n unfair advantage of him might have
been too strong to be resisted. But when his anger had had time to cool
down or he had departed for his long home, as ghosts generally do after
a reasonable time, the precautions taken to baffle his vengeance might
be safely relaxed. Perhaps, as I have already hinted, the reverence
which the Fijians felt for any man who had taken a human life, or at all
events the life of an enemy, may have partly sprung from a belief that
the slayer increased his own strength and valour either by subjugating
the ghost of his victim and employing it as his henchman, or perhaps
rather by simply absorbing in some occult fashion the vital energy of
the slain. This view is confirmed by the permission given to the killer
to assume the name of the killed, whenever his victim was a man of
distinguished rank;[721] for by taking the name he, according to an
opinion common among savages, assumed the personality of his namesake.

[Sidenote: Other funeral customs based on a fear of the ghost.]

The same fear of the ghost of the recently departed which manifested
itself, if my interpretation of the customs is right, in the treatment
of manslayers, seems to have imprinted itself, though in a more
attenuated form, on some of the practices observed by Fijian mourners
after a natural, not a violent, death.

[Sidenote: Persons who have handled a corpse forbidden to touch food.
Seclusion of grave-diggers.]

Thus all the persons who had handled a corpse were forbidden to touch
anything for some time afterwards; in particular they were strictly
debarred from touching their food with their hands; their victuals were
brought to them by others, and they were fed like infants by attendants
or obliged to pick up their food with their mouths from the ground. The
time during which this burdensome restriction lasted was different
according to the rank of the deceased: in the case of great chiefs it
lasted from two to ten months; in the case of a petty chief it did not
exceed one month; and in the case of a common person a taboo of not more
than four days sufficed. When a chief's principal wife did not follow
him to the other world by being strangled or buried alive, she might not
touch her own food with her hands for three months. When the mourners
grew tired of being fed like infants or feeding themselves like dogs,
they sent word to the head chief and he let them know that he would
remove the taboo whenever they pleased. Ac