Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 26, 1915.djvu/151

 the H 07)16 of the Dead in Indonesia. 141

arrangements of those peoples who believe that the land of the dead is situated on this earth. Evidence will be brought to show that the disposal of the dead is, in these cases, sometimes influenced in another manner.

Canoe-coffi7is mid transportation. — It will have been noticed that the Babar people place their dead in canoes. They place their land of the dead across the sea, and thus it becomes possible that the canoe is associated with this fact. A study of the distributions of the disposal of the dead in canoes and a belief in a land of the dead or a land of origin reached by water shows that this surmise is well founded, and that the two are in correspondence. For example, canoe-coffins are used by the Galela people of Halmahera,^*" and they have a tradition that their ancestors came over the sea from the north-west. ^^ Again, the people of Timorlao place their land of the dead over the sea whence they have come,^^ and they place their dead in canoes which shall serve for the journey back to the land of origin.^^

The next case is important, for it shows that the use of a canoe-coffin may in some cases have been more than symbolical. It also shows in yet another way how close may be the relationship between the living and the dead. The Olo Ngadjoe of south-east Borneo believe that the land of the dead is situated up the river on which they live. The disposal of the dead has two stages. First, the body is placed in a canoe-coffin, rating, which is placed in a direction parallel to that of the river, and is left for some time, generally two years, when the second part of the disposal is

^"C. F. H. Campen, " De alfoeren van Halmahera,"' Tijd. Ned. Ind., 1883, i., p. 294.

'7 J. G. F. Riedel, "Galela undTobeloresen,"ZfiV./. Ethn., xvii., 1885, p. 58.

'* Riedel, Sluik- en kroeshaarige rassen, pp. 276, 305-6.

'* H. O. Forbes, A Naturalist^ s Wanderings in the Eastern Archipelago, 1885, p. 322 ; (.". V. lloevell, " De Leti eilanden," Tijd. taal land- en volk., xxxiii., 1890, p. 169.