48 Melanesian Religions

V. Lanternari

The inhabitants of Melanesia traditionally gain their livelihood mainly by horticulture, with gardens of yams and taro, and in the coastal areas by fishing. Pig-raising is also practised in a number of isles and in the interior region of New Guinea.

Knowledge of the necessary rituals is often passed on from father to son or, in matrilineal societies, from maternal uncle to nephew. In the Fiji group there was a class of hereditary priests who officiated at ancestor cult ceremonies and became possessed. In this state they spoke with the voice of the spirit and were consulted as oracles. Sometimes, as in the Solomon Islands, ancestral spirits are believed to inhabit fish or other ani­mals. Among some tribes, they are believed to inhabit their skulls which are recovered some time after death. They are moulded with coloured resins and clays, then they are collected in men’s houses or placed on a figure modelled in clay and fibre (malekula), or in a special model-hut (New Georgia). The skulls actually represent the deceased persons. Their power is considered to be favourable or harmful according to the proper or improper fulfilling of ethical and ritual duties by their clan heirs.

On the northern coastal region of Irian the korwar figures are a notable form of religious art production. Korwar is the wooden or stone statue of a deceased forefather. Some time after death a statuette is made by the relatives of the deceased, into which his soul is then lured. The very skull of the departed person may be placed on a headless korwar statue. Among the Fly River and Purari River tribes and in New Britain the frontal portion of the skull was modelled in the form of a mask. Generally speaking, masks are worn by initiates during sacred ceremonies, particularly in the initiation rites. Actually, the uninitiated believe that the masked performers are spirits and regard them with awe and terror. The initiates, though conscious of the deception, nevertheless feel a sort of identification with the spirits they represent.

Sometimes the cult of the dead, together with the males’ initiation rites and the New Year fertility feast, merges into one single multivalent ceremony, in which an atmosphere of symbolic death­regeneration is produced. This ceremony is more generally concerned with the adolescent life crisis of puberty, with the growing of crops and with propitiation for the whole tribe’s destiny in its relationship with the cosmic order. The Nanga ceremony of Fiji is an example of this kind of complex ritual. On this occasion, the young novices are led to the sacred stone platform in the centre of the village. Here they meet an awesome group of actors whose arrival is announced by the sound of sacred flutes representing the ghosts’ voices. The actors-initiates are masked and disguised in frighten­ing apparel; they threaten the novices in terrifying mimes. Frightened by the scene, the novices ritually die; but after some time they are reborn and collectively recognised as adult members of the society. Thus the return of the dead is dramatically represented as a symbolic rite of human and cosmic regeneration. Offerings of crops and meat are produced for the spirits from the heaps of yams and the swine which have been prepared for the celebra­tion.

Another and somewhat different example of the merging of initiation rites with mortuary ceremonies and with a general regeneration feast is the Malanggan ritual in New Ireland. The name itself, Malanggan, is also shared by special kinds of ceremonial objects of great artistic interest. The Malanggans are either intricate, wide horizontal carv­ings, or meticulously executed multifigured, vertical carved poles. Both types are embellished by printed patterns of a stylistically impressive effect. The Malanggan carvings are solemnly presented by adult initiates to the novices during the initiation rites, which are performed on the occasion of the great Malanggan celebrations in memory of the departed.

In Melanesia, the spirits of recently deceased persons are believed to exercise individually a direct influence on the living, while the spirits of those who died in the more remote past are collectively evoked on the occasion of periodical rituals. On these occasions they are honoured with food offerings and particularly the first-fruits. Then they are formally and vigorously expelled and invited to go back to their abode. The inhabitants of many of the Melanesian islands believe that the ghosts have their dwelling on a smaller isle in the west.

This belief becomes relevant with reference to the newer development of syncretistic movements generally called Cargo-cults. They have emerged among the inhabitants of a great number of islands, in response to the arrival of the white peoples’ boats with their surprising products (cargo), so different from anything the natives had ever seen. The initial identification of the white people with the spirits of the dead was favoured by the traditional mythical belief concerning the western abode of the ghosts and their maritime journeys. People were easily induced to mythologise about the cargo and to ascribe its creation to a spiritual world with which the white man was in contact.

As for the traditional ceremonies, in which the spirits of the deceased are honoured with every kind of offering, we conclude that through the ritual activity a profitable psychic equilibrium is fostered by the people for themselves. Through the rite, in fact, a mutual giving-receiving relationship is established between the living and the supernatural powers. Further, by paying homage to the spirits people hope to obtain the practical reward of good fortune for themselves.

