteries.920
Thus, if I am right, wherever totemism is found, and wherever a pretence is made of killing and bringing to life again at initiation, there must exist or have existed not only a belief in the possibility of permanently depositing the soul in some external object—animal, plant, or what not—but an actual intention of so depositing it. If the question is put, why do men desire to deposit their life outside their bodies? the answer can only be that, like the giant in the fairy tale, they think it safer to do so than to carry it about with them, just as people deposit their money with a banker rather than carry it on their persons. We have seen that at critical periods the life or soul is sometimes temporarily deposited in a safe place till the danger is past. But institutions like totemism are not resorted to merely on special occasions of danger; they are systems into which every one, or at least every male, is obliged to be initiated at a certain period of life. Now the period of life at which initiation takes place is regularly puberty; and this fact suggests that the special danger which totemism and systems like it are intended to obviate is supposed not to arise till sexual maturity has been attained, in fact, that the danger [pg 359] apprehended is believed to attend the relation of the sexes to each other. It would be easy to prove by a long array of facts that the sexual relation is associated in the primitive mind with many supernatural perils; but the exact nature of the danger apprehended is still obscure. We may hope that a more exact acquaintance with savage modes of thought will in time disclose this central mystery of primitive society, and will thereby furnish the clue, not only to the social aspect of totemism (the prohibition of sexual union between persons of the same totem), but to the origin of the marriage system.