Page:Native Tribes of South-East Australia.djvu/466

440 belief in the existence of the human spirit after death, as a ghost, which is able to communicate with the living when they sleep. It finds its way to the sky-country, where it lives in a land like the earth, only more fertile, better watered, and plentifully supplied with game.

The Murup, Yambo, Bulabong, or by whatever name it is known, represents during life the self-consciousness of the individual. Its apparent ability to leave the body during sleep naturally leads to the further belief that death is merely the permanent disability to return to the body, produced by the evil magic of some enemy. Thus it seems that the belief has arisen that the individual continues to exist after death, although usually invisible to the living.

This feeling gives rise to the reluctance to speak of the dead, which seems to be universal among the tribes dealt with here, and especially to do so by name. This applies equally to the living as to the dead, since a knowledge of the personal name would enable an enemy, as they put it, to "catch" its owner by evil magic. But the reluctance to name the dead arises, it seems, out of a fear of the anger of the deceased.

The following is a good illustration of this feeling. One of the Kurnai was spoken to about a man who was dead, and in doing so his name was used. The man addressed looking round uneasily, said, "Do not do that; he might hear you and kill me."

This feeling exists in the tribes known to me. A few instances will serve as examples. The Jajaurung, of the Upper Loddon River, called the human spirit or ghost Ku-it-gil. Stanbridge mentions this in referring to their reluctance to name the dead. It was supposed that doing so excited the malignity of the spirit of the departed, which hovered upon the earth for a time, and ultimately went towards the setting sun. One of the Jajaurung told me that the Kuitgil is the same name as the Murup of the Wurunjerri. Among the Geawe-gal the name of a deceased