V
We come now to consider some examples of dancing as a mourning or burial rite among some of the savage and semi-civilized peoples. What will strike us here as strange are the contradictory ideas regarding the purpose of the rite; but it is just these opposing ideas that will be found to be so instructive. Various customs in existence at the present day among civilized peoples are explained in the light of the ideas and practices now to be considered.
There is no doubt that the object of this rite among uncivilized races which is most common now is the honouring of the departed; but it is probably true to say that this represents the latest development regarding its purpose, and that the other reasons for which it was performed take us back to earlier stages of the growth of savage thought regarding the departed.
We will begin by offering examples of this most developed idea and purpose of the rite.
In writing of the Kol tribes of Chota Nagpur who are remarkable for their pathetic reverence for their dead, Tylor says:
When a Ho or Munda has been burned on the funeral pile, collected morsels of his bones are carried in procession with a solemn, ghostly, sliding step, keeping time to the deep-sounding drum, and when the old woman who carries the bones in her bamboo tray lowers it from time to time, then girls who carry pitchers and brass vessels mournfully reverse them to show that they are empty; thus the remains are taken to visit every house in the village, and every dwelling of a friend or a relative for miles, and the inmates come out to mourn and praise the goodness of the departed. The bones are carried to all the dead man’s favourite haunts, to the fields he cultivated, to the grove he planted, to the threshing-floor where he worked, to the village dance-room where he made merry. At last they are taken to the grave, and buried in an earthen vase upon a store of food...[371].
It is clear that the departed spirit is believed in some way to remain in the vicinity of the bones, or possibly to be inside them; and this reminds one of the quaint belief of life residing in the bones which occurs in the Old Testament[372]. In the case before us honour, affection, and solicitude are shown, and felt, for the departed: honour, in being borne in procession, which is performed rhythmically with a particular kind of step so that it must be regarded as coming under the category of the sacred dance; affection, because of the kind thought in taking him to the spots he loved; and solicitude, in that he is supplied with food. It is with the first of these that we are particularly concerned just now; and here is another illustration of it, also in India, but this time among the Musulmans; it is not strictly speaking a mourning rite, but it is an honorific ceremony for the departed and may therefore be appropriately given. During the Muharram[373] Festival in India one of the ceremonies is the parading of the standard of the martyr Qāsim. He is one of the sacred bridegrooms, for at the age of ten he was betrothed to Fātima, daughter of Husain, and was slain in battle. His standard is carried by a man on horseback, who is followed by girls dancing in his honour, and singing elegies while beating their breasts. During another part of this festival there is the dance of Bharang, or “foolish chatterer”; his whole body is smeared with red ochre mixed with water; his head is covered with a shawl, and a small flag is attached to it. On his legs he carries tinkling bells, and during his dance he cries out: “Ali, ali, ali, zang[374]!” This is all done in honour of the departed saint. It is not a hazardous surmise to suggest that we have here an example of an adaptation of a rite millenniums older than its present form; and its oldest element is, in all probability, the sacred dance. The Bharang, with bells, paint, and disguise represents a development to which reference will be made again below.
Dances in honour of the departed are recorded of the Conibos of the Ucayali river in Eastern Peru who, on certain occasions, perform them on the graves of the deceased[375]; also among the Maoris[376]. The inhabitants of Dutch New Guinea dance round the images of their departed on various festal occasions. Again, at the funeral feast among the Gilbert islanders dancing and singing is performed in honour of the dead; wailing is also included in these mourning rites[377]. It is also an important mourning rite among the Melanesians[378]. Similarly among the inhabitants of British New Guinea a high festival is held in honour of the departed at which a great dance takes place;
all the dancers are arranged in full dancing costume, including heavy head-dresses of feathers, and they carry drums and spears, sometimes also clubs and adzes. The dance lasts the whole night[379].
