but to harm the living.[1] In New Zealand, the ideas were to be found that the souls of the dead were apt to linger near the bodies, and that the spirits of men left unburied or killed in battle and eaten, would wander; and the bringing such malignant souls to dwell within the sacred burial-enclosure was a task for the priest to accomplish with his charms.[2] Among the Iroquois of North America the spirit also stays near the body for a time, and 'unless the rites of burial were performed, it was believed that the spirits of the dead hovered for a time upon the earth, in a state of great unhappiness. Hence their extreme solicitude to procure the bodies of the slain in battle.'[3] Among Brazilian tribes, the wandering shadows of the dead are said to be considered unresting till burial.[4] In Turanian regions of North Asia, the spirits of the dead who have no resting-place in earth are thought of as lingering above ground, especially where their dust remains.[5] South Asia has such beliefs: the Karens say that the ghosts who wander on earth are not the spirits of those who go to Plu, the land of the dead, but of infants, of such as died by violence, of the wicked, and of those who by accident have not been buried or burned;[6] the Siamese fear as unkindly spirits the souls of such as died a violent death or were not buried with the proper rites, and who desiring expiation, invisibly terrify their descendants.[7] Nowhere in the world had such thoughts a stronger hold than in classic antiquity, where it was the most sacred of duties to give the body its funeral rites, that the shade should not flit moaning near the gates of Hades, nor wander in the dismal crowd
- ↑ Oldfield in 'Tr. Eth. Soc.' vol. iii. pp. 228, 236, 245.
- ↑ Taylor, 'New Zealand,' p. 221; Schirren, p. 91; see Turner, 'Polynesia,' p. 233.
- ↑ Morgan, 'League of Iroquois,' p. 174.
- ↑ J. G. Müller, p. 286.
- ↑ Castrén, 'Finn. Myth.' p. 126.
- ↑ Cross in 'Journ. Amer. Or. Soc.' vol. iv. p. 309; Mason in 'Journ. As. Soc. Bengal,' 1865, part ii. p. 203. See also J. Anderson, 'Exp. to W. Yunnan,' pp. 126, 131 (Shans).
- ↑ Bastian, 'Psychologie,' pp. 51, 99-101.
