Volume 2

115


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Page 2.115

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Here Lies One Who in His Life was Honoured of the Betsileo People

HERE LIES ONE WHO IN HIS LIFE WAS HONOURED OF THE BETSILEO PEOPLE

Funerals are expensive affairs for Malagasy mourners. The ceremonies include a banquet for which bullocks are slaughtered in numbers proportioned to the rank of the deceased or the ambitious ostentation of the relatives. As many as three hundred bullocks have been slaughtered for a single such occasion. Afterwards the skulls and horns are placed on or near the tomb as a memorial. The Betsileo tribe erect large stone monuments, about twenty-five feet square and five feet high, the actual tomb being a deep subterranean chamber approached by a passage opening out about a hundred feet away