The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (Third Edition, Vol. 11 of 12)

This view of totemism throws light on a class of religious rites of which no adequate explanation, so far as I am aware, has yet been offered. Amongst many savage tribes, especially such as are known to practise totemism, it is customary for lads at puberty to undergo certain initiatory rites, of which one of the commonest is a pretence of killing the lad and bringing him to life again. Such rites become intelligible if we suppose that their substance consists in extracting the youth's soul in order to transfer it to his totem. For the extraction of his soul would naturally be supposed to kill the youth or at least to throw him into a death-like trance, which the savage hardly distinguishes from death. His recovery would then be attributed either to the gradual recovery of his system from the violent shock which it had received, or, more probably, to the infusion into him of fresh life drawn from the totem. Thus the essence of these initiatory rites, so far as they consist in a simulation of death and resurrection, would be an exchange of life or souls between the man and his totem. The primitive belief in the possibility of such an exchange of souls comes clearly out in the story of the Basque hunter who affirmed that he had been killed by a bear, but that the bear had, after killing him, breathed its own soul into him, so that the bear's body was now dead, but he himself was a bear, being animated by the bear's soul.[601 - Theodor Benfey, Pantschatantra (Leipsic, 1859), i. 128 sq. Similarly a man of the Kulin tribe in Victoria was called Kurburu, that is, “native bear,” because the spirit of a native bear was supposed to have entered into him when he killed the animal, and to have endowed him with its wonderful cleverness. This I learn from Miss E. B. Howitt's Folklore and Legends of some Victorian Tribes (chapter vi.), which I have been privileged to see in manuscript. Among the Chiquites Indians of Paraguay sickness was sometimes accounted for by supposing that the soul of a deer or a turtle had entered into the patient. See Lettres Édifiantes et Curieuses, Nouvelle Édition, viii. (Paris, 1781) p. 339. We have seen (pp. 213 (#x_16_i30)sq.) that the Indians of Honduras made an alliance with the animal that was to be their nagual by offering some of their own blood to it. Conversely the North American Indian kills the animal which is to be his personal totem, and thenceforth wears some part of the creature as an amulet (Totemism and Exogamy, i. 50). These facts seem to point to the establishment of a blood covenant, involving an interchange of life between a man and his personal totem or nagual; and among the Fans of West Africa, as we saw (above, p. 201 (#x_16_i12)), such a covenant is actually supposed to exist between a sorcerer and his elangela.] This revival of the dead hunter as a bear is exactly analogous to what, on the theory here suggested, is supposed to take place in the ceremony of killing a lad at puberty and bringing him to life again. The lad dies as a man and comes to life again as an animal; the animal's soul is now in him, and his human soul is in the animal. With good right, therefore, does he call himself a Bear or a Wolf, etc., according to his totem; and with good right does he treat the bears or the wolves, etc., as his brethren, since in these animals are lodged the souls of himself and his kindred.

The rite of death and resurrection among the Wonghi of New South Wales.

Examples of this supposed death and resurrection at initiation are as follows. In the Wonghi or Wonghibon tribe of New South Wales “the youths on approaching manhood attend a meeting of the tribe. The ceremonies of initiation are secret, and at them none but the men of the tribe who have been initiated attend with the novices. At the spot where the ceremonies are to be performed, a large oval space is cleared. The old men of the tribe conduct the ceremonies, and the ‘medicine man’ of the tribe is the master of them. Part of the proceedings consists in knocking out a tooth and giving a new designation to the novice, indicating the change from youth to manhood. When the tooth is knocked out, a loud humming noise is heard, which is made with an instrument of the following description: a flat piece of wood is made with serrated edges, and having a hole at one end, to which a string is attached, and this swung round produces a humming noise. The uninitiated are not even allowed to see this instrument. Women are forbidden to be present at these ceremonies, and should one, by accident or otherwise, witness them, the penalty is death. The penalty for revealing the secrets is probably the same. When everything is prepared the women and children are covered with boughs, and the men retire, with the young fellows who are to be initiated, to a little distance. It is said that the youths are sent away a short distance one by one, and that they are each met in turn by a Being, who, so far as I can understand, is believed to be something between a blackfellow and a spirit. This Being, called Thuremlin, it is said, takes the youth to a distance, kills him, and in some instances cuts him up, after which he restores him to life and knocks out a tooth. Their belief in the power of Thuremlin is undoubted.”[602 - A. L. P. Cameron, “Notes on some Tribes of New South Wales,” Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xiv. (1885) pp. 357 sq. Compare A. W. Howitt, Native Tribes of South-East Australia (London, 1904), pp. 588 sq.]

Use of the bull-roarer at initiatory ceremonies in Australia. The sound of the bull-roarer compared to thunder. Belief of the Dieri that by sounding a bull-roarer a newly initiated young man produces a supply of edible snakes and lizards.

