§ 3. Names of the Dead tabooed.
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Frazer, James George
The dead revived in their namesakes among the Lapps, Khonds, Yorubas, Baganda, and Makalaka.
Among the Lapps, when a woman was with child and near the time of her delivery, a deceased ancestor or relation (known as a Jabmek) used to appear to her in a dream and inform her what dead person was to be born again in her infant, and whose name the child was therefore to bear. If the woman had no such dream, it fell to the father or the relatives to determine the name by divination or by consulting a wizard.1389 Among the Khonds a birth is celebrated on the seventh day after the event by a feast given to the priest and to the whole village. To determine the child's name the priest drops grains of rice into a cup of water, naming with each grain a deceased ancestor. From the movements of the seed in the water, and from observations made on the person of the infant, he pronounces which of his progenitors has reappeared in him, and the child generally, at least [pg 369] among the northern tribes, receives the name of that ancestor.1390 Among the Ewe-speaking peoples of Togo, in West Africa, when a woman is in hard labour, a fetish priest or priestess is called in to disclose the name of the deceased relative who has just been born again into the world in the person of the infant. The name of that relative is bestowed on the child.1391 Among the Yorubas, soon after a child has been born, a priest of Ifa, the god of divination, appears on the scene to ascertain what ancestral soul has been reborn in the infant.
As soon as this has been decided, the parents are told that the child must conform in all respects to the manner of life of the ancestor who now animates him or her, and if, as often happens, they profess ignorance, the priest supplies the necessary information. The child usually receives the name of the ancestor who has been born again in him.1392 In Uganda a child is named with much ceremony by its grandfather, who bestows on it the name of one of its ancestors, but never the name of its father. The spirit of the deceased namesake then enters the child and assists him through life.1393 Here the reincarnation of the ancestor appears to be effected by giving his name, and with it his soul, to his descendant. The same idea seems to explain a curious ceremony observed by the Makalaka of South Africa at the naming of a child. The spirit of the ancestor (motsimo), whose name the child is to bear, is represented by an elderly kinsman or kinswoman, [pg 370] according as the little one is a boy or a girl. A pretence is made of catching the representative of the spirit, and dragging him or her to the hut of the child's parents. Outside the hut the pretended spirit takes his seat and the skin of an animal is thrown over him. He then washes his hands in a vessel of water, eats some millet-porridge, and washes it down with beer. Meantime the women and girls dance gleefully round him, screaming or singing, and throw copper rings, beads, and so forth as presents into the vessel of water. The men do the same, but without dancing; after that they enter the hut to partake of a feast.
The representative of the ancestral spirit now vanishes, and the child thenceforth bears his or her name.1394 This ceremony may be intended to represent the reincarnation of the ancestral spirit in the child.
Revival of the names of the dead among the Nicobarese and Gilyaks.
In the Nicobar Islands the names of dead relatives are tabooed for a generation; but when both their parents are dead, men and women are bound to assume the names of their deceased grandfathers or grandmothers respectively.1395 Perhaps with the names they may be thought to inherit the spirits of their ancestors. Among the Tartars in the Middle Ages the names of the dead might not be uttered till the third generation.1396 Among the Gilyaks of Saghalien no two persons in the same tribe may bear the same name at the same time; for they think that if a child were to receive the name of a living man, either the child or the man would die within the year. When a man dies, his name may not be uttered until after the celebration of the festival at which they sacrifice a bear for the purpose of procuring plenty of game and fish. At that festival they call out the name of the deceased while they beat the skin of the bear. Thenceforth the name may be pronounced by every one, and it will be bestowed on a child who shall afterwards be born.1397 These customs suggest that the Gilyaks, like other peoples, suppose [pg 371] the namesake of a deceased person to be his or her reincarnation; for their objection to let two living persons bear the same name seems to imply a belief that the soul goes with the name, and therefore cannot be shared by two people at the same time.
Namesakes of the dead treated as the dead in person among the Esquimaux of Bering Strait.
