-HW**' 
m—«aaijafcHBj.mayseni— 
92 VI. Abhandlung: Schmidt. 
anderen Salomonsinseln mit Vaterrecht und im Gegensatz zu 
den Neu-Hebriden und Banksinseln ,there is no difficulty 
about meeting, or mentioning tlie name of father- or mother-in- 
law, or any of a wife’s kindred, and no extraordinary marks 
of respects are shewn‘ (C, p. 43). 
f) Religiöse Vorstellungen, Opfer, Tapu. — Für 
die richtige Beurtheilung des religiösen Elementes bei den 
Melanesiern hält es Codrington für sehr wichtig, ,to distinguish 
between spirits who are beings of an Order higher than man- 
kind, and the disembodied spirits of men, which have become 
in the vulgär sense of the word ghosts (1. c. p. 120). Er con- 
statiert nun ,a very remarkable difference between the natives 
of the New Hebrides and Bank’s Islands to the east, and 
the natives of the Salomon Islands to the west; the direction 
of the religious ideas and practices of the former is towards 
spirits rather than ghosts, the latter pay very attention to 
spirits and address themselves almost wholly to ghosts. This 
goes with a much greater development of a sacrificial System 
in the west than in the east; and goes along also with a cer- 
tain advance in the arts of life ... In Fiji is the established 
custom to call the objects of the old worship gods; but Mr. 
Fison was ,inclined to think all the spiritual beings of Fiji, 
including the gods, simply the Mota tamate‘ i. e. ghosts; and 
the words of Mr. Hazelwood, quoted by Mr. Brenchley (Cruise 
of the Curagao, p. 181) confirm this view ... In Fiji also this 
worship of the dead, rather than of beings that never were in 
the flesh, accompanies a more considerable advance in the arts 
of life than is found in, for example, the Bank’s Islands 1 , C, 
p. 122. — ,The sacrifices, in the more restricted sense, of the 
Solomon Islands are widely different from those of New 
Hebrides and Banks’ Islands; in the Western Islands the 
offerings are naade to ghosts, and consumed by fire as well as 
eaten; in the eastern islands they are made to spirits, and 
tkere is no sacrificial fire or meal. In the former nothing is 
offered but food, in the latter money has a conspicuous place. 1 
C, p. 129. — ,The tapu or tambu of Melanesia is not so con 
spicuous in native life as the tapu of Polynesia; and it differs 
also perhaps in this, that it never signifies any inherent holi- 
ness or awfulness, but always a sacred and unapproachable