Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 26, 1915.djvu/160

 150 Myths of Origin and

this day, but no one can enter. If one listens outside the deep notes of the gong and the sounds of men's voices can still be heard. They inter their dead. About their future home they are most explicit. After death they believe that the deceased go into the large hill whence man first emerged ; this they say is the land of the dead."*^

These two cases suggest the possibility of a genetic relationship between cave disposal and interment, but the scarcity of evidence and the possibility of the existence of other correspondences connected with cave-disposal make it quite impossible to decide one way or the other at the present. Probably the question will have to be decided in regions other than Indonesia.

Stone disposal. — In some parts of Indonesia there is the custom of using stone in the construction of graves ; in one case indeed the dead are put in stone urns. The Kabui Naga have already been mentioned as placing their dead in a cave hollowed out of the side of a hill. They also have the practice of interring their dead, and in this case a flat stone is placed on the grave, or else an upright stone is placed standing on it.^^ In the case in which the dead are placed in a cave, the opening is filled up with stones.^^ The Tangkhul Naga inter their dead, the grave having a top dressing of stones.^^ Again, the Paiwan of Formosa inter their dead under the house and fill the grave with stones.^^ The people of Minahassa place their dead in stone urns which are put, partly in the ground, behind the house.^*

49 T. H. Lewin, The Hill Tracts of Chittagong, Calcutta, 1869, pp. 95, 97.

^^loc. cit., and Brown, op. cit., p. 106. ' ^^ M'Culloch, op. cit., p. 52.

by the Tangkhul Nagas," Jour. Roy. Asiatic Soc. Straits Branch. New Sen, iv., 1909, p. 37 et seq.
 * ^Rev. W. Pettigrew, "Kathi Kasham. The soul-departure feast as practised

^•^A. Fischer, Streifzuge durch Formosa, 1909, pp. 244-5; Davidson, Formosa,

P- 575-

Zeit. f. Ethn., vii., 1875, p. 259; S. A. Buddingh, op. cit., p. 51 ; L. Mang- indaan, "Oud Tondano," Tijd. taal land- en volk., xx., 1864, p. 364.
 * Riedel, " Ueber die Tiwukas oder steineren Graben in der (Minahassa,"