holy swine was an act of
piety. Men might be seen throwing down basketfuls of food before the
snouts of the worshipful pigs, and at the same time calling the
attention of the ancestral spirits to the meritorious deed. "Take
knowledge of me," they would cry, "ye who lie buried, our heads! I am
feeding this pig of yours." Finally, all the men who had taken part in
the ceremonies bathed together in the river, carefully cleansing
themselves from every particle of the black paint with which they had
been bedaubed. When the novices, now novices no more, emerged from the
water, the high priest, standing on the river bank, preached to them an
eloquent sermon on the duties and responsibilities which devolved on
them in their new position.[694]

[Sidenote: The intention of the initiatory rites seems to be to
introduce the young men to the ancestral spirits. The drama of death and
resurrection. The Fijian rites of initiation seem to have been imported
by Melanesian immigrants from the west.]

The general intention of these initiatory rites appears to be, as Mr.
Fison has said in the words which I have quoted, to introduce the young
men to the ancestral spirits at their sanctuary, to incorporate them, so
to say, in the great community which embraces all adult members of the
tribe, whether living or dead. At all events this interpretation fits in
very well with the prayers which are offered to the souls of departed
kinsfolk on these occasions, and it is supported by the analogy of the
New Guinea initiatory rites which I described in former lectures; for in
these rites, as I pointed out, the initiation of the youths is closely
associated with the conceptions of death and the dead, the main feature
in the ritual consisting indeed of a simulation of death and subsequent
resurrection. It is, therefore, significant that the very same
simulation figures prominently in the Fijian ceremony, nay it would seem
to be the very pivot on which the whole ritual revolves. Yet there is an
obvious and important difference between the drama of death and
resurrection as it is enacted in New Guinea and in Fiji; for whereas in
New Guinea it is the novices who pretend to die and come to life again,
in Fiji the pretence is carried out by initiated men who represent the
ancestors, while the novices merely look on with horror and amazement at
the awe-inspiring spectacle. Of the two forms of ritual the New Guinea
one is probably truer to the original purpos