On the whole, ritual activity in Melanesia generally revolves around three main critical moments of the individual’s or commun­ity’s life: death, initiation and the New Year. Initiation rites are of two main types: initiation of all boys into adult status, which is typical of New Guinea, Bismarck Archipelago, the Solomon Islands and New Caledonia; and initia­tion into age-grades or secret societies (the ‘degree-taking’ rites), which are common in New Britain (Duk-duk), New Ireland (Igiet), Florida (Matam- bala), Banks Islands (Tamale) and northern New Hebrides (Qatu). The initi­ated are ritually and collectively instructed by the elders on their moral duties, myths, ancestors’ deeds, the general prescriptions and taboos and sometimes also magical rites. They are supposed to communicate, during the rituals, with the spirits through the voice of the sacred flutes or of the bull-roarer.

For initiated men the revelation of cult secrets to women or to the uninitiated is regarded as a serious breach of tradition. Since the observance of the general moral code is imposed on the initiated men, an outstanding function of the initiation rites is to ensure a correct and harmoni­ous proceeding of the social life. Contraventions meet not only with human blame and censure, but also with automatic spiritual punishment such as sickness and misfortune, attributed to the intervention of the spirits.

In recent times European contact has brought about a decline of the traditional ways of life, mostly in the religious, socio-ethical and economic spheres. Christian missionaries have intervened against initia­tion rituals and other feasts, which they regarded as unacceptable manifesta­tions of paganism. The forced abandonment of customary ritual activities, the attraction of modem cultural models, the diffusion of alcoholic beverages and the changes in the old value orientations caused by the new forms of economic enterprise introduced by the Europeans, have produced the col­lapse of old spiritual sanctions, and the deterioration of moral standards.

So far we have considered Melanesian religion mostly in the phenomenological contexts of death and initiation. Both are tightly interwoven with a third mythico-ritual context: the religion of the New Year. A very well-known example of the New Year feast in traditional Melanesian societies is the Milamala feast of the Trobriand Islanders, as it is described by Malinowski in his classical work, Coral Gardens. The Trobrian- ders celebrate the Milamala after the principal harvest of the yam crop has been completed, in August. The celebration lasts one lunar month; its name is shared by the month itself, and contains the notion of abundance (malia). On this occasion heaps of yams are ostentatiously distributed in the village, while the store-huts are full of the new tubers. Milamala is primarily a joyful celebration of the products of cultivation. Nevertheless, the newly produced yam crop is taboo. It cannot be eaten before the end of the ceremony. A fund­amental aspect of the ceremony, in fact, is the return of the spirits of the dead (balotna) to the village, en masse. The hungry spirits are welcomed and an offer­ing of the first-fruits is given to them. Heaps of yams are prepared on special platforms along the paths of the village, which the spirits are supposed to visit every night. They eat the essence of the yams. And only then, when the offer­ings have been accepted, is the consumption of the new food permitted.

This ritual symbolically underlines the acknow­ledgement of the spirits’ ownership of the cultivated plants and of food in general. The offering of the first-fruits to them, together with the imposing of the food taboo on the living, clearly signifies the restitution of property to its spiritual owners and the symbolic annulment of the yearly work of cultivation and of the product itself, as if a sacrilege had been perpetrated against the supernatural powers, particularly the spirits of the dead. In the final part of the feast—which is at the same time a feast of the crops and of the dead—the balotna spirits are ritually expelled by a solemn declaration, and people then indulge in eating, dancing and sexual licence.

This ritual behaviour—the celebration of crops, the food taboo, the ceremonial return of the dead, the first-fruits offering to them and the final expulsion of the spirits and the orgy—is observable, in more or less the same forms, among the majority of the Melanesian peoples, whose belief systems and culture have been examined by scholars. Moreover, from a more general point of view, it is worth pointing out here that among practically all societies of primitive or archaic cultivators, a structural inter­play can be observed between the ideological sphere pertinent to cultivation and production, and the one pertinent to the world of the dead. Among these societies the cult of the dead is of great significance and in one particular form this cult is represented by the eschatological complex of the return of the dead viewed as the forerunners of a general regeneration.

