4o8 s.A. xativp:s and primitive folk custom. 



The position is not that of sleep; so discomfortable a position 

 could hardlv find favour with the most contrarily built savage. 

 It would, of course, be easy to explain if the position had been 

 originally a sitting- one, as to-day among the xA.runta of Australia 

 or among our own Bantu, as will be presently explained; we 

 might say that the lying posture preserved also the crouching 

 one which is familiar to us in natives squatting, only that the 

 dead sitting figure has been overturned, and lies as it \yas 

 crouching. Unfortunately the lying, trussed up position 

 appears to be the older, and may have suggested the later 

 crouching attitude, but cannot be explained by it, but as to the 

 direction in which the corpse lies, there is a practical consensus 

 of opinion on the importance o'f points of the compass. Alost 

 seem to lie facing east as we Christians do, and, I am told, the 

 Malavs, for example, in a loculus at the bottom of the grave, 

 due originally, no doul)t, to dislike of earth falling on an un- 

 coffinedbody. But burying towards the east does not necessarily 

 mean that the extended l^ody lies west with feet to east, for 

 when the body is extended, it can be laid on its side, for 

 example; then if the face turn to east, the body will lie north 

 and south; or the body may be sitting crouched up knees to 

 chin, as Basuto bury, or as we say above, lying with the legs 

 more or less bent, like the skeleton found at Mentone on its 

 left side, as also in Egyptian neolithic graves, and the head, at 

 least, still to the left even under the xi.-xiii dynasties; or again 

 like the skeleton discovered in I90<S in France on its right side 

 wath cheek on elbow. In Palestine, too, a woman was found 

 at Gezer with head to left and legs drawn up. though the body 

 was lying on the back. 



Now the Wanyamwezi of Central Africa are said to face their 

 native village and the Arunta of Australia their camp in the 

 Alcheringa or dreamland of the ancestors. So when primitive 

 Europeans face the east, one is tempted to think that they 

 preserve a tradition of their original home being in that 

 direction. This is more likely than the sentiment of facing the 

 sunrise, which would seem rather advanced for them. And the 

 suggestion is reinforced by the Bantu custom of facing 

 Ntsoanatsatsi, the hole whence the black men came out. There 

 IS a tradition placing it in the east, but also in the north, that is. 

 it was to the east of them when they were in Central Africa, to 

 the north of their present seat. Hence the dead is buried facing- 

 north in a sitting posture, with his face uncovered towards the 

 eastern sun (that it may strike his right temple propitiously), 

 with fur cap on and staff in hand and knife and grains of Kaffir 

 corn, and seeds of pumpkin and melon, immemorial food of the 

 race (philologv showing us that the original Bantu had names 

 for them which have descended in differing forms to the dialects 

 of to-day), and a wisp of weeds to show that man nuist still 

 work bevond the grave to eradicate them, and the reed with 

 which the grave's depth was measured to use in roofing the 

 house which the dead will build yonder for his children. (Souls 

 are supposed, by the bye, to live among the reed and in Zulu 

 man is supposed to have appeared from them. Hence, 

 perhaps, the reed stuck before the door of the hut to warn that 