The foregoing account, while it applies strictly to one tribe only, may be regarded as typical of the initiation ceremonies performed on young men throughout the tribes of South-Eastern and Central Australia, except that among the Central tribes the practice of knocking out a tooth on these occasions is replaced by the equally mysterious and much severer bodily mutilations of circumcision and subincision, which are not practised by the tribes of the South-East.[603 - Baldwin Spencer and F. J. Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia (London, 1899), pp. 213, 453.] The instrument whose humming or booming sound accompanies the critical operation of knocking out the tooth of the novice, is the now well-known bull-roarer, which figures in many savage rites of initiation. Its true nature is concealed from the women and uninitiated lads, who are taught to believe that its sonorous and long-drawn notes are the voice of the mythical being, often called Daramulun, who lives in the sky, instituted the rites, and superintends their performance. The hollow roar of the slat of wood, as it is swung round and round, “represents the muttering of thunder, and the thunder is the voice of Daramulun, and therefore its sound is of the most sacred character. Umbara once said to me, ‘Thunder is the voice of him (pointing upward to the sky) calling on the rain to fall and make everything grow up new.’ ”[604 - A. W. Howitt, Native Tribes of South-East Australia (London, 1904), p. 538. As to Daramulun (of whose name Thuremlin is no doubt only a dialectical variation) see id., pp. 407, 493, 494 sq., 497, 499, 500, 507, 523 sq., 526, 528, 529 sq., 535, 540, 541, 585 sq., 587; id., “On some Australian Ceremonies of Initiation,” Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xiii. (1884) pp. 442, 443, 446, 447, 448, 450, 451, 452, 455, 456, 459. On the bull-roarer see Andrew Lang, Custom and Myth (London, 1884), pp. 29-44; J. D. E. Schmeltz, Das Schwirrholz (Hamburg, 1896); A. C. Haddon, The Study of Man (London and New York, 1898), pp. 277-327; J. G. Frazer, “On some Ceremonies of the Central Australian Aborigines,” Proceedings of the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science for the Year 1900 (Melbourne, 1901), pp. 317-322. The religious or magical use of the bull-roarer is best known in Australia. See, for example, L. Fison and A. W. Howitt, Kamilaroi and Kurnai (Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide, and Brisbane, 1880), pp. 267-269; A. W. Howitt, Native Tribes of South-East Australia, pp. 354, 509 sq., 514, 515, 517, 569, 571, 575, 578, 579, 582, 583, 584, 589, 592, 594, 595, 606, 659 sq., 670, 672, 696, 715; Baldwin Spencer and F. J. Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia (London, 1899), pp. 246, 344, 347; W. Baldwin Spencer, Introduction to the Study of Certain Native Tribes of the Northern Territory (Bulletin of the Northern Territory, No. 2) (Melbourne, 1912), pp. 19 sq., 23, 24, 31 sq., 37 sqq.; A. R. Brown, “Three Tribes of Western Australia,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, xliii. (1913) pp. 168, 174; R. Pettazzoni, “Mythologie Australienne du Rhombe,” Revue de l'Histoire des Religions, lxv. (1912) pp. 149-170. But in the essay just referred to Mr. Andrew Lang shewed that the instrument has been similarly employed not only by savages in various parts of the world, but also by the ancient Greeks in their religious mysteries. In the Torres Straits Islands it is used both at the initiation of young men and as a magical instrument. See Reports of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits, v. (Cambridge, 1904) pp. 217, 218, 219, 328, 330-333, 346, 352. In various parts of New Guinea it is sounded at the initiation of young men and is carefully concealed from women; the sound is thought to be the voice of a spirit. See Rev. J. Chalmers, Pioneering in New Guinea (London, 1887), p. 85; id., “Toaripi,” Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xxvii. (1898) p. 329; Rev. J. Holmes, “Initiation Ceremonies of Natives of the Papuan Gulf,” Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xxxii. (1902) pp. 420, 424 sq.; O. Schellong, “Das Barlum-fest der Gegend Finsch-hafens,” Internationales Archiv für Ethnographie, ii. (1889) pp. 150 sq., 154 sq.; F. Grabowsky, “Der Bezirk von Hatzfeldthafen und seine Bewohner,” Petermanns Mitteilungen, xli. (1895) p. 189; B. Hagen, Unter den Papua's (Wiesbaden, 1899), pp. 188 sq.; Max Krieger, Neu-Guinea (Berlin, preface dated 1899), pp. 168 sqq.; J. Vetter, in Mitteilungen der Geographischen Gesellschaft zu Jena, xi. (1892) p. 105; K. Vetter, in Nachrichten über Kaiser Wilhelms-Land und den Bismarck-Archipel, 1897 (Berlin), p. 93; R. Neuhauss, Deutsch Neu-Guinea (Berlin, 1911), pp. 36, 297, 403, 406 sq., 410-412, 494 sqq.; Otto Reche, Der Kaiserin-Augusta-Fluss (Hamburg, 1913), pp. 349 sqq. (Ergebnisse der Südsee-Expedition 1908-1910, herausgegeben von G. Thilenius). It is similarly used at the circumcision-festivals in the French Islands, to the west of New Britain (R. Parkinson, Dreissig Jahre in der Südsee, Stuttgart, 1907, pp. 640 sq.), and it is employed at mysteries or mourning ceremonies in Bougainville and other Melanesian Islands. See R. Parkinson, op. cit. pp. 658 sq.; id., Zur Ethnographie der Nordwestlichen Salomo Inseln (Berlin, 1899), p. 11; R. H. Codrington, The Melanesians (Oxford, 1891), pp. 98 sq., 342. Among the Minangkabauers of Sumatra the bull-roarer (gasiĕng) is used by a rejected lover to induce the demons to carry off the soul of the jilt and so drive her mad. It is made of the frontal bone of a brave or skilful man, and some of the intended victim's hair is attached to it. See J. L. van der Toorn, “Het animisme bij den Minangkabauer in der Padangsche Bovenlanden,” Bijdragen tot de Taal- Land- en Volkenkunde van Nederlandsch Indië, xxxix. (1890) pp. 55 sq. Among the Yoruba-speaking negroes of the Slave Coast in West Africa, particularly at Abeokuta, the sound of the bull-roarer is supposed to be the voice of a great bogey named Oro, whose votaries compose a secret society under the name of Ogboni. When the sound of the bull-roarer is heard in the streets, every woman must shut herself up in her house and not look out of the window under pain of death. See R. F. Burton, Abeokuta and the Cameroons Mountains (London, 1863), i. 197 sq.;, Missionary Chautard, in Annales de la Propagation de la Foi, lv. (Lyons, 1883) pp. 192-198; Missionary Baudin, “Le Fétichisme,” Les Missions Catholiques, xvi. (1884) p. 257; P. Bouche, La Côte des Esclaves et le Dahomey (Paris, 1885), p. 124; Mrs. R. B. Batty and Governor Moloney, “Notes on the Yoruba Country,” Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xix. (1890) pp. 160-164; A. B. Ellis, The Yoruba-speaking Peoples of the Slave Coast of West Africa (London, 1894), pp. 110 sq.; R. H. Stone, In Afric's Forest and Jungle (Edinburgh and London, 1900), p. 88; L. Frobenius, Die Masken und Geheimbünde Afrikas (Halle, 1898), pp. 95 sqq. (Nova Acta, Abh. der Kaiserl. Leop. – Carol. Deutschen Akademie der Naturforscher, vol. lxxiv. No. 1). Among the Nandi of British East Africa and the Bushongo of the Congo region bull-roarers are sounded by men to frighten novices at initiation. See A. C. Hollis, The Nandi (Oxford, 1909), pp. 40, 56; E. Torday and T. A. Joyce, Les Bushongo (Brussels, 1910), p. 82. Among the Caffres of South Africa and the Boloki of the Upper Congo the bull-roarer is a child's toy, but yet is thought to be endowed with magical virtue. See below, p. 232 (#x_18_i9) note 3. Among the Koskimo Indians of British Columbia the sound of the bull-roarers is supposed to be the voice of a spirit who comes to fetch away the novices. See Franz Boas, “The Social Organization and the Secret Societies of the Kwakiutl Indians,” Report of the United States National Museum (Washington, 1897), p. 610. The bull-roarer is used as a sacred or magical instrument for the making of rain by the Zuñi and other Pueblo Indians of Arizona and New Mexico, also by the Navajos and Apaches of the same region, and by the Utes of Nevada and Utah. See Dr. Washington Matthews, “The Mountain Chant, a Navajo Ceremony,” Fifth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology (Washington, 1887), pp. 435, 436; Captain J. G. Bourke, “The Medicine-men of the Apache,” Ninth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology (Washington, 1892), pp. 476-479; Mrs. Matilda Coxe Stevenson, “The Zuñi Indians,” Twenty-third Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology (Washington, 1904), pp. 115, 117, 128 sq., 175, 177, 355. The Guatusos of Costa Rica ascertain the will of the deity by listening to the humming sound of the bull-roarer. See Dr. C. Sapper, “Ein Besuch bei den Guatusos in Costarica,” Globus, lxxvi. (1899) p. 352; id., “Beiträge zur Ethnographie des südlichen Mittelamerika,” Petermanns Mitteilungen, xlvii. (1901) p. 36. The Caripunas Indians of the Madeira River, in Brazil, sound bull-roarers in lamentations for the dead. See Franz Keller, The Amazon and Madeira Rivers (London, 1874), p. 124. The Bororo of Brazil also swing bull-roarers at their festivals of the dead; the sound of them is the signal for the women to hide themselves; it is believed that women and children would die if they saw a bull-roarer. See K. von den Steinen, Unter den Naturvölkern Zentral-Brasilien's (Berlin, 1894), pp. 497-499. The Nahuqua and other Brazilian tribes use bull-roarers in their masked dances, but make no mystery of them. See K. von den Steinen, op. cit. pp. 327 sq. As to the magical use of the bull-roarer, see pp. 230 sqq.] This supposed resemblance of the sound to thunder probably explains a certain use which the Dieri, a tribe of Central Australia, made of the instrument. When a young man had passed through an initiatory rite, which consisted in cutting a row of gashes in his back, he was given a bull-roarer, and when he went out in search of game, he used to twirl the implement in the belief that by doing so, while his wounds were still unhealed, he created a good harvest of snakes, lizards, and other reptiles, which the natives employ as food; but on the contrary they imagined that these supplies of food would be cut off for ever, if a woman were to see a bull-roarer which had been swung at the rites of initiation.[605 - A. W. Howitt, “The Dieri and other Kindred Tribes of Central Australia,” Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xx. (1891) p. 83; id., Native Tribes of South-East Australia, p. 660. In the latter passage Dr. Howitt omits the not unimportant particular that the bull-roarer is swung for this purpose by the young man before his wounds are healed.] No doubt these savages, living in a parched wilderness where the existence of plants and animals depends on rare and irregular showers,[606 - On the desert nature of Central Australia and the magical-like change wrought in its fauna and flora by heavy rain, see Baldwin Spencer and F. J. Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia (London, 1899), pp. 4 sq.; Totemism and Exogamy, i. 170 sqq., 316 sqq., 341 sq.; J. G. Frazer, “Howitt and Fison,” Folk-lore, xx. (1909) pp. 160, 162 sq., 164.] have observed that the fall of rain is regularly followed by a great and sudden increase in the food supply, and that this increase is most marked after violent thunder-storms. Hence by making a noise like thunder with the help of bull-roarers they probably hope, on the principle of imitative magic, to bring on a thunder-storm and with it a fertilizing deluge of rain.

The bull-roarer used by the Indians of New Mexico and Arizona to procure rain. The bull-roarer used in Torres Straits Islands to produce wind and good crops.

For the same reason in the parched and torrid regions of Arizona and New Mexico the Indians make great use of the bull-roarer in their ceremonies for procuring rain. For example, when Captain Bourke was at the Pueblo Indian village of Walpi in the month of August, 1881, he saw the instrument in use at the snake dance. “The medicine-men twirled it rapidly, and with a uniform motion, about the head and from front to rear, and succeeded in faithfully imitating the sound of a gust of rain-laden wind. As explained to me by one of the medicine-men, by making this sound they compelled the wind and rain to come to the aid of the crops. At a later date I found it in use among the Apache, and for the same purpose.”[607 - Captain J. G. Bourke, “The Medicine-men of the Apache,” Ninth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology (Washington, 1892), pp. 476 sq.] The Zuñi Indians of New Mexico whirl bull-roarers “to create enthusiasm” among the mythical beings who are supposed to cause rain, or for the purpose of making them gather in the air over the village.[608 - Mrs. Matilda Coxe Stevenson, “The Zuñi Indians,” Twenty-third Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology (Washington, 1904), pp. 115, 355.] In a Zuñi rain-making ceremony, while one medicine-man whirls a bull-roarer, another whips up a mixture of water and meal into frothy suds symbolic of clouds, and a third plays a flute. “All this is an invocation to the gods for rain – the one great and perpetual prayer of the people of this arid land.”[609 - Mrs. Matilda Coxe Stevenson, op. cit. p. 175; compare id., pp. 128 sq., 177.] This supposed connexion of the instrument with thunder-storms explains why the Navajos of the same torrid country say that the bull-roarer should always be made of wood from a pine-tree that has been struck by lightning;[610 - Dr. Washington Matthews, “The Navajo Chant,” Fifth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology (Washington, 1887), p. 436; compare id., p. 435, where the sound of the bull-roarer is said to be “like that of a rain storm.”] and why the Bakairi of Brazil call the unpretentious instrument by a name that means “thunder and lightning.”[611 - Karl von den Steinen, Unter den Naturvölkern Zentral-Brasiliens (Berlin, 1894), p. 328.] The resemblance of the sound of the bull-roarer to the roaring of the wind is doubtless the reason why in the Torres Straits Islands wizards whirled bull-roarers in order to make the wind to blow,[612 - Reports of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits, v. (Cambridge, 1904) p. 352.] and why, when Caffres wish for calm weather, they forbid boys to play with bull-roarers, because they think that the booming noise attracts a gale of wind.[613 - G. McCall Theal, Kaffir Folk-lore (London, 1886), pp. 222 sq.; id., Records of South-Eastern Africa, vii. (1901) p. 456; Dudley Kidd, The Essential Kafir (London, 1904), p. 333. For an analogous reason among the Boloki of the Upper Congo the elders do not like when boys play with bull-roarers, because the sound resembles the growl of a leopard and will attract these ferocious animals. See Rev. John H. Weeks, Among Congo Cannibals (London, 1913), p. 157.] Hence, as an instrument whose sound resembles the rumbling of thunder, the roar of wind, and the patter of rain, the bull-roarer is naturally swung by agricultural savages as a powerful means of promoting the growth of the crops. In the island of Kiwai, off the mouth of the Fly River in British New Guinea, bull-roarers are whirled in order to ensure a good crop of yams, sweet potatoes, and bananas.[614 - A. C. Haddon, Head-hunters, Black, White, and Brown (London, 1901), p. 104; Reports of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits, v. (Cambridge, 1904) pp. 218, 219; Rev. J. Chalmers, “Notes on the Natives of Kiwai Island,” Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xxxiii. (1903) p. 119.] Similarly the Yabim of German New Guinea imagine that by twirling bull-roarers while they mention the names of the dead they produce a fine crop of taro.[615 - H. Zahn, “Die Jabim,” in R. Neuhauss's Deutsch Neu-Guinea (Berlin, 1911), iii. 333.]

