Other funeral customs based on a fear of the ghost.
The same fear of the ghost of the recently departed which manifested itself, if my interpretation of the customs is right, in the treatment of manslayers, seems to have imprinted itself, though in a more attenuated form, on some of the practices observed by Fijian mourners after a natural, not a violent, death.
Persons who have handled a corpse forbidden to touch food. Seclusion of grave-diggers.
Thus all the persons who had handled a corpse were forbidden to touch anything for some time afterwards; in particular they were strictly debarred from touching their food with their hands; their victuals were brought to them by others, and they were fed like infants by attendants or obliged to pick up their food with their mouths from the ground. The time during which this burdensome restriction lasted was different according to the rank of the deceased: in the case of great chiefs it lasted from two to ten months; in the case of a petty chief it did not exceed one month; and in the case of a common person a taboo of not more than four days sufficed. When a chief's principal wife did not follow him to the other world by being strangled or buried alive, she might not touch her own food with her hands for three months. When the mourners grew tired of being fed like infants or feeding themselves like dogs, they sent word to the head chief and he let them know that he would remove the taboo whenever they pleased. Accordingly they sent him presents of pigs and other provisions, which he shared among the people. Then the tabooed persons went into a stream and washed themselves; after that they caught some animal, such as a pig or a turtle, and wiped their hands on it, and the animal thereupon became sacred to the chief. Thus the taboo was removed, and the men were free once more to work, to feed themselves, and to live with their wives. Lazy and idle fellows willingly undertook the duty of waiting on the dead, as it relieved them for some time from the painful necessity of earning their own bread.[722] The reason why such persons might not touch food with their hands was probably a fear of the ghost or at all events of the infection of death; the ghost or the infection might be clinging to their hands and might so be transferred from them to their food with fatal effects. In Great Fiji not every one might dig a chief's grave. The office was hereditary in a certain clan. After the funeral the grave-digger was shut up in a house and painted black from head to foot. When he had to make a short excursion, he covered himself with a large mantle of painted native cloth and was supposed to be invisible. His food was brought to the house after dark by silent bearers, who placed it just within the doorway. His seclusion might last for a long time;[723] it was probably intended to screen him from the ghost.
Hair cropped and finger-joints cut off in mourning.
The usual outward sign of mourning was to crop the hair or beard, or very rarely both. Some people merely made bald the crown of the head. Indeed the Fijians were too vain of their hair to part with it lightly, and to conceal the loss which custom demanded of them on these occasions they used to wear wigs, some of which were very skilfully made. The practice of cutting off finger-joints in mourning has already been mentioned; one early authority affirms and another denies that joints of the little toes were similarly amputated by the living as a mark of sorrow for the dead. So common was the practice of lopping off the little fingers in mourning that till recently few of the older natives could be found who had their hands intact; most of them indeed had lost the little fingers of both hands. There was a Fijian saying that the fourth finger "cried itself hoarse in vain for its absent mate" (droga-droga-wale). The mutilation was usually confined to the relations of the deceased, unless he happened to be one of the highest chiefs. However, the severed joints were often sent by poor people to wealthy families in mourning, who never failed to reward the senders for so delicate a mark of sympathy. Female mourners burned their skin into blisters by applying lighted rolls of bark-cloth to various parts of their bodies; the brands so produced might be seen on their arms, shoulders, necks, and breasts.[724] During the mourning for a king people fasted till evening for ten or twenty days; the coast for miles was tabooed and no one might fish there; the nuts also were made sacred. Some people in token of grief for a bereavement would abstain from fish, fruit, or other pleasant food for months together; others would dress in leaves instead of in cloth.[725]
Men whipped by women in time of mourning for a chief.
Though the motive for these observances is not mentioned, we may suppose that they were intended to soothe and please the ghost by testifying to the sorrow felt by the survivors at his decease. It is more doubtful whether the same explanation would apply to another custom which the Fijians used to observe in mourning. During ten days after a death, while the soul of a deceased chief was thought to be still lingering in or near his body, all the women of the town provided themselves with long whips, knotted with shells, and applied them with great vigour to the bodies of the men, raising weals and inflicting bloody wounds, while the men retorted by flirting pellets of clay from splinters of bamboo.[726] According to Mr. Williams, this ceremony was performed on the tenth day or earlier, and he adds: "I have seen grave personages, not accustomed to move quickly, flying with all possible speed before a company of such women. Sometimes the men retaliate by bespattering their assailants with mud; but they use no violence, as it seems to be a day on which they are bound to succumb."[727] As the soul of the dead was believed to quit his body and depart to his destined abode on the tenth day after death,[728] the scourging of the men by the women was probably supposed in some way to speed the parting guest on his long journey.
The dead taken out of the house by a special opening made in a wall. Examples of the custom among Aryan peoples.