Funeral are accompanied by loud howling and lamentations, which begin as soon as the sick person's case is deemed hopeless. The corpse is placed in a sitting posture, the elbows on the knees and the head resting on both hands, this being the usual mode of sitting, especially on solemn occasions. The interment occurs very soon after death, and is made in a cave, to which the whole kraal, howling and with passionate gestures of grief, bring the body. The deceased is not removed from his lint through the ordinary door, but a special opening is made in the rear wall, probably from the idea that he is thereby prevented from returning—a custom which we have also seen to exist in other parts of the globe (p. 224).
When the corpse is interred and the grave securely closed, the mourn ers return to the hut and squat in a circle, while the elder of the village sprinkles all, men and women, with his urine and strews over them ashes from the hearth of the deceased. Friends then bring sheep to be slaughtered, and the eldest son of the deceased wears about his neck a part of the entrails, sprinkled with buchn, until they rot off. Who ever has no sheep to be killed shaves his hair, both as an offering and as a sign of mourning, in such manner that the crown and a broad cir cular stripe in the midst of the hair are bare. The next day the whole kraal is taken down and transferred to another location, only the house of the deceased being left, so as not to anger his ghost, and the lamentations are repeated before the house for six or eight days. The manner of burial among the Bushmen is similar: they also leave the place of death, but they burn the hut of the departed. Both Hottentots and Bushmen have great fear of the spirits of the dead.
Religious Belief: Deities and J1) was a serious error to assume that neither the Hottentots nor the Bushmen had a belief in deities. Both are markedly religious peoples, but their conceptions are not clearly defined or are not understood by us, and at the time of the discovery they were no longer understood by themselves. The supreme god of the Hottentots was Tstii-toab, and it is an evidence of his former importance that his worship was adopted by the Caffirs (Vanderkemp and Moffat). He brought men from heaven down to earth, and gave them all that is good. He rules over everything, and consequently bears the name of ruler, Tsui-llgoab. He is undoubtedly a personification of the vault of heaven, as among the Nama there is also found a myth about the great flood and the ship of clouds which brings white people and rich blessings. But the veneration of this god was afterward put in the background, as the whole conception of him was indistinct, and later he was looked upon merely as a powerful man or a wandering chieftain.
The Bushmen also believed in a masculine deity abiding, in heaven who gives all that is good, and especially victory, and whom they therefore wor shipped by dances before every war. They feared an evil deity, whom, accord ing to Kolbe, they venerated more than Tsui-llg,oab, and who takes a part in many of the myths. The San believed in a subterranean deity. The moon was highly venerated, and they honored her by nocturnal dances and songs, which were plaintive at the new moon, but joyous at the full moon. The mortality of men was associated with the moon: the moon ordered the hare to tell men how she herself dies and again arises, and that they should do likewise, but the hare omitted communicating, the news of the resurrection, and therefore man must die.
Whether we must recognize in the often-mentioned hero Heitsi-Eibib, who continually dies and comes to life, whose graves, large heaps of stone, no Hottentot passes by without adding another stone, and who is also represented as purely human,—whether we must recognize in him a personification of the moon or of the sun we leave an open question. He appears as an independent deity who brings blessings; and he fights with the hostile 11Ga 11Garip, who casts him into a dark ditch, from which he always returns, and into which he at length casts his enemy. A cave is also shown as his dwelling. In one myth he calls the water his grandfather's father, and everywhere the water-god was venerated; the Bushmen knew him by the name of Tu-sip, made offerings to him when searching for water, and implored him for blessings; and no Hottentot will cross a river without honoring him with dances and other ceremonies.
Spirits.—The number of inferior spirits is large. The stars receive peculiar veneration, especially the Pleiades, the Milky Way, Jupiter, the Southern Cross, etc., about which the Hottentots and the Bushmen relate many tales. They also venerate the large animals of the chase, especially lions, elephants, etc. If a Hottentot has killed any such, lie must undergo a religious purification; and the same becomes necessary for the whole kraal if they have slain several while hunting together. No Bushman dares utter the lion's name aloud at night; even during the day lie avoids pronouncing it, and in its place says " the boy with the beard " or uses some similar periphrasis. We have already spoken about the hare (p. 298), and in this connection we may mention the vari ous prohibitions of food found among these tribes. One tribe is for bidden to eat this animal, another that; and this custom is certainly founded on the fact that the tribes see in these animals respectively their guardian spirits.