[369]. Besides forms of actual worship there are several usages that involve religious veneration of the dead. Graves are regarded as asylums by the Kafirs (graves of chiefs)[683] and in Tonga.[684] The Bedawin of Arabia held (in pre-Islamic times), and still hold, graves sacred;[685] they sometimes become shrines, and oaths are sworn by them. The custom of swearing by the dead is widespread. In their character of powerful spirits they are agents in processes of magic and divination. Parts of dead bodies are used as charms. The skull especially is revered as an oracle.[686]
[370]. Among the lower tribes, savage and half-civilized, it is chiefly those who have died recently that are worshiped. A Zulu explained to Callaway that his people forgot those who died long ago—they were supposed to be not helpful—and hope of gain has always been the basis of worship. Among the Kafirs of the Hindu Kush it is the custom to erect an effigy to the memory of every adult one year after his decease. Women, as well as men, are thus honored, and may be put on an equality with men by being given a throne to sit on. No worship is offered to these images, but it is believed that their presence brings prosperity; bad weather is ascribed to their removal. There are solemn dances in honor of the illustrious dead and sacrifices are offered to them.[687]
[371]. The worship of the dead in the great civilized communities, though more elaborate and refined than the savage cult, is in substance identical with it. The Egyptians provided the departed soul with food and honored the dead man with laudatory notices of his earthly life; the royal ancestor of a king, it was believed, might act as mediator between him and the gods.[688] The Babylonians, while they lamented the departure of men to the gloomy existence in the Underworld, recognized the quasi-divine power of the dead and addressed prayer to them.[689] The Hebrews offered food to the dead, had funeral feasts, and consulted ghosts who were regarded as divine.[690] The Hindu "fathers," though kept distinct from the gods, were yet conceived of as possessing godlike powers and were worshiped as gods.[691] The Persian "forefathers" (fravashis), particularly the manes of eminent pious men, were held to be bestowers of all the blessings of life; offerings were made and prayers addressed to them.[692]
[372]. Early notices of a cult of the dead among the Greeks are scanty. There was the usual kindly provision of food, arms, and other necessaries for them.[693] Odysseus in Hades pours out a libation (honey, wine, water, to which meal is added) to all the dead, addresses vows and prayers to them, and promises to offer to them a barren heifer on his return to Ithaca, and a black sheep separately to Teiresias.[694] From the sixth century onward the references in the literature show that the worship of the dead (including children) was then general (and of course it must have begun much earlier). The offerings made to them were both vegetable and animal; the sacrificed animal was slaughtered in the same way as in the sacrifices to chthonic deities—the dead were, in fact, regarded as underground deities.[695] The flesh of the animals offered was not eaten by the worshipers.
[373]. Among the dead thus honored is to be included one class of heroes. A Greek "hero" was sometimes an eminent man, sometimes such a man divinized, sometimes an old god reduced to human dimensions, reckoned in some cases to belong to the circle of the gods proper.[696] Such personages might be worshiped as gods, with the sacrifices appropriate to the gods, or as departed men, with the sacrifices that custom fixed for the dead. The hero-cult included many men of note recently deceased, like Brasidas and those that fell at Marathon.[697]
[374]. The cults just mentioned dealt with the departed as friendly souls, the protectors of the family, the clan, or the state. The state cult of the dead was elaborate and solemn. The Greek citizen was surrounded by a host of the eminent dead who kept him in touch with the past and offered him ideals of life.[698] Another attitude toward the dead is indicated by the great apotropaic spring festival, the Anthesteria of Athens, the object of which was to rid the city of the ghosts that then wandered about.[699] This double attitude is precisely that of the savage tribes referred to above. The same difference of feeling appears in the Roman cults: the manes are the friendly or doubtful souls of dead ancestors; the Parentalia is a festival in honor of the dead kin; in the Lemuria, on the other hand, the father of the family performs a ceremony at midnight intended to rid the house of ghosts.[700]
[375]. Among modern peoples it is the Chinese that have organized the worship of the dead in the completest way; it is for them the most important part of the popular religion.[701] Similar veneration of ancestors exists in Japan.[702]
[376]. The venerated dead stood apart, as a rule, from the nature-spirits and the gods, but these different classes sometimes coalesced, as has been remarked above, in popular usage. The powers and functions of the dead were not essentially different from those of the divinities proper, particularly in the simpler stages of society. They were able to bestow all the blessings and to inflict all the misfortunes of life. In process of time the advance of knowledge relegated them to a subordinate place, but they long retained a considerable importance as friends of families and states, as disseminators of disease, and as predictors of human fortunes.
[377]. In the exercise of these functions they were often not to be distinguished from the higher and lower deities. King Saul, on the eve of a great battle, having failed to get an answer from the national deity by the ordinary legitimate methods, had recourse to necromancy and obtained from the ghost of Samuel the information that Yahweh had refused to give.[703] The Greek kēres and the wandering ghosts of West Africa do exactly what is ascribed to the malefic spirits of Babylonia.[704] Examples of such identity of function between the various superhuman Powers are found all over the world.
[378]. This fact does not show that these Powers have the same origin. The savage accepts agents in human life wherever he can find them—in beings inhabiting mountains, rocks, trees, caves, springs, and in the souls of departed men. Doubtless he thinks of the forms of these various actors as being all of the same sort, a sublimated manlike body; but he keeps them in different categories, and in the course of time the tendency is for ghosts and spirits to sink out of sight and for the gods to absorb all extrahuman activities.