The name which is given to a child is also the result of much care and forethought. Fetichers, shamans, sorcerers, and priests are consulted. The name chosen is sometimes determined by the locality or house of the birth. Thus the Kalmuks who were exhibited at Paris in 1882 gave the name of “Paris” to the child which one of their number brought into the world. The Negroes of Senegal, under similar circumstances in 1895, called one of their new-born “The Frenchman.” But most frequently the name given is of a plant or animal (Red Indians, Mongols, etc.). It must be said, however, that among many peoples the name given at birth is not borne throughout life. It may be changed more than once. The most frequent cause for doing this is the fear of spirits; the Dyaks and the Mongols change the name of sick persons to “deceive the spirit” who has caused the disease; among the Fuegians, the Indians of North America, the Polynesians, and the Malays, the name of a dead man is not allowed to be uttered, and all his namesakes are obliged to change their name. Often, too, the name is changed because their “trade” requires it; the Okanda healers bear another name when they practise their art; and among civilised peoples changes of name are bound up with certain social conditions (monks, actors, prostitutes, etc.).
Education of Children.—Suckling ordinarily lasts a very long time among uncivilised peoples, till the child is two, three, four, and five years old, sometimes even older.[281] Children are treated kindly by uncivilised peoples, and rarely are they chastised as they are in Europe, though a certain “discipline” appears among the half-civilised, with the necessity of making the child learn many more things. At the age of puberty, among most uncivilised peoples, the ceremony of initiation takes place. This is a sort of higher education with certain tests, followed by a ceremony, after which the individual is declared adult. It is met with among the Australians, as also among the American Indians, Negroes, etc., with the same essential features. The young men of the tribe are led into a place apart, where the sorcerers, the fetichers, or the “old men,” teach them during a varying period all that a “man” should know about social and sexual life. The candidates are then put tests, sometimes very cruel, to make sure of their power to resist thirst, hunger, and physical pain. Those who emerge victorious from these tests are brought back triumphantly into the villages, and feasted during several days.[282]
Among the operations to which young men are subjected during initiation, we must specially notice circumcision, generally practised all over Oceania, among the American Indians and other peoples, without taking into account the Israelite and Mussulman world, in which this custom has now but a religious symbolic signification. Moreover, several religions have kept the custom of initiation, giving to it very varied forms (shaving of the forelock among Buddhists, first communion among Catholics, etc.).
The lot of the old men is not an enviable one in primitive societies. They are not cared for, and often when they become infirm they are left to die of hunger. The voluntary suicide of the old men, which is committed amid great pomp among the Chukchi[283] and some other peoples, may be explained as much by the miseries of existence as by the belief in a better life beyond the tomb, which is the basis of funereal rites.[284] Among nearly all peoples it is customary to put into the grave objects which the dead had used in their ordinary occupations, but only such as constituted private property: weapons by the side of a warrior, pottery near to a woman, etc.[285] These objects are usually broken to signify that they also are dead, and that their “soul” goes to accompany their owner into the other life. It is also with this idea that a warrior’s favourite horse is sacrificed on his grave (Red Indians, Altaians), or a symbolic ceremony suffices, the animal being led in the funeral procession, a custom still practised all over Europe at the interments of superior officers. In India women are sacrificed, slaves in Dahomey and among the Dyaks, etc., in order that the dead may not be deprived of anything in the other world.[286]
Funeral ceremonies and the practice of going into mourning give place to feasts of diverse character. Among the Dualas of the Cameroons (Western Africa), the “feast of the dead” lasts nine days, the time required for his soul to make the journey to Bela, the place of eternal rest. Among the Battas of Sumatra, we find these funeral feasts accompanied by dances and a special kind of game, the Topingha. The exhumation of the bones of the dead person at the end of a certain time, practised by several Indonesian, Melanesian, and American tribes, is the occasion of orgies; I may also mention the habit of visiting the cemetery at stated periods, and taking food either on the grave or by the side of it, which is very general in Europe.
Among the feasts organised in honour of the dead let us mention the Bung of the Japanese, at the end of which miniature skiffs in straw are thrown into the sea, supposed to transport the souls of the dead who have been present at the feast back to their dwelling-place.
The modes of sepulture, although very varied,—interment, incineration, exposure to the air (natural mummification), embalming, pure and simple abandonment on the earth or to the waves,—have not a great importance from the ethnical point of view; often two or three modes may co-exist among the same people (examples, Mongols, Papuans).
Mourning.—Outward manifestations of grief caused by the death of a near relative exist among all peoples of the world, even the most uncivilised. These are, first, cries, lamentations, and tears (Bushmen, Bechuana, ancient Egyptians, Caribs of Guiana, Italians, Russians). Then succeed material signs displayed on the body, some of which are the consequence of cruel practices which seem to suggest the idea of sacrifice for the purpose of removing the anger of “the dead man’s soul,” which wanders about the survivors. We need only mention the cutting off of the finger-joints among the Bushmen, of the toes among the Fijians, the drawing out of teeth in Eastern Polynesia, the laceration of the skin among the Australians, the burnings among the New Caledonians. Under a milder form the same idea of sacrifice manifests itself in the custom of plucking out the hair of the beard (Australians, Fijians), of cutting or shaving off a part or the whole of the hair (Jews and Egyptians in ancient times, Huns, Albanians, Hovas, Malays, American Indians, Basutos, Gallas). Certain signs of mourning on the body seem to be caused by the desire not to be recognised by the “spirit” of the dead person; such is the custom of daubing the face or the whole body, practised by the Negroes of Central Africa, the Australians, the Polynesians, etc. Among peoples who are more clothed, the mode of dress is altered. General negligence in dress is a sign of grief among the Bechuana and the Malays; tearing of the garments is practised among the American Indians; the Manganya of Southern Africa wrap the body in palm-leaves, which they wear until they fall withered to the ground. The conventional colour of the clothes, white among the Chinese, black among Europeans, is a sign of the same kind.
4.—SOCIAL LIFE.
Social life may be studied both as limited to a given people (inner life) and in the relations of one people with another (international life).