The whirling of bull-roarers by young men with bleeding backs in Australia seems to have been a rain-making ceremony.

But why among the Dieri of Central Australia should the power of attracting rain and so ensuring a supply of food be specially attributed to a young man whose back has just been scored and whose wounds are still raw? Perhaps the reason may be that the blood dripping from the gashes is thought to resemble rain and therefore to be endowed with a magical potency of drawing showers from the clouds. The conjecture is confirmed by the observation that the Dieri actually do bleed themselves avowedly for the purpose of making rain, and they are not the only people in Australia and elsewhere who have resorted to this singular mode of putting an end to a drought.[616 - The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings, i. 256-258.] Altogether the foregoing evidence seems to hint that the whole virtue of the bull-roarer resides, as its English name implies, in its voice, and that its original significance was simply that of a magical instrument for causing thunder, wind, and rain.[617 - This appears to be the view also of Professor K. von den Steinen (Unter den Naturvölkern Zentral-Brasiliens, pp. 327 sq.), who is probably right in thinking that the primary intention of the instrument is to make thunder, and that the idea of making rain is secondary.] When these natural phenomena came to be personified as spirits, the sound of the bull-roarer was naturally interpreted as their voice.

The sound of the bull-roarer at initiation is believed by Australian women and children to be the voice of a spirit, who carries away the novices.

Among the tribes on the Brisbane River in Queensland the weird sound of the bull-roarers swung at initiation was believed by the women and children to be made by the wizards in swallowing the boys and bringing them up again as young men. The Ualaroi of the Upper Darling River said that the boy met a ghost, who killed him and brought him to life again as a young man. Among the natives on the Lower Lachlan and Murray Rivers it was Thrumalun (Daramulun) who was thought to slay and resuscitate the novices.[618 - A. W. Howitt, “On Australian Medicine Men,” Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xvi. (1887) pp. 47 sq.; compare id., Native Tribes of South-East Australia, p. 596.] In the Arunta tribe of Central Australia, at the moment when the lads are being circumcised, the bull-roarer sounds in the darkness all round the ceremonial ground; and the awestruck women, listening in the distance, believe that it is the voice of a spirit called Twanyirika, who lives in wild and inaccessible regions and only comes out when a youth is initiated. They think that the spirit enters the body of the lad after the operation of circumcision has been performed and carries him away into the bush, keeping him there till his wound is healed. While the newly circumcised youth is out in the wilds, carefully secluded from the sight of the women and children, he constantly sounds the bull-roarer. When he has recovered from the wound, the spirit leaves him and he returns to camp an initiated, or rather partially initiated, man. He has learned, at all events, the secret of Twanyirika; for no sooner is he circumcised than an elder brother comes up to him, and placing in his hands a bundle of sacred sticks or stones (churinga), says, “Here is Twanyirika, of whom you have heard so much. They are churinga and will help you to heal quickly; guard them well, or else you and your mothers and sisters will be killed.”[619 - Baldwin Spencer and F. J. Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 246 note 1; id., Northern Tribes of Central Australia (London, 1904), p. 497. According to the classificatory system of relationship, which prevails among all the aborigines of Australia, a man may have, and generally has, a number of women who stand to him in the relation of mother as well as of sister, though there need not be a drop of blood in common between them, as we count kin. This explains the reference in the text to a boy's “mothers.”]

In some Australian tribes the women believe that lads at initiation are killed and brought to life again by a spirit, whose voice is heard in the sound of the bull-roarer.

In this account nothing is said about killing the lad and bringing him to life again; but a belief in the death and resurrection of the novices at initiation is expressly affirmed to be part of the feminine creed in other tribes of Central Australia. Thus in the Unmatjera tribe both women and children believe that Twanyirika kills the youth and afterwards brings him to life again during the period of initiation. The rites of initiation in this tribe, as in the other Central tribes, comprise the operations of circumcision and subincision; and as soon as the second of these has been performed on him, the young man receives from his father a sacred stick (churinga), with which, he is told, his spirit was associated in the remotest past. While he is out in the bush recovering from his wounds, he must swing the bull-roarer, or a being who lives up in the sky will swoop down and carry him off.[620 - B. Spencer and F. J. Gillen, Northern Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 342 sq., 498.] In the Urabunna tribe of Central Australia a lad at initiation receives a bull-roarer, the very name of which (chimbaliri) is never heard by women and children. They are taught to believe that the sound of it is the voice of a spirit called Witurna, who takes the boy away, cuts out all his bowels, provides him with a new set, and brings him back an initiated youth. The lad is warned that on no account may he allow a woman or a child to see the sacred stick, else he and his mother and sisters will fall down as dead as stones.[621 - Spencer and Gillen, op. cit. p. 498.] In the Binbinga tribe, on the western coast of the Gulf of Carpentaria, the women and children believe that the noise of the bull-roarer at initiation is made by a spirit named Katajalina, who lives in an ant-hill and comes out and eats up the boy, afterwards restoring him to life.[622 - Spencer and Gillen, op. cit. pp. 366 sq., 501.] Similarly among their neighbours the Anula the women imagine that the droning sound of the bull-roarer is produced by a spirit called Gnabaia, who swallows the lads at initiation and afterwards disgorges them in the form of initiated men. In this tribe, after a lad has been subincised as well as circumcised, he is presented with a bull-roarer and informed that the instrument was originally made by the whirlwind, that it is sacred or tabooed, and that it may on no account be shewn to women or children.[623 - Spencer and Gillen, op. cit. pp. 373, 501.]

A drama of resurrection from the dead used to be shewn to novices at initiation in some tribes of New South Wales. Dr. Howitt's description of the scene. The seeming dead man in the grave. The resurrection from the grave.