In New Britain, too, the Sulka, a tribe dwelling to the south of the Gazelle Peninsula, dance in honour of their dead at a funeral feast[380]. An interesting account, together with an illustration, of the Maquarri dance among the Arāwaks, one of the Indian tribes of Guiana, is given by W. H. Brett[381]; this is danced in honour of the departed. It is called the Maquarri dance from the “whip,” more than three feet long, which is waved about during the dance by each dancer; with it the dancers lash each other’s legs until the blood flows; the whips have a sort of sacred character among the natives. It is the flowing of the blood which is now supposed to be pleasing to the dead; but it is pretty certain that this is a development; at one time the dance would have been considered as all-sufficient. Once more, among the North American Indians the funeral dance is performed at the grave when a sacrifice is made for the dead; the dancing is done round the grave and is accompanied by drum-playing and singing[382]. A similar rite is practised by the Bondas of Guinea[383], and among the aborigines of Northern Australia[384].
A case of particular interest is that of the dance of the Tami inhabitants; for while this is in honour of the dead, a further idea regarding the departed appears in connexion with it which leads on to another purpose of this mourning rite. The people of Tami, an island in the Indian archipelago, belong to the Melanesian stock; when they mourn for their dead the whole village takes part in the lamentation; the women dance death-dances in honour of the dead person while the men make preparations for the burial. Now these people, like many others, believe that when anyone has died the ghosts of his dead kinsfolk gather in the village, and are joined by the ghosts of other dead people; these ghosts may or may not be friendly inclined towards the living; but in case they are not, the people of the village take care not to leave the dancing mourners alone, they remain close at hand to help in case of need. This belief in the vicinity of the ghosts of the dead is further illustrated by these Tami islanders, for they have regular dancing seasons during which they dance round men disguised as familiar spirits; true, the dance “consists of little more than running round and round in a circle, with an occasional hop[385],” but it is essentially a dance, and its essence is more important than its form. This is a case of personating the departed in the dance; and the idea seems to be that by doing so a proof is given that the departed are really still living and that their personality is imparted, for the time being, to the dancers. Something quite similar is found among the Pulu islanders, in the Torres Straits; the performers dance in pairs, personating the deceased, for this ceremony is sometimes performed for a number of recently deceased people at once; according to Haddon
the idea evidently was to convey to the mourners the assurance that the ghost was alive, and that in the person of the dancer he visited his friends; the assurance of his life after death comforted the bereaved ones[386].
If it be asked why this personating of the deceased should be accompanied by dancing, the answer probably is that as dancing was the most usual way of honouring the departed, it would be thought of as the most efficacious means of attracting them. The Sioux, another North American Indian tribe, also performed dances at graves as a mourning rite, for they believed that in doing so they were, in some undefined way, joined by the departed in this dance[387]. It is very likely that the common custom of dances at funeral feasts originally had a similar object. Among the Esquimaux, for example, there are always dances at the funeral feasts, the dead are invited in song to come to the feast; offerings of food are made to them, and they feast and dance together with the living. At their great festival of the dead, which is held every few years, the dances are an important feature. The dancers dance on the graves, and on the ice if the deceased met their death by drowning[388]. Here we seem to have the purposes separately; the dancing at the funeral feasts is a joining together with the departed, the dancing on the graves is in their honour.
A very different purpose of the dance as a mourning rite next claims attention. That it sometimes has the object of appeasing the wrath of the departed, i.e. of their ghosts, is shown, for instance, by the fact that when among the inhabitants of Timor, an island in the East Indies, a head-hunter returns home after a successful expedition, sacrifices are offered to the man who has lost his head; and part of the ceremony consists of a dance accompanied by a song in which the death of the slain man is lamented and his forgiveness is entreated.
“Be not angry,” they say, “because your head is here with us; had we been less lucky our heads might now have been exposed in your village. We have offered the sacrifice to appease you. Your spirit may now rest and leave us at peace[389].”
