76 GEORGE D-S-DUNBAR ON 



the grave and a fowl at home. The pig's liver is burnt and four pieces of flesh 

 are put on sticks near the grave The fowl is hung on a stick near the grave. For a 

 year some one goes daily and tends the fire and gives the dead a portion of food. 



When building a log bridge over a stream near Riga in 19 13 a man broke his 

 leg and died from the shock. That night all Riga turned out and, scattering over 

 the spur on which this big village is built, with waving torches and shouts and the 

 beating of sticks, drove away the evil spirits, Uyus , responsible for the death of their 

 fellow- villager. The twinkling lights clustering and separating on the black hill side 

 made a most effective scene from our camp across the narrow valley. Every house- 

 hold not only drove away the demons with sticks and shouts and the waving 

 of torches, but threw ashes and dust into the air to protect themselves from the 

 further malevolence of the spirits they were attempting to disperse : and then the dead 

 man, and such of his possessions as he may want on his long last journey, were 

 carried down to the burial ground by the water. It is, I am told, the custom of the 

 Abors to take the dead down hill, to bury them. The word Uyu always seems to me 

 remarkably descriptive of a spirit they believe to be not unlike a bat; one 

 can almost hear the beating of his wings. I was told in Rotung that, where a man is 

 buried, a wild boar comes out of the ground, and the scourge of dysentery falls on 

 anyone who eats the flesh of this animal, an act they would regard as cannibalism. 



In order that the corpse will undubitably be buried in the usual posture that 

 obtains (so I have found) as far west as the Subansiri Daflas, it appears customary 

 among some communities (such as Komsing) to force the knees of the dying up to 

 their chins for fear lest rigor should set in and harden the body directly life is extinct. 

 The dead are always buried, so far as I have been able to gather, with their faces 

 towards the south and their heads towards the west. 



The custom of making offerings to the dead is of exceptional interest. It is older 

 even than the early graves of Egyptian civilization, for it is as old as the hopes and 

 fears of man. The sacrifice of some animal, so that its spirit may accompany the 

 soul of its owner into the unknown, has its counterpart in the hetacombs of slaves 

 that heralded the passing of an ancient king and in the sati of India, and is echoed in the 

 presence of the soldier's charger in the military funerals of the West. The setting aside 

 of a definite portion of the funeral banquet for the soul of the departed is to be expected 

 from a people who firmly believe in the after-life of both men and animals But the 

 main interest is found in the idea underlying the gifts of inanimate objects, rice and 

 apong, cooking utensils and moni , his bow and arrows, and his dao. They are not 

 placed there to enrich a tomb, as, in the days of mediaeval chivalry, the harness and 

 weapons of the Black Prince were thus displayed These necessities of life are for the 

 use of the dead man beyond the grave and, possibly without in the least realizing that 

 he does so, the hill man attributes spirits to these inanimate objects, that pass 

 through the gate of death with the soul of that which had life. Tylor ' quotes from 



I " Primitive Culture, ' ' Vol. I, 479-483 ; see also the pages that follow for a discussion of what may be the actual 

 Abor view (a view of course that is common to his neighbours). 



