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They could have been conceived of, in the nature of the case, by a race of immortals who never dreamed of such a thing as a ghost. For these gods, the ghost-theory is not required, and is superfluous, even contradictory. Baiame, Cagn, Bunjil, in their adorers' belief, were there; death later intruded among men, but did not affect these divine beings in any way.
Once more, syncretism came in as a mythopoeic influence. Say that several Australian nations, becoming more polite, amalgamated into a settled people. Then we should have several Gods, the chief Beings of various tribes, say Noorele, Bunjil, Mungan- ngaur, Baiame, Daramulun, Mangarrah, Mulkari, Pinmeheal. The most imposing God of the dominant tribe might be elevated to the sovereignty of Zeus.
He dwells above "the vaulted sky beyond which lies the mysterious home of that great and powerful Being, who is Bunjil, Baiame, or Daramulun in different tribal languages, but who in all is known by a name the equivalent of the only one used by the Kurnai, which is Mungan-ngaur, or 'Our Father." This Father is conceived of in some places as "a very great old man with a long beard," enthroned on, or growing into, a crystal throne.
The much-discussed Australian figures, Baiame, Bunjil, and Daramulun, appear not to differ essentially from those just mentioned.
Man never lived consistently on the level of his best original ideas: savages also have endless myths of Baiame or Daramulun, or Bunjil, in which these personages, though interested in human behaviour, are puerile, cruel, absurd, lustful, and so on. Man will sport thus with his noblest intuitions.
In Southeast Australia the personages called Daramulun, Baiame, Bunjil, correspond to this description: they are supernatural old men who have always existed; they are taken for granted without inquiry into their origin; they direct the affairs of the tribe in a general way in accordance with the moral ideas of the place and time.
Such, for example, are Baiame, Daramulun, Bunjil of Australia, perhaps Supu of the Melanesian island of Vate. +678+. In Polynesia there is a better-defined cosmogonic anthropomorphism. The Hawaiian creators Kane and Tangaloa appear to be fully formed deities. The Maoris have the divine figures Heaven and Earth, whose children are the producers of all things in the world.
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