[1267] It may be asked why repeated ceremonies are necessary to produce the relief which follows upon mourning. The funeral ceremonies are frequently very long; they include many operations which take place at intervals during many months. Thus they prolong and support the moral disturbance brought about by the death (cf. Hertz, La Representation collective de la mort, in Année Sociol., X, pp. 48 ff.). In a general way, a death marks a grave change of condition which has extended and enduring effects upon the group. It takes a long time to neutralize these effects.
[1268] In a case reported by Grey from the observations of Bussel, the rite has all the aspects of a sacrifice: the blood is sprinkled over the body itself (Grey, II, p. 330). In other cases, there is something like an offering of the beard: men in mourning cut off a part of their beards, which they throw on to the corpse (ibid., p. 335).
[1269] Nat. Tr., pp. 135-136.
[1270] Of course each churinga is believed to be connected with an ancestor. But it is not to appease the spirits of the ancestors that they mourn for the lost churinga. We have shown elsewhere (p. 123) that the idea of the ancestor only entered into the conception of the churinga secondarily and late.
[1271] Op. cit., p. 207; cf. p. 116.
[1272] Eylmann, p. 208.
[1273] Ibid., p. 211.
[1274] Howitt, The Dieri, in J.A.I., XX (1891), p. 93.
[1275] Howitt, Nat. Tr., p. 394.
[1276] Howitt, ibid., p. 396.