[214] Rig-Veda, x. 18. 1.
[215] Crooke, Popular Religion of Northern India, i. 269.
[216] Fawcett, in the Madras Government Museum’s Bulletin, iii. 251. See also Iyer, ‘Nayādis of Malabar,’ibid. iv. 71.
[217] Waddell, op. cit. p. 498.
[218] Thomson, Savage Island, p. 134.
[219] Kålund, loc. cit. p. 227.
[220] von Hahn, Albanesische Studien, i. 163.
Burial itself has served a similar purpose.[221] According to the Danish traveller Monrad, the Negroes of Accra expressly believe that by covering the body of a dead person with earth they keep the ghost from walking and causing trouble to the survivors; and he adds that exactly the same superstition prevails in Jutland in Denmark.[222] This belief is also preserved in the Swedish word for committing a corpse to the earth, jordfästa, which literally means “to fasten to the earth.” In Gothland, in Sweden, there was an old tradition of a man called Takstein who in his lifetime was overbearing and cruel and after his death haunted the living, in consequence of which “a wizard finally earth-fastened him in such a manner that he afterwards lay quiet.”[223] But burial has often been supplemented by other precautions against the return of the ghost. Högström says that the Laplanders carefully wrapped up their dead in cloth so as to prevent the soul from slipping away.[224] The practice of placing logs or stones immediately over the corpse may have a similar origin; in some Queensland tribes, when an individual has been killed by the whole tribe in punishment for some serious crime, boomerangs are substituted for the ordinary logs, evidently for fear of the ghost.[225] The Chuvashes, again, put two stakes across the coffin of a dead man for the purpose of preventing him from lifting up the cover.[226] Graves are often provided with mounds, tombstones, or enclosures in order to keep the dead from walking.[227] The Omahas raise no mound over a man who has been killed by lightning, but bury him face downwards and with the soles of his feet split, in the belief that he will then go to the spirit-land without giving further trouble to the living.[228] The Savage Islanders pile heavy stones upon the grave to keep the ghost down.[229] The Cheremises believe that the ghosts cannot step over the fence-poles with which they surround the graves.[230] When ceremonies like that of striking the air at a funeral or the ringing of bells are represented as means of keeping off evil spirits from the dead, we have reason to suspect that their original object was to keep off the ghost from the living. At Central Australian funerals women beat the air with the palms of their hands for the express purpose of driving the spirit away from the old camp which it is supposed to haunt, and the men beat the air with their spear-throwers.[231] The Bondeis of East Africa frighten the ghosts by beating drums.[232] And at Port Moresby, in New Guinea, when the church bell was first used, the natives thanked the missionaries for having driven off numerous bands of ghosts.[233]
[221] Cf. Frazer, in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xv. 64 sq.; Preuss, op. cit. p. 292 sq.
[222] Monrad, op. cit. p. 13.