THE FACT OF DEATH PROVIDES A CENTRAL FOCUS AROUND WHICH HUMAN cultures develop in two main ways. Firstly, there is what we may loosely call conceptual aspect of death; secondly, organizational. Or to put it another, and not altogether overlapping, way, there is anticipation of death and actuality of death, ideology and interment. The first of these clusters of meaning lies at core of much religious and indeed philosophical activity, and from it perhaps stems whole mesh of religious beliefs. The inevitable fact of death needs to be reckoned with and accounted for; it has to be explained and to be included in a wider scheme of representations, a belief system, a religion, an ideology. In a recent volume on the origins of a sense of God, J. Bowker argues that religion has failed to disappear because of great constraint of death; role of religion is to find a way through this limitation to human existence.' The theme echoes Malinowski and many scholars of previous centuries who, taking a cue from actors themselves, stressed link between journey of soul (death, survival, immortality and passage to other world), dualistic concept of human being (body and spirit/soul), and existence of spiritual beings. The theme requires little elaboration. It characterizes Euhemerist explanations of origin of religion, and runs through evolutionary schemas of 19th century scholars like Herbert Spencer and E. B. Tylor.2 Indeed it is enshrined in latter's minimum definition of religion.3 But such specula-
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