Further, it is reasonable to assume that the New Year feast of the Melanesians can be interpreted as the ritualised expression of the feeling of a link between the tilling of the earth—mother of plants—and the violation of the ancestors’ seat—the earth itself where the dead are buried—so that the rites of the temporary food taboo, of welcoming the balotna spirits once a year, of the first-fruits offering to them, reveal the significance of a symbolic and articulate action viewed as expiating the inevitable guilt com­mitted. In this way the fear that in the future food production may fail is overcome. The final feasting, the joyful and frantic indulging in eating and dancing and in the sexual orgy after the expiatory role of the previous rites and after the expulsion of the spirits, play the complementary role of clearing the way for the community to proceed trustfully and joyfully towards the new cycle of life and of agricultural activity. The Melanesian New Year feast, therefore, can be regarded as paradigmatic of how an eschatological world­view is expressed by a ritual drama in which the resurrection of the dead is represented in its living and sensible reality.

By way of contrast, among those tribes who practise pig-raising, ritual life centres on a solemn pig festival, which is carried out at intervals of several years. The pig festival is substantially a rite of social promotion, within the context of the dynamic competition between indi­viduals who aim to acquire social prestige and to emerge as leaders (‘big men’), or who wish to maintain the role and power they have previously acquired. Ambitious men gain or maintain personal power by arranging and managing a great pig festival. The procedure is based, firstly, on the ability of wives to procure and rear as many pigs as possible, within a period of several years. It is also based on the ability to mobilise kin, friends and clients of the candidate for leadership, in order to obtain their co-operation in the rearing of a great number of pigs. When the candidate or ‘big man’ believes that the right moment has arrived to display his riches, in the form of all the pigs amassed by himself and by his clients, the pig festival begins. It takes the form of a tremendous fight to kill the animals, and of a huge sacrifice of hundreds of swine. This sacrifice has a number of mythical references. For example, according to a Kiwai myth in New Guinea, man and pig are identified and the killing of a pig is at the basis of death for humankind. That is the reason why the pigs are not killed by their personal owners, but by others. The religious character of the feast is also marked by the ritual dedication of the animals to the spirits or to mythical beings as the culture-heroes, or (among the Marind-anim of New Guinea) to the swine-Dema. The Dema are mythical beings of the Marind-anim; all natural objects, plants, animals and human­kind itself derive from the Dema.

The social function of the pig festival is to create or to re-establish the special rank of‘big men’ who exercise religious, social and political power within the federation of the affiliated kin, friends and clients who have co-operated with them. The principle of reciprocity is central to the relationship between leader and co-operators. The former is supposed and is even obliged to return the favours he received from the latter. Where he is unable to fulfil his obligations, he loses his power and rank. On the other hand, each ‘big man’ has also to face competition from every other ambitious individual who may at any time try to rise in rank and status by arranging his own pig festival. We see from the Melanesian pig festival that myth and ritual are interwoven with the dynamics of the social structure. The pig festival includes in its structure also some of the same rites as the New Year festival, such as the offerings to the spirits, the initiation of young men and such beliefs as the return of the dead.

A final observation is worth adding: the sacrificial massacre of hundreds of pigs is followed by what amounts to a frenetic bout of eating. The excessive consumption of meat on this occasion can only be understood and rationalised if seen within the framework of a dialectical relationship between ordinary and extraordinary behaviour, and particularly between profane time and sacred time, that is to say between daily life and feast. Actually, the waste of goods and food in the feast is one of its structural rules, since the purpose of the feast is to express the reversal of ordinary everyday conditions, relationships and situations. Thus daily poverty and hardship are denied—in strongly symbolic language—by the exaggerated consumption of food in the feast.

A concept widely diffused in Melanesia is mana. According to classical authorities such as Rivers, Hocart and Codrington, itis at the very heart of most religious beliefs and practices, and also of the world of magic. Mana is a supernatural and impersonal power or influence, which operates in and influences all the events or phenomena which remain outside the ordinary competence or domain of men. Though impersonal, mana is always activated and directed by certain kinds of people. Originally it belonged to all kinds of spirits and ghosts, and to certain individuals. Even some inanimate objects possess mana because they are inhabited by a spirit. These objects are characterised by unusual and strange forms. In New Britain the sorcerers have power from mana to cause illness and even death. In Guadalcanal (Solomon Islands) a sorcerer may obtain mana from a ghost (tindalo) inhabiting a special bird, naroha. The sorcerer goes to a place where that bird can be found and asks him for mana. Among the Fijians the mana is associated with ghosts, spirits, chiefs and medicines. In many tribes all around Melanesia the spirits of the dead are held to be the principal sources of mana. Bones of deceased persons, for instance, are employed to build arrows in Lepers Island. The effect should be to bestow mana on the arrow and to get success in striking the prey. Bones or teeth are also employed to make charms. In New Guinea the belief in mana exists only among the south­western and Papua-Gulf tribes.

