The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (Third Edition, Vol. 03 of 12)
by James George Frazer · English · Gutenberg #41832 · 1,224,057 chars · public domain (US)
The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (Third Edition, Vol. 03 of 12)
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.
Title: The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (Third Edition, Vol. 03 of 12)
Author: James George Frazer
Release date: January 12, 2013 [eBook #41832]
Most recently updated: June 15, 2020
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/41832
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GOLDEN BOUGH: A STUDY IN MAGIC AND RELIGION (THIRD EDITION, VOL. 03 OF 12) ***
The Golden Bough
A Study in Magic and Religion
By
James George Frazer, D.C.L., LL.D., Litt.D.
Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge
Professor of Social Anthropology in the University of Liverpool
Third Edition.
Vol. III.
Part II
Taboo and the Perils of the Soul
New York and London
MacMillan and Co.
1911
CONTENTS
Preface.
Chapter I. The Burden Of Royalty.
§ 1. Royal and Priestly Taboos.
§ 2. Divorce of the Spiritual from the Temporal Power.
Chapter II. The Perils Of The Soul.
§ 1. The Soul as a Mannikin.
§ 2. Absence and Recall of the Soul.
§ 3. The Soul as a Shadow and a Reflection.
Chapter III. Tabooed Acts.
§ 1. Taboos on Intercourse with Strangers.
§ 2. Taboos on Eating and Drinking.
§ 3. Taboos on shewing the Face.
§ 4. Taboos on quitting the House.
§ 5. Taboos on leaving Food over.
Chapter IV. Tabooed Persons.
§ 1. Chiefs and Kings tabooed.
§ 2. Mourners tabooed.
§ 3. Women tabooed at Menstruation and Childbirth.
§ 4. Warriors tabooed.
§ 5. Manslayers tabooed.
§ 6. Hunters and Fishers tabooed.
Chapter V. Tabooed Things.
§ 1. The Meaning of Taboo.
§ 2. Iron tabooed.
§ 3. Sharp Weapons tabooed.
§ 4. Blood tabooed.
§ 5. The Head tabooed.
§ 6. Hair tabooed.
§ 7. Ceremonies at Hair-cutting.
§ 8. Disposal of Cut Hair and Nails.
§ 9. Spittle tabooed.
§ 10. Foods tabooed.
§ 11. Knots and Rings tabooed.
Chapter VI. Tabooed Words.
§ 1. Personal Names tabooed.
§ 2. Names of Relations tabooed.
§ 3. Names of the Dead tabooed.
§ 4. Names of Kings and other Sacred Persons tabooed.
§ 5. Names of Gods tabooed.
§ 6. Common Words tabooed.
Chapter VII. Our Debt To The Savage.
Note. Not To Step Over Persons And Things.
Index.
Footnotes
[Cover Art]
[Transcriber’s Note: The above cover image was produced by the submitter
at Distributed Proofreaders, and is being placed into the public domain.]
PREFACE.
The term Taboo is one of the very few words which the English language has
borrowed from the speech of savages. In the Polynesian tongue, from which
we have adopted it, the word designates a remarkable system which has
deeply influenced the religious, social, and political life of the Oceanic
islanders, both Polynesians and Melanesians, particularly by inculcating a
superstitious veneration for the persons of nobles and the rights of
private property. When about the year 1886 my ever-lamented friend William
Robertson Smith asked me to write an article on Taboo for the Ninth
Edition of the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_, I shared what I believe to have
been at the time the current view of anthropologists, that the institution
in question was confined to the brown and black races of the Pacific. But
an attentive study of the accounts given of Taboo by observers who wrote
while it still flourished in Polynesia soon led me to modify that view.
The analogies which the system presents to the superstitions, not only of
savages elsewhere, but of the civilised races of antiquity, were too
numerous and too striking to be overlooked; and I came to the conclusion
that Taboo is only one of a number of similar systems of superstition
which among many, perhaps among all races of men have contributed in large
measure, under many different names and with many variations of detail, to
build up the complex fabric of society in all the various sides or
elements of it which we describe as religious, social, political, moral
and economic. This conclusion I briefly indicated in my article. My
general views on the subject were accepted by my friend Robertson Smith
and applied by him in his celebrated _Lectures_ to the elucidation of some
aspects of Semitic religion. Since then the importance of Taboo and of
systems like it in the evolution of religion and morality, of government
and property, has been generally recognised and has indeed become a
commonplace of anthropology.
The present volume is merely an expansion of the corresponding chapter in
the first edition of _The Golden Bough_. It treats of the principles of
taboo in their special application to sacred personages, such as kings and
priests, who are the proper theme of the book. It does not profess to
handle the subject as a whole, to pursue it into all its ramifications, to
trace the manifold influences which systems of this sort have exerted in
moulding the multitudinous forms of human society. A treatise which should
adequately discuss these topics would far exceed the limits which I have
prescribed for myself in _The Golden Bough_. For example, I have barely
touched in passing on the part which these superstitions have played in
shaping the moral ideas and directing the moral practice of mankind, a
profound subject fraught perhaps with momentous issues for the time when
men shall seriously set themselves to revise their ethical code in the
light of its origin. For that the ethical like the legal code of a people
stands in need of constant revision will hardly be disputed by any
attentive and dispassionate observer. The old view that the principles of
right and wrong are immutable and eternal is no longer tenable. The moral
world is as little exempt as the physical world from the law of ceaseless
change, of perpetual flux. Contemplate the diversities, the
inconsistencies, the contradictions of the ethical ideas and the ethical
practice, not merely of different peoples in different countries, but of
the same people in the same country in different ages, then say whether
the foundations of morality are eternally fixed and unchanging. If they
seem so to us, as they have probably seemed to men in all ages who did not
extend their views beyond the narrow limits of their time and country, it
is in all likelihood merely because the rate of change is commonly so slow
that it is imperceptible at any moment and can only be detected by a
comparison of accurate observations extending over long periods of time.
Such a comparison, could we make it, would probably convince us that if we
speak of the moral law as immutable and eternal, it can only be in the
relative or figurative sense in which we apply the same words to the
outlines of the great mountains, by comparison with the short-lived
generations of men. The mountains, too, are passing away, though we do not
see it; nothing is stable and abiding under or above the sun. We can as
little arrest the process of moral evolution as we can stay the sweep of
the tides or the courses of the stars.
Therefore, whether we like it or not, the moral code by which we regulate
our conduct is being constantly revised and altered: old rules are being
silently expunged and new rules silently inscribed in the palimpsest by
the busy, the unresting hand of an invisible scribe. For unlike the public
and formal revision of a legal code, the revision of the moral code is
always private, tacit, and informal. The legislators who make and the
judges who administer it are not clad in ermine and scarlet, their edicts
are not proclaimed with the blare of trumpets and the pomp of heraldry. We
ourselves are the lawgivers and the judges: it is the whole people who
make and alter the ethical standard and judge every case by reference to
it. We sit in the highest court of appeal, judging offenders daily, and we
cannot if we would rid ourselves of the responsibility. All that we can do
is to take as clear and comprehensive a view as possible of the evidence,
lest from too narrow and partial a view we should do injustice, perhaps
gross and irreparable injustice, to the prisoners at the bar. Few things,
perhaps, can better guard us from narrowness and illiberality in our moral
judgments than a survey of the amazing diversities of ethical theory and
practice which have been recorded among the various races of mankind in
different ages; and accordingly the Comparative Method applied to the
study of ethical phenomena may be expected to do for morality what the
same method applied to religious phenomena is now doing for religion, by
enlarging our mental horizon, extending the boundaries of knowledge,
throwing light on the origin of current beliefs and practices, and thereby
directly assisting us to replace what is effete by what is vigorous, and
what is false by what is true. The facts which I have put together in this
volume as well as in some of my other writings may perhaps serve as
materials for a future science of Comparative Ethics. They are rough
stones which await the master-builder, rude sketches which more cunning
hands than mine may hereafter work up into a finished picture.
J. G. Frazer.
CAMBRIDGE,
_1st February 1911_.
CHAPTER I. THE BURDEN OF ROYALTY.
§ 1. Royal and Priestly Taboos.
(M1) At a certain stage of early society the king or priest is often
thought to be endowed with supernatural powers or to be an incarnation of
a deity, and consistently with this belief the course of nature is
supposed to be more or less under his control, and he is held responsible
for bad weather, failure of the crops, and similar calamities.(1) To some
extent it appears to be assumed that the king’s power over nature, like
that over his subjects and slaves, is exerted through definite acts of
will; and therefore if drought, famine, pestilence, or storms arise, the
people attribute the misfortune to the negligence or guilt of their king,
and punish him accordingly with stripes and bonds, or, if he remains
obdurate, with deposition and death.(2) Sometimes, however, the course of
nature, while regarded as dependent on the king, is supposed to be partly
independent of his will. His person is considered, if we may express it
so, as the dynamical centre of the universe, from which lines of force
radiate to all quarters of the heaven; so that any motion of his—the
turning of his head, the lifting of his hand—instantaneously affects and
may seriously disturb some part of nature. He is the point of support on
which hangs the balance of the world, and the slightest irregularity on
his part may overthrow the delicate equipoise. The greatest care must,
therefore, be taken both by and of him; and his whole life, down to its
minutest details, must be so regulated that no act of his, voluntary or
involuntary, may disarrange or upset the established order of nature. Of
this class of monarchs the Mikado or Dairi, the spiritual emperor of
Japan, is or rather used to be a typical example. He is an incarnation of
the sun goddess, the deity who rules the universe, gods and men included;
once a year all the gods wait upon him and spend a month at his court.
During that month, the name of which means “without gods,” no one
frequents the temples, for they are believed to be deserted.(3) The Mikado
receives from his people and assumes in his official proclamations and
decrees the title of “manifest or incarnate deity” (_Akitsu Kami_) and he
claims a general authority over the gods of Japan.(4) For example, in an
official decree of the year 646 the emperor is described as “the incarnate
god who governs the universe.”(5)
(M2) The following description of the Mikado’s mode of life was written
about two hundred years ago:—(6)
“Even to this day the princes descended of this family more particularly
those who sit on the throne, are looked upon as persons most holy in
themselves, and as Popes by birth. And, in order to preserve these
advantageous notions in the minds of their subjects, they are obliged to
take an uncommon care of their sacred persons, and to do such things,
which, examined according to the customs of other nations, would be
thought ridiculous and impertinent. It will not be improper to give a few
instances of it. He thinks that it would be very prejudicial to his
dignity and holiness to touch the ground with his feet; for this reason
when he intends to go anywhere, he must be carried thither on men’s
shoulders. Much less will they suffer that he should expose his sacred
person to the open air, and the sun is not thought worthy to shine on his
head. There is such a holiness ascribed to all the parts of his body that
he dares to cut off neither his hair, nor his beard, nor his nails.
