One day Punjil was walking about the earth with a big knife in his hand. With this knife he cut two pieces of bark. Then he mixed some clay and made two black men, one very much blacker than the other. He took all day over them and when he had finished he found that one had curly hair and the other smooth. The curly-haired one he named Kookinberrook, the other Berrookboru. At first they were like dead fellows, but after he had blown into their nostrils they began to move about.
Now the very next day Punjil's brother Pallian was paddling about in a creek in his canoe. Presently he saw two heads come up out of the water. Then two breasts followed. Pallian paddled up to them and found that they were two women. He took them to Punjil who was very pleased and blew into their nostrils exactly as he had done in the case of the two men he had made the day before. Then Punjil gave them names, one he called Kunewarra, the other Kimrook. After this he put a spear in the hand of each man and gave a digging stick to each of the women and showed them how to use them. Then he gave the women to the men as their wives.
Here is a Flood story which you will like to compare with the beautiful story in Genesis. You will notice these among other differences. Though the people of wild Australia believe in a Flood they have no idea that it was sent as a punishment from God. On the other hand it was purely an accident. Again you must remember they have no belief in God like our own. There are various vague, indefinite beliefs in one or more creators and in a Supreme Being who is pleased when the different ceremonies are properly performed. There is nothing more than this. There is, for instance, no idea at all of sin as being against God. They only understand offences against the tribe which the old men must punish, or indignities against the spirits of the departed which those spirits themselves will revenge. The Supreme Being never interferes in purely human concerns.
Once upon a time there was no water anywhere upon the earth. All the animals, therefore, met in solemn council to find out the reason of this remarkable drought. After a great deal of foolish talking they discovered the secret. An enormous frog had swallowed all the water and the only way he could be made to disgorge it was by being made to laugh. So one after another they all tried to amuse him but none of them succeeded in even making him smile. At last a big eel came and he began to wriggle. This was more than the frog's gravity could stand. He opened his mouth and laughed loudly. At once great streams of water began to pour from his jaws, and in a short time so much water had come from him that a great flood followed, and many of the animals and some of the people perished in the waters. A large pelican then determined to do his utmost to save the people. He made a canoe and paddled in it from one island to another. Wherever he found any blacks he took them into his canoe and so saved them. Before very long, however, the pelican had a quarrel with the blacks about a woman, and as a punishment was turned into stone.
CHAPTER XIII RELIGION
In the really strict sense of the word the people of wild Australia have no religion. There is, as you have already seen, some faint belief in a Supreme Being and Creator who is known by a different name in the different tribes, but this belief in a Supreme Being makes no difference to their lives and they do not recognize that they have any duties towards him. He is pleased when certain ceremonies are performed properly, and angry when they are performed carelessly or not at all, but beyond that he takes no interest in them. They, for their part, do not think it necessary to worry themselves about him. They never say any prayers, they offer no sacrifices, they build no temples or altars, and they make no idols. For these reasons we usually say they have no religion.
That which takes the place of religion among them is fear of evil spirits, the ghosts of the dead. These ghosts are always looked upon as hostile, and always ready to do them harm. This belief is commonly known as Animism. It is a general belief among all very primitive peoples. Among some races, like the Kols of India, to whom the natives of Australia are believed by some people to be very closely akin, it takes the form of devil worship, and constant offerings are made to turn away the anger of the spirits, but there is no attempt at propitiation, as this is called, among the people of Australia. They live in constant fear of spirits it is true, but their efforts are all in the direction of avoiding them, or keeping them at a distance. For this reason they will seldom camp beneath trees for the ghosts of men and women whose bodies have been placed in those trees to decay may still be hovering about among them and would come down and harm them if they dared to sleep under their shadow. For this same reason, too, they never mention, as you have already been told, the names of their dead. If the ghost heard them talking about him he would conclude they were not sufficiently sorry and would be very angry and be sure to harm them. A white man was once talking with an aboriginal boy, and in the course of his talk he three times mentioned rather loudly the name of a dead black man. The boy was so frightened that he ran away as fast as he could into the bush and did not appear again for several days. When a death occurs any other members of the tribe will, as you have already been told, at once change their names, and should the dead man or woman have borne the name of some plant or animal a new name will at once be given to it.
The aboriginals probably came to believe in spirits through their dreams. In those dreams they have visited friends in some far-off tribe, fought some battle, or engaged in a hunt, yet their bodies, they know, have not moved from their resting-place. How could they have done this unless they had a spirit which was able to pass out of their body during sleep and go away on a journey. Some tribes give the name of mūrŏp to this spirit. At death the mūrŏp leaves the body and either goes across the sea, or along the milky way into the beautiful sky country, or continues to haunt the scenes of its earthly life and especially the place where the body is buried, so becoming a source of danger and annoyance to those who remain alive. This is why most tribes move their camp after a death has taken place and why the tribes in the Kimberley District of Western Australia nearly always cross the river. The ghost will have great difficulty in finding them and in any case he could not cross water.
Some tribes believe that as soon as the dead body has completely turned to dust the soul goes back to the rock or water-hole whence the totemic ancestor, or great-great-greatest-grandfather of the dead man, originally came. There it quietly waits until some little baby is born in the immediate neighbourhood, when it passes into his body and so again becomes incarnate.