The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion (Vol. 2 of 2)Frazer, James George
ReligionComparative
The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion (Vol. 2 of 2)
Frazer, James George
Magic; Mythology; Religion; Superstition
With some savages a special reason for respecting the bones of game, and
generally of the animals which they eat, is a belief that, if the bones
are preserved, they will in course of time be reclothed with flesh, and
thus the animal will come to life again. It is, therefore, clearly for the
interest of the hunter to leave the bones intact, since to destroy them
would be to diminish the future supply of game. Many of the Minnetaree
Indians “believe that the bones of those bisons which they have slain and
divested of flesh rise again clothed with renewed flesh, and quickened
with life, and become fat, and fit for slaughter the succeeding
June.”(388) Hence on the western prairies of America, the skulls of
buffalos may be seen arranged in circles and symmetrical piles, awaiting
the resurrection.(389) After feasting on a dog, the Dacotas carefully
collect the bones, scrape, wash, and bury them, “partly, as it is said, to
testify to the dog-species, that in feasting upon one of their number no
disrespect was meant to the species itself, and partly also from a belief
that the bones of the animal will rise and reproduce another.”(390) In
sacrificing an animal the Lapps regularly put aside the bones, eyes, ears,
heart, lungs, sexual parts (if the animal was a male), and a morsel of
flesh from each limb. Then, after eating the rest of the flesh, they laid
the bones etc. in anatomical order in a coffin and buried them with the
usual rites, believing that the god to whom the animal was sacrificed
would reclothe the bones with flesh and restore the animal to life in
Jabme-Aimo, the subterranean world of the dead. Sometimes, as after
feasting on a bear, they seem to have contented themselves with thus
burying the bones.(391) Thus the Lapps expected the resurrection of the
slain animal to take place in another world, resembling in this respect
the Kamtchatkans, who believed that every creature, down to the smallest
fly, would rise from the dead and live underground.(392) On the other
hand, the North American Indians looked for the resurrection of the
animals in the present world. The habit, observed especially by Mongolian
peoples, of stuffing the skin of a sacrificed animal, or stretching it on
a framework,(393) points rather to a belief in a resurrection of the
latter sort. The objection commonly entertained by primitive peoples to
break the bones of the animals which they have eaten or sacrificed(394)
may be based either on a belief in the resurrection of the animals, or on
a fear of intimidating the other creatures of the same species and
offending the ghosts of the slain animals. The reluctance of North
American Indians to let dogs gnaw the bones of animals(395) is perhaps
only a precaution to prevent the bones from being broken. There are traces
in folk-tales of the same primitive belief that animals or men may come to
life again, if only their bones are preserved; not uncommonly the animal
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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