Among the tribes settled on the southern coast of New South Wales, of which the Coast Murring tribe may be regarded as typical, the drama of resurrection from the dead was exhibited in a graphic form to the novices at initiation. Before they were privileged to witness this edifying spectacle they had been raised to the dignity of manhood by an old man, who promoted them to their new status by the simple process of knocking a tooth out of the mouth of each with the help of a wooden chisel and hammer. The ceremony of the resurrection has been described for us in detail by an eye-witness, the late Dr. A. W. Howitt, one of the best authorities on the customs of the Australian aborigines. The scene selected for the sacred drama was the bottom of a deep valley, where a sluggish stream wound through a bed of tall sharp-edged sedge. Though the hour was between ten and eleven o'clock in the morning, the sun had but just peeped over the mountains which enclosed the valley like a wall on the east; and while the upper slopes, clothed with a forest of tall rowan trees, looked warm and bright in sunshine, which shot between the grey stems and under the light feathery foliage of the trees, all the bottom of the dell was still in deep shadow and dank with the moisture of the night's rain. While the novices rested and warmed themselves at a crackling fire, the initiated men laid their heads together, prepared a stock of decorations made of stringy bark, and dug a grave. There was some discussion as to the shape of the grave, but the man who was to be buried in it decided the question by declaring that he would be laid in it on his back at full length. He was a man of the eagle-hawk totem and belonged to the tribal subdivision called Yibai. So while two men under his directions were digging the grave with sticks in the friable granitic soil, he superintended the costume of the other actors in the drama. Sheets of bark were beaten out into fleeces of stringy fibre, and in these garments six performers were clothed from head to foot so that not even a glimpse could be obtained of their faces. Four of them were tied together by a cord which was fastened to the back of their heads, and each of them carried two pieces of bark in his hands. The other two walked free, but hobbled along bent double and supporting their tottery steps on staves to mark the weight of years; for they played the part of two medicine-men of venerable age and great magical power. By this time the grave was ready, and the eagle-hawk man stretched himself in it at full length on a bed of leaves, his head resting on a rolled-up blanket, just as if he were a corpse. In his two hands, crossed on his chest, he held the stem of a young tree (Persoonia linearis), which had been pulled up by the roots and now stood planted on his chest, so that the top of it rose several feet above the level of the ground. A light covering of dried sticks filled the grave, and dead leaves, tufts of grass, and small plants were artistically arranged over them so as to complete the illusion. All being now ready, the novices were led by their sisters' husbands to the grave and placed in a row beside it, while a singer, perched on the trunk of a fallen tree at the head of the grave, crooned a melancholy ditty, the song of Yibai. Though the words of the song consisted merely of a monotonous repetition of the words Burrin-burrin Yibai, that is, Stringy-bark Yibai, they were understood to refer to the eagle-hawk totem, as well as to the tribal subdivision of the buried man. Then to the slow, plaintive but well-marked air of the song the actors began to move forward, winding among the trees, logs, and rocks. On came the four disguised men, stepping in time to the music, swaying from side to side, and clashing their bark clappers together at every step, while beside them hobbled the two old men keeping a little aloof to mark their superior dignity. They represented a party of medicine-men, guided by two reverend seniors, who had come on pilgrimage to the grave of a brother medicine-man, him of the eagle-hawk totem, who lay buried here in the lonely valley, now illumined by the warm rays of the sun; for by this time the morning was wearing on to noon. When the little procession, chanting an invocation to Daramulun, had defiled from among the rocks and trees into the open, it drew up on the side of the grave opposite to the novices, the two old men taking up a position in the rear of the dancers. For some time the dance and song went on till the tree that seemed to grow from the grave began to quiver. “Look there!” cried the sisters' husbands to the novices, pointing to the trembling leaves. As they looked, the tree quivered more and more, then was violently agitated and fell to the ground, while amid the excited dancing of the dancers and the chanting of the tuneful choir the supposed dead man spurned from him the superincumbent mass of sticks and leaves, and springing to his feet danced his magic dance in the grave itself, and exhibited in his mouth the magic substances which he was supposed to have received from Daramulun in person.[624 - A. W. Howitt, Native Tribes of South-East Australia, pp. 554-556. Compare id., “On some Australian Ceremonies of Initiation,” Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xiii. (1884) pp. 453 sq.]

In some Australian tribes a medicine-man at his initiation is thought to be killed and raised again from the dead.

In some tribes of Central and Northern Australia the initiation of a medicine-man into the mysteries of his craft is supposed to be accomplished by certain spirits, who kill him, cut out his internal organs, and having provided him with a new set bring him to life again. Sometimes the spirits kindly replace the man's human organs by their own spiritual organs; sometimes along with the new organs they insert magical stones in his body or even a serpent, and the stones or the serpents naturally endow the new wizards with marvellous powers. In some tribes the initiation takes place in a cave, where the spirits dwell. After the man has been restored to life with a new heart, a new pair of lungs, and so forth, he returns to his people in a more or less dazed condition, which his friends may at first mistake for insanity, though afterwards they recognize its true character as inspiration.[625 - B. Spencer and F. J. Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 523-525; id., Northern Tribes of Central Australia, 480 sq., 484, 485, 487, 488; id., Across Australia (London, 1912), ii. 334 sqq.] One eminent medical practitioner in the Unmatjera tribe assured Messrs. Spencer and Gillen that when he came to himself after the operation, which in his case was performed by an aged doctor, he had completely forgotten who he was and all about his past life. After a time his venerable friend led him back to the camp and shewed it to him, and said, “That woman there is your wife,” for she had gone clean out of his head.[626 - Spencer and Gillen, Northern Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 480 sq.] We shall see presently that this temporary oblivion, a natural effect of the shock to the nervous system produced by resuscitation from the dead, is characteristic of novices under similar circumstances in other lands. Among the Arunta of Alice Springs the cave where the mystic initiation takes place is a limestone cavern in a range of hills which rises to the north of the wide level expanse known as the Emily plain. None of the ordinary natives would dare to set foot in the awful grotto, which they believe to extend for miles into the bowels of the earth and to be tenanted by certain ancestral spirits, who live there in perpetual sunshine and amid streams of running water, an earthly paradise by contrast with the arid sun-scorched steppes and barren mountains outside. White men have explored the cave, and if they perceived no spirits, they found bats in plenty. The man who aspires to the rank of a wizard lies down at the mouth of the cave and falls asleep; and as he sleeps one of the ancestral spirits steals up to him and drives an invisible spear through his neck from back to front. The point of the spear comes out through the man's tongue, leaving a hole through which you could put your little finger, and this hole the man retains for the rest of his natural life, or at least so long as he retains his magical powers; for if the hole should close up, these spiritual gifts and graces would depart from him. A second thrust from the invisible spear transfixes the man's head from ear to ear; he drops down dead, and is immediately transported into the depths of the cavern, where the spirits dissect his dead body, extract the old viscera, and replace them with a new set in the manner already described.[627 - F. J. Gillen, “Notes on some Manners and Customs of the Aborigines of the McDonnel Ranges belonging to the Arunta Tribe,” in Report on the Work of the Horn Scientific Expedition to Central Australia, Part iv. Anthropology (London and Melbourne, 1896), pp. 180 sq.; B. Spencer and F. J. Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia (London, 1899), pp. 523 sq.; id., Across Australia (London, 1912), ii. 335.]

Notable features in the initiation of Australian medicine-men.

In this account of the manner in which medicine-men obtain their magical powers not only are the supposed death and resurrection of the novice worthy of attention, but also the exchange of internal organs which in the Binbinga and Mara tribes is supposed to be effected between the man and the spirit;[628 - B. Spencer and F. J. Gillen, Northern Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 487, 488; id., Across Australia, ii. 481 sq.] for this exchange resembles that which, on the theory I have suggested, may be thought to take place between a lad and his totem at the ceremonies of initiation which mark the momentous transition from boyhood to manhood. Further, the bodily mutilation which is the visible sign of the medicine-man's initiation (for however the hole may be made it certainly exists in the tongues of regular Arunta practitioners) corresponds to the bodily mutilations of other sorts, which in many savage tribes attest to the world that the mutilated persons are fullgrown men. What the precise meaning of such mutilations may be, still remains very obscure; but they seem in some cases to be directly associated with the conception of death and resurrection.

Rites of initiation in some tribes of German New Guinea. The novices thought to be swallowed and disgorged by a monster, whose voice is heard in the hum of the bull-roarers.

This association certainly comes out plainly in the rites of initiation through which in some parts of New Guinea all lads must pass before they attain to the status of adults. The rites are observed by a group of tribes who occupy contiguous territories about Finsch Harbour and Huon Gulf in German New Guinea. The tribes in question are the Yabim, the Bukaua, the Kai, and the Tami. All of them except the Kai belong to the Melanesian stock and are therefore presumably immigrants from the adjoining islands; but the Kai, who inhabit the rugged, densely wooded, and rainy mountains inland from Finsch Harbour, belong to the aboriginal Papuan stock and differ from their neighbours in speech as well as in appearance. Yet the rites of initiation which all these tribes celebrate and the beliefs which they associate with them are so similar that a single description will apply accurately enough to them all. All of them, like many Australian tribes, require every male member of the tribe to be circumcised before he ranks as a full-grown man; and the tribal initiation, of which circumcision is the central feature, is conceived by them, as by some Australian tribes, as a process of being swallowed and disgorged by a mythical monster, whose voice is heard in the humming sound of the bull-roarer. Indeed the New Guinea tribes not only impress this belief on the minds of women and children, but enact it in a dramatic form at the actual rites of initiation, at which no woman or uninitiated person may be present. For this purpose a hut about a hundred feet long is erected either in the village or in a lonely part of the forest. It is modelled in the shape of the mythical monster; at the end which represents his head it is high, and it tapers away at the other end. A betel-palm, grubbed up with the roots, stands for the backbone of the great being and its clustering fibres for his hair; and to complete the resemblance the butt end of the building is adorned by a native artist with a pair of goggle eyes and a gaping mouth. When after a tearful parting from their mothers and women folk, who believe or pretend to believe in the monster that swallows their dear ones, the awe-struck novices are brought face to face with this imposing structure, the huge creature emits a sullen growl, which is in fact no other than the humming note of bull-roarers swung by men concealed in the monster's belly. The actual process of deglutition is variously enacted. Among the Tami it is represented by causing the candidates to defile past a row of men who hold bull-roarers over their heads; among the Kai it is more graphically set forth by making them pass under a scaffold on which stands a man, who makes a gesture of swallowing and takes in fact a gulp of water as each trembling novice passes beneath him. But the present of a pig, opportunely offered for the redemption of the youth, induces the monster to relent and disgorge his victim; the man who represents the monster accepts the gift vicariously, a gurgling sound is heard, and the water which had just been swallowed descends in a jet on the novice. This signifies that the young man has been released from the monster's belly. However, he has now to undergo the more painful and dangerous operation of circumcision. It follows immediately, and the cut made by the knife of the operator is explained to be a bite or scratch which the monster inflicted on the novice in spewing him out of his capacious maw. While the operation is proceeding, a prodigious noise is made by the swinging of bull-roarers to represent the roar of the dreadful being who is in the act of swallowing the young men.

The return of the novices after initiation.

