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.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 483 of 705
Words from 133477 to 133738
of 194943
