Page:Folklore1919.djvu/426

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60
The Concept of “Soul-Substance”

island. On the eighteenth day after death the ghalaghala, although supposed to have departed, is transferred with the skull to a special shrine, while still later the ghost of the dead man, now called a tomate, goes to the home of the dead in Bougainville. This twofold nature of the destination of the soul points to its double nature.

Eddystone Island is the seat of a definite skull-cult, but there is no evidence that any spirit comparable with the head-spirit of the Mailu is believed to dwell in the head (see p. 59).

In Florida the soul is called tarunga.[1] It leaves the body in sleep and after death becomes a tindalo or ghost. The only hint of a double nature is given in the fact that a pig has a tarunga, but this never becomes a tindalo.

In San Cristoval the Rev. C. E. Fox records the existence of two souls which in Bauro, the home of the dual organisation,[2] are called ataro or aunga and nununa, while at Wango, the point of junction between the region of bird-totemism and the dual region, the two souls are called aunga and adaro. The aunga of Wango is compared with the shadow caused by the sun, and the adaro with the reflection in water. When a man dies the aunga comes out either at the fontanelle or from the mouth, and sets out on its journey to Rodomana, the distant home of the dead. The adaro, on the other hand, remains for some time with the body and then goes either into the jaw-bone, into a small stone statue placed on the burial mound (heo)^ or into a sacred stone.[3] Of these two concepts it is evidently the aunga which corresponds most nearly with the concept of soul-substance. The stone statue on the burial mound represents the deceased, and it is significant that it should be the adaro, corresponding with the ghost, which passes into it.

  1. R. H. Codrington, The Melanesians. London (1891), p. 249.
  2. C. E. Fox, Journ. Roy. Anth. Inst., vol. xlix. (1919), p. 94.
  3. This account is based on letters recently received from Mr. Fox.