When, as sometimes happens, a lad dies from the effect of the operation, he is buried secretly in the forest, and his sorrowing mother is told that the monster has a pig's stomach as well as a human stomach, and that unfortunately her son slipped into the wrong stomach, from which it was impossible to extricate him. After they have been circumcised the lads must remain for some months in seclusion, shunning all contact with women and even the sight of them. They live in the long hut which represents the monster's belly; among the Yabim they beguile the tedium of this enforced leisure by weaving baskets and playing on certain sacred flutes, which are never used except on these occasions. The instruments are of two patterns. One is called the male and the other the female; and they are believed to be married to each other. No woman may see these mysterious flutes; if she did, she would die. When the long seclusion is over, the lads, now ranking as initiated men, are brought back with great pomp and ceremony to the village, where they are received with sobs and tears of joy by the women, as if the grave had given up its dead. At first the young men keep their eyes rigidly closed or even sealed with a plaster of chalk, and they appear not to understand the words of command which are given them by an elder. Gradually, however, they come to themselves as if awaking from a stupor, and next day they bathe and wash off the crust of white chalk with which their bodies had been coated.[629 - As to the initiatory rites among the Yabim, see K. Vetter, in Nachrichten über Kaiser Wilhelms-Land und den Bismarck-Archipel, 1897, pp. 92 sq.; id., in Mitteilungen der Geographischen Gesellschaft zu Jena, xi. (1892) p. 105; id., Komm herüber und hilf uns! ii. (Barmen, 1898) p. 18; id., cited by M. Krieger, Neu-Guinea (Berlin, preface dated 1899), pp. 167-170; O. Schellong, “Das Barlum-fest der Gegend Finschhafens,” Internationales Archiv für Ethnographie, ii. (1889) pp. 145-162; H. Zahn, “Die Jabim,” in R. Neuhauss's Deutsch Neu-Guinea (Berlin, 1911), iii. 296-298. As to the initiatory rites among the Bukaua, see S. Lehner, “Bukaua,” in R. Neuhauss's Deutsch Neu-Guinea, iii. 402-410; among the Kai, see Ch. Keysser, “Aus dem Kai-Leute,” ibid. pp. 34-40; among the Tami, see G. Bamler, “Tami,” ibid. pp. 493-507. I have described the rites of the various tribes more in detail in The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, i. 250-255, 260 sq., 290 sq., 301 sq. In the Bukaua and Tami tribes the initiation ceremonies are performed not in the forest but in a special house built for the purpose in the village, which the women are obliged to vacate till the rites are over.]

The monster who is supposed to swallow the novices is apparently conceived as a ghost or ancestral spirit.

It is highly significant that all these tribes of New Guinea apply the same word to the bull-roarer and to the monster, who is supposed to swallow the novices at circumcision, and whose fearful roar is represented by the hum of the harmless wooden instruments. The word in the speech of the Yabim and Bukaua is balum; in that of the Kai it is ngosa; and in that of the Tami it is kani. Further, it deserves to be noted that in three languages out of the four the same word which is applied to the bull-roarer and to the monster means also a ghost or spirit of the dead, while in the fourth language (the Kai) it signifies “grandfather.” From this it seems to follow that the being who swallows and disgorges the novices at initiation is believed to be a powerful ghost or ancestral spirit, and that the bull-roarer, which bears his name, is his material representative. That would explain the jealous secrecy with which the sacred implement is kept from the sight of women. While they are not in use, the bull-roarers are stowed away in the men's club-houses, which no woman may enter; indeed no woman or uninitiated person may set eyes on a bull-roarer under pain of death.[630 - The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, i. 250, 251, 255, 261, 290 sq., 301. Among the Bukaua not only does the bull-roarer bear the general name for a ghost (balum), but each particular bull-roarer bears in addition the name of a particular dead man, and varies in dignity and importance with the dignity and importance of the deceased person whom it represents. And besides the big bull-roarers with gruff voices there are little bull-roarers with shrill voices, which represent the shrill-voiced wives of the ancient heroes. See S. Lehner, “Bukaua,” in R. Neuhauss's Deutsch Neu-Guinea, iii. 410-412.] Similarly among the Tugeri or Kaya-Kaya, a large Papuan tribe on the south coast of Dutch New Guinea, the name of the bull-roarer, which they call sosom, is given to a mythical giant, who is supposed to appear every year with the south-east monsoon. When he comes, a festival is held in his honour and bull-roarers are swung. Boys are presented to the giant, and he kills them, but considerately brings them to life again.[631 - R. Pöch, “Vierter Bericht über meine Reise nach Neu-Guinea,” Sitzungsberichte der mathematischen-naturwissenschaftlichen Klasse der Kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften (Vienna), cxv. (1906) Abteilung i. pp. 901, 902.]

The drama of death and resurrection used to be enacted before young men at initiation in some parts of Fiji.

In certain districts of Viti Levu, the largest of the Fijian Islands, the drama of death and resurrection used to be acted with much solemnity before the eyes of young men at initiation. The ceremonies were performed in certain sacred precincts of oblong shape, enclosed by low walls or rows of stones but open to the sky. Such a precinct was called a Nanga, and it might be described as a temple dedicated to the worship of ancestors; for in it sacrifices and prayers were offered to the ancestral spirits. For example, the first-fruits of the yam harvest were regularly presented with great ceremony to the souls of the dead in the temple before the bulk of the crop was dug for the people's use, and no man might taste of the new yams until this solemn offering had been made. The yams so offered were piled up in the sacred enclosure and left to rot there; if any man were so bold as to eat of these dedicated fruits, it was believed that he would go mad.[632 - Rev. Lorimer Fison, “The Nanga or Sacred Stone Enclosure of Wainimala, Fiji,” Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xiv. (1885) p. 27. The Nanga or sacred enclosure of stones, with its sacred rites, was known only to certain tribes of Fiji (the Nuyaloa, Vatusila, Mbatiwai, and Mdavutukia), who inhabited a comparatively small area, barely a third, of the island of Viti Levu. As to the institution in general, see Rev. Lorimer Fison, op. cit. pp. 14-31; A. B. Joske, “The Nanga of Viti-levu,” Internationales Archiv für Ethnographie, ii. (1889) pp. 254-266; Basil Thomson, The Fijians (London, 1908), pp. 146-157. Compare The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, i. 427-438.] Any initiated man had the right of approaching the ancestral spirits at any time in their holy place, where he would pray to them for help and protection and propitiate them by laying down his offering of a pig, or yams, or eels, or cloth, or what not.[633 - Rev. Lorimer Fison, op. cit. p. 26; Basil Thomson, op. cit. 147.] Of these offerings perhaps the most curious was that of the foreskins of young men, who were circumcised as a sort of vicarious sacrifice or atonement for the recovery of a sick relative, it might be either their father or one of their father's brothers. The bloody foreskins, stuck in the cleft of a split reed, were presented to the ancestral gods in the temple by the chief priest, who prayed for the sick man's recovery.[634 - Rev. Lorimer Fison, op. cit. pp. 27 sq. The phrase “the ancestral gods” is used by Mr. Fison, one of our best authorities on Fijian religion. Mr. Basil Thomson (op. cit. p. 157) questions the accuracy of Mr. Fison's account of this vicarious sacrifice on the ground that every youth was regularly circumcised as a matter of course. But there seems to be no inconsistency between the two statements. While custom required that every youth should be circumcised, the exact time for performing the ceremony need not have been rigidly prescribed; and if a saving or atoning virtue was attributed to the sacrifice of foreskins, it might be thought desirable in cases of emergency, such as serious illness, to anticipate it for the benefit of the sufferer.] The temple or sacred enclosure was divided into two or three compartments by cross walls of stones, and the inmost of these compartments was the Nanga-tambu-tambu, or Holy of Holies.[635 - According to Mr. Fison, the enclosure was divided into three compartments; Mr. Basil Thomson describes only two, though by speaking of one of them as the “Middle Nanga” he seems to imply that there were three. The structure was a rough parallelogram lying east and west, about a hundred feet long by fifty feet broad, enclosed by walls or rows of stone slabs embedded endwise in the earth. See Basil Thomson, op. cit. pp. 147 sq.]

Description of the rite. The mimic death. The mimic resurrection. The sacramental meal. The intention of the rite.

