Last week we discovered the strange concept of “happy deaths”, some peculiar practices that showed the willingness with which native Fijians accepted their death, according to the Gifford Lectures by Lord Adam Gifford, contained in Professor James Frazer’s book, The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead.
The book had 20 Gifford lectures that were delivered between 1911 and 1912 at St Andrews University. It focused on the belief in immortality in primitive societies.
This week we will look at the concept of god and the manner in which native Fijians worshipped their gods according to the beliefs and practices of their religion, before the sweeping influence of Christianity.
Two classes of gods
The native word that expressed divinity in old Fiji was kalou which while used to denote the people’s highest notion of a god, was constantly heard as denoting anything great or marvellous.
Very often, the word kalou was used for exclamation or flattery. For example, ‘You are a kalou!’ or ‘Your countrymen are gods!’
The Fijians appeared to believe in two distinguished classes of gods. The first, kalou vu, literally referred to “root-gods” or original source gods. These were gods strictly.
The second were kalou yalo literally “soulgods” belonging to deified mortals. Other terms like kalou rere were also used.
First class gods were treated as eternal. The Gods of the second class were classed above humanity but were “subject to human passions and want to commit accidents and even to death”.
Examples of gods belonging to the latter class were the spirits of departed chiefs, war heroes etc.
Though the Fijians distinguished between the two classes of gods, they confused them in practice.
According to Professor Frazer’s book, it was impossible to ascertain with any degree of probability how many gods the natives had as any man with some respected attributes could easily be deified after death.
“The Fijians could never be far from their gods on land or sea. The gods were everywhere,” noted the book Fiji and the Fijians.
“The groves were sacred because they were haunted by deities; the sailors voyaging over the seas would preserve strict silence in places known to be frequented by the gods; the traveller who saw a god as he walked into the country would throw some leaves on the spot to warn others that it was holy ground.”
The friends of chiefs and warriors were sometimes deified. There had been instances where a chief’s friends who drowned at sea were deified.
Imagine praying to those who could not save themselves from drowning. To call them gods would be absurd in today’s world.
Tuikilakila, the great chief of Somosomo, was known to have once offered a missionary the chance to be god.
Tuikilakila told him ‘If you die first ‘I shall make you my god.’ He sometimes claimed he was god too.
“Here appears to be no certain line of demarcation between departed spirits and gods nor between gods and living men for many of the priests and old chiefs are considered as sacred persons and not a few of them will also claim to themselves the right of divinity,” Professor Frazer’s book said.
Writers on Fijian History could also list some principal gods of the first class who were never to have been men.
However, these historians’ writings on religious rituals failed to distinguish between the worship which was paid to eternal deities and that paid to deified men.
The book noted: “Accordingly, we may infer that the ritual was practically the same…”
In the history of religion, three beliefs of fundamental importance often emerge.
First is the existence of an overruling spiritual power. Second is the existence of a man’s soul which was distinct from his body and could survive after death. The third is the possibility of communication between the soul of man and an overruling spirit.
Native Fijians of old believed in all three.
“His gods were many, not one; he had no doubt whatever of the existence of a soul, and that it was capable of detachment from the body even while the man was alive healthy Fijians have been known to call out to their straying souls entreating them to come back to their bodies!” Fiji and the Fijians noted.
Fijians were not too clear about their belief in immortality. However, they had no doubt that the spirit of man did live on after the death of the body.
“He was so sure of the possibility of communication between the divine and humans that he regarded his priests as mediums whose bodies the gods used to become articulate and make their wills known to the people.”
Somosomo chief, Tuikilakila was known to be fond of weeding his father’s grave.
He made it neat before he went to war in the hope that the spirit of the departed man he had loved would help him.
This showed that the natives kept in touch continually with spiritual powers they believed were greater and more powerful than themselves.
The Fijian temple (bure)
Every Fijian town or village had at least one temple, otherwise known as burekalou. Many had several.
The spot where a chief had been killed was sometimes chosen as a suitable site of a temple.
The structures of the temple were sometimes stranger than people’s private bure.
Each was built on the top of a mound raised from three to twenty feet above the ground.
The roof was high-pitched with the ridgepole covered with white shells (Ovula Cypraea) and projected three or four feet at each end.
Each temple had two doors and a fireplace in the centre. There were instances where people were buried alive in each post when constructing a temple.
This was to “strengthen” the posts.
The furniture consisted of a few wooden artefacts, mats, several large clay artefacts and many drinking vessels.
A temple also contained images. Though they were esteemed ornaments and were held sacred, they were not worshipped as idols.
From the roof dropped a long piece of plain white bark cloth or masi. It did not hang vertically but was suspended at an angle.
Like a phone line, the white masi cloth formed a pathway, down which gods were believed to pass before entering a priest. It also marked a “holy place” that people would never move close to.
Professor Frazer’s book claimed, however, the temples were not exclusively for religion and worship practices.
They were also used as a council chamber and town hall, where the chiefs lounged for hours together, strangers were entertained and very important people might even sleep.
In some parts of Viti Levu, the dead were sometimes buried in the temples “that the wind might not disturb nor the rain fall upon them” and in order that the living might have the satisfaction of lying near their departed friends”.
Worship at the temple
Temples could also be unoccupied for months until the chief had some request to make to the god, but first, when the necessary repairs were first carried out.
The temple had “no regular worship” and “no habitual reverence”.
“The principle of fear we are told seemed to be the only motive of religious observances and it was artfully fomented by the priests through whom alone the people had access to the gods when they desired to supplicate the favour of the divine beings,” Professor Frazer’s book said.
Prayers were naturally accompanied by offerings including large quantities of food together with whales’ teeth or mats or weapons.
The food offered by worshippers was dedicated to the god who only ate the soul of it.
The food substance was consumed by the priest and old men. If there was a lot, the whole village could eat.
The priests and oracles
The priest or bete was usually hereditary. He had a sacred character and could be seen in a convulsive frenzy when communicating or being possessed by the gods.
Every chief had a priest. The two worked the oracles that were believed in by the people, who were very superstitious.
A priest had a great influence. He was the representative of the deity and was almost “deified”
The principal duty of the priest was to reveal to men the will of the god and this he always did through the direct inspiration of the deity.
The revelation was usually made after an enquiry or a prayer was first offered.
The person could ask for a good crop of yams, for showers of rain, for protection in battle, or for a safe voyage etc.
The worshipper would take a gift, such as a whale’s tooth, and present it to the priest at the temple.
“The man of God might have had a word of his coming and time to throw himself into an appropriate attitude. He might for example be seen lying on the floor near the sacred corner plunged in profound meditation,”
Professor Frazer’s book said. When a person entered the bure, the priest would get up and then seat himself with his back to the white cloth down which the deity was to pass into the medium’s body.
After receiving the gift, he would contemplate it before beginning to tremble. The priest’s limbs often twitched and his features would be distorted, these being the common symptoms of the entrance of the spirit into him.
The shakes gradually increased in violence until the priest’s whole body convulsed.
At this stage, the priest was fully possessed and inspired by the god.
His human personality was temporarily removed and all he said and did while being possessed were treated as the “words and acts of the indwelling deity”.
- History being the subject it is, a group’s version of events may not be the same as that held by another group. When publishing one account, it is not our intention to cause division or to disrespect other oral traditions. Those with a different version can contact us so we can publish your account of history too — Editor.