However, lest he should grow too dirty, they may clean him in the night
when he is asleep; because, they say, that which is taken from his body at
that time, hath been stolen from him, and that such a theft doth not
prejudice his holiness or dignity. In ancient times, he was obliged to sit
on the throne for some hours every morning, with the imperial crown on his
head, but to sit altogether like a statue, without stirring either hands
or feet, head or eyes, nor indeed any part of his body, because, by this
means, it was thought that he could preserve peace and tranquillity in his
empire; for if, unfortunately, he turned himself on one side or the other,
or if he looked a good while towards any part of his dominions, it was
apprehended that war, famine, fire, or some other great misfortune was
near at hand to desolate the country. But it having been afterwards
discovered, that the imperial crown was the palladium, which by its
immobility(7) could preserve peace in the empire, it was thought expedient
to deliver his imperial person, consecrated only to idleness and
pleasures, from this burthensome duty, and therefore the crown is at
present placed on the throne for some hours every morning. His victuals
must be dressed every time in new pots, and served at table in new dishes:
both are very clean and neat, but made only of common clay; that without
any considerable expense they may be laid aside, or broke, after they have
served once. They are generally broke, for fear they should come into the
hands of laymen, for they believe religiously, that if any layman should
presume to eat his food out of these sacred dishes, it would swell and
inflame his mouth and throat. The like ill effect is dreaded from the
Dairi’s sacred habits; for they believe that if a layman should wear them,
without the Emperor’s express leave or command, they would occasion
swellings and pains in all parts of his body.” To the same effect an
earlier account of the Mikado says: “It was considered as a shameful
degradation for him even to touch the ground with his foot. The sun and
moon were not even permitted to shine upon his head. None of the
superfluities of the body were ever taken from him, neither his hair, his
beard, nor his nails were cut. Whatever he eat was dressed in new
vessels.”(8)
(M3) Similar priestly or rather divine kings are found, at a lower level
of barbarism, on the west coast of Africa. At Shark Point near Cape
Padron, in Lower Guinea, lives the priestly king Kukulu, alone in a wood.
He may not touch a woman nor leave his house; indeed he may not even quit
his chair, in which he is obliged to sleep sitting, for if he lay down no
wind would arise and navigation would be stopped. He regulates storms, and
in general maintains a wholesome and equable state of the atmosphere.(9)
On Mount Agu in Togo, a German possession in West Africa, there lives a
fetish or spirit called Bagba, who is of great importance for the whole of
the surrounding country. The power of giving or withholding rain is
ascribed to him, and he is lord of the winds, including the Harmattan, the
dry, hot wind which blows from the interior. His priest dwells in a house
on the highest peak of the mountain, where he keeps the winds bottled up
in huge jars. Applications for rain, too, are made to him, and he does a
good business in amulets, which consist of the teeth and claws of
leopards. Yet though his power is great and he is indeed the real chief of
the land, the rule of the fetish forbids him ever to leave the mountain,
and he must spend the whole of his life on its summit. Only once a year
may he come down to make purchases in the market; but even then he may not
set foot in the hut of any mortal man, and must return to his place of
exile the same day. The business of government in the villages is
conducted by subordinate chiefs, who are appointed by him.(10) In the West
African kingdom of Congo there was a supreme pontiff called Chitomé or
Chitombé, whom the negroes regarded as a god on earth and all-powerful in
heaven. Hence before they would taste the new crops they offered him the
first-fruits, fearing that manifold misfortunes would befall them if they
broke this rule. When he left his residence to visit other places within
his jurisdiction, all married people had to observe strict continence the
whole time he was out; for it was supposed that any act of incontinence
would prove fatal to him. And if he were to die a natural death, they
thought that the world would perish, and the earth, which he alone
sustained by his power and merit, would immediately be annihilated.(11)
Similarly in Humbe, a kingdom of Angola, the incontinence of young people
under the age of puberty used to be a capital crime, because it was
believed to entail the death of the king within the year. Of late the
death penalty has been commuted for a fine of ten oxen inflicted on each
of the culprits. This commutation has attracted thousands of dissolute
youth to Humbe from the neighbouring tribes, among whom the old penalty is
still rigorously exacted.(12) Amongst the semi-barbarous nations of the
New World, at the date of the Spanish conquest, there were found
hierarchies or theocracies like those of Japan;(13) in particular, the
high pontiff of the Zapotecs in Southern Mexico appears to have presented
a close parallel to the Mikado. A powerful rival to the king himself, this
spiritual lord governed Yopaa, one of the chief cities of the kingdom,
with absolute dominion. It is impossible, we are told, to overrate the
reverence in which he was held. He was looked on as a god whom the earth
was not worthy to hold nor the sun to shine upon. He profaned his sanctity
if he even touched the ground with his foot. The officers who bore his
palanquin on their shoulders were members of the highest families; he
hardly deigned to look on anything around him; and all who met him fell
with their faces to the earth, fearing that death would overtake them if
they saw even his shadow. A rule of continence was regularly imposed on
the Zapotec priests, especially upon the high pontiff; but “on certain
days in each year, which were generally celebrated with feasts and dances,
it was customary for the high priest to become drunk. While in this state,
seeming to belong neither to heaven nor to earth, one of the most
beautiful of the virgins consecrated to the service of the gods was
brought to him.” If the child she bore him was a son, he was brought up as
a prince of the blood, and the eldest son succeeded his father on the
pontifical throne.(14) The supernatural powers attributed to this pontiff
are not specified, but probably they resembled those of the Mikado and
Chitomé.
(M4) Wherever, as in Japan and West Africa, it is supposed that the order
of nature, and even the existence of the world, is bound up with the life
of the king or priest, it is clear that he must be regarded by his
subjects as a source both of infinite blessing and of infinite danger. On
the one hand, the people have to thank him for the rain and sunshine which
foster the fruits of the earth, for the wind which brings ships to their
coasts, and even for the solid ground beneath their feet. But what he
gives he can refuse; and so close is the dependence of nature on his
person, so delicate the balance of the system of forces whereof he is the
centre, that the least irregularity on his part may set up a tremor which
shall shake the earth to its foundations. And if nature may be disturbed
by the slightest involuntary act of the king, it is easy to conceive the
convulsion which his death might provoke. The natural death of the
Chitomé, as we have seen, was thought to entail the destruction of all
things. Clearly, therefore, out of a regard for their own safety, which
might be imperilled by any rash act of the king, and still more by his
death, the people will exact of their king or priest a strict conformity
to those rules, the observance of which is deemed necessary for his own
preservation, and consequently for the preservation of his people and the
world. The idea that early kingdoms are despotisms in which the people
exist only for the sovereign, is wholly inapplicable to the monarchies we
are considering. On the contrary, the sovereign in them exists only for
his subjects; his life is only valuable so long as he discharges the
duties of his position by ordering the course of nature for his people’s
benefit. So soon as he fails to do so, the care, the devotion, the
religious homage which they had hitherto lavished on him cease and are
changed into hatred and contempt; he is dismissed ignominiously, and may
be thankful if he escapes with his life. Worshipped as a god one day, he
is killed as a criminal the next. But in this changed behaviour of the
people there is nothing capricious or inconsistent. On the contrary, their
conduct is entirely of a piece. If their king is their god, he is or
should be also their preserver; and if he will not preserve them, he must
make room for another who will. So long, however, as he answers their
expectations, there is no limit to the care which they take of him, and
which they compel him to take of himself. A king of this sort lives hedged
in by a ceremonious etiquette, a network of prohibitions and observances,
of which the intention is not to contribute to his dignity, much less to
his comfort, but to restrain him from conduct which, by disturbing the
harmony of nature, might involve himself, his people, and the universe in
one common catastrophe. Far from adding to his comfort, these observances,
by trammelling his every act, annihilate his freedom and often render the
very life, which it is their object to preserve, a burden and sorrow to
him.
(M5) Of the supernaturally endowed kings of Loango it is said that the
more powerful a king is, the more taboos is he bound to observe; they
regulate all his actions, his walking and his standing, his eating and
drinking, his sleeping and waking.(15) To these restraints the heir to the
throne is subject from infancy; but as he advances in life the number of
abstinences and ceremonies which he must observe increases, “until at the
moment that he ascends the throne he is lost in the ocean of rites and
taboos.”(16) In the crater of an extinct volcano, enclosed on all sides by
grassy slopes, lie the scattered huts and yam-fields of Riabba, the
capital of the native king of Fernando Po. This mysterious being lives in
the lowest depths of the crater, surrounded by a harem of forty women, and
covered, it is said, with old silver coins. Naked savage as he is, he yet
exercises far more influence in the island than the Spanish governor at
Santa Isabel. In him the conservative spirit of the Boobies or aboriginal
inhabitants of the island is, as it were, incorporate. He has never seen a
white man and, according to the firm conviction of all the Boobies, the
sight of a pale face would cause his instant death. He cannot bear to look
upon the sea; indeed it is said that he may never see it even in the
distance, and that therefore he wears away his life with shackles on his
legs in the dim twilight of his hut. Certain it is that he has never set
foot on the beach. With the exception of his musket and knife, he uses
nothing that comes from the whites; European cloth never touches his
person, and he scorns tobacco, rum, and even salt.(17)
(M6) Among the Ewe-speaking peoples of the Slave Coast, in West Africa,
“the king is at the same time high priest. In this quality he was,
particularly in former times, unapproachable by his subjects. Only by
night was he allowed to quit his dwelling in order to bathe and so forth.