In these open-air temples of the dead the ceremony of initiating young men was performed as a rule every year at the end of October or the beginning of November, which was the commencement of the Fijian New Year; hence the novices who were initiated at that season went by the name of Vilavou or New Year's Men. The exact time for celebrating the rite was determined by the flowering of the ndrala tree (Erythrina); but it roughly coincided with the New Year of the Tahitians and Hawaiians, who dated the commencement of the year by observation of the Pleiades. The highlanders of Fiji, who alone celebrated these rites, did not trouble their heads about the stars.[636 - A. B. Joske, “The Nanga of Vitilevu,” Internationales Archiv für Ethnographie, ii. (1889) p. 259; Basil Thomson, The Fijians, pp. 150 sq. According to Mr. Fison (op. cit. p. 19) the initiatory ceremonies were held as a rule only every second year; but he adds: “This period, however, is not necessarily restricted to two years. There are always a number of youths who are growing to the proper age, and the length of the interval depends upon the decision of the elders.” Perhaps the seeming discrepancy between our authorities on this point may be explained by Mr. Joske's statement (p. 259) that the rites are held in alternate years by two different sets of men, the Kai Vesina and the Kai Rukuruku, both of whom claim to be descended from the original founders of the rites. The custom of dating the New Year by observation of the Pleiades was apparently universal among the Polynesians. See The Spirits of the Corn and of the Wild, i. 312 sq.] As a preparation for the solemnity the heads of the novices were shaved and their beards, if they had any, were carefully eradicated. On four successive days they went in procession to the temple and there deposited in the Holy of Holies their offerings of cloth and weapons to the ancestral spirits. But on the fifth and great day of the festival, when they again entered the sacred ground, they beheld a sight which froze their souls with horror. Stretched on the ground was a row of dead or seemingly dead and murdered men, their bodies cut open and covered with blood, their entrails protruding. At the further end sat the High Priest, regarding them with a stony glare, and to reach him the trembling novices had to crawl on hands and knees over the ghastly blood-bedabbled corpses that lay between. Having done so they drew up in a line before him. Suddenly he blurted out a piercing yell, at which the counterfeit dead men started to their feet and ran down to the river to cleanse themselves from the blood and guts of pigs with which they were beslobbered. The High Priest now unbent his starched dignity, and skipping from side to side cried in stridulous tones, “Where are the people of my enclosure? Are they gone to Tonga Levu? Are they gone to the deep sea?” He was soon answered by a deep-mouthed chant, and back from the river marched the dead men come to life, clean, fresh, and garlanded, swaying their bodies in time to the music of their solemn hymn. They took their places in front of the novices and a religious silence ensued. Such was the drama of death and resurrection. It was immediately followed by a sacramental meal. Four old men of the highest order of initiates now entered the Holy of Holies. The first bore a cooked yam carefully wrapt up in leaves so that no part of it should touch the hands of the bearer: the second carried a piece of baked pork similarly enveloped: the third held a drinking-cup full of water and wrapt round with native cloth; and the fourth bore a napkin of the same stuff. The first elder passed along the row of novices putting the end of the yam into each of their mouths, and as he did so each of them nibbled a morsel of the sacred food: the second elder did the same with the hallowed pork: the third elder followed with the holy water, with which each novice merely wetted his lips; and the fourth elder wiped all their mouths with his napkin. Then the high priest or one of the elders addressed the young men, warning them solemnly against the sacrilege of betraying to the profane vulgar any of the high mysteries which they had witnessed, and threatening all such traitors with the vengeance of the gods. The general intention of the initiatory rites seems to have been to introduce the young men to the worshipful spirits of the dead at their temple, and to cement the bond between them by a sacramental meal.[637 - Rev. Lorimer Fison, op. cit. pp. 20-23; A. B. Joske, op. cit. pp. 264 sq.; Basil Thomson, The Fijians, pp. 150-153. The sacramental character of the meal is recognized by Mr. Fison, who says (p. 23) that after the performance of the rites the novices “are now Vīlavóu, accepted members of the Nanga, qualified to take their place among the men of the community, though still only on probation. As children – their childhood being indicated by their shaven heads – they were presented to the ancestors, and their acceptance was notified by what (looking at the matter from the natives' standpoint) we might, without irreverance, almost call the sacrament of food and water, too sacred even for the elders' hands to touch.”]

Initiatory rite in the island of Rook: pretence that the novices are swallowed by the devil. Secret society of the Duk-duk in New Britain. Novices supposed to be killed. The new birth.

The people of Rook, an island between New Guinea and New Britain, hold festivals at which one or two disguised men, their heads covered with wooden masks, go dancing through the village, followed by all the other men. They demand that the circumcised boys who have not yet been swallowed by Marsaba (the devil) shall be given up to them. The boys, trembling and shrieking, are delivered to them, and must creep between the legs of the disguised men. Then the procession moves through the village again, and announces that Marsaba has eaten up the boys, and will not disgorge them till he receives a present of pigs, taro, and so forth. So all the villagers, according to their means, contribute provisions, which are then consumed in the name of Marsaba.[638 - Paul Reina, “Ueber die Bewohner der Insel Rook,” Zeitschrift für allgemeine Erdkunde, N.F., iv. (1858) pp. 356 sq.] In New Britain all males are members of an association called the Duk-duk. The boys are admitted to it very young, but are not fully initiated till their fourteenth year, when they receive from the Tubuvan or Tubuan a terrible blow with a cane, which is supposed to kill them. The Tubuan and the Duk-duk are two disguised men who represent cassowaries. They dance with a short hopping step in imitation of the cassowary. Each of them wears a huge hat like an extinguisher, woven of grass or palm-fibres; it is six feet high, and descends to the wearer's shoulders, completely concealing his head and face. From the neck to the knees the man's body is hidden by a crinoline made of the leaves of a certain tree fastened on hoops, one above the other. The Tubuan is regarded as a female, the Duk-duk as a male. The former is supposed to breed and give birth to the novices, who are accordingly looked upon as newly born. The female masks are very plain compared with the male masks. Two of them are regularly kept from year to year in order that they may annually breed new Duk-duks. When they are wanted for this purpose they are brought forth, decorated afresh, and provided with new leaf dresses to match. According to one account, women and children may not look upon one of these disguised men or they would die. So strong is this superstition among them that they will run away and hide as soon as they hear him coming, for they are aware of his approach through a peculiar shrieking noise he utters as he goes along. In the district of Berara, where red is the Duk-duk colour, the mere sight of a red cloth is enough to make the women take to their heels. The common herd are not allowed to know who the masker is. If he stumbles and his hat falls to the ground, disclosing his face, or his crinoline is torn to tatters by the bushes, his attendants immediately surround him to hide his person from the vulgar eye. According to one writer, indeed, the performer who drops his mask, or lets it fall so that the sharp point at the top sticks in the ground, is put to death. The institution of the Duk-duk is common to the neighbouring islands of New Ireland and the Duke of York.[639 - R. Parkinson, Im Bismarck Archipel (Leipsic, 1887), pp. 129-134; id.Dreissig Jahre in der Südsee (Stuttgart, 1907), pp. 567 sqq.; Rev. G. Brown, “Notes on the Duke of York Group, New Britain, and New Ireland,” Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, xlvii. (1878) pp. 148 sq.; H. H. Romilly, “The Islands of the New Britain Group,” Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society, N.S., ix. (1887) pp. 11 sq.; Rev. G. Brown, ibid. p. 17; id., Melanesians and Polynesians (London, 1910), pp. 60 sqq.; W. Powell, Wanderings in a Wild Country (London, 1883), pp. 60-66; C. Hager, Kaiser Wilhelm's Land und der Bismarck Archipel (Leipsic, n. d.), pp. 115-128; Hubner, quoted by W. H. Dall, “On masks, labrets, and certain aboriginal customs,” Third Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology (Washington, 1884), p. 100; P. A. Kleintitschen, Die Küstenbewohner der Gazellehalbinsel (Hiltrup bei Münster, n. d.), pp. 350 sqq.; H. Schurtz, Altersklassen und Männerbünde (Berlin, 1902), pp. 369-377. The inhabitants of these islands are divided into two exogamous classes, which in the Duke of York Island have two insects for their totems. One of the insects is the mantis religiosus; the other is an insect that mimics the leaf of the horse-chestnut tree very closely. See Rev. B. Danks, “Marriage Customs of the New Britain Group,” Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xviii. (1889) pp. 281 sq.; Totemism and Exogamy, ii. 118 sqq.]

Initiatory rite in Halmahera: pretence of begetting the novices anew.

Among the Galelareese and Tobelorese of Halmahera, an island to the west of New Guinea, boys go through a form of initiation, part of which seems to consist in a pretence of begetting them anew. When a number of boys have reached the proper age, their parents agree to celebrate the ceremony at their common expense, and they invite others to be present at it. A shed is erected, and two long tables are placed in it, with benches to match, one for the men and one for the women. When all the preparations have been made for a feast, a great many skins of the rayfish, and some pieces of a wood which imparts a red colour to water, are taken to the shed. A priest or elder causes a vessel to be placed in the sight of all the people, and then begins, with significant gestures, to rub a piece of the wood with the ray-skin. The powder so produced is put in the vessel, and at the same time the name of one of the boys is called out. The same proceeding is repeated for each boy. Then the vessels are filled with water, after which the feast begins. At the third cock-crow the priest smears the faces and bodies of the boys with the red water, which represents the blood shed at the perforation of the hymen. Towards daybreak the boys are taken to the wood, and must hide behind the largest trees. The men, armed with sword and shield, accompany them, dancing and singing. The priest knocks thrice on each of the trees behind which a boy is hiding. All day the boys stay in the wood, exposing themselves to the heat of the sun as much as possible. In the evening they bathe and return to the shed, where the women supply them with food.[640 - J. G. F. Riedel, “Galela und Tobeloresen,” Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, xvii. (1885) pp. 81 sq.]

The Kakian association in Ceram. The rite of initiation: pretence of killing the novices.