Since a rigid distinction between magic and religion is fundamentally doubtful, we can consider here some of the so-called magi­cal practices that are common almost everywhere in Melanesia. As is well known, magic is aimed at preventing individual or collective calamities of every kind. Malinowski’s idea was that magic intervenes in those circum­stances and situations regarded as being beyond human control. He under­lined a series of magical operations of the Trobrianders in the preparation of canoes for their kula expeditions, in order to ensure the success of the expedition itself. Magical practices are also carried out, he wrote, on yam farms, in order to ensure that the plants grow well, and to protect the plantations from the intrusions of wild pigs.

A number of traditional practices, of magico- religious significance, especially head-hunting, cannibalism and human sacrifice, were suppressed after the arrival of Europeans. Head-hunting was originally practised for the purpose of acquiring and displaying skulls, a mark of warriors’ virtue. Among the Marind-anim of New Guinea, once a year a head-hunting expedition was organised against the enemy. All the able­bodied members of the tribe participated in it. A special hut was prepared where the skulls were placed as glorious trophies and as bringers of new force to the tribe. The heads were also used in the fertility rites, as a magical source of vitality.

Cannibalism was practised by some of the tribes inhabiting the smaller Melanesian islands and New Guinea, mainly in the initiation ceremonies. Among the Kiwai people a ritual prescription for novices in the initiation rituals was to kill an enemy as a test of courage. Cannibalism followed on this occasion, the principal purpose of it being to seize the force and vitality of the victim. Human sacrifice occurred sporadi­cally, mainly in the Solomon group, on such occasions as the launching of a canoe.

The suppression of certain traditional customs after contact with Europeans, the introduction of new cultural models from the Whites and the appearance of the European ships off the coasts from the end of the last century, profoundly affected the world-view of the indigenous inhabitants and the same disturbing effect was produced by the arrival of the first planes in the open glades of the forest in New Guinea. A messianic and millenarian atmosphere soon began to pervade all parts of the region. Ancient mythological topics, particularly those of the periodical return of the dead, were revived, reshaped and adjusted to new configurations. What was tradi­tionally, in the yearly feast of the dead, simply the periodic expectation of the return of the dead and of a temporary renewal of life, now, in the new cults, became the enthusiastic expectation of a definitive and eschatological regeneration of the world.

This happened on a great number of islands and among many peoples, and it gave rise to a completely new process in the local history: the rise of millenarian Cargo-cults. In other instances the myth of a culture-hero of the past was revived, for instance in the case of Manseren Manggundi in the Schouten Islands of New Guinea. In every case, both the spirits of the dead and the culture-hero were held up as messianic heralds of a new era of good fortune and blessing. According to the myth, Manggundi was a beneficent, popular hero reputed to have access to the source of all riches and foods. He also had power to lead men to the threshold of the Golden Era by bestowing on them the riches he controlled. But the myth also narrated that men did not acknowledge him when he first came among them, so that, hurt and discouraged, the hero departed, promising none the less to return. The myth is a clear ‘rationalised’ representation of the poor conditions of life of the aborigines, and also an expression of a longing for a better future.

The myth of Manggundi was revived more recently, when in 1938 a number of prophets established millenarian movements. They announced the regeneration of the world, combining in their teachings the traditional ideas of abundance and immortality with the new idea of emancipation from colonialism. Inspired by dreams, they preached the advent of a Utopia (koreri) marked by liberty and riches.

In Dutch New Guinea another prophetic cult was created among the Muju people in 1913 by Karoem. This prophet was visited by a spirit, who showed him how to lead the Maju out of their backward condition to one of wealth, well-being and fulfilment. All taxes and tributes imposed by the administration, and all contributions to mission churches, would be abolished. A great city would rise up, including a factory, a mint and shops. A huge ship laden with goods for the inhabitants would arrive at the port. The dead would come to life. Karoem was arrested by order of the Dutch government, but his prophecies spread far and wide among the Muju people who tried, in public assemblies, to contact the spirits in order to prepare for the advent of the New Day. In many cases, as one can see from the examples we give, these movements pave the way for the more or less organised expressions of socio-political ferment and discontent. Always, they are a response to the critical experience of culture shock, de­rived from the encounter with ‘modem’ and attractive but frustrating forms of civilisation.

