There are towns and villages, rivers,
mountains, bush, plantations, and markets.
When the sun rises here
it sets in Srahmandazi. It has its pleasures and its pains, not
necessarily retributive or rewarding, but dim. All souls in it grow
forward or backward into the prime of life and remain there, some
informants say; others say that each inhabitant remains there at the
same age as he was when he quitted the world above. This latter
view is most like the South West one. The former is possibly only
an attempt to make Srahmandazi into a heaven in conformation with
Christian teaching, which it is not, any more than it is a hell.
I have much curious information regarding its flora and fauna. A
great deal of both is seemingly indigenous, and then there are the
souls of great human beings, the Asrahmanfw, and the souls of all
the human beings, animals, and things sent down with them. The
ghosts do not seem to leave off their interest in mundane affairs,
for they not only have local palavers, but try palavers left over
from their earthly existence; and when there is an outbreak of
sickness in a Fantee town or village, and several inhabitants die
off, the opinion is often held that there is a big palaver going on
down in Srahmandazi and that the spirits are sending up on earth for
witnesses, subpoenaing them as it were. Medicine men or priests are
called in to find out what particular earthly grievance can be the
subject of the ghost palaver, and when they have ascertained this,
they take the evidence of every one in the town on this affair, as
it were on commission, and transmit the information to the court
sitting in Srahmandazi. This prevents the living being incommoded
by personal journeys down below, and although the priests have their
fee, it is cheaper in the end, because the witnesses' funeral
expenses would fall heavier still.
Although far more elaborated and thought out than any other African
underworld I have ever come across, the Tschwi Srahmandazi may be
taken as a type of all the African underworlds. The Bantu's idea of
a future life is a life spent in much such a place. As far as I can
make out there is no definite idea of eternity. I have even come
across cases in which doubt was thrown on the present existence of
the Creating God, but I think this has arisen from attempts having
been made to introduce concise conceptions into the African mind,
conceptions that are quite foreign to its true nature and which
alarm and worry it. You never get the strange idea of the
difference between time and eternity - the idea I mean, that they are
different things - in the African that one frequently gets in
cultured Europeans; and as for the human soul, the African always
believes "that still the spirit is whole, and life and death but
shadows of the soul."
CHAPTER XVI.
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