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Frazer, James George, Sir, 1854-1941

"The Golden Bough"

" In
sacrificing an animal the Lapps regularly put aside the bones, eyes,
ears, heart, lungs, sexual parts (if the animal was a male), and a
morsel of flesh from each limb. Then, after eating the remainder of
the flesh, they laid the bones and the rest in anatomical order in a
coffin and buried them with the usual rites, believing that the god
to whom the animal was sacrificed would reclothe the bones with
flesh and restore the animal to life in Jabme-Aimo, the subterranean
world of the dead. Sometimes, as after feasting on a bear, they seem
to have contented themselves with thus burying the bones. Thus the
Lapps expected the resurrection of the slain animal to take place in
another world, resembling in this respect the Kamtchatkans, who
believed that every creature, down to the smallest fly, would rise
from the dead and live underground. On the other hand, the North
American Indians looked for the resurrection of the animals in the
present world. The habit, observed especially by Mongolian peoples,
of stuffing the skin of a sacrificed animal, or stretching it on a
framework, points rather to a belief in a resurrection of the latter
sort.


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