None but his representative, the so-called ‘visible king,’ with three
chosen elders might converse with him, and even they had to sit on an
ox-hide with their backs turned to him. He might not see any European nor
any horse, nor might he look upon the sea, for which reason he was not
allowed to quit his capital even for a few moments. These rules have been
disregarded in recent times.”(18) The king of Dahomey himself is subject
to the prohibition of beholding the sea,(19) and so are the kings of
Loango(20) and Great Ardra in Guinea.(21) The sea is the fetish of the
Eyeos, to the north-west of Dahomey, and they and their king are
threatened with death by their priests if ever they dare to look on
it.(22) It is believed that the king of Cayor in Senegal would infallibly
die within the year if he were to cross a river or an arm of the sea.(23)
In Mashonaland down to recent times the chiefs would not cross certain
rivers, particularly the Rurikwi and the Nyadiri; and the custom was still
strictly observed by at least one chief within the last few years. “On no
account will the chief cross the river. If it is absolutely necessary for
him to do so, he is blindfolded and carried across with shouting and
singing. Should he walk across, he will go blind or die and certainly lose
the chieftainship.”(24) So among the Mahafalys and Sakalavas in the south
of Madagascar some kings are forbidden to sail on the sea or to cross
certain rivers.(25) The horror of the sea is not peculiar to kings. The
Basutos are said to share it instinctively, though they have never seen
salt water, and live hundreds of miles from the Indian Ocean.(26) The
Egyptian priests loathed the sea, and called it the foam of Typhon; they
were forbidden to set salt on their table, and they would not speak to
pilots because they got their living by the sea; hence too they would not
eat fish, and the hieroglyphic symbol for hatred was a fish.(27) When the
Indians of the Peruvian Andes were sent by the Spaniards to work in the
hot valleys of the coast, the vast ocean which they saw before them as
they descended the Cordillera was dreaded by them as a cause of disease;
hence they prayed to it that they might not fall ill. This they all did
without exception, even the little children.(28) Similarly the inland
people of Lampong in Sumatra are said to pay a kind of adoration to the
sea, and to make it an offering of cakes and sweetmeats when they behold
it for the first time, deprecating its power of doing them mischief.(29)
(M7) Among the Sakalavas of southern Madagascar the chief is regarded as a
sacred being, but “he is held in leash by a crowd of restrictions, which
regulate his behaviour like that of the emperor of China. He can undertake
nothing whatever unless the sorcerers have declared the omens favourable:
he may not eat warm food: on certain days he may not quit his hut; and so
on.”(30) Among some of the hill tribes of Assam both the headman and his
wife have to observe many taboos in respect of food; thus they may not eat
buffalo, pork, dog, fowl, or tomatoes. The headman must be chaste, the
husband of one wife, and he must separate himself from her on the eve of a
general or public observance of taboo. In one group of tribes the headman
is forbidden to eat in a strange village, and under no provocation
whatever may he utter a word of abuse. Apparently the people imagine that
the violation of any of these taboos by a headman would bring down
misfortune on the whole village.(31)
(M8) The ancient kings of Ireland, as well as the kings of the four
provinces of Leinster, Munster, Connaught, and Ulster, were subject to
certain quaint prohibitions or taboos, on the due observance of which the
prosperity of the people and the country, as well as their own, was
supposed to depend. Thus, for example, the sun might not rise on the king
of Ireland in his bed at Tara, the old capital of Erin; he was forbidden
to alight on Wednesday at Magh Breagh, to traverse Magh Cuillinn after
sunset, to incite his horse at Fan-Chomair, to go in a ship upon the water
the Monday after Bealltaine (May day), and to leave the track of his army
upon Ath Maighne the Tuesday after All-Hallows. The king of Leinster might
not go round Tuath Laighean left-hand-wise on Wednesday, nor sleep between
the Dothair (Dodder) and the Duibhlinn(32) with his head inclining to one
side, nor encamp for nine days on the plains of Cualann, nor travel the
road of Duibhlinn on Monday, nor ride a dirty black-heeled horse across
Magh Maistean. The king of Munster was prohibited from enjoying the feast
of Loch Lein from one Monday to another; from banqueting by night in the
beginning of harvest before Geim at Leitreacha; from encamping for nine
days upon the Siuir; and from holding a border meeting at Gabhran. The
king of Connaught might not conclude a treaty respecting his ancient
palace of Cruachan(33) after making peace on All-Hallows Day, nor go in a
speckled garment on a grey speckled steed to the heath of Dal Chais, nor
repair to an assembly of women at Seaghais, nor sit in autumn on the
sepulchral mounds of the wife of Maine, nor contend in running with the
rider of a grey one-eyed horse at Ath Gallta between two posts. The king
of Ulster was forbidden to attend the horse fair at Rath Line among the
youths of Dal Araidhe, to listen to the fluttering of the flocks of birds
of Linn Saileach after sunset, to celebrate the feast of the bull of
Daire-mic-Daire, to go into Magh Cobha in the month of March, and to drink
of the water of Bo Neimhidh between two darknesses. If the kings of
Ireland strictly observed these and many other customs, which were
enjoined by immemorial usage, it was believed that they would never meet
with mischance or misfortune, and would live for ninety years without
experiencing the decay of old age; that no epidemic or mortality would
occur during their reigns; and that the seasons would be favourable and
the earth yield its fruit in abundance; whereas, if they set the ancient
usages at naught, the country would be visited with plague, famine, and
bad weather.(34)
(M9) The kings of Egypt were worshipped as gods,(35) and the routine of
their daily life was regulated in every detail by precise and unvarying
rules. “The life of the kings of Egypt,” says Diodorus, “was not like that
of other monarchs who are irresponsible and may do just what they choose;
on the contrary, everything was fixed for them by law, not only their
official duties, but even the details of their daily life.... The hours
both of day and night were arranged at which the king had to do, not what
he pleased, but what was prescribed for him.... For not only were the
times appointed at which he should transact public business or sit in
judgment; but the very hours for his walking and bathing and sleeping with
his wife, and, in short, performing every act of life were all settled.
Custom enjoined a simple diet; the only flesh he might eat was veal and
goose, and he might only drink a prescribed quantity of wine.”(36)
However, there is reason to think that these rules were observed, not by
the ancient Pharaohs, but by the priestly kings who reigned at Thebes and
in Ethiopia at the close of the twentieth dynasty.(37) Among the Karen-nis
of Upper Burma a chief attains his position, not by hereditary right, but
on account of his habit of abstaining from rice and liquor. The mother,
too, of a candidate for the chieftainship must have eschewed these things
and lived solely on yams and potatoes so long as she was with child.
During that time she may not eat any meat nor drink water from a common
well. And if her son is to be qualified for the office of chief he must
continue to observe these habits.(38)
(M10) Of the taboos imposed on priests we may see a striking example in
the rules of life prescribed for the Flamen Dialis at Rome, who has been
interpreted as a living image of Jupiter, or a human embodiment of the
sky-spirit.(39) They were such as the following:—The Flamen Dialis might
not ride or even touch a horse, nor see an army under arms,(40) nor wear a
ring which was not broken, nor have a knot on any part of his garments; no
fire except a sacred fire might be taken out of his house; he might not
touch wheaten flour or leavened bread; he might not touch or even name a
goat, a dog,(41) raw meat, beans,(42) and ivy; he might not walk under a
vine; the feet of his bed had to be daubed with mud; his hair could be cut
only by a free man and with a bronze knife, and his hair and nails when
cut had to be buried under a lucky tree; he might not touch a dead body
nor enter a place where one was burned;(43) he might not see work being
done on holy days; he might not be uncovered in the open air; if a man in
bonds were taken into his house, the captive had to be unbound and the
cords had to be drawn up through a hole in the roof and so let down into
the street. His wife, the Flaminica, had to observe nearly the same rules,
and others of her own besides. She might not ascend more than three steps
of the kind of staircase called Greek; at a certain festival she might not
comb her hair; the leather of her shoes might not be made from a beast
that had died a natural death, but only from one that had been slain or
sacrificed; if she heard thunder she was tabooed till she had offered an
expiatory sacrifice.(44)
(M11) Among the Grebo people of Sierra Leone there is a pontiff who bears
the title of Bodia and has been compared, on somewhat slender grounds, to
the high priest of the Jews. He is appointed in accordance with the behest
of an oracle. At an elaborate ceremony of installation he is anointed, a
ring is put on his ankle as a badge of office, and the door-posts of his
house are sprinkled with the blood of a sacrificed goat. He has charge of
the public talismans and idols, which he feeds with rice and oil every new
moon; and he sacrifices on behalf of the town to the dead and to demons.
Nominally his power is very great, but in practice it is very limited; for
he dare not defy public opinion, and he is held responsible, even with his
life, for any adversity that befalls the country. It is expected of him
that he should cause the earth to bring forth abundantly, the people to be
healthy, war to be driven far away, and witchcraft to be kept in abeyance.
His life is trammelled by the observance of certain restrictions or
taboos. Thus he may not sleep in any house but his own official residence,
which is called the “anointed house” with reference to the ceremony of
anointing him at inauguration. He may not drink water on the highway. He
may not eat while a corpse is in the town, and he may not mourn for the
dead. If he dies while in office, he must be buried at dead of night; few
may hear of his burial, and none may mourn for him when his death is made
public. Should he have fallen a victim to the poison ordeal by drinking a
decoction of sassywood, as it is called, he must be buried under a running
stream of water.(45)
(M12) Among the Todas of Southern India the holy milkman (_palol_), who
acts as priest of the sacred dairy, is subject to a variety of irksome and
burdensome restrictions during the whole time of his incumbency, which may
last many years. Thus he must live at the sacred dairy and may never visit
his home or any ordinary village. He must be celibate; if he is married he
must leave his wife. On no account may any ordinary person touch the holy
milkman or the holy dairy; such a touch would so defile his holiness that
he would forfeit his office. It is only on two days a week, namely Mondays
and Thursdays, that a mere layman may even approach the milkman; on other
days if he has any business with him, he must stand at a distance (some
say a quarter of a mile) and shout his message across the intervening
space. Further, the holy milkman never cuts his hair or pares his nails so
long as he holds office; he never crosses a river by a bridge, but wades
through a ford and only certain fords; if a death occurs in his clan, he
may not attend any of the funeral ceremonies, unless he first resigns his
office and descends from the exalted rank of milkman to that of a mere
common mortal. Indeed it appears that in old days he had to resign the
seals, or rather the pails, of office whenever any member of his clan
departed this life. However, these heavy restraints are laid in their
entirety only on milkmen of the very highest class.(46) Among the Todas
there are milkmen and milkmen; and some of them get off more lightly in
consideration of their humbler station in life.(47) Still, apart from the
dignity they enjoy, the lot even of these other milkmen is not altogether
a happy one. Thus, for example, at a place called Kanodrs there is a
dairy-temple of a conical form. The milkman who has charge of it must be
celibate during the tenure of his office: he must sleep in the calves’
house, a very flimsy structure with an open door and a fire-place that
gives little heat: he may wear only one very scanty garment: he must take
his meals sitting on the outer wall which surrounds the dairy: in eating
he may not put his hand to his lips, but must throw the food into his
mouth; and in drinking he may not put to his lips the leaf which serves as
a cup, he must tilt his head back and pour the liquid into his mouth in a
jet from above. With the exception of a single layman, who is allowed to
bear the milkman company, but who is also bound to celibacy and has a bed
rigged up for him in the calves’ house, no other person is allowed to go
near this very sacred dairy under any pretext whatever. No wonder that
some years ago the dairy was unoccupied and the office of milkman stood
vacant. “At the present time,” says Dr. Rivers, “a dairyman is appointed
about once a year and holds office for thirty or forty days only. So far
as I could ascertain, the failure to occupy the dairy constantly is due to
the very considerable hardships and restrictions which have to be endured
by the holder of the office of dairyman, and the time is probably not far
distant when this dairy, one of the most sacred among the Todas, will
cease altogether to be used.”(48)
§ 2. Divorce of the Spiritual from the Temporal Power.
