"The native word expressive of divinity is kalou, which, while used to denote the people's highest notion of a god, is also constantly heard as a qualificative of any thing great or marvellous, or, according to Hazlewood's Dictionary, 'anything superlative, whether good or bad.'... Often the word sinks into a mere exclamation, or becomes an expression of flattery. 'You are a kalou!' or, 'Your countrymen are gods!' is often uttered by the natives, when hearing of the triumphs of art among civilized nations."[702] The Fijians distinguished two classes of gods: first, kalou vu, literally "Root-gods," that is, gods strictly so called, and second, kalou yalo, literally, "Soul-gods," that is, deified mortals. Gods of the first class were supposed to be absolutely eternal; gods of the second class, though raised far above mere humanity, were thought nevertheless to be subject to human passions and wants, to accidents, and even to death. These latter were the spirits of departed chiefs, heroes, and friends; admission into their number was easy, and any one might secure his own apotheosis who could ensure the services of some one to act as his representative and priest after his death.[703] However, though the Fijians admitted the distinction between the two classes of gods in theory, they would seem to have confused them in practice. Thus we are informed by an early authority that "they have superior and inferior gods and goddesses, more general and local deities, and, were it not an obvious contradiction, we should say they have gods human, and gods divine; for they have some gods who were gods originally, and some who were originally men. It is impossible to ascertain with any degree of probability how many gods the Fijians have, as any man who can distinguish himself in murdering his fellow-men may certainly secure to himself deification after death. Their friends are also sometimes deified and invoked. I have heard them invoke their friends who have been drowned at sea. I need not advert to the absurdity of praying to those who could not save themselves from a watery grave. Tuikilakila, the chief of Somosomo, offered Mr. Hunt a preferment of this sort. 'If you die first,' said he, 'I shall make you my god.' In fact, there appears to be no certain line of demarcation between departed spirits and gods, nor between gods and living men, for many of the priests and old chiefs are considered as sacred persons, and not a few of them will also claim to themselves the right of divinity. 'I am a god,' Tuikilakila would sometimes say; and he believed it too. They were not merely the words of his lips; he believed he was something above a mere man."[704]
Writers on Fiji have given us lists of some of the principal gods of the first class,[705] who were supposed never to have been men; but in their account of the religious ritual they do not distinguish between the worship which was paid to such deities and that which was paid to deified men. Accordingly we may infer that the ritual was practically the same, and in the sequel I shall assume that what is told us of the worship of gods in general holds good of the worship of deified men in particular.
The Fijian temple (bure).
Every Fijian town had at least one bure or temple, many of them had several. Significantly enough the spot where a chief had been killed was sometimes chosen for the site of a temple. The structure of these edifices was somewhat peculiar. Each of them was built on the top of a mound, which was raised to the height of from three to twenty feet above the ground and faced on its sloping sides with dry rubble-work of stone. The ascent to the temple was by a thick plank, the upper surface of which was cut into notched steps. The proportions of the sacred edifice itself were inelegant, if not uncouth, its height being nearly twice as great as its breadth at the base. The roof was high-pitched; the ridge-pole was covered with white shells (Ovula cypraea) and projected three or four feet at each end. For the most part each temple had two doors and a fire-place in the centre. From some temples it was not lawful to throw out the ashes, however much they might accumulate, until the end of the year, which fell in November. The furniture consisted of a few boxes, mats, several large clay jars, and many drinking vessels. A temple might also contain images, which, though highly esteemed as ornaments and held sacred, were not worshipped as idols. From the roof depended a long piece of white bark-cloth; it was carried down the angle so as to hang before the corner-post and lie on the floor. This cloth formed the path down which the god was believed to pass in order to enter and inspire his priest. It marked the holy place which few but he dared to approach. However, the temples were by no means dedicated exclusively to the use of religion. Each of them served also as a council-chamber and town-hall; there the chiefs lounged for hours together; there strangers were entertained; and there the head persons of the village might even sleep.[706] In some parts of Viti Levu the dead were sometimes buried in the temples, "that the wind might not disturb, nor the rain fall upon them," and in order that the living might have the satisfaction of lying near their departed friends. A child of high rank having died under the charge of the queen of Somosomo, the little body was placed in a box and hung from the tie-beam of the principal temple. For some months afterwards the daintiest food was brought daily to the dead child, the bearers approaching with the utmost respect and clapping their hands when the ghost was thought to have finished his meal just as a chiefs retainers used to do when he had done eating.[707]
Worship at the temples.
