[257] Hertz, loc. cit. passim.
[258] Dennys, op. cit. p. 76.
[259] Curr, The Australian Race, i. 44, 87. Lumholtz, Among Cannibals, p. 279 (Northern Queensland aborigines).
[260] Tout, ‘Ethnology of the Stlatlumh of British Columbia,’ in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xxxv. 138. Bourke, ‘Medicine-Men of the Apache,’ in Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn. ix. 462. Frazer, Golden Bough, i. 431 sqq.
Progress in intellectual culture has a tendency to affect the notions of death. The change involved in it appears greater. The soul, if still thought to survive the death of the body, is more distinctly separated from it; it is rid of all sensuous desires, as also of all earthly interests. Duties to the dead which arose from the old ideas may still be maintained, but their meaning is changed.
Thus the funeral sacrifice may be continued as a mark of respect or affection. In Melanesia, for instance, at the death-meals which follow upon funerals or begin before them, and which still form one of the principal institutions of the natives, a piece of food is put aside for the dead. “It is readily denied now,” says Dr. Codrington, “that the dead … are thought to come and eat the food, which they say is given as a friendly remembrance only, and in the way of associating together those whom death has separated.”[261] In many cases the offerings made to the dead have become alms given to the poor, just as has been the case with sacrifices offered to gods;[262] and this almsgiving is undoubtedly looked upon as a duty to the dead. Among the Omahas goods are collected from the kindred of the dead between the death and the funeral, and when the body has been deposited in the grave they are brought forth and equally divided among the poor who are assembled on the spot.[263] At a Hindu funeral in Sindh, on the road to the burning place, the relatives of the dead throw dry dates into the air over the corpse; these are considered as a kind of alms and are left to the poor.[264] Among some peoples of Malabar, at the çráddha, or yearly anniversary of a death, not less than three Brahmins are well fed and presented with money and cloth;[265] and according to Brahmanism the çráddha is “a debt which is transferred from one generation to another, and on the payment of which depends the happiness of the dead in the next life.”[266] Among Muhammedans alms, generally consisting of food, are distributed in connection with a death in order to confer merits upon the deceased.[267] Thus in Morocco bread or dried fruits are given to the poor who are assembled at the grave-side on the day of the funeral, as also on the third and sometimes on the fortieth day after it, on the tenth day of Muḥarram, and in many parts of the country on other feast-days as well, when the graves are visited by relatives of the dead. These alms are obviously survivals of offerings to the dead themselves. While residing among the Bedouins of Dukkâla, I was told that if the funeral meal were omitted the dead man’s mouth would be filled with earth; and it is a common custom among the Moors that, if a dead person appears in a dream complaining of hunger or thirst, food or drink is at once given to some poor people. Among the Christians, in former days, alms were distributed in the church when, soon after a death or on the anniversary of a death, the sacrifice of the mass was offered; and alms were also given at funerals and at graves, in the hope that their merit might be of advantage to the deceased.[268] At Mykonos, in the Cyclades, on some fixed days after the burial a dish consisting of boiled wheat adorned with sugar plums or other delicacy is put on the tomb, and finally distributed to the poor at the church door;[269] and in some parts of Russia the people still believe that if the usual alms are not given at a funeral the dead man’s soul will reveal itself to his relatives in the form of a moth flying about the flame of a candle.[270] The supposed conferring of merits upon the dead and the prayers on their behalf, so common both in Christianity and Muhammedanism, are the last remains of a series of customs by means of which the living have endeavoured to benefit their departed friends.
[261] Codrington, Melanesians, p. 271 sq. Cf. ibid. p. 128.
[262] Supra, [i. 565 sqq.]
[263] La Flesche, in Jour. American Folk-Lore, ii. 8 sqq.
[264] Burton, Sindh, p. 350.