Among the Esquimaux of Bering Strait the first child born in a village after some one has died receives the dead person's name, and must represent him in subsequent festivals which are given in his honour. The day before the great feast of the dead the nearest male relative of the deceased goes to the grave and plants before it a stake bearing the crest or badge of the departed. This is the notice served to the ghost to attend the festival. Accordingly he returns from the spirit-land to the grave. Afterwards a song is sung at the grave inviting the ghost to repair to the assembly-house, where the people are gathered to celebrate the festival. The shade accepts the invitation and takes his place, with the other ghosts, in the fire-pit under the floor of the assembly-house. All the time of the festival, which lasts for several days, lamps filled with seal-oil are kept burning day and night in the assembly-house in order to light up the path to the spirit-land and enable the ghosts to find their way back to their old haunts on earth. When the spirits of the dead are gathered in the pit, and the proper moment has come, they all rise up through the floor and enter the bodies of their living namesakes. Offerings of food, drink, and clothes are now made to these namesakes, who eat and drink and wear the clothes on behalf of the ghosts.
Finally, the shades, refreshed and strengthened by the banquet, are sent away back to their graves thinly clad in the spiritual essence of the clothes, while the gross material substance of the garments is retained by their namesakes.1398 Here the reincarnation of the dead in the living is not permanent, but merely occasional and temporary. Still a special connexion may well be thought to subsist at all times between the deceased and the living person who bears his or her name.
Ceremonies at the naming of children are probably often associated with the idea of rebirth.
The foregoing facts seem to render it probable that even where a belief in the reincarnation of ancestors either is not expressly attested or has long ceased to form part of the popular creed, many of the solemnities which attend the naming of children may have sprung originally from the widespread notion that the souls of the dead come to life again in their namesakes.1399
Sometimes the names of the dead may be pronounced after their bodies have decayed. Arunta practice of chasing the ghost into the grave at the end of the period of mourning.
In some cases the period during which the name of the deceased may not be pronounced seems to bear a close relation to the time during which his mortal remains may be supposed still to hold together. Thus, of some Indian tribes on the north-west coast of America it is said that they may not speak the name of a dead person “until the bones are finally disposed of.”1400 Among the Narrinyeri of South Australia the name might not be uttered until the corpse had decayed.1401 In the Encounter Bay tribe of the same country the dead body is dried over a fire, packed up in mats, and carried about for several months among the scenes which had been familiar to the deceased in his life. Next it is placed on a platform of sticks and left there till it has completely decayed, whereupon the next of kin takes the skull and uses it as a drinking-cup. After that the name of the departed may be uttered without offence. Were it pronounced sooner his kinsmen would be deeply offended, and a war might be the result.1402 The rule that the name of the dead may not be spoken until his body has mouldered away seems to point to a belief that the spirit continues to exist only so long as the body does so, and that, when the material frame is dissolved, the spiritual part of the man perishes with it, or goes away, or at least becomes so feeble and incapable of mischief that his name may be bandied about with impunity.1403 This view is to some extent confirmed [pg 373] by the practice of the Arunta tribe in central Australia.
We have seen that among them no one may mention the name of the deceased during the period of mourning for fear of disturbing and annoying the ghost, who is believed to be walking about at large. Some of the relations of the dead man, it is true, such as his parents, elder brothers and sisters, paternal aunts, mother-in-law, and all his sons-in-law, whether actual or possible, are debarred all their lives from taking his name into their lips; but other people, including his wife, children, grandchildren, grandparents, younger brothers and sisters, and father-in-law, are free to name him so soon as he has ceased to walk the earth and hence to be dangerous. Some twelve or eighteen months after his death the people seem to think that the dead man has enjoyed his liberty long enough, and that it is time to confine his restless spirit within narrower bounds. Accordingly a grand battue or ghost-hunt brings the days of mourning to an end. The favourite haunt of the deceased is believed to be the burnt and deserted camp where he died. Here therefore on a certain day a band of men and women, the men armed with shields and spear-throwers, assemble and begin dancing round the charred and blackened remains of the camp, shouting and beating the air with their weapons and hands in order to drive away the lingering spirit from the spot he loves too well. When the dancing is over, the whole party proceed to the grave at a run, chasing the ghost before them.
It is in vain that the unhappy ghost makes a last bid for freedom, and, breaking away from the beaters, [pg 374] doubles back towards the camp; the leader of the party is prepared for this manœuvre, and by making a long circuit adroitly cuts off the retreat of the fugitive. Finally, having run him to earth, they trample him down into the grave, dancing and stamping on the heaped-up soil, while with downward thrusts through the air they beat and force him under ground. There, lying in his narrow house, flattened and prostrate under a load of earth, the poor ghost sees his widow wearing the gay feathers of the ring-neck parrot in her hair, and he knows that the time of her mourning for him is over. The loud shouts of the men and women shew him that they are not to be frightened and bullied by him any more, and that he had better lie quiet. But he may still watch over his friends, and guard them from harm, and visit them in dreams.1404