The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume 2 (of 3). Frazer James George

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СКАЧАТЬ respects from those of Stonehenge. In the first place the interval (ten or twelve feet) between the uprights of the Tongan trilithon appears to be much greater than the interval between the uprights of the trilithons at Stonehenge.324 In the second place, the cross-stone of the Tongan trilithon is mortised much more deeply into the uprights than are the cross-stones at Stonehenge. For whereas at Stonehenge these cross-stones present the appearance of being laid flat on the top of the uprights, the cross-stone of the Tongan trilithon is sunk deeply into the uprights by means of mortises or grooves about two feet wide which are cut into the uprights, so that the top of the cross-stone is nearly flush with their tops, while its ends also are nearly flush with their outside surfaces.325

      As the origin and purpose of Stonehenge are still unknown, its massive trilithons can hardly be cited to explain the similar monument of Tongataboo. The rival theories which see in Stonehenge a memorial of the dead and a temple of the sun326 are equally applicable or inapplicable to the Tongan monument. In favour of the mortuary character of this solitary trilithon it might be urged that the Tongans were long accustomed to erect megalithic monuments, though of a different type, at the tombs of their sacred kings, which are situated not many miles away; but against this view it may be argued that there are no traces of burial or graves in the immediate neighbourhood, and that native tradition, not lightly to be set aside, assigns a different origin to the monument. Against the solar interpretation of the trilithon it may be alleged, first, that the monument faces north and south, not east and west, as it might be expected to do if it were a temple of the sun or a gateway leading into such a temple; second, that, while a circle of trilithons, as at Stonehenge, with an opening towards the sunrise may be plausibly interpreted as a temple of the sun, such an interpretation cannot so readily be applied to a solitary trilithon facing north and south; and, third, that no trace of sun-worship has been discovered in the Tonga islands. So far as I have observed, the Tongan pantheon is nowhere said to have included a sun-god, and the Tongans are nowhere reported to have paid any special respect to the sun. Savages in general, it may be added, appear to be very little addicted to sun-worship; it is for the most part among peoples at a much higher level of culture, such as the ancient Egyptians, Babylonians, and Peruvians, that solar worship becomes an important, or even the predominant, feature of the national faith.327 Perhaps the impulse to it came rather from the meditations of priestly astronomers than from the random fancies of common men. Some depth of thought was needed to detect in the sun the source of all life on earth; the immutable regularity of the great luminary's movements failed to rouse the interest or to excite the fear of the savage, to whom the elements of the unusual, the uncertain, and the terrible are the principal incentives to wonder and awe, and hence to reflexion. We are all naturally more impressed by extraordinary than by ordinary events; the fine edge of the mind is dulled by familiarity in the one case and whetted by curiosity in the other.

      Bearing in mind the numerous other stone monuments scattered widely over the islands of the Pacific, from the Carolines to Easter Island, Dr. Guillemard concludes that some race, with a different, if not a higher civilisation preceded the Polynesian race in its present homes, and to this earlier race he would apparently refer the erection of the trilithon in Tongataboo.328 He may be right. Yet when we consider, first, the native tradition of the setting up of the trilithon by one of the sacred kings of Tonga; second, the practice of the Tongans of building megalithic tombs for these same sacred kings; and, third, the former existence in Tonga of a professional class of masons whose business it was to construct stone vaults for the burial of chiefs,329 we may hesitate to resort to the hypothesis of an unknown people in order to explain the origin of a monument which the Tongans, as we know them, appear to have been quite capable of building for themselves.

      § 11. Rites of Burial and Mourning

      The only mode of disposing of the dead which was practised in the Tonga islands seems to have been burial in the earth. So far as appears, the corpse was not doubled up, but laid at full length in the grave; at all events I have met with no mention of burying a corpse in a contracted posture; and Captain Cook says that "when a person dies, he is buried, after being wrapped up in mats and cloth, much after our manner." He adds that, while chiefs had the special burial-places called fiatookas appropriated to their use, common people were interred in no particular spot.330 So far as I have observed, none of our authorities speak of a practice of embalming the dead or of giving the bodies any particular direction in the grave.

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      1

      Horatio Hale, The United States Exploring Expedition, Ethnography and Philology (Philadelphia, 1846), pp. 4 sqq., 9 sqq.; J. Deniker, The Races of Man (London, 1900), pp. 500 sqq.

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1

Horatio Hale, The United States Exploring Expedition, Ethnography and Philology (Philadelphia, 1846), pp. 4 sqq., 9 sqq.; J. Deniker, The Races of Man (London, 1900), pp. 500 sqq.

2

J. Deniker, The Races of Man (London, 1900), pp. 154, 501; British Museum, Handbook to the Ethnographical Collections (1910), p. 147.

3

Captain James Cook, Voyages (London, 1809), v. 416; W. Mariner, Account of the Natives of the Tonga Islands, Second Edition (London, 1818), i. 67; W. Ellis, Polynesian Researches, Second Edition (London, 1832-1836), i. 220; E. Shortland, Traditions and Superstitions of the New Zealanders, Second Edition (London, 1856), p. 212; J. Deniker, The Races of Man, p. 501. In Polynesia "the bow was not a serious weapon; it was found in some islands, e. g. in Tahiti and Tonga, but was principally used for killing rats or in shooting matches" (British Museum, Handbook to the Ethnographical Collections, p. 153). As to the limited use of bows and arrows in Polynesia, see further E. Tregear, "The Polynesian Bow," Journal of the Polynesian Society, vol. i. no. 1 (April 1892), pp. 56-59; W. H. R. Rivers, The History of Melanesian Society (Cambridge, 1914), ii. 446 sqq.

4

Compare (Sir) E. B. Tylor, Anthropology (London, 1881), p. 102; R. H. Codrington, The Melanesian Languages (Oxford, 1885), pp. 33 sqq.; S. Percy Smith, Hawaiki, the Original Home of the Maori (Christchurch, etc., New Zealand, 1910), pp. 85 sqq.; A. C. Haddon, The Wanderings of Peoples (Cambridge, 1919), pp. 34 sqq.; A. H. Keane, Man Past and Present, revised by A. Hingston-Quiggin СКАЧАТЬ