But even among friends there are cases in which the ghost of the deceased is annoyed and has to be kept in the grave so that the surviving relatives may not be molested by it; and the dance figures as part of the ceremony. Thus, among the Arunta of Central Australia as a finale to the mourning period the people gather on the spot where the deceased died, viz. the site where he once lived and which is now burnt and deserted. Here the men and women dance round the charred remains, the men beating the air with their spears, the women doing likewise with the palms of their hands and all shouting Wah! Wah! Wah! wa-a-ah! This, we take it, is done to drive off both the ghost of the deceased and any evil spirits which may be lurking about the unhallowed spot. When the dancing, the description continues,
which lasted about ten minutes, was over, the party proceeded to the grave at a run, the leader making a circuit from the main party, shouting wildly with a very prolonged intonation, Ba-au! Ba-au! The idea of the leading man making a circuit was, perhaps, though the natives could give no explanation, to prevent the spirit from doubling back to the camp from which they were supposed to be driving him.
When he reached the grave, into which the spirit of the dead man was supposed to have fled, he began dancing wildly upon it. He was soon joined by the rest of the party who began
to dance backwards and forwards on and around the grave, shouting Wah! Wah! and beating the air downwards as if to drive the spirit down, while with their feet they stamped upon and broke the twigs with which a newly made grave is always covered. When these were thoroughly broken up the dancing ceased[390].
It must be confessed that the dancing here seems quite out of place, and yet there can be no doubt that it forms an integral part of the ceremonies. There seems to be something so entirely incongruous in scaring the ghost away by shouting at it and beating him down into his grave, and yet dancing on and around the grave which is so very frequently a mark of honour to the dead. The explanation is probably to be sought in the fact of the retention of a traditional custom concurrently with a later one which arose in consequence of the birth of new ideas regarding the activity of the spirits of the departed. We get a similar intermingling of rites among the Tarahumares of Mexico whose funeral ceremonies include the dance, though the object of the dance, in what is presumably a new form as compared with the original and traditional one, is the driving away of the ghost of the deceased. They have three funeral feasts; the first takes place a fortnight after the death, the second six months, and the last some months after that. At each of these feasts an important element is the ceremony of the hikuli dance. The hikuli is the sacred cactus, which is soaked in water and this is sprinkled over the dancers. The hikuli is supposed to drive away the ghost of the departed[391]. Here again the original custom of the dance performed in honour of the departed is retained, and there is added to it a further rite because in course of time new beliefs regarding the activity of the spirits of the departed had arisen; these beliefs were in reference to the possibility of anger on the part of the spirits because of their being cut off from their usual mode of life and taken away from their familiar haunts; they might be envious of those who were left, and might show their envy by harming the living. It became necessary, therefore, to devise means to counter these evil intentions by driving away the ghost of the departed. What these means were we know in many cases, but why particular means were chosen, such as the hikuli, or why they should be supposed to drive the spirit away is a matter of savage philosophy, and not always possible to penetrate. It must be evident, however, that the idea of driving away a ghost, together with the rite whereby this is effected, is subsequent in time to the simple rite of dancing in honour of the departed, because while this latter does not involve any theory as to the activity of spirits, the former obviously points to speculations on the subject. And as we have already said, the explanation of the incongruity of the two rites, as seen in the examples given, is to be sought in the retention of the earlier traditional rite concurrently with a later one which arose in consequence of the birth of new ideas regarding the activity of the spirits of the departed.
It is probable that a further step in the development of ideas regarding this activity is to be discerned in the belief that the spirit of the departed is joined by others who share with him his resentment against the living; and for safety the mourners disguise themselves, and, possibly, the dance then assumes a different purpose, namely, that of frightening the spirits away. This is said to be the purpose with which some of the tribes of Northern India dance at burials[392]; and the dance of the Bharang, disguised, to which reference was made above, points, perhaps, to the same thing; so also the custom of the inhabitants of the Aaru archipelago. Among them, when a member of the family dies, all the women leave the house with their hair hanging loose, to wail upon the shore; they tumble over one another head over heels in a strange kind of dance, and smear their bodies with dirt and mud[393].