(M13) The burdensome observances attached to the royal or priestly office
produced their natural effect. Either men refused to accept the office,
which hence tended to fall into abeyance; or accepting it, they sank under
its weight into spiritless creatures, cloistered recluses, from whose
nerveless fingers the reins of government slipped into the firmer grasp of
men who were often content to wield the reality of sovereignty without its
name. In some countries this rift in the supreme power deepened into a
total and permanent separation of the spiritual and temporal powers, the
old royal house retaining their purely religious functions, while the
civil government passed into the hands of a younger and more vigorous
race.
(M14) To take examples. In a previous part of this work we saw that in
Cambodia it is often necessary to force the kingships of Fire and Water
upon the reluctant successors,(49) and that in Savage Island the monarchy
actually came to an end because at last no one could be induced to accept
the dangerous distinction.(50) In some parts of West Africa, when the king
dies, a family council is secretly held to determine his successor. He on
whom the choice falls is suddenly seized, bound, and thrown into the
fetish-house, where he is kept in durance till he consents to accept the
crown. Sometimes the heir finds means of evading the honour which it is
sought to thrust upon him; a ferocious chief has been known to go about
constantly armed, resolute to resist by force any attempt to set him on
the throne.(51) The savage Timmes of Sierra Leone, who elect their king,
reserve to themselves the right of beating him on the eve of his
coronation; and they avail themselves of this constitutional privilege
with such hearty goodwill that sometimes the unhappy monarch does not long
survive his elevation to the throne. Hence when the leading chiefs have a
spite at a man and wish to rid themselves of him, they elect him king.(52)
Formerly, before a man was proclaimed king of Sierra Leone, it used to be
the custom to load him with chains and thrash him. Then the fetters were
knocked off, the kingly robe was placed on him, and he received in his
hands the symbol of royal dignity, which was nothing but the axe of the
executioner.(53) It is not therefore surprising to read that in Sierra
Leone, where such customs have prevailed, “except among the Mandingoes and
Suzees, few kings are natives of the countries they govern. So different
are their ideas from ours, that very few are solicitous of the honour, and
competition is very seldom heard of.”(54) Another writer on Sierra Leone
tells us that “the honour of reigning, so much coveted in Europe, is very
frequently rejected in Africa, on account of the expense attached to it,
which sometimes greatly exceeds the revenues of the crown.”(55) A
reluctance to accept the sovereignty in the Ethiopian kingdom of Gingiro
was simulated, if not really felt, as we learn from the old Jesuit
missionaries. “They wrap up the dead king’s body in costly garments, and
killing a cow, put it into the hide; then all those who hope to succeed
him, being his sons or others of the royal blood, flying from the honour
they covet, abscond and hide themselves in the woods. This done, the
electors, who are all great sorcerers, agree among themselves who shall be
king, and go out to seek him, when entering the woods by means of their
enchantments, they say, a large bird called _liber_, as big as an eagle,
comes down with mighty cries over the place where he is hid, and they find
him encompass’d by lyons, tygers, snakes, and other creatures gather’d
about him by witchcraft. The elect, as fierce as those beasts, rushes out
upon those who seek him, wounding and sometimes killing some of them, to
prevent being seiz’d. They take all in good part, defending themselves the
best they can, till they have seiz’d him. Thus they carry him away by
force, he still struggling and seeming to refuse taking upon him the
burthen of government, all which is mere cheat and hypocrisy.”(56)
(M15) The Mikados of Japan seem early to have resorted to the expedient of
transferring the honours and burdens of supreme power to their infant
children; and the rise of the Tycoons, long the temporal sovereigns of the
country, is traced to the abdication of a certain Mikado in favour of his
three-year-old son. The sovereignty having been wrested by a usurper from
the infant prince, the cause of the Mikado was championed by Yoritomo, a
man of spirit and conduct, who overthrew the usurper and restored to the
Mikado the shadow, while he retained for himself the substance, of power.
He bequeathed to his descendants the dignity he had won, and thus became
the founder of the line of Tycoons. Down to the latter half of the
sixteenth century the Tycoons were active and efficient rulers; but the
same fate overtook them which had befallen the Mikados. Immeshed in the
same inextricable web of custom and law, they degenerated into mere
puppets, hardly stirring from their palaces and occupied in a perpetual
round of empty ceremonies, while the real business of government was
managed by the council of state.(57) In Tonquin the monarchy ran a similar
course. Living like his predecessors in effeminacy and sloth, the king was
driven from the throne by an ambitious adventurer named Mack, who from a
fisherman had risen to be Grand Mandarin. But the king’s brother Tring put
down the usurper and restored the king, retaining, however, for himself
and his descendants the dignity of general of all the forces.
Thenceforward the kings or _dovas_, though invested with the title and
pomp of sovereignty, ceased to govern. While they lived secluded in their
palaces, all real political power was wielded by the hereditary generals
or _chovas_.(58) The present king of Sikhim, “like most of his
predecessors in the kingship, is a mere puppet in the hands of his crafty
priests, who have made a sort of priest-king of him. They encourage him by
every means in their power to leave the government to them, whilst he
devotes all his time to the degrading rites of devil-worship, and the
ceaseless muttering of meaningless jargon, of which the Tibetan form of
Buddhism chiefly consists. They declare that he is a saint by birth, that
he is the direct descendant of the greatest king of Tibet, the canonised
Srongtsan Gampo, who was a contemporary of Mahomed in the seventh century
A.D. and who first introduced Buddhism to Tibet.” “This saintly lineage,
which secures for the king’s person popular homage amounting to worship,
is probably, however, a mere invention of the priests to glorify their
puppet-prince for their own sordid ends. Such devices are common in the
East.”(59) The custom regularly observed by the Tahitian kings of
abdicating on the birth of a son, who was immediately proclaimed sovereign
and received his father’s homage, may perhaps have originated, like the
similar custom occasionally practised by the Mikados, in a wish to shift
to other shoulders the irksome burden of royalty; for in Tahiti as
elsewhere the sovereign was subjected to a system of vexatious
restrictions.(60) In Mangaia, another Polynesian island, religious and
civil authority were lodged in separate hands, spiritual functions being
discharged by a line of hereditary kings, while the temporal government
was entrusted from time to time to a victorious war-chief, whose
investiture, however, had to be completed by the king. To the latter were
assigned the best lands, and he received daily offerings of the choicest
food.(61) The Mikado and Tycoon of Japan had their counterparts in the
Roko Tui and Vunivalu of Fiji. The Roko Tui was the Reverend or Sacred
King. The Vunivalu was the Root of War or War King. In one kingdom a
certain Thakambau, who was the War King, kept all power in his own hands,
but in a neighbouring kingdom the real ruler was the Sacred King.(62)
Similarly in Tonga, besides the civil king or _How_, whose right to the
throne was partly hereditary and partly derived from his warlike
reputation and the number of his fighting men, there was a great divine
chief called _Tooitonga_ or “Chief of Tonga,” who ranked above the king
and the other chiefs in virtue of his supposed descent from one of the
chief gods. Once a year the first-fruits of the ground were offered to him
at a solemn ceremony, and it was believed that if these offerings were not
made the vengeance of the gods would fall in a signal manner on the
people. Peculiar forms of speech, such as were applied to no one else,
were used in speaking of him, and everything that he chanced to touch
became sacred or tabooed. When he and the king met, the monarch had to sit
down on the ground in token of respect until his holiness had passed by.
