[Note: this transcription was produced by an automatic OCR engine]

DEATH AND DISPOSAL OF THE DEAD 539
nimorot ar resvages mahzs ve binggen (“The thinking that his
friend is dead is great within him, he meditates on him, and men
do not speak unto him as yet "). One exprssion of this grief
and desolation is a repugnance for any acts which are intimately
associated with the memory of the intense bond of affection which
united him to the deceased. In particular he is loth to eat,
anything belonging to or in any way connected with his dead
friend. Seeing a pig which had belonged to the latter, the
survivor thinks : “ If he were alive it is we who would eat this
pig together; but he is dead now, let those who are his enemies
feast on it." One native expressed the attitude by saying that
when he looked at the pig he thought “ it was the dead man."
On the same principle, if a man have two friends who are not
friends of each other, then after'his death these two men will
avoid giving each other any gift in memory of the deceased. Such
a gift would rouse anger and anguish in the recipient's bosom, and
he might and, indeed, frequently would, shoot the giver, because
of the anger which he felt towards him on account of the gift.
This general principle acts most intensely where food belonging
to the dead man is concerned. Thus the clansmen of the deceased
would not, in general, make gifts of yams and other vegetables
to his great friends in other clans. Were they to do so, they
would be liable to be shot at or poisoned by the other. This
comes out very clearly in the annual ceremony of the Neerew
Rahulemdz when yams are presented in memory of those who
have died to some person belonging to a village with which the
deceased had not been friendly} If two men who were friends
were also friends of a third who was dead, and one of them made
the other a gift of a yam or pig in the name of the dead man, the
other would sit down and weep bitterly, saying: “ Why have
you done this? If you were not my friend I would not let it
pass, I would shoot you; but you are my friend. Why have
you done this? " '
The ceremonial connected with the acceptance of the pig,
described above, has, when witnessed, all the appearance of
spontaneity. Nevertheless, the whole succession, from the
greatest friend to the ï¬Årst non-friend of the deceased, is known
or at least prepared beforehand. The general method appears
to be as follows. The greatest friend of the dead man, who is
1 See Chapter XXII.
F l