Belief in reincarnation and measures taken to secure it among other peoples.
Reincarnation among the Bagishu of Mount Elgon.
Reincarnation among the tribes of the Lower Congo.
Reincarnation in India.
Reincarnation among the Hurons.
Reincarnation among the ancient Greeks.
As the belief in reincarnation is shared by many peoples besides the Australians, it is natural to suppose that funeral rites intended to facilitate the rebirth of the deceased may be found in other parts of the world. Elsewhere I have cited examples of these rites:[348] here I will add a few more. It is especially the bodies of dead infants which are the object of such ceremonies; for since their lives have been cut prematurely short, it seems reasonable to give their souls a chance of beginning again and lengthening out their existence on earth to its natural close. But it is not always dead babies only whom the living seek thus to bring back to life. For example, we read that round about Mount Elgon in East Africa “the custom of throwing out the dead is universal among all the clans of Bagishu, except in the case of the youngest child or the old grandfather or grandmother, for whom, like the child, a prolonged life on earth is desired. . . . When it is desired to perpetuate on the earth the life of some old man or woman, or that of some young baby, the corpse is buried inside the house or just under the eaves, until another child is born to the nearest relation of the corpse. This child, male or female, takes the name of the corpse, and the Bagishu firmly believe that the spirit of the dead has passed into this new child and lives again on earth. The remains are then dug up and thrown out into the open.”[349] Similarly among the {p104} tribes of the Lower Congo “a baby is always buried near the house of its mother, never in the bush. They think that, if the child is not buried near its mother’s house, she will be unlucky and never have any more children. It is believed that the only new thing about a child is its body. The spirit is old and formerly belonged to some deceased person, or it may have the spirit of some living person. They have two reasons for believing this. The child speaks early of strange things the mother has never taught it, so that they believe the old spirit is talking in the child. Again, if the child is like its mother, father, or uncle, they think it has the spirit of the person it resembles, and that that person will soon die. Hence a parent will resent it if you say that the baby is like him or her.”[350] Thus it appears that the argument for the pre-existence of the human soul, which Plato and Wordsworth[351] drew from reminiscence, is fully accepted by some negro tribes of West Africa. In the Bilaspore district of India “a still-born child, or one who has passed away before the Chhatti (the sixth day, the day of purification) is not taken out of the house for burial, but is placed in an earthen vessel (a gharā) and is buried in the doorway or in the yard of the house. Some say that this is done in order that the mother may bear another child.”[352] It is said that among the Kondhs of India, on the day after a death, some boiled rice and a small fowl are taken to the place where the body was burned; there the fowl is split down the breast and placed on the spot, after which it is eaten and the soul of the departed is invited to enter a new-born child.[353] On the fifth day after a death the Gonds perform the ceremony of bringing back the soul. They go to the riverside and call aloud the name of the deceased. {p105} Then they enter the river, catch a fish or an insect, and taking it home place it among the sainted dead of the family, believing that the spirit of their lost one has thus been brought back to the house. Sometimes the fish or insect is eaten in order that the spirit which it contains may be born again as a child.[354] When a baby died within a month or two of birth, the Hurons did not dispose of its little body like those of grown people by depositing it on a scaffold; they buried it beside the road in order, so they said, that the child might enter secretly into the womb of some woman passing by and be born again into the world.[355] Some of the ancient rules observed with regard to funerals in the Greek island of Ceos have been ingeniously explained by Mr. F. B. Jevons as designed to secure the rebirth of the departed in one of the women of the family.[356] The widespread custom of burying the dead in the house was perhaps instituted for the same purpose,[357] and the ancient Greek practice of sacrificing to the dead man at the grave on his birthday may possibly have originated in the same train of thought.[358] For example, sacrifices were annually offered on their birthdays to Hippocrates by the Coans, to Aratus by the Sicyonians, and to Epicurus by his disciples.[359]
Rites to procure the rebirth of edible animals and plants.
Now too we can fully understand the meaning of the bloody ritual in the ceremonies for the multiplication of the totem animals and plants. We have seen that a strengthening and fertilising virtue is attributed to human blood. What {p106} more natural than that it should be poured out by the men of the totem on the spot in which the disembodied spirits of the totem animals or plants are waiting for reincarnation? Clearly the rite seems intended to enable these spirits to take bodily shape and be born again, in order that they may again serve as food, if not to the men of the totem clan, at least to all the other numbers of the tribe. Later on we shall find that the attempt to reincarnate the souls of dead animals, in order that their bodies may be eaten over again, is not peculiar to the Australian savages, but is practised with many curious rites by peoples in other parts of the world.
General theory of intichiuma and initiatory rites in Australia.