Yet Puluga lives in a large stone house (clearly derived from ours at Port Blair), eats and drinks, foraging for himself, and is married to a green shrimp.[9] There is the usual story of a Deluge caused by the moral wrath of Puluga. The whole theology was scrupulously collected from natives unacquainted with other races.
The account of Andamanese religion does not tally with the anthropological hypothesis. Foreign influence seems to be more than usually excluded by insular conditions and the jealousy of the 'original inhabitants.' The evidence ought to make us reflect on the extreme obscurity of the whole problem.
Anthropological study of religion has hitherto almost entirely overlooked the mysteries of various races, except in so far as they confirm the entry of the young people into the ranks of the adult. Their esoteric moral and religious teaching is nearly unknown to us, save in a few instances. It is certain that the mysteries of Greece were survivals of savage ceremonies, because we know that they included specific savage rites, such as the use of the rhombos to make a whirring noise, and the custom of ritual daubing with dirt; and the sacred ballets d'action, in which, as Lucian and Qing say, mystic facts are 'danced out.'[10] But, while Greece retained these relics of savagery, there was something taught at Eleusis which filled minds like Plato's and Pindar's with a happy religious awe. Now, similar 'softening of the heart' was the result of the teaching in the Australian Bora: the Yao mysteries inculcate the victory over self; and, till we are admitted to the secrets of all other savage mysteries throughout the world, we cannot tell whether, among mummeries, frivolities, and even license, high ethical doctrines are not presented under the sanction of religion. The New Life, and perhaps the future life, are undeniably indicated in the Australian mysteries by the simulated Resurrection.
I would therefore no longer say, as in 1887, that the Hellenic genius must have added to 'an old medicine dance' all that the Eleusinian mysteries possessed of beauty, counsel, and consolation[11]. These elements, as well as the barbaric factors in the rites, may have been developed out of such savage doctrine as softens the hearts of Australians and Yaos. That this kind of doctrine receives religious sanction is certain, where we know the secret of savage mysteries. It is therefore quite incorrect, and strangely presumptuous, to deny, with almost all anthropologists, the alliance of ethics with religion among the most backward races. We must always remember their secrecy about their inner religion, their frankness about their mythological tales. These we know: the inner religion we ought to begin to recognise that we do not know.
The case of the Andamanese has taught us how vague, even now, is our knowledge, and how obscure is our problem. The example of the Melanesians enforces these lessons. It is hard to bring the Melanesians within any theory. Dr. Codrington has made them the subject of a careful study, and reports that while the European inquirer can communicate pretty freely on common subjects 'the vocabulary of ordinary life in almost useless when the region of mysteries and superstitions is approached.'[12] The Banks Islanders are most free from an Asiatic element of population on one side, and a Polynesian element on the other.
The Banks Islanders 'believe in two orders of intelligent beings different from living men.' (1) Ghosts of the dead, (2) 'Beings who were not, and never had been, human.' This, as we have shown, and will continue to show, is the usual savage doctrine. On the one hand are separable souls of men, surviving the death of the body. On the other are beings, creators, who were before men were, and before death entered the world. It is impossible, logically, to argue that these beings are only ghosts of real remote ancestors, or of ideal ancestors. These higher beings are not safely to be defined as 'spirits,' their essence is vague, and, we repeat, the idea of their existence might have been evolved before the ghost theory was attained by men. Dr. Codrington says, 'the conception can hardly be that of a purely spiritual being, yet, by whatever name the natives call them, they are such as in English must be called spirits.'
That is our point. 'God is a spirit,' these beings are Gods, therefore 'these are spirits.' But to their initial conception our idea of 'spirit' is lacking. They are beings who existed before death, and still exist.
The beings which never were human, never died, are Vui, the ghosts are Tamate. Dr. Codrington uses 'ghosts' for Tamate, 'spirits' for Vui. But as to render Vui 'spirits' is to yield the essential point, we shall call Vui 'beings,' or, simply, Vui. A Vui is not a spirit that has been a ghost; the story may represent him as if a man, 'but the native will always maintain that he was something different, and deny to him the fleshly body of a man.'[13]
This distinction, ghost on one side—original being, not a man, not a ghost of a man, on the other—is radical and nearly universal in savage religion. Anthropology, neglecting the essential distinction insisted on, in this case, by Dr. Codrington, confuses both kinds under the style of 'spirits,' and derives both from ghosts of the dead. Dr. Codrington, it should be said, does not generalise, but confines himself to the savages of whom he has made a special study. But, from the other examples of the same distinction which we have offered, and the rest which we shall offer, we think ourselves justified in regarding the distinction between a primeval, eternal, being or beings, on one hand, and ghosts or spirits exalted from ghost's estate, on the other, as common, if not universal.
There are corporeal and incorporeal Vuis, but the body of the corporeal Vui is 'not a human body.'[14] The chief is Qat, 'still at hand to help and invoked in prayers.' 'Qat, Marawa, look down upon me, smooth the sea for us two, that I may go safely over the sea!' Qat 'created men and animals,' though, in a certain district, he is claimed as an ancestor (p. 268). Two strata of belief have here been confused.