[132] Jastrow, op. cit. p. 581.
[133] Rohde, op. cit. pp. 177 sqq., 225 n. 4. Schmidt, Die Ethik der alten Griechen, ii. 130.
[134] Ovid, Fasti, v. 429 sqq. Granger, Worship of the Romans, p. 67.
[135] de Groot, op. cit. (vol. v. book) ii. 464.
[136] Dennys, Folk-Lore of China, p. 73. See also Legge, Religions of China, pp. 13, 201.
[137] Dr. Steinmetz (Ethnol. Studien zur ersten Entwicklung der Strafe, i. 283) has arrived at the same conclusion. See also Meiners, Geschichte der Religionen, i. 301 sqq.; Karsten, op. cit. p. 115 sqq.
[138] Jevons, Introduction to the History of Religion, p. 53 sq.
[139] Grant Allen, Evolution of the Idea of God, p. 347 sq.
Thus the Bondeis in East Africa apparently make little difference between a devil and a departed ancestor.[140] Among the Fjort of Loango the good people who have left this life “are generally considered the enemies of mankind.”[141] Other Africans maintain that the spirits of the dead hover in the air, “watching the destiny of friends, haunting houses, killing children, injuring cattle, and causing disease and destruction,” all being malevolent to the living.[142] Of the Savage Islanders in Polynesia we are told that “no effort of the missionary can avail to break them of their belief in the malevolence of ghosts, even of those who loved them best in life; the spirits of the dead seem compelled to work ill to the living without their own volition.”[143] In Tahiti the spirits of parents and children, sisters and brothers, “seemed to have been regarded as a sort of demons.”[144] Among the Maoris “the nearest and most beloved relatives were supposed to have their natures changed by death, and to become malignant, even towards those they formerly loved.”[145] The natives of Erromanga, in the New Hebrides, maintained that all the spirits of their departed ancestors were evil, and roamed the earth doing harm to men.[146] In the tribes inhabiting the mouth of the Wanigela River, in New Guinea, all dead ancestors are supposed to be constantly on the watch to deal out sickness or death to anyone who may displease them; hence the natives are most particular to do nothing that should raise their anger.[147] Australian natives believe that a deceased person is malevolent for a long time after death, and the more nearly related the more he is feared.[148] The anitos or ghosts, of the Tagales in the Philippine Islands are likewise perpetually anxious to do harm to their descendants, trying to kill people, especially shortly after death, and being the causes of nearly all diseases.[149] The Saora of the Madras Presidency only know the existence of the departed souls by the mischief they do, and think that all ills are occasioned either by ancestral spirits or gods.[150] In the North-Western Provinces of India the díwárs, or genii loci, are oftentimes “the spirits of good men, Brahmans, or village heroes, who manage, when they become objects of worship, to be generally considered very malicious devils”;[151] and the ghosts of all low caste natives are notoriously malignant.[152] The Tibetans are of opinion that a ghost is always malicious, and that it returns and gives troubles either on account of its malevolence or its desire to see how its former property is being disposed of.[153] The Finns and other peoples of the same stock believed that the souls of the dead were generally intent to do harm to the living, their nearest relatives included.[154] Thus, according to Votyak ideas, even a mother may become the enemy of her own child from the moment of her death.[155] Among the Ainu of Japan, “if a man is at a loss for the authorship of any particular calamity, which has befallen him, he is very apt to refer it to the ghost of a dead wife, mother, grandmother, or, still more certainly, to that of a dead mother-in-law”;[156] an Ainu who accompanied Mr. Batchelor would on no account come within twenty-five or thirty yards of the spot where his own mother was burned.[157] The Koniagas believe that after death every man becomes a devil.[158] According to ideas prevalent among the Central Eskimo, the dead are at first malevolent spirits who frequently roam around the villages, causing sickness and mischief and killing men by their touch; but subsequently they are supposed to attain to rest and are no longer feared.[159] The Tarahumares of Mexico are afraid of their dead; a mother asks her deceased infant to go away and not to come back, and the weeping widow implores her husband not to carry off, or do harm to, his own sons or daughters.[160] Mr. Bridges informs us that the Fuegian word for a ghost, cúshpich, is also an adjective signifying “frightful, dreadful, awful.”[161]
[140] Dale, ‘Natives inhabiting the Bondei Country,’ in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xxv. 233.