By all this I certainly do not mean to assert that the funeral and mourning customs to which I have just referred have exclusively or in every case originated in fear of the dead or of the pollution of death. Burial may also be genuinely intended to protect the body from beasts or birds; and the same may be the case with mounds, tombstones, and enclosures.[242] Some savages are reported to burn the dead in order to prevent their bodies from falling into the hands of enemies,[243] which might be bad both for the dead and for their friends, as charms might be made from the corpses.[244] Moreover, cremation does away with the slow process of transformation to which a dead body is naturally subject, and this process is regarded not only as a danger to the living but also as painful to the deceased himself.[245] The same object may be achieved by exposing the corpse to wild animals. And we should also remember that the putrefactive process itself, whether accompanied by any superstitious ideas or not, is a sufficient motive for disposing of the dead body in some way or other—either by burial or cremation or exposure; and if one method is held objectionable another will be resorted to. Among the Masai the custom of throwing away corpses is said to spring from the notion that to bury them would be to poison the soil;[246] and the Zoroastrian law enjoining the exposure of the dead was closely connected with the sacredness ascribed to fire and earth and the consequent dread of polluting them.
[242] Cranz, op. cit. i. 217 (Greenlanders). Turner, in Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn. xi. 192 (Hudson Bay Eskimo). Yarrow, ibid. i. 102 (Wichita Indians). Dunbar, in Magazine of American History, viii. 734 (Pawnee Indians). Curr, The Australian Race, i. 87.
[243] Hyades and Deniker, op. cit. vii. 379 (Fuegians). Preuss, op. cit. p. 310 (Seminole Indians of Florida).
[244] Ralph, quoted by Hartland, Legend of Perseus, ii. 437 (Haidahs of British Columbia).
[245] See Hertz, loc. cit. p. 71.
[246] Thomson, Through Masai Land, p. 259.
Again, as for the mutilations and self-inflicted wounds which accompany funerals, I have suggested in a previous chapter that they may be partly practised for the purpose of refreshing the departed soul with human blood;[247] or, as Dr. Hirn observes, they may be instinctive efforts to procure that relief from overpowering feelings which is afforded by pain and the subsequent exhaustion.[248] The reluctance to name the dead may, in some measure, be traced to a natural unwillingness in his old friends to revive past sorrows.[249] And with reference to the mourning apparel, Dr. de Groot believes—if rightly or wrongly I am not in a position to decide—that, so far as China is concerned, it originated in the custom of sacrificing to the dead the clothes on one’s own back. He thinks that this explanation is confirmed by the fact that in the age of Confucius it was customary for the mourners to throw off their clothes as far as decency allowed when the corpse was being dressed.[250]
[248] Hirn, Origins of Art, p. 66 sq.
[249] Fison and Howitt, op. cit. p. 249 (Kurnai). Frazer, Golden Bough, i. 422.