Yet though he enjoyed the highest veneration by reason of his divine
origin, this sacred personage possessed no political authority, and if he
ventured to meddle with affairs of state it was at the risk of receiving a
rebuff from the king, to whom the real power belonged, and who finally
succeeded in ridding himself of his spiritual rival.(63) The king of the
Getae regularly shared his power with a priest, whom his subjects called a
god. This divine man led a solitary life in a cave on a holy mountain,
seeing few people but the king and his attendants. His counsels added much
to the king’s influence with his subjects, who believed that he was
thereby enabled to impart to them the commands and admonitions of the
gods.(64) At Athens the kings degenerated into little more than sacred
functionaries and it is said that the institution of the new office of
Polemarch or War Lord was rendered necessary by their growing
effeminacy.(65) American examples of the partition of authority between a
king and a pope have already been cited from the early history of Mexico
and Colombia.(66)
(M16) In some parts of western Africa two kings reign side by side, a
fetish or religious king and a civil king, but the fetish king is really
supreme. He controls the weather and so forth, and can put a stop to
everything. When he lays his red staff on the ground, no one may pass that
way. This division of power between a sacred and a secular ruler is to be
met with wherever the true negro culture has been left unmolested, but
where the negro form of society has been disturbed, as in Dahomey and
Ashantee, there is a tendency to consolidate the two powers in a single
king.(67) Thus, for example, there used to be a fetish king at New Calabar
who ranked above the ordinary king in all native matters, whether
religious or civil, and always walked in front of him on public occasions,
attended by a slave who held an umbrella over his head. His opinion
carried great weight.(68) The office and the causes which led to its
extinction are thus described by a missionary who spent many years in
Calabar: “The worship of the people is now given especially to their
various _idems_, one of which, called Ndem Efik, is a sort of tutelary
deity of the country. An individual was appointed to take charge of this
object of worship, who bore the name of King Calabar; and likely, in
bypast times, possessed the power indicated by the title, being both king
and priest. He had as a tribute the skins of all leopards killed, and
should a slave take refuge in his shrine he belonged to Ndem Efik. The
office, however, imposed certain restrictions on its occupant. He, for
instance, could not partake of food in the presence of any one, and he was
prohibited from engaging in traffic. On account of these and other
disabilities, when the last holder of the office died, a poor old man of
the Cobham family, no successor was found for him, and the priesthood has
become extinct.”(69) One of the practical inconveniences of such an office
is that the house of the fetish king enjoys the right of sanctuary, and so
tends to become little better than a rookery of bad characters. Thus on
the Grain Coast of West Africa the fetish king or Bodio, as he is called,
“exercises the functions of a high-priest, and is regarded as protector of
the whole nation. He lives in a house provided for him by the people, and
takes care of the national fetiches. He enjoys some immunities in virtue
of his office, but is subject to certain restrictions which more than
counterbalance his privileges. His house is a sanctum to which culprits
may betake themselves without the danger of being removed by any one
except by the Bodio himself.”(70) One of these Bodios resigned office
because of the sort of people who quartered themselves on him, the cost of
feeding them, and the squabbles they had among themselves. He led a
cat-and-dog life with them for three years. Then there came a man with
homicidal mania varied by epileptic fits; and soon afterwards the
spiritual shepherd retired into private life, but not before he had lost
an ear and sustained other bodily injury in a personal conflict with this
very black sheep.(71)
(M17) At Porto Novo there used to be, in addition to the ordinary monarch,
a King of the Night, who reigned during the hours of darkness from sunset
to sunrise. He might not shew himself in the street after the sun was up.
His duty was to patrol the streets with his satellites and to arrest all
whom he found abroad after a certain hour. Each band of his catchpoles was
led by a man who went about concealed from head to foot under a conical
casing of straw and blew blasts on a shell which caused every one that
heard it to shudder. The King of the Night never met the ordinary king
except on the first and last days of their respective reign; for each of
them invested the other with office and paid him the last honours at
death.(72) With this King of the Night at Porto Novo we may compare a
certain king of Hawaii who was so very sacred that no man might see him,
even accidentally, by day under pain of death; he only shewed himself by
night.(73)
(M18) In some parts of the East Indian island of Timor we meet with a
partition of power like that which is represented by the civil king and
the fetish king of western Africa. Some of the Timorese tribes recognise
two rajahs, the ordinary or civil rajah, who governs the people, and the
fetish or taboo rajah (_radja pomali_), who is charged with the control of
everything that concerns the earth and its products. This latter ruler has
the right of declaring anything taboo; his permission must be obtained
before new land may be brought under cultivation, and he must perform
certain necessary ceremonies when the work is being carried out. If
drought or blight threatens the crops, his help is invoked to save them.
Though he ranks below the civil rajah, he exercises a momentous influence
on the course of events, for his secular colleague is bound to consult him
in all important matters. In some of the neighbouring islands, such as
Rotti and eastern Flores, a spiritual ruler of the same sort is recognised
under various native names, which all mean “lord of the ground.”(74)
Similarly in the Mekeo district of British New Guinea there is a double
chieftainship. The people are divided into two groups according to
families, and each of the groups has its chief. One of the two is the war
chief, the other is the taboo (_afu_) chief. The office of the latter is
hereditary; his duty is to impose a taboo on any of the crops, such as the
coco-nuts and areca nuts, whenever he thinks it desirable to prohibit
their use. In his office we may perhaps detect the beginning of a priestly
dynasty, but as yet his functions appear to be more magical than
religious, being concerned with the control of the harvests rather than
with the propitiation of higher powers. The members of another family are
bound to see to it that the taboo imposed by the chief is strictly
observed. For this purpose some fourteen or fifteen men of the family form
a sort of constabulary. Every evening they go round the village armed with
clubs and disguised with masks or leaves. All the time they are in office
they are forbidden to live with their wives and even to look at a woman.
Hence women may not quit their houses while the men are going their
rounds. Further, the constables on duty are prohibited from chewing betel
nut and drinking coco-nut water, lest the areca and coco-nuts should not
grow. When there is a good show of nuts, the taboo chief proclaims that on
a certain day the restriction will come to an end.(75) In Ponape, one of
the Caroline Islands, the kingship is elective within the limits of the
blood royal, which runs in the female line, so that the sovereignty passes
backwards and forwards between families which we, reckoning descent in the
male line, should regard as distinct. The chosen monarch must be in
possession of certain secrets. He must know the places where the sacred
stones are kept, on which he has to seat himself. He must understand the
holy words and prayers of the liturgy, and after his election he must
recite them at the place of the sacred stones. But he enjoys only the
honours of his office; the real powers of government are in the hands of
his prime-minister or vizier.(76)
CHAPTER II. THE PERILS OF THE SOUL.
§ 1. The Soul as a Mannikin.
(M19) The foregoing examples have taught us that the office of a sacred
king or priest is often hedged in by a series of burdensome restrictions
or taboos, of which a principal purpose appears to be to preserve the life
of the divine man for the good of his people. But if the object of the
taboos is to save his life, the question arises, How is their observance
supposed to effect this end? To understand this we must know the nature of
the danger which threatens the king’s life, and which it is the intention
of these curious restrictions to guard against. We must, therefore, ask:
What does early man understand by death? To what causes does he attribute
it? And how does he think it may be guarded against?
(M20) As the savage commonly explains the processes of inanimate nature by
supposing that they are produced by living beings working in or behind the
phenomena, so he explains the phenomena of life itself. If an animal lives
and moves, it can only be, he thinks, because there is a little animal
inside which moves it: if a man lives and moves, it can only be because he
has a little man or animal inside who moves him. The animal inside the
animal, the man inside the man, is the soul. And as the activity of an
animal or man is explained by the presence of the soul, so the repose of
sleep or death is explained by its absence; sleep or trance being the
temporary, death being the permanent absence of the soul. Hence if death
be the permanent absence of the soul, the way to guard against it is
either to prevent the soul from leaving the body, or, if it does depart,
to ensure that it shall return. The precautions adopted by savages to
secure one or other of these ends take the form of certain prohibitions or
taboos, which are nothing but rules intended to ensure either the
continued presence or the return of the soul. In short, they are
life-preservers or life-guards. These general statements will now be
illustrated by examples.
(M21) Addressing some Australian blacks, a European missionary said, “I am
not one, as you think, but two.” Upon this they laughed. “You may laugh as
much as you like,” continued the missionary, “I tell you that I am two in
one; this great body that you see is one; within that there is another
little one which is not visible. The great body dies, and is buried, but
the little body flies away when the great one dies.” To this some of the
blacks replied, “Yes, yes. We also are two, we also have a little body
within the breast.” On being asked where the little body went after death,
some said it went behind the bush, others said it went into the sea, and
some said they did not know.(77) The Hurons thought that the soul had a
head and body, arms and legs; in short, that it was a complete little
model of the man himself.(78) The Esquimaux believe that “the soul
exhibits the same shape as the body it belongs to, but is of a more subtle
and ethereal nature.”(79) According to the Nootkas of British Columbia the
soul has the shape of a tiny man; its seat is the crown of the head. So
long as it stands erect, its owner is hale and hearty; but when from any
cause it loses its upright position, he loses his senses.(80) Among the
Indian tribes of the Lower Fraser River, man is held to have four souls,
of which the principal one has the form of a mannikin, while the other
three are shadows of it.(81) The Malays conceive the human soul
(_semangat_) as a little man, mostly invisible and of the bigness of a
thumb, who corresponds exactly in shape, proportion, and even in
complexion to the man in whose body he resides. This mannikin is of a thin
unsubstantial nature, though not so impalpable but that it may cause
displacement on entering a physical object, and it can flit quickly from
place to place; it is temporarily absent from the body in sleep, trance,
and disease, and permanently absent after death.(82)
(M22) The ancient Egyptians believed that every man has a soul (_ka_)
which is his exact counterpart or double, with the same features, the same
gait, even the same dress as the man himself. Many of the monuments dating
from the eighteenth century onwards represent various kings appearing
before divinities, while behind the king stands his soul or double,
portrayed as a little man with the king’s features. Some of the reliefs in
the temple at Luxor illustrate the birth of King Amenophis III. While the
queen-mother is being tended by two goddesses acting as midwives, two
other goddesses are bringing away two figures of new-born children, only
one of which is supposed to be a child of flesh and blood: the
inscriptions engraved above their heads shew that, while the first is
Amenophis, the second is his soul or double. And as with kings and queens,
so it was with common men and women. Whenever a child was born, there was
born with him a double which followed him through the various stages of
life; young while he was young, it grew to maturity and declined along
with him. And not only human beings, but gods and animals, stones and
trees, natural and artificial objects, everybody and everything had its
own soul or double. The doubles of oxen and sheep were the duplicates of
the original oxen or sheep; the doubles of linen or beds, of chairs or
knives, had the same form as the real linen, beds, chairs, and knives. So
thin and subtle was the stuff, so fine and delicate the texture of these
doubles, that they made no impression on ordinary eyes. Only certain
classes of priests or seers were enabled by natural gifts or special
training to perceive the doubles of the gods, and to win from them a
knowledge of the past and the future. The doubles of men and things were
hidden from sight in the ordinary course of life; still, they sometimes
flew out of the body endowed with colour and voice, left it in a kind of
trance, and departed to manifest themselves at a distance.(83)
(M23) So exact is the resemblance of the mannikin to the man, in other
words, of the soul to the body, that, as there are fat bodies and thin
bodies, so there are fat souls and thin souls;(84) as there are heavy
bodies and light bodies, long bodies and short bodies, so there are heavy
souls and light souls, long souls and short souls. The people of Nias (an
island to the west of Sumatra) think that every man, before he is born, is
asked how long or how heavy a soul he would like, and a soul of the
desired weight or length is measured out to him. The heaviest soul ever
given out weighs about ten grammes. The length of a man’s life is
proportioned to the length of his soul; children who die young had short
souls.(85) The Fijian conception of the soul as a tiny human being comes
clearly out in the customs observed at the death of a chief among the
Nakelo tribe. When a chief dies, certain men, who are the hereditary
undertakers, call him, as he lies, oiled and ornamented, on fine mats,
saying, “Rise, sir, the chief and let us be going. The day has come over
the land.” Then they conduct him to the river side, where the ghostly
ferryman comes to ferry Nakelo ghosts across the stream As they thus
attend the chief on his last journey, they hold their great fans close to
the ground to shelter him, because, as one of them explained to a
missionary, “His soul is only a little child.”(86) People in the Punjaub
who tattoo themselves believe that at death the soul, “the little entire
man or woman” inside the mortal frame, will go to heaven blazoned with the
same tattoo patterns which adorned the body in life.(87) Sometimes,
however, as we shall see, the human soul is conceived not in human but in
animal form.
