Ritual and belief : $b Studies in the history of religionHartland, Edwin Sidney
Religion
Ritual and belief : $b Studies in the history of religion
Hartland, Edwin Sidney
Ethnopsychology; Magic; Religion; Rites and ceremonies
The illustration of practices like these might be multiplied
indefinitely. The same reason holds good for them all. In the lower
culture grief at a death is often intensified by fear--on the one
hand, of an accusation of witchcraft--on the other hand, of the
ill-will of the deceased himself, who is naturally disgusted to find
himself dead. Against the latter danger at any rate the forlorn
condition of the survivors, stiff with wounds, thrust like him from
the company of their friends and fellow-tribesmen, made to wear a
distinctive garb, often in rags or dirt, wailing, watching, fasting,
would constitute an appeal that even the ghost of a savage would feel
hard to resist. That this is actually the effect intended, in some
instances at least, is certain. A widow among the Salivas of South
America cuts her hair, and is not allowed to anoint herself as usual,
nor to wear any ornament, in order, we are expressly told, not to
irritate the departed, but to humble herself before him.[263.4] {264}
Nor must it be overlooked that wailing and lamenting, so usually part
of the rites practised especially by the chief mourners, such as
widows and near relations, would not favour concealment. On the
contrary, they would draw attention to the grief, and help even the
simplest and most easily deluded of ghosts to identify the mourner,
which they would seem indeed to be meant to do. But they would
powerfully deprecate his malice or revenge. In this connection the
belief of the Bañarwanda on the east of Lake Kivu, in German East
Africa, is interesting. To them the _bazimu_ (plural of _muzimu_) or
souls of the departed are by no means always kindly disposed, even the
best of them. They must be continually propitiated with offerings, or
they will cause calamities, either of themselves directly, or
indirectly by setting in motion the _imandwa_, semi-apotheosized
heroes. But the _muzimu_ does not begin his mischievous activities
until the mourning ceremonies are at an end. So long as they last the
survivors are quite safe from him, for he will not during that period
attack the living.[264.1]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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