Fasting after a death is regarded as a dutiful tribute to the dead; the Chinese say that it is “a means of raising the mind up to the soul, a means to enable the sacrificer to perform in a more perfect way the acts of worship incumbent upon him, by bringing about a closer contact between himself and the soul.”[70] The self-mutilations performed by the relatives of the dead are supposed to be pleasing to him as tokens of affliction;[71] and the same is of course the case with the lamentations at funerals. In some Central Australian tribes the custom of painting the body of a mourner is said to have as its object “to render him or her more conspicuous, and so to allow the spirit to see that it is being properly mourned for.”[72] The mourning dress is a sign of regard for the dead. Nay, even the custom of not mentioning his name is looked upon in the same light. Some peoples maintain that to name him would be to disturb his rest,[73] or that he would take it as an indication that his relatives are not properly mourning for him, and would feel it as an insult.[74]
[70] de Groot, op. cit. (vol. ii. book) i. 657.
[71] Dorman, Origin of Primitive Superstitions, p. 216 sqq.
[72] Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 511.
[73] Nansen, Eskimo Life, p. 233 (Greenlanders). Tout, ‘Ethnology of the Stlatlumh of British Columbia,’ in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xxxv. 138. Georgi, op. cit. iii. 27 (Samoyedes).
[74] Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 498.
As the duties to the living, so the duties to the dead are greatly influenced by the relationship between the parties. Everywhere the obligation to satisfy the wants of the deceased is incumbent upon those who were nearest to him whilst alive. In the archaic State, as we have seen, it is considered the greatest misfortune which can befall a person to die without descendants, since in such a case there would be nobody to attend to his soul.[75] Confucius said, “For a man to sacrifice to a spirit which does not belong to him is flattery.”[76] The distinction between a tribesman or fellow countryman and a stranger also applies to the dead. In Greenland a stranger without relatives or friends was generally suffered to lie unburied.[77] Among North American Indians it is permitted to scalp warriors of a hostile tribe, whereas “there is no example of an Indian having taken the scalp of a man of his own tribe, or of one belonging to a nation in alliance with his own, and whom he may have killed in a quarrel or a fit of anger”;[78] and an Indian who would never think of desecrating the grave of a tribesman may have “no such scruple in regard to the graves of another tribe.”[79] Yet already from early times we hear of the recognition of certain duties even to strangers and enemies. The Greeks of the post-Homeric age made it a rule to deliver up a slain enemy so that he should receive the proper funeral rites.[80] It was considered a disgraceful act of Lysander not to accord burial to Philocles, the Athenian general at Aegospotami, together with about four thousand prisoners whom he put to the sword;[81] and the Athenians themselves boasted that their ancestors had with their own hands buried the Persians who had fallen in the battle of Marathon, holding it to be “a sacred and imperative duty to cover with earth a human corpse.”[82] According to the Chinese penal code, “destroying, mutilating, or throwing into the water the unenclosed and unburied corpse of a stranger,” though a much less serious crime than the same injury inflicted upon the corpse of a relative, is yet an offence punishable with 100 blows, and perpetual banishment to the distance of 3,000 lee.[83]
[75] Supra, [ii. 400 sqq.]
[76] Lun Yü, ii. 24. 1.
[77] Cranz, op. cit. i. 218.