Temples were often unoccupied for months and allowed to fall into ruins, until the chief had some request to make to the god, when the necessary repairs were first carried out. No regular worship was maintained, no habitual reverence was displayed at the shrines. The principle of fear, we are told, seemed to be the only motive of religious observances, and it was artfully fomented by the priests, through whom alone the people had access to the gods when they desired to supplicate the favour of the divine beings. The prayers were naturally accompanied by offerings, which in matters of importance comprised large quantities of food, together with whales' teeth; in lesser affairs a tooth, club, mat, or spear sufficed. Of the food brought by the worshippers part was dedicated to the god, but as usual he only ate the soul of it, the substance being consumed by the priest and old men; the remainder furnished a feast of which all might partake.[708]
The priests.
The office of priest (mbete, bete) was usually hereditary, but when a priest died without male heirs a cunning fellow, ambitious of enjoying the sacred character and of living in idleness, would sometimes simulate the convulsive frenzy, which passed for a symptom of inspiration, and if he succeeded in the imposture would be inducted into the vacant benefice. Every chief had his priest, with whom he usually lived on a very good footing, the two playing into each other's hands and working the oracle for their mutual benefit. The people were grossly superstitious, and there were few of their affairs in which the priest had not a hand. His influence over them was great. In his own district he passed for the representative of the deity; indeed, according to an early missionary, the natives seldom distinguished the idea of the god from that of his minister, who was viewed by them with a reverence that almost amounted to deification.[709]
Oracles given by the priest under the inspiration of the god. Paroxysm of inspiration.
The principal duty of the priest was to reveal to men the will of the god, and this he always did through the direct inspiration of the deity. The revelation was usually made in response to an enquiry or a prayer; the supplicant asked, it might be, for a good crop of yams or taro, for showers of rain, for protection in battle, for a safe voyage, or for a storm to drive canoes ashore, so that the supplicant might rob, murder, and eat the castaways. To lend force to one or other of these pious prayers the worshipper brought a whale's tooth to the temple and presented it to the priest. The man of god might have had word of his coming and time to throw himself into an appropriate attitude. He might, for example, be seen lying on the floor near the sacred corner, plunged in a profound meditation. On the entrance of the enquirer the priest would rouse himself so far as to get up and then seat himself with his back to the white cloth, down which the deity was expected to slide into the medium's body. Having received the whale's tooth he would abstract his mind from all worldly matters and contemplate the tooth for some time with rapt attention. Presently he began to tremble, his limbs twitched, his features were distorted. These symptoms, the visible manifestation of the entrance of the spirit into him, gradually increased in violence till his whole frame was convulsed and shook as with a strong fit of ague: his veins swelled: the circulation of the blood was quickened. The man was now possessed and inspired by the god: his own human personality was for a time in abeyance: all that he said and did in the paroxysm passed for the words and acts of the indwelling deity. Shrill cries of "Koi au! Koi au!" "It is I! It is I!" filled the air, proclaiming the actual presence of the powerful spirit in the vessel of flesh and blood. In giving the oracular response the priest's eyes protruded from their sockets and rolled as in a frenzy: his voice rose into a squeak: his face was pallid, his lips livid, his breathing depressed, his whole appearance that of a furious madman. At last sweat burst from every pore, tears gushed from his eyes: the strain on the organism was visibly relieved; and the symptoms gradually abated. Then he would look round with a vacant stare: the god within him would cry, "I depart!" and the man would announce the departure of the spirit by throwing himself on his mat or striking the ground with his club, while blasts on a shell-trumpet conveyed to those at a distance the tidings that the deity had withdrawn from mortal sight into the world invisible.[710] "I have seen," says Mr. Lorimer Fison, "this possession, and a horrible sight it is. In one case, after the fit was over, for some time the man's muscles and nerves twitched and quivered in an extraordinary way. He was naked except for his breech-clout, and on his naked breast little snakes seemed to be wriggling for a moment or two beneath his skin, disappearing and then suddenly reappearing in another part of his chest. When the mbete (which we may translate 'priest' for want of a better word) is seized by the possession, the god within him calls out his own name in a stridulous tone, 'It is I! Katouviere!' or some other name. At the next possession some other ancestor may declare himself."[711]