§ 2. Absence and Recall of the Soul.
(M24) The soul is commonly supposed to escape by the natural openings of
the body, especially the mouth and nostrils. Hence in Celebes they
sometimes fasten fishhooks to a sick man’s nose, navel, and feet, so that
if his soul should try to escape it may be hooked and held fast.(88) A
Turik on the Baram River, in Borneo, refused to part with some hook-like
stones, because they, as it were, hooked his soul to his body, and so
prevented the spiritual portion of him from becoming detached from the
material.(89) When a Sea Dyak sorcerer or medicine-man is initiated, his
fingers are supposed to be furnished with fish-hooks, with which he will
thereafter clutch the human soul in the act of flying away, and restore it
to the body of the sufferer.(90) But hooks, it is plain, may be used to
catch the souls of enemies as well as of friends. Acting on this principle
head-hunters in Borneo hang wooden hooks beside the skulls of their slain
enemies in the belief that this helps them on their forays to hook in
fresh heads.(91) When an epidemic is raging, the Goajiro Indians of
Colombia attribute it to an evil spirit, it may be the prowling ghost of
an enemy. So they hang strings furnished with hooks from the roofs of
their huts and from all the trees in the neighbourhood, in order that the
demon or ghost may be caught on a hook and thus rendered powerless to harm
them.(92) Similarly the Calchaquis Indians to the west of Paraguay used to
plant arrows in the ground about a sick man to keep death from getting at
him.(93) One of the implements of a Haida medicine-man is a hollow bone,
in which he bottles up departing souls, and so restores them to their
owners.(94) When any one yawns in their presence the Hindoos always snap
their thumbs, believing that this will hinder the soul from issuing
through the open mouth.(95) The Marquesans used to hold the mouth and nose
of a dying man, in order to keep him in life by preventing his soul from
escaping;(96) the same custom is reported of the New Caledonians;(97) and
with the like intention the Bagobos of the Philippine Islands put rings of
brass wire on the wrists or ankles of their sick.(98) On the other hand,
the Itonamas in South America seal up the eyes, nose, and mouth of a dying
person, in case his ghost should get out and carry off others;(99) and for
a similar reason the people of Nias, who fear the spirits of the recently
deceased and identify them with the breath, seek to confine the vagrant
soul in its earthly tabernacle by bunging up the nose or tying up the jaws
of the corpse.(100) Before leaving a corpse the Wakelbura in Australia
used to place hot coals in its ears in order to keep the ghost in the
body, until they had got such a good start that he could not overtake
them.(101) Esquimaux mourners plug their nostrils with deerskin, hair, or
hay for several days,(102) probably to prevent their souls from following
that of their departed friend; the custom is especially incumbent on the
persons who dress the corpse.(103) In southern Celebes, to hinder the
escape of a woman’s soul at childbirth, the nurse ties a band as tightly
as possible round the body of the expectant mother.(104) The
Minangkabauers of Sumatra observe a similar custom; a skein of thread or a
string is sometimes fastened round the wrist or loins of a woman in
childbed, so that when her soul seeks to depart in her hour of travail it
may find the egress barred.(105) Among the Kayans of Borneo illness is
attributed to the absence of the soul; so when a man has been ill and is
well again, he attempts to prevent his soul from departing afresh. For
this purpose he ties the truant into his body by fastening round his wrist
a piece of string on which a _lukut_, or antique bead, is threaded; for a
magical virtue appears to be ascribed to such beads. But lest the string
and the bead should be broken and lost, he will sometimes tattoo the
pattern of the bead on his wrist, and this is found to answer the purpose
of tethering his soul quite as well.(106) Again, the Koryak of
North-Eastern Asia fancy that if there are two sick people in a house and
one of them is at the last extremity, the soul of the other is apt to be
lured away by the soul of the dying man; hence in order to hinder its
departure they tie the patient’s neck by a string to the bands of the
sleeping-tent and recite a charm over the string so that it may be sure to
detain the soul.(107) And lest the soul of a babe should escape and be
lost as soon as it is born, the Alfoors of Celebes, when a birth is about
to take place, are careful to close every opening in the house, even the
keyhole; and they stop up every chink and cranny in the walls. Also they
tie up the mouths of all animals inside and outside the house, for fear
one of them might swallow the child’s soul. For a similar reason all
persons present in the house, even the mother herself, are obliged to keep
their mouths shut the whole time the birth is taking place. When the
question was put, Why they did not hold their noses also, lest the child’s
soul should get into one of them? the answer was that breath being exhaled
as well as inhaled through the nostrils, the soul would be expelled before
it could have time to settle down.(108) Popular expressions in the
language of civilised peoples, such as to have one’s heart in one’s mouth,
or the soul on the lips or in the nose, shew how natural is the idea that
the life or soul may escape by the mouth or nostrils.(109)
(M25) Often the soul is conceived as a bird ready to take flight. This
conception has probably left traces in most languages,(110) and it lingers
as a metaphor in poetry. But what is metaphor to a modern European poet
was sober earnest to his savage ancestor, and is still so to many people.
The Bororos of Brazil fancy that the human soul has the shape of a bird,
and passes in that shape out of the body in dreams.(111) According to the
Bilqula or Bella Coola Indians of British Columbia the soul dwells in the
nape of the neck and resembles a bird enclosed in an egg. If the shell
breaks and the soul flies away, the man must die. If he swoons or becomes
crazed, it is because his soul has flown away without breaking its shell.
The shaman can hear the buzzing of its wings, like the buzz of a mosquito,
as the soul flits past; and he may catch and replace it in the nape of its
owner’s neck.(112) A Melanesian wizard in Lepers’ Island has been known to
send out his soul in the form of an eagle to pursue a ship and learn the
fortunes of some natives who were being carried off in it.(113) The soul
of Aristeas of Proconnesus was seen to issue from his mouth in the shape
of a raven.(114) There is a popular opinion in Bohemia that the parting
soul comes forth from the mouth like a white bird.(115) The Malays carry
out the conception of the bird-soul in a number of odd ways. If the soul
is a bird on the wing, it may be attracted by rice, and so either
prevented from taking wing or lured back again from its perilous flight.
Thus in Java when a child is placed on the ground for the first time (a
moment which uncultured people seem to regard as especially dangerous), it
is put in a hen-coop and the mother makes a clucking sound, as if she were
calling hens.(116) Amongst the Battas of Sumatra, when a man returns from
a dangerous enterprise, grains of rice are placed on his head, and these
grains are called _padiruma tondi_, that is, “means to make the soul
(_tondi_) stay at home.” In Java also rice is placed on the head of
persons who have escaped a great danger or have returned home unexpectedly
after it had been supposed that they were lost.(117) Similarly in the
district of Sintang in West Borneo, if any one has had a great fright, or
escaped a serious peril, or comes back after a long and dangerous journey,
or has taken a solemn oath, the first thing that his relations or friends
do is to strew yellow rice on his head, mumbling, “Cluck! cluck! soul!”
(_koer, koer, semangat_). And when a person, whether man, woman, or child,
has fallen out of a house or off a tree, and has been brought home, his
wife or other kinswoman goes as speedily as possible to the spot where the
accident happened, and there strews rice, which has been coloured yellow,
while she utters the words, “Cluck! cluck! soul! So-and-so is in his house
again. Cluck! cluck! soul!” Then she gathers up the rice in a basket,
carries it to the sufferer, and drops the grains from her hand on his
head, saying again, “Cluck! cluck! soul!”(118) Here the intention clearly
is to decoy back the loitering bird-soul and replace it in the head of its
owner. In southern Celebes they think that a bridegroom’s soul is apt to
fly away at marriage, so coloured rice is scattered over him to induce it
to stay. And, in general, at festivals in South Celebes rice is strewed on
the head of the person in whose honour the festival is held, with the
object of detaining his soul, which at such times is in especial danger of
being lured away by envious demons.(119) For example, after a successful
war the welcome to the victorious prince takes the form of strewing him
with roasted and coloured rice “to prevent his life-spirit, as if it were
a bird, from flying out of his body in consequence of the envy of evil
spirits.”(120) In Central Celebes, when a party of head-hunters returns
from a successful expedition, a woman scatters rice on their heads for a
similar purpose.(121) Among the Minangkabauers of Sumatra the old rude
notions of the soul seem to be dying out. Nowadays most of the people hold
that the soul, being immaterial, has no shape or form. But some of the
sorcerers assert that the soul goes and comes in the shape of a tiny man.
