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

DEATH mo DISPOSAL or run DEAD 579
Each man goes to the wut maul, hangs up his basket
makes his prayer alone. When the ï¬Årst returns thence,
goes, and so on in turn. If a man has a son who is either
boy or grow-n up, the two will go together and the father
the prayer. Curiously enough any request made in the
on this occasion must not have any reference to women,
desire for children, or other cognate matters. The puddings,
their nininin, are presumably for the consumption of
e ghost, but after a rmsangsang held some years ago, when all
puddings had been offered and everybody had dispersed to
go to bed, one old man of the place was spied quietly munching
away at the puddings which he had taken from where they hung
in the wut maul. This was not regarded as a sacriligeous act ;
the incident ended in general mirth and nothing was done to
the old fellow. .
, Animal sacriï¬Åce to the dead is unknown in Lambumbu, but
in Laravat a pig is sometimes killed with a stick or hammer and
the carcase burnt, so that the ghost will scent it and come to
eat it. In the same way a pig is offered up to placate a ghost
who is believed to be causing sickness among the living,
/ A vcry intelligent native of Lamhumbu, who was something
at a sceptic, remarked to Deacon that the people were " cranky â€ù
iii their attitude towards the ghosts of the dead. He said that
they are very afraid of them and do everything to make them
depart and not trouble the living, and at the same time during
havfll nsangnsang they go and pray to thcm to “ make all things
good ", to make them strong, their children strong, their gardens
good. He pointed out that if you are afraid ot something because
it»"is going to kill or eat you it is inconsistent to pray to it to
make you strong.
, The Land of the Dead
In Lambumbu and Lagalag the souls of the dead are supposed
to go to a region called Iambi (Lambumbu) or Hambi (Lagalag).
This is very probably the same word as the Seniang Embw
which, it will be remembered, is one of the names for the Land
of the Dead in that district, and this probability combined with
the beliefs as to the route which a ghost takes to reach Iambi
(Haxnbi) provides a very close link between the cultures of