We now come to consider the various means adopted to facilitate the journey of the departing soul, and to prevent it from returning as a malignant ghost to bring trouble, disease, or death on the survivors.
First comes the custom of placing the dying man on the ground at the moment of dissolution. This is done partly, as we have seen, through some feeling of the sanctity of Mother earth and that anyone resting on her bosom is safe from demoniacal agency, and partly that the spirit may meet with no obstruction in its passage through the air. This last idea prevails very generally. Thus, in Great Britain, death is believed to be retarded and the dying person kept in a state of suffering by having any lock closed or any bolt shut in the dwelling.[150]
The tortures which the soul undergoes in its journey to the land of the dead are vividly pictured in some of the sacred writings.[151] He is scorched by heat and pierced by wind and cold, attacked by beasts of prey, stumbling through thorns and filth, until he at last reaches the dread river Vaitaranî, which rolls its flood of abominations between him and the other shore. So, when a Hindu dies, a lamp made of flour is placed in his hands to light his ghost to the realm of Yama. Devout people believe that the spirit takes three hundred and sixty days to accomplish the journey, so an offering of that number of lamps is made. In order, also, to help him on his way, they feed a Brâhman every day for a year; if the deceased was a woman, a Brâhmanî is fed. The lamps are lighted facing the south, and this is the only occasion on which this is done, because the south is the realm of death, and no one will sleep or have their house door opening towards that ill-omened quarter of the sky.
With the same intention of aiding the spirit on his way, the relations howl during the funeral rites, like the keeners at an Irish wake, in order to scare the evil spirits who would obstruct the passage of the soul to its final rest.[152]
Another plan is to carry out the corpse by a special way, which is then barred up, so that it may not be able to find its way back. The same end is attained by carrying out the corpse feet foremost. Thus Marco Polo writes: “Sometimes their sorcerers shall tell them that it is not good luck to carry the corpse out by the door, so they have to break a hole in the wall, and to draw it out that way when it is taken to the burning.” It is needless to say that the same custom prevails in Great Britain.[153] The Banjâras of Khândesh reverse the process. They move their huts after a death, and make a special entrance instead of the ordinary door, which is supposed to be polluted by the passage of the spirit of the dead.[154] A somewhat similar custom prevails among the Maghs of Bengal. When the friends return from the cremation ground, if it is the master of the house who has died, the ladder leading up to the house is thrown down, and they must effect an entrance by cutting a hole in the back wall and so creeping up.[155] The theory appears to be that the evil spirits who were on the watch for the ghost may be lurking near the route by which the corpse was removed. We have the same idea in the European custom of saluting a corpse which is being carried past. Grose distinctly states that the homage was really offered to the attendant evil spirits.[156] So, the Birhors of Bengal, on the sixth day after birth, take the child out of the house by an opening made in the wall, so as to evade the evil spirit on the watch at the door.[157]
The most elaborate precautions are, however, devoted to barring out the ghost and preventing its return to its former home. The first of these consist of rules to prevent the breach of the curiosity taboo. All through folk-lore we have instances of the danger of looking back, as in the case of Lot’s wife. One of the maxims of Pythagoras was: “On setting out on a journey, do not return back; for if you do the fairies will catch you.”[158] In one of the Kashmîr tales the youth is warned not to look back, otherwise he would be changed into a pillar of stone.[159] In one of the Italian spells the officiant is told: “Spit behind you thrice and look not behind you.”[160] In an Indian tale the god promises to help the Brâhman and to follow him. The Brâhman looks back and the deity becomes a stone.[161] The danger of looking back is that the person’s soul may be detained among the ghosts of the dead. This is the reason why Hindu mourners do not look back when they are returning from the cremation ground, and so we find that in Naxos it is a rule that none of the women who follow the bier must look back, for if she do she will die on the spot, or else one of her relations will die.[162]
Another means is to bar the return of the ghost in a physical way. Thus, when the Aheriyas of the North-Western Provinces burn the corpse, they fling pebbles in the direction of the pyre to prevent the spirit accompanying them. In the Himâlayas, when a man has attended the funeral ceremonies of a relative, he takes a piece of the shroud worn by the deceased and hangs it on some tree in the cremation ground, as an offering to the spirits which frequent such places. On his return, he places a thorny bush on the road wherever it is crossed by another path, and the nearest male relative of the deceased, on seeing this, puts a stone on it, and pressing it down with his feet, prays the spirit of the dead man not to trouble him.[163] Among the Bengal Limbus, the Phedangma attends the funeral, and delivers a brief address to the departed spirit on the general doom of mankind and the succession of life and death, concluding with the command to go where his fathers have gone, and not to come back to trouble the living with dreams.[164]
Practically the same custom still prevails in Ireland. When a corpse is carried to the grave, it is the rule for the bearers to stop half-way while the nearest relatives build up a small monument of loose stones, and no hand would dare to disturb this monument while the world lasts.[165]
In the case of the Dhângars and Basors, both menial tribes in the North-Western Provinces, we come across an usage which appears to be of a very primitive type and to be intended to secure the same object of barring the return of the ghost. After they have buried the corpse they return to the house of the dead man, kill a hog, and after separating the limbs, which are cooked for the funeral feast, they bury the trunk in the courtyard of the house, making an invocation to it as the representative of the dead man, and ordering him to rest there in peace and not worry his descendants. In the grave in which they bury this they pile stones and thorns to keep the ghost down.
Many other mourning customs appear to be based on the same principle. Thus, the old ritual directs that all who return from a funeral must touch the Lingam, fire, cowdung, a grain of barley, a grain of sesame and water—“all,” as Professor De Gubernatis says, “symbols of that fecundity which the contact with a corpse might have destroyed.”[166] The real motive is doubtless to get rid of the ghost, which may have accompanied the mourners from the cremation ground. In Borneo rice is sprinkled over them with the same object, and the Basutos who have carried a corpse to the grave have their hands scratched with a knife and magic stuff is rubbed into the wound to remove the ghost which may be adhering to them.[167]