Others are of opinion that it does so in the form of a fly; hence they
make food ready to induce the absent soul to come back, and the first fly
that settles on the food is regarded as the returning truant. But in
native poetry and popular expressions there are traces of the belief that
the soul quits the body in the form of a bird.(122)
(M26) The soul of a sleeper is supposed to wander away from his body and
actually to visit the places, to see the persons, and to perform the acts
of which he dreams. For example, when an Indian of Brazil or Guiana wakes
up from a sound sleep, he is firmly convinced that his soul has really
been away hunting, fishing, felling trees, or whatever else he has dreamed
of doing, while all the time his body has been lying motionless in his
hammock. A whole Bororo village has been thrown into a panic and nearly
deserted because somebody had dreamed that he saw enemies stealthily
approaching it. A Macusi Indian in weak health, who dreamed that his
employer had made him haul the canoe up a series of difficult cataracts,
bitterly reproached his master next morning for his want of consideration
in thus making a poor invalid go out and toil during the night.(123) The
Indians of the Gran Chaco are often heard to relate the most incredible
stories as things which they have themselves seen and heard; hence
strangers who do not know them intimately say in their haste that these
Indians are liars. In point of fact the Indians are firmly convinced of
the truth of what they relate; for these wonderful adventures are simply
their dreams, which they do not distinguish from waking realities.(124)
(M27) Now the absence of the soul in sleep has its dangers, for if from
any cause the soul should be permanently detained away from the body, the
person thus deprived of the vital principle must die.(125) There is a
German belief that the soul escapes from a sleeper’s mouth in the form of
a white mouse or a little bird, and that to prevent the return of the bird
or animal would be fatal to the sleeper.(126) Hence in Transylvania they
say that you should not let a child sleep with its mouth open, or its soul
will slip out in the shape of a mouse, and the child will never wake.(127)
Many causes may detain the sleeper’s soul. Thus, his soul may meet the
soul of another sleeper and the two souls may fight; if a Guinea negro
wakens with sore bones in the morning, he thinks that his soul has been
thrashed by another soul in sleep.(128) Or it may meet the soul of a
person just deceased and be carried off by it; hence in the Aru Islands
the inmates of a house will not sleep the night after a death has taken
place in it, because the soul of the deceased is supposed to be still in
the house and they fear to meet it in a dream.(129) Similarly among the
Upper Thompson Indians of British Columbia, the friends and neighbours who
gathered in a house after a death and remained there till the burial was
over were not allowed to sleep, lest their souls should be drawn away by
the ghost of the deceased or by his guardian spirit.(130) The Lengua
Indians of the Gran Chaco hold that the vagrant spirits of the dead may
come to life again if only they can take possession of a sleeper’s body
during the absence of his soul in dreams. Hence, when the shades of night
have fallen, the ghosts of the departed gather round the villages,
watching for a chance to pounce on the bodies of dreamers and to enter
into them through the gateway of the breast.(131) Again, the soul of the
sleeper may be prevented by an accident or by physical force from
returning to his body. When a Dyak dreams of falling into the water, he
supposes that this accident has really befallen his spirit, and he sends
for a wizard, who fishes for the spirit with a hand-net in a basin of
water till he catches it and restores it to its owner.(132) The Santals
tell how a man fell asleep, and growing very thirsty, his soul, in the
form of a lizard, left his body and entered a pitcher of water to drink.
Just then the owner of the pitcher happened to cover it; so the soul could
not return to the body and the man died. While his friends were preparing
to burn the body some one uncovered the pitcher to get water. The lizard
thus escaped and returned to the body, which immediately revived; so the
man rose up and asked his friends why they were weeping. They told him
they thought he was dead and were about to burn his body. He said he had
been down a well to get water, but had found it hard to get out and had
just returned. So they saw it all.(133) A similar story is reported from
Transylvania as follows. In the account of a witch’s trial at Mühlbach in
the eighteenth century it is said that a woman had engaged two men to work
in her vineyard. After noon they all lay down to rest as usual. An hour
later the men got up and tried to waken the woman, but could not. She lay
motionless with her mouth wide open. They came back at sunset and still
she lay like a corpse. Just at that moment a big fly came buzzing past,
which one of the men caught and shut up in his leathern pouch. Then they
tried again to waken the woman, but could not. Afterwards they let out the
fly; it flew straight into the woman’s mouth and she awoke. On seeing this
the men had no further doubt that she was a witch.(134)
(M28) It is a common rule with primitive people not to waken a sleeper,
because his soul is away and might not have time to get back; so if the
man wakened without his soul, he would fall sick. If it is absolutely
necessary to rouse a sleeper, it must be done very gradually, to allow the
soul time to return.(135) A Fijian in Matuku, suddenly wakened from a nap
by somebody treading on his foot, has been heard bawling after his soul
and imploring it to return. He had just been dreaming that he was far away
in Tonga, and great was his alarm on suddenly wakening to find his body in
Matuku. Death stared him in the face unless his soul could be induced to
speed at once across the sea and reanimate its deserted tenement. The man
would probably have died of fright if a missionary had not been at hand to
allay his terror.(136) Some Brazilian Indians explain the headache from
which a man sometimes suffers after a broken sleep by saying that his soul
is tired with the exertions it made to return quickly to the body.(137) A
Highland story, told to Hugh Miller on the picturesque shores of Loch
Shin, well illustrates the haste made by the soul to regain its body when
the sleeper has been prematurely roused by an indiscreet friend. Two young
men had been spending the early part of a warm summer day in the open air,
and sat down on a mossy bank to rest. Hard by was an ancient ruin
separated from the bank on which they sat only by a slender runnel, across
which there lay, immediately over a miniature cascade, a few withered
stalks of grass. “Overcome by the heat of the day, one of the young men
fell asleep; his companion watched drowsily beside him; when all at once
the watcher was aroused to attention by seeing a little indistinct form,
scarce larger than a humble-bee, issue from the mouth of the sleeping man,
and, leaping upon the moss, move downwards to the runnel, which it crossed
along the withered grass stalks, and then disappeared among the
interstices of the ruin. Alarmed by what he saw, the watcher hastily shook
his companion by the shoulder, and awoke him; though, with all his haste,
the little cloud-like creature, still more rapid in its movements, issued
from the interstice into which it had gone, and, flying across the runnel,
instead of creeping along the grass stalks and over the sward, as before,
it re-entered the mouth of the sleeper, just as he was in the act of
awakening. ‘What is the matter with you?’ said the watcher, greatly
alarmed, ‘what ails you?’ ‘Nothing ails me,’ replied the other; ‘but you
have robbed me of a most delightful dream. I dreamed I was walking through
a fine rich country, and came at length to the shores of a noble river;
and, just where the clear water went thundering down a precipice, there
was a bridge all of silver, which I crossed; and then, entering a noble
palace on the opposite side, I saw great heaps of gold and jewels; and I
was just going to load myself with treasure, when you rudely awoke me, and
I lost all.’ ”(138)
(M29) Still more dangerous is it in the opinion of primitive man to move a
sleeper or alter his appearance, for if this were done the soul on its
return might not be able to find or recognise its body, and so the person
would die. The Minangkabauers of Sumatra deem it highly improper to
blacken or dirty the face of a sleeper, lest the absent soul should shrink
from re-entering a body thus disfigured.(139) Patani Malays fancy that if
a person’s face be painted while he sleeps, the soul which has gone out of
him will not recognise him, and he will sleep on till his face is
washed.(140) In Bombay it is thought equivalent to murder to change the
aspect of a sleeper, as by painting his face in fantastic colours or
giving moustaches to a sleeping woman. For when the soul returns it will
not know its own body and the person will die.(141) The Coreans are of
opinion that in sleep “the soul goes out of the body, and that if a piece
of paper is put over the face of the sleeper he will surely die, for his
soul cannot find its way back into him again.”(142) The Servians believe
that the soul of a sleeping witch often leaves her body in the form of a
butterfly. If during its absence her body be turned round, so that her
feet are placed where her head was before, the butterfly soul will not
find its way back into her body through the mouth, and the witch will
die.(143) The Esthonians of the island of Oesel think that the gusts which
sweep up all kinds of trifles from the ground and whirl them along are the
souls of old women, who have gone out in this shape to seek what they can
find. Meantime the beldame’s body lies as still as a stone, and if you
turn it round her soul will never be able to enter it again, until you
have replaced the body in its original position. You can hear the soul
whining and whimpering till it has found the right aperture.(144)
Similarly in Livonia they think that when the soul of a were-wolf is out
on his hateful business, his body lies like dead; and if meanwhile the
body were accidentally moved, the soul would never more find its way into
it, but would remain in the body of a wolf till death.(145) In the
picturesque but little known Black Mountain of southern France, which
forms a sort of link between the Pyrenees and the Cevennes, they tell how
a woman, who had long been suspected of being a witch, one day fell asleep
at noon among the reapers in the field. Resolved to put her to the test,
the reapers carried her, while she slept, to another part of the field,
leaving a large pitcher on the spot from which they had moved her. When
her soul returned, it entered the pitcher and cunningly rolled it over and
over till the vessel lay beside her body, of which the soul thereupon took
possession.(146)
(M30) But in order that a man’s soul should quit his body, it is not
necessary that he should be asleep. It may quit him in his waking hours,
and then sickness, insanity, or death will be the result. Thus a man of
the Wurunjeri tribe in Victoria lay at his last gasp because his spirit
(_murup_) had departed from him. A medicine-man went in pursuit and caught
the spirit by the middle just as it was about to plunge into the sunset
glow, which is the light cast by the souls of the dead as they pass in and
out of the underworld, where the sun goes to rest. Having captured the
vagrant spirit, the doctor brought it back under his opossum rug, laid
himself down on the dying man, and put the soul back into him, so that
after a time he revived.(147) The Karens of Burma are perpetually anxious
about their souls, lest these should go roving from their bodies, leaving
the owners to die. When a man has reason to fear that his soul is about to
take this fatal step, a ceremony is performed to retain or recall it, in
which the whole family must take part. A meal is prepared consisting of a
cock and hen, a special kind of rice, and a bunch of bananas. Then the
head of the family takes the bowl which is used to skim rice, and knocking
with it thrice on the top of the house-ladder says: “_Prrrroo!_ Come back,
soul, do not tarry outside! If it rains, you will be wet. If the sun
shines, you will be hot. The gnats will sting you, the leeches will bite
you, the tigers will devour you, the thunder will crush you. _Prrrroo!_
Come back, soul! Here it will be well with you. You shall want for
nothing. Come and eat under shelter from the wind and the storm.” After
that the family partakes of the meal, and the ceremony ends with everybody
tying their right wrist with a string which has been charmed by a
sorcerer.(148) Similarly the Lolos, an aboriginal tribe of western China,
believe that the soul leaves the body in chronic illness. In that case
they read a sort of elaborate litany, calling on the soul by name and
beseeching it to return from the hills, the vales, the rivers, the
forests, the fields, or from wherever it may be straying. At the same time
cups of water, wine, and rice are set at the door for the refreshment of
the weary wandering spirit. When the ceremony is over, they tie a red cord
round the arm of the sick man to tether the soul, and this cord is worn by
him until it decays and drops off.(149) So among the Kenyahs of Sarawak a
medicine-man has been known to recall the stray soul of a child, and to
fasten it firmly in its body by tying a string round the child’s right
wrist, and smearing its little arm with the blood of a fowl.(150) The
Ilocanes of Luzon think that a man may lose his soul in the woods or
gardens, and that he who has thus lost his soul loses also his senses.