In the west of Ceram boys at puberty are admitted to the Kakian association.[641 - The Kakian association and its initiatory ceremonies have often been described. See François Valentyn, Oud en nieuw Oost-Indiën (Dordrecht and Amsterdam, 1724-1726), iii. 3 sq.; Von Schmid, “Het Kakihansch Verbond op het eiland Ceram,” Tijdschrift voor Neérlands Indië (Batavia, 1843), dl. ii. pp. 25-38; A. van Ekris, “Het Ceramsche Kakianverbond,” Mededeelingen van wege het Nederlandsche Zendelinggenootschap, ix. (1865) pp. 205-226 (repeated with slight changes in Tijdschrift voor Indische Taal- Land- en Volkenkunde, xvi. (1867) pp. 290-315); P. Fournier, “De Zuidkust van Ceram,” Tijdschrift voor Indische Taal- Land- en Volkenkunde, xvi. (1867) pp. 154-156; W. A. van Rees, Die Pionniers der Beschaving in Neêrlands Indië (Arnheim, 1867), pp. 92-106; G. W. W. C. Baron van Hoëvell, Ambon en meer bepaaldelijk de Oeliasers (Dordrecht, 1875), pp. 153 sqq.; Schulze, “Ueber Ceram und seine Bewohner,” Verhandlungen der Berliner Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, Ethnologie, und Urgeschichte (1877), p. 117; W. Joest, “Beiträge zur Kenntniss der Eingebornen der Insel Formosa und Ceram,” ibid. (1882) p. 64; H. von Rosenberg, Der Malayische Archipel (Leipsic, 1878), p. 318; A. Bastian, Indonesien, i. (Berlin, 1884) pp. 145-148; J. G. F. Riedel, De sluik- en kroesharige rassen tusschen Selebes en Papua (The Hague, 1886), pp. 107-111; O. D. Tauern, “Ceram,” Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, xlv. (1913) pp. 167 sq. The best accounts are those of Valentyn, Von Schmid, Van Ekris, Van Rees, and Riedel, which are accordingly followed in the text.] Modern writers have commonly regarded this association as primarily a political league instituted to resist foreign domination. In reality its objects are purely religious and social, though it is possible that the priests may have occasionally used their powerful influence for political ends. The society is in fact merely one of those widely-diffused primitive institutions, of which a chief object is the initiation of young men. In recent years the true nature of the association has been duly recognized by the distinguished Dutch ethnologist, J. G. F. Riedel. The Kakian house is an oblong wooden shed, situated under the darkest trees in the depth of the forest, and is built to admit so little light that it is impossible to see what goes on in it. Every village has such a house. Thither the boys who are to be initiated are conducted blindfold, followed by their parents and relations. Each boy is led by the hand by two men, who act as his sponsors or guardians, looking after him during the period of initiation. When all are assembled before the shed, the high priest calls aloud upon the devils. Immediately a hideous uproar is heard to proceed from the shed. It is made by men with bamboo trumpets, who have been secretly introduced into the building by a back door, but the women and children think it is made by the devils, and are much terrified. Then the priests enter the shed, followed by the boys, one at a time. As soon as each boy has disappeared within the precincts, a dull chopping sound is heard, a fearful cry rings out, and a sword or spear, dripping with blood, is thrust through the roof of the shed. This is a token that the boy's head has been cut off, and that the devil has carried him away to the other world, there to regenerate and transform him. So at sight of the bloody sword the mothers weep and wail, crying that the devil has murdered their children. In some places, it would seem, the boys are pushed through an opening made in the shape of a crocodile's jaws or a cassowary's beak, and it is then said that the devil has swallowed them. The boys remain in the shed for five or nine days. Sitting in the dark, they hear the blast of the bamboo trumpets, and from time to time the sound of musket shots and the clash of swords. Every day they bathe, and their faces and bodies are smeared with a yellow dye, to give them the appearance of having been swallowed by the devil. During his stay in the Kakian house each boy has one or two crosses tattooed with thorns on his breast or arm. When they are not sleeping, the lads must sit in a crouching posture without moving a muscle. As they sit in a row cross-legged, with their hands stretched out, the chief takes his trumpet, and placing the mouth of it on the hands of each lad, speaks through it in strange tones, imitating the voice of the spirits. He warns the lads, under pain of death, to observe the rules of the Kakian society, and never to reveal what has passed in the Kakian house. The novices are also told by the priests to behave well to their blood relations, and are taught the traditions and secrets of the tribe.

The resurrection of the novices.

Meantime the mothers and sisters of the lads have gone home to weep and mourn. But in a day or two the men who acted as guardians or sponsors to the novices return to the village with the glad tidings that the devil, at the intercession of the priests, has restored the lads to life. The men who bring this news come in a fainting state and daubed with mud, like messengers freshly arrived from the nether world. Before leaving the Kakian house, each lad receives from the priest a stick adorned at both ends with cock's or cassowary's feathers. The sticks are supposed to have been given to the lads by the devil at the time when he restored them to life, and they serve as a token that the youths have been in the spirit land. When they return to their homes they totter in their walk, and enter the house backward, as if they had forgotten how to walk properly; or they enter the house by the back door. If a plate of food is given to them, they hold it upside down. They remain dumb, indicating their wants by signs only. All this is to shew that they are still under the influence of the devil or the spirits. Their sponsors have to teach them all the common acts of life, as if they were new-born children. Further, upon leaving the Kakian house the boys are strictly forbidden to eat of certain fruits until the next celebration of the rites has taken place. And for twenty or thirty days their hair may not be combed by their mothers or sisters. At the end of that time the high priest takes them to a lonely place in the forest, and cuts off a lock of hair from the crown of each of their heads. After these initiatory rites the lads are deemed men, and may marry; it would be a scandal if they married before.

The secret society of Ndemboin the valley of the Lowe Congo.

In the region of the Lower Congo a simulation of death and resurrection is, or rather used to be, practised by the members of a guild or secret society called ndembo. The society had nothing to do with puberty or circumcision, though the custom of circumcision is common in the country. Young people and adults of both sexes might join the guild; after initiation they were called “the Knowing Ones” (nganga). To found a branch of the society it was necessary to have an albino, who, whether a child, lad, or adult, was the acknowledged head of the society.[642 - No reason is assigned for this curious choice of a president. Can it have been that, because negro children are born pale or nearly white, an albino was deemed a proper president for a society, all the initiated members of which claimed to have been born again? Speaking of the people of the Lower Congo the old English traveller Andrew Battel observes that “the children of this country are born white, but change their colour in two days' time to a perfect black” (“Adventures of Andrew Battel,” in J. Pinkerton's Voyages and Travels, xvi. London, 1814, p. 331).] The ostensible reason for starting a branch of the guild in a district was commonly an epidemic of sickness, “and the idea was to go into ndembo to die, and after an indefinite period, from a few months to two or three years, to be resurrected with a new body not liable to the sickness then troubling the countryside. Another reason for starting a ndembo was a dearth of children in a district. It was believed that good luck in having children would attend those who entered or died ndembo. But the underlying idea was the same, i. e. to get a ‘new body’ that would be healthy and perform its functions properly.” The quarters of the society were always a stockaded enclosure in a great thick forest; a gate of planks painted yellow and red gave access to it, and within there was an assemblage of huts. The place was fenced to keep intruders from prying into the mysteries of the guild, and it was near water. Uninitiated persons might walk on the public roads through the forest, but if they were caught in bye-paths or hunting in the woods, they were flogged, fined, and sometimes killed. They might not even look upon the persons of those who had “died ndembo”; hence when these sanctified persons were roving about the forest or going to the river, the booming notes of a drum warned the profane vulgar to keep out of their way.

Pretence of death as a preliminary to resurrection.

When the stockade and the huts in the forest were ready to receive all who wished to put off the old man or woman and to put on the new, one of the initiates gave the sign and the aspirant after the higher life dropped down like dead in some public place, it might be the market or the centre of the town where there were plenty of people to witness the edifying spectacle. The initiates immediately spread a pall over him or her, beat the earth round about the pretended corpse with plantain stalks, chanted incantations, fired guns, and cut capers. Then they carried the seemingly dead body away into the forest and disappeared with it into the stockade. The spectacle proved infectious; one after another in the emotional, excitable crowd of negroes followed the example, dropped down like dead, and were carried off, sometimes in a real cataleptic state. In this way fifty to a hundred or more novices might feign death and be transported into the sacred enclosure. There they were supposed not only to die but to rot till only a single bone of their body remained, of which the initiated had to take the greatest care in expectation of the joyful resurrection that was soon to follow. However, though they were both dead and rotten, they consumed a large quantity of food, which their credulous relatives brought to them in baskets, toiling with the loads on their backs over the long paths through the forest in the sweltering heat of the tropical day. If the relations failed to discharge this pious and indispensable duty, their kinsman in the sacred enclosure ran a risk of dying in good earnest, or rather of being spirited away to a distant town and sold as a slave.

Seclusion of the novices.

Shut up within the stockade for months or years, the men and women, boys and girls, dispensed with the superfluity of clothes, rubbed their naked bodies with red ochre or powdered camwood instead, and gave themselves up to orgies of unbridled lust. Some feeble attempts were made to teach them the rudiments of a secret language, but the vocabulary was small and its principles lacking in ingenuity. The time during which this seclusion lasted might vary from three months to three years. When the circumstances which had furnished the pretext for instituting the society had passed away, whether it was that the epidemic had died out or that the birth-rate had sensibly increased, murmurs would begin to be heard among friends and relatives in the town, who did not see why they should be taxed any longer to support a set of idle and dissolute ruffians in the forest, and why they should trudge day after day in the sweat of their brow to carry provisions to them. So the supplies would begin to run short, and whenever that happened the mystery of the resurrection was sure to follow very soon after.

Resurrection of the novices. Pretence of the novices that they have forgotten everything.

