Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 29, 1918.djvu/48

38 First, let us consider the abandonment of property. From the Old Stone Age to the present day we have evidence of a widespread custom of placing property in the grave or upon it. Food, weapons, utensils, clothing, ornaments, and the like may find a place there, as well as amulets and other objects of a magico-religious nature. The simplest motive for the act, in so far as it is not perhaps merely affectionate or honorific, as in the case of our own gift of flowers, seems to be an emotional shrinking from the use of the dead man's intimate personal belongings. Thus the Bantu express surprise that we should use them; the Zulu, according to Bishop Callaway, say explicitly that they are afraid to do so. This illustrates the sentiment of taboo in regard to the property of the dead, which is rendered dangerous by the mystic contagion of death. Such a sentiment affords in itself sufficient grounds for the custom of abandoning to the dead the property that was theirs in life. The customs of the Bathonga happen to show an instructive combination of the animistic with the pre-animistic attitude of mind. Certain articles, which have belonged to the dead man, are hung on trees till they are supposed to be purified, when they may be used again with impunity. Here, then, we have to do with a removable contagion. In the grave, however, other articles are buried for his use hereafter. It may be suggested that this represents the animistic development of the simpler conception of taboo. But if this indeed be so, and we may assume a similar transition of thought to have taken place elsewhere, it is obvious how easily the presence of these personal belongings in the grave may help to fill in