Hence before they quit the woods or the fields they call to their soul,
“Let us go! let us go!” lest it should loiter behind or go astray. And
when a man becomes crazed or mad, they take him to the place where he is
supposed to have lost his soul and invite the truant spirit to return to
his body.(151) The Mongols sometimes explain sickness by supposing that
the patient’s soul is absent, and either does not care to return to its
body or cannot find the way back. To secure the return of the soul it is
therefore necessary on the one hand to make its body as attractive as
possible, and on the other hand to shew the soul the way home. To make the
body attractive all the sick man’s best clothes and most valued
possessions are placed beside him; he is washed, incensed, and made as
comfortable as may be; and all his friends march thrice round the hut
calling out the sick man’s name and coaxing his soul to return. To help
the wanderer to find its way back a coloured cord is stretched from the
patient’s head to the door of the hut. The priest in his robes reads a
list of the horrors of hell and the dangers incurred by souls which
wilfully absent themselves from their bodies. Then turning to the
assembled friends and the patient he asks, “Is it come?” All answer “Yes,”
and bowing to the returning soul throw seed over the sick man. The cord
which guided the soul back is then rolled up and placed round the
patient’s neck, who must wear it for seven days without taking it off. No
one may frighten or hurt him, lest his soul, not yet familiar with its
body, should again take flight.(152)
(M31) Some of the Congo tribes believe that when a man is ill, his soul
has left his body and is wandering at large. The aid of the sorcerer is
then called in to capture the vagrant spirit and restore it to the
invalid. Generally the physician declares that he has successfully chased
the soul into the branch of a tree. The whole town thereupon turns out and
accompanies the doctor to the tree, where the strongest men are deputed to
break off the branch in which the soul of the sick man is supposed to be
lodged. This they do and carry the branch back to the town, insinuating by
their gestures that the burden is heavy and hard to bear. When the branch
has been brought to the sick man’s hut, he is placed in an upright
position by its side, and the sorcerer performs the enchantments by which
the soul is believed to be restored to its owner.(153) The soul or shade
of a Déné or Tinneh Indian in the old days generally remained invisible,
but appeared wandering about in one form or another whenever disease or
death was imminent. All the efforts of the sufferer’s friends were
therefore concentrated on catching the roving shade. The method adopted
was simple. They stuffed the patient’s moccasins with down and hung them
up. If next morning the down was warm, they made sure that the lost soul
was in the boots, with which accordingly they carefully and silently shod
their suffering friend. Nothing more could reasonably be demanded for a
perfect cure.(154) An Ottawa medicine-man has been known to catch a stray
soul in a little box, which he brought back and inserted in the patient’s
mouth.(155)
(M32) Pining, sickness, great fright, and death are ascribed by the Battas
or Bataks of Sumatra to the absence of the soul (_tendi_) from the body.
At first they try to beckon the wanderer back, and to lure him, like a
fowl, by strewing rice. Then the following form of words is commonly
repeated: “Come back, O soul, whether thou art lingering in the wood, or
on the hills, or in the dale. See, I call thee with a _toemba bras_, with
an egg of the fowl Rajah _moelija_, with the eleven healing leaves. Detain
it not, let it come straight here, detain it not, neither in the wood, nor
on the hill, nor in the dale. That may not be. O come straight home!”(156)
Sometimes the means adopted by the Battas to procure the return of a sick
person’s soul are more elaborate. A procession sets out from the village
to the tuck of drum to find and bring home the strayed soul. First goes a
person bearing a basket which contains cakes of rice-meal, rice dyed
yellow, and a boiled fowl’s egg. The sorcerer follows carrying a chicken,
and behind him walks a man with a black, red, and white flag. A crowd of
sympathisers brings up the rear. On reaching the spot where the lost soul
is supposed to tarry, they set up a small bamboo altar, and the sorcerer
offers on it the chicken to the spirit of the place, the drums beating all
the time. Then, waving his shawl to attract the soul of the sick man, he
says: “Come hither, thou soul of So-and-So, whether thou sittest among the
stones or in the mud. In the house is thy place. We have besought the
spirit to let thee go.” After that the procession reforms and marches back
to the village to the roll of drums and the clash of cymbals. On reaching
the door of the house the sorcerer calls out to the inmates, “Has it
come?” and a voice from within answers, “It is here, good sorcerer.” At
evening the drums beat again.(157) A number of plants, including rice, a
species of fig, and garlic, are supposed by the Battas to possess
soul-compelling virtue and are accordingly made use of by them in rites
for the recovery of lost souls. When a child is sick, the mother commonly
waves a cloth to beckon home its wandering spirit, and when a cock crows
or a hen cackles in the yard, she knows that the prodigal has returned. If
the little sufferer persists in being ill in spite of these favourable
omens, the mother will hang a bag of rice at the head of her bed when she
goes to sleep, and next morning on getting up she measures the rice. If
the rice has increased in volume during the night, as it may do in a
moisture-laden atmosphere, she is confident that the lost soul has indeed
come home to stay.(158) The Kayans of Borneo fasten packets of rice,
flesh, and fish to the window in the roof through which the wandering soul
of a sick man is expected to return home. The doctor sits cross-legged on
a mat under the open window with a display of pretty things spread out
temptingly before him as baits to entice the spirit back to its deserted
tabernacle. From the window hangs a string of precious corals or pearls to
serve the returning prodigal as a ladder and so facilitate his descent
into the house. The lower end of the string is attached to a bundle
composed of wooden hooks, a fowl’s feather, little packets of rice, and so
forth. Chanting his spells, the doctor strokes the soul down the string
into the bundle, which he then deposits in a basket and hides in a corner
till the dusk of the evening. When darkness has fallen, he blows the
captured soul back into the patient’s head and strokes the sufferer’s arm
downwards with the point of an old spear in order to settle the soul
firmly in his body.(159) Once when a popular traveller was leaving a Kayan
village, the mothers, fearing that their children’s souls might follow him
on his journey, brought him the boards on which they carry their infants
and begged him to pray that the souls of the little ones would return to
the familiar boards and not go away with him into the far country. To each
board was fastened a looped string for the purpose of tethering the
vagrant spirits, and through the loop each baby was made to pass a chubby
finger to make sure that its tiny soul would not wander away.(160) When a
Dyak is dangerously ill, the medicine-men may say that his soul has
escaped far away, perhaps to the river; then they will wave a garment or
cloth about to imitate the casting of a net, signifying thereby that they
are catching the soul like a fish in a net. Or they may give out that the
soul has escaped into the jungle; and then they will rush out of the house
to circumvent and secure it there. Or again they may allege that it has
been carried away over seas to some unknown land; and then they will play
at paddling a boat to follow it across the great water. But more commonly
their mode of treatment is as follows. A spear is set up in the middle of
the verandah with a few leaves tied to it and the medicine-boxes of the
medicine-men laid at its foot. Round this the doctors run at full speed,
chanting the while, till one of them falls down and lies motionless. The
bystanders cover him with a blanket, and wait while his spirit hies away
after the errant soul and brings it back. Presently he comes to himself,
stares vacantly about like a man awaking from sleep, and then rises,
holding the soul in his clenched right hand. He then returns it to the
patient through the crown of his head, while he mutters a spell.(161)
Among the Dyaks of the Kayan and Lower Melawie districts you will often
see, in houses where there are children, a basket of a peculiar shape with
shells and dried fruits attached to it. These shells contain the remains
of the children’s navel-strings, and the basket to which they are fastened
is commonly hung beside the place where the children sleep. When a child
is frightened, for example by being bathed or by the bursting of a
thunderstorm, its soul flees from its body and nestles beside its old
familiar friend the navel-string in the basket, from which the mother
easily induces it to return by shaking the basket and pressing it to the
child’s body.(162) The Toboongkoos of Central Celebes believe that
sickness in general is caused by the departure of the soul. To recover the
wanderer a priest will set out food in the courtyard of the sufferer’s
house and then invoke the soul, promising it many fine things if it will
only come back. When he thinks it has complied with his request, he
catches it in a cloth which he keeps ready for the purpose. This cloth he
afterwards claps on the sick man’s head, thereby restoring to him his lost
soul.(163)
(M33) In an Indian story a king conveys his soul into the dead body of a
Brahman, and a hunchback conveys his soul into the deserted body of the
king. The hunchback is now king and the king is a Brahman. However, the
hunchback is induced to shew his skill by transferring his soul to the
dead body of a parrot, and the king seizes the opportunity to regain
possession of his own body.(164) A tale of the same type, with variations
of detail, reappears among the Malays. A king has incautiously transferred
his soul to an ape, upon which the vizier adroitly inserts his own soul
into the king’s body and so takes possession of the queen and the kingdom,
while the true king languishes at court in the outward semblance of an
ape. But one day the false king, who played for high stakes, was watching
a combat of rams, and it happened that the animal on which he had laid his
money fell down dead. All efforts to restore animation proved unavailing
till the false king, with the instinct of a true sportsman, transferred
his own soul to the body of the deceased ram, and thus renewed the fray.
The real king in the body of the ape saw his chance, and with great
presence of mind darted back into his own body, which the vizier had
rashly vacated. So he came to his own again, and the usurper in the ram’s
body met with the fate he richly deserved.(165) In another Indian story a
Brahman reanimates the dead body of a king by conveying his own soul into
it. Meantime the Brahman’s body has been burnt, and his soul is obliged to
remain in the body of the king.(166) In a Chinese story we read of a monk
in a Buddhist monastery who used from time to time to send his soul away
out of himself. Whenever he was thus absent from the body, he took the
precaution of locking the door of his cell. On one of these occasions an
envoy from the north arrived and put up at the monastery, but there was no
cell for him to pass the night in. Then he looked into the cell of the
brother whose soul was not