Accordingly it would be announced that on a certain market-day the new initiates, now raised from the dead, would reveal themselves in all their glory to the astonished gaze of the public. The glad tidings were received with enthusiasm, and crowds assembled from all the country round about to welcome those who had come back from the world beyond the grave. When all were gathered in eager expectancy in the market-place, the sounds of distant music would be heard, and soon the gay procession would defile into the open square and march round it, while the dusky skins, reddened with camwood powder, glistened in the sunshine, the gay garments fluttered in the wind, and the tassels of palm-leaf fibre dangled at every arm. In the crowd of spectators many parents would recognize their children in the marching figures of the procession, and girls and boys would point out their brothers and sisters and eagerly call out their names. But in the stolid faces of the initiates not an eye would gleam with recognition, not a muscle would twitch with an involuntary expression of delight; for having just been raised from the dead they were supposed to know nothing of their former life, of friends and relations, of home and country. There might be in the crowd a mother or a sister not seen for years; or, more moving still, the novice might look in vain for loved and remembered faces that would never be seen in the market-place again. But whatever his feelings might be, he must rigidly suppress them under pain of a flogging, a fine, or even death. At last the parade was over and the procession broke up. Then the old hands introduced the new hands to their own parents and brothers and sisters, to their old homes and haunts. For still the novices kept up the pretence that everything was new and strange to them, that they could not speak their mother tongue, that they did not know their own fathers and mothers, their own town and their own houses; nay that they had forgotten even how to eat their food. So everything and everybody had to be shewn to them and their names and meanings explained. Their guides would lead them about the town, pointing out the various roads and telling where they led to – this one to the watering-place on the river, this to the forest, that to the farms, and so on: they would take up the commonest domestic utensils and shew what they were used for: they would even chew the food and put it into the mouths of the novices, like mother birds feeding their callow young. For some time afterwards the resuscitated persons, attended by their mentors, would go about the town and the neighbourhood acting in a strange way like children or mad folk, seizing what they wanted and trying to beat or even kill such as dared to refuse them anything. Their guardian would generally restrain these sallies; but sometimes he would arrange with his hopeful pupils to be out of sight when two or three of them clubbed together to assault and rob an honest man, and would only return in time to share the booty. After a while, however, the excitement created by the resurrection would wear off; the dead folk come to life were expected to have learned their lessons, and if they forgot themselves, their memory was promptly refreshed by the law.[643 - Rev. J. H. Weeks, “Notes on some Customs of the Lower Congo People,” Folk-lore, xx. (1909) pp. 189-198; Rev. W. H. Bentley, Life on the Congo (London, 1887), pp. 78 sq.; id., Pioneering on the Congo (London, 1900), i. 284-287. Mr. Weeks's description of the institution is the fullest and I have followed it in the text. The custom was in vogue down to recent years, but seems to have been suppressed chiefly by the exertions of the missionaries. Besides the ndembo guild there is, or was, in these regions another secret society known as the nkimba, which some writers have confused with the ndembo. The nkimba was of a more harmless character than the other; indeed it seems even to have served some useful purposes, partly as a kind of freemasonry which encouraged mutual help among its members, partly as a system of police for the repression of crime, its professed object being to put down witchcraft and punish witches. Only males were admitted to it. Candidates for initiation were stupefied by a drug, but there was apparently no pretence of killing them and bringing them to life again. Members of the society had a home in the jungle away from the town, where the novices lived together for a period varying from six months to two years. They learned a secret language, and received new names; it was afterwards an offence to call a man by the name of his childhood. Instead of the red dye affected by members of the ndembo guild, members of the nkimba guild whitened their bodies with pipe clay and wore crinolines of palm frondlets. See Rev. W. H. Bentley, Life on the Congo, pp. 80-83; id., Pioneering on the Congo, i. 282-284; Rev. J. H. Weeks, op. cit. pp. 198-201; (Sir) H. H. Johnston, “A Visit to Mr. Stanley's Stations on the River Congo,” Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society, N. S. v. (1883) pp. 572 sq.; E. Delmar Morgan, “Notes on the Lower Congo,” id., N.S. vi. (1884) p. 193. As to these two secret societies on the Lower Congo, see further (Sir) H. H. Johnston, “On the Races of the Congo,” Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xiii. (1884) pp. 472 sq.; É. Dupont, Lettres sur le Congo (Paris, 1889), pp. 96-100; Herbert Ward, Five Years with the Congo Cannibals (London, 1890), pp. 54 sq.; id. “Ethnographical Notes relating to the Congo Tribes,” Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xxiv. (1895) pp. 288 sq.; E. J. Glave, Six Years of Adventure in Congo Land (London, 1893), pp. 80-83; L. Frobenius, Die Masken und Geheimbünde Afrikas (Halle, 1898), pp. 43-54 (Nova Acta. Abh. der Kaiserl. Leop. Carol. Deutschen Akademie der Naturforscher, vol. lxxiv. No. 1); H. Schurtz, Altersklassen und Männerbünde (Berlin, 1902), pp. 433-437; Notes Annalytiques sur les Collections Ethnographiques du Musée du Congo (Brussels, 1902-1906), pp. 199-206; Ed. de Jonghe, Les Sociétés Secrètes au Bas-Congo (Brussels, 1907), pp. 15 sqq. (extract from the Revue des Questions Scientifiques, October 1907). Some of these writers do not discriminate between the two societies, the ndembo and the nkimba. According to our best authorities (Messrs. Bentley and Weeks) the two societies are quite distinct and neither of them has anything to do with circumcision, which is, however, prevalent in the region. See Rev. J. H. Weeks, “Notes on some Customs of the Lower Congo People,” Folk-lore, xx. (1909) pp. 304 sqq. A secret society of the Lower Congo which Adolf Bastian has described under the name of quimba is probably identical with the nkimba. He speaks of a “Secret Order of those who have been born again,” and tells us that the candidates “are thrown into a death-like state and buried in the fetish house. When they are wakened to life again, they have (as in the Belliparo) lost their memory of everything that is past, even of their father and mother, and they can no longer remember their own name. Hence new names are given them according to the titles or ranks to which they are advanced.” See A. Bastian, Die deutsche Expedition an der Loango-Küste (Jena, 1874-1875), ii. 15 sqq.]

Bastian's account of the ritual of death and resurrection in West Africa.

The following account of the rites, as practised in this part of Africa, was given to Adolf Bastian by an interpreter. “The great fetish lives in the interior of the forest-land, where nobody sees him and nobody can see him. When he dies, the fetish priests carefully collect his bones in order to bring them to life again, and they nourish them, that he may be clothed anew in flesh and blood. But it is not good to speak of it. In the land of Ambamba every one must die once, and when the fetish priest shakes his calabash against a village, all the men and lads whose hour is come fall into a state of lifeless torpidity, from which they generally arise after three days. But if the fetish loves a man he carries him away into the bush and buries him in the fetish house, often for many years. When he comes to life again, he begins to eat and drink as before, but his understanding is gone and the fetish man must teach him and direct him in every motion, like the smallest child. At first this can only be done with a stick, but gradually his senses return, so that it is possible to talk with him, and when his education is complete, the priest brings him back to his parents. They would seldom recognize their son but for the express assurances of the fetish priest, who moreover recalls previous events to their memory. He who has not gone through the ceremony of the new birth in Ambamba is universally looked down upon and is not admitted to the dances.”[644 - A. Bastian, Ein Besuch in San Salvador (Bremen, 1859), pp. 82 sq.]

Acquisition of a patron animal or guardian spirit in a dream.

In the same part of Africa we hear of a fetish called Malassi, the votaries of which form a secret order of the usual sort with a variety of ranks to which the initiates are promoted. “The candidate is plunged into a magic sleep within the temple-hut, and while he sleeps he beholds a bird or other object with which his existence is henceforth sympathetically bound up, just as the life of the young Indian is bound up with the animal which he sees in his dream at puberty. All who have been born again at initiation, after their return to a normal state, bear the name of Swamie (a sacred designation also in India) or, if they are women, Sumbo (Tembo), and wear as a token the ring called sase, which consists of an iron hoop with a fruit attached to it.”[645 - A. Bastian, Die deutsche Expedition an der Loango-Küste, ii. 183. Elsewhere Bastian says that about San Salvador lads at puberty are secluded in the forest and circumcised, and during their seclusion “each of them is mystically united to the fetish by which his life is henceforth determined, as the Brahman whispers the secret charm in the ear of him who has been born again.” See A. Bastian, Ein Besuch in San Salvador (Bremen, 1859), pp. 85 sq.] Similarly among the Fans of the Gaboon a young warrior acquires his guardian spirit by dreaming. He is secluded in the forest, drinks a fermented and intoxicating liquor, and smokes hemp. Then he falls into a heavy sleep, and next morning he must describe exactly to the fetish priest the animal, tree, mineral, or whatever it may have been which he saw in his dream. This magical dream is repeated on three successive nights; and after that the young man is sent forth by the priest to seek and bring back the beast, bird, reptile, or whatever it was of which he dreamed. The youth obeys, reduces the animal or thing to cinders or ashes, and preserves these calcined remains as a talisman which will protect him against many dangers.[646 - H. Trilles, Le Totémisme chez les Fâṅ (Münster i. W., 1912), pp. 479 sq. The writer speaks of the guardian spirit as the individual totem of the young warrior.] However, in these rites there is no clear simulation of dying and coming to life again.

Dapper's account of the ritual of death and resurrection in the Belli-Paaro society.