The Elementary Forms of the Religious LifeDurkheim, Émile
Religion
The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life
Durkheim, Émile
Cults; Religion; Religion -- Philosophy; Rites and ceremonies; Totemism
Howitt mentions them among the Dieri of South Australia.[830] The word
_Mura-mura_, which Gason translates with Good Spirit and which he thinks
expresses a belief in a god creator,[831] is really a collective word
designating the group of ancestors placed by the myth at the beginning
of the tribe. They continue to exist to-day as formerly. "They are
believed to live in trees, which are sacred for this reason." Certain
irregularities of the ground, rocks and springs are identified with
these Mura-mura,[832] which consequently resemble the Altjirangamitjina
of the Arunta in a singular way. The Kurnai of Gippsland, though
retaining only vestiges of totemism, also believe in the existence of
ancestors called _Muk-Kurnai_, and which they think of as beings
intermediate between men and animals.[833] Among the Nimbaldi, Taplin
has observed a theory of conception similar to that which Strehlow
attributes to the Arunta.[834] We find this belief in reincarnation held
integrally by the Wotjobaluk in Victoria. "The spirits of the dead,"
says Mathews, "assemble in the _miyur_[835] of their respective clans;
they leave these to be born again in human form when a favourable
occasion presents itself."[836] Mathews even affirms that "the belief in
the reincarnation or transmigration of souls is strongly enrooted in all
the Australian tribes."[837]
If we pass to the northern regions we find the pure doctrine of the
Arunta among the Niol-Niol in the north-west; every birth is attributed
to the incarnation of a pre-existing soul, which introduces itself into
the body of a woman.[838] In northern Queensland myths, differing from
the preceding only in form, express exactly the same ideas. Among the
tribes on the Pennefather River it is believed that every man has two
souls: the one, called _ngai_, resides in the heart; the other, called
_choi_, remains in the placenta. Soon after birth the placenta is buried
in a consecrated place. A particular genius, named Anje-a, who has
charge of the phenomena of procreation, comes to get this _choi_ and
keeps it until the child, being grown up, is married. When the time
comes to give him a son, Anje-a takes a bit of the choi of this man,
places it in the embryo he is making, and inserts it into the womb of
the mother. So it is out of the soul of the father that that of the
child is made. It is true that the child does not receive the paternal
soul integrally at first, for the _ngai_ remains in the heart of the
father as long as he lives. But when he dies the _ngai_, being
liberated, also incarnates itself in the bodies of the children; if
there are several children it is divided equally among them. Thus there
is a perfect spiritual continuity between the generations; it is the
same soul which is transmitted from a father to his children and from
these to their children, and this unique soul, always remaining itself
in spite of its successive divisions and subdivisions, is the one which
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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