One of the best-known examples of Cargo-cults is the so-called ‘Vailala Madness’ of the Orokolo tribes on the Gulf of Papua. It arose soon after the First World War in response to European influence and missionary preaching. The founder, Evara, was visited by the spirits. In a state of trance, characterised by frantic excitement which very quickly affected the assembled crowd, and which the whites viewed as manifestations of collective hysteria, Evara prophesied the arrival of a ship guided by spirits of the ancestors. They would bring the cargo of rice, meal, tobacco and guns for the people. The cargo, the prophet said, did not belong to the whites but to the Melanesians. The former, in fact, would be miraculously expelled from the island and their cargo would then pass into local hands. The psychic and physical excitement which spread among the prophet’s followers is one very typical feature of this cult, and another is its millenarian notion of the return of the dead. This concept, while based on traditional belief, was developed and revived in new ways after Evara had heard a white missionary deliver a sermon on the resurrection of the dead. Thus we can see the direct influence of Christianity on the rise of the Melanesian messianic cults in modem times. It is important to note, however, that European Christianity as it was and still is preached by missionaries was modified in the light of local needs and hopes. For example, in this case the biblical concept of the Resur­rection was reinterpreted, adapted and made relevant to expectations and material requirements of the indigenous population.

Furthermore, the founder, Evara, introduced special rituals and insisted on the observance of certain ethical and moral norms. He commanded his followers to attend the feasts in honour of the departed; he ordered them not to steal, not to commit adultery and to observe Sunday rest. Special ‘temples’ were erected for worship, the main purpose of which was to facilitate the speedy arrival of the cargo, and the regeneration of the world. Some followers called themselves ‘men of Jesus Christ’, and were at least nominal Christians. Meanwhile so great was their faith in the immediate arrival of the miraculous cargo and in the dispensation of goods in the Golden Age that they abandoned all those agricultural and commercial pursuits which traditionally gave them a livelihood. Although desirous of the material benefits that Europeans had to offer, Evara and his followers were totally opposed to white domination. After a number of incidents, the colonial administration intervened and arrested several chiefs of the movement. As Peter Worsley points out, Vailala Madness expressed both the eagerness of these people to possess European goods and at the same time their desire to expel the whites. The followers of the Cargo-cults not only abandoned work, but sometimes even destroyed their gardens and killed their pigs, indulging in dancing and feasting. They placed offerings on the graves of the dead, and in some cases they constructed roads for the spirits of the dead who were supposed to come from the sea.

Some recent experiences from the Second World War were also incorporated into some cults. For instance the members of the Marching Rule, a Cargo-cult which spread in the Solomon Islands, came to expect the arrival of the Americans whom they viewed as the heralds of a this-worldly ‘paradise’. Other prophets took rational initiatives of a social and reformative character. Among these were Yali in the Madang District of New Guinea (1946-50), and Paliau in Manus Island, Great Admiralty Islands (1946-54).

Generally speaking, then, in the Cargo-cults we can see the adaptation and development of traditional myths and rituals found in the great yam feasts and elsewhere: the idea of the return of the dead, of the boat of the dead, the ritual suspension of work and the offerings to the spirits. The socio-culture crisis brought about by the disturbing presence of the Europeans, the expectations of the periodic return of the dead and of renewal of life, typical of the yearly traditional feasts, becomes in the new cults the expectation and the symbolic foundation of a definitive and eschatological renewal of the world. Nevertheless, in spite of their mythico-ritual basis, which is taken as their starting-point, the cargo-movements are often vehi­cles of modernisation and social improvement.

Further Reading

Burridge, K.O. Mambu, a Melanesian Millenium (Methuen, London, 1960)

----- New Heaven, New Earth (Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1971)

Brunton, R. ‘Misconstrued Order in Melanesian Religion’, Man, 1 (1980), pp. 112-28

Lanternari, V. ‘Origini storiche dei culti profetici melanesiani’, Studi e Materiali di Storia delle Religioni (1956), pp. 31-86

----- The Religions of the Oppressed. A Studv of Modern Messianic Cults (Alfred Knopf, New York, 1963)

----- La Grande Festa. Vita rituale e sistemi di produzione nelle società traditional (Liguori Editore, Bari, 1976)

Lawrence, P. Road Belong Cargo (Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1964) Sahlins, M. ‘Poor man, rich man, big-man, chief. Political Types in Melanesia and

Polynesia’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, no. 5 (1953)

Worsley, P. The Trumpet Shall Sound. A Study on Cargo-cults in Melanesia (MacGibbon and Kee, London, 1957)

Wagner, R. ‘Ritual as Communication: Order, Meaning and Secrecy in Melanesian

Initiation Rites’, Annual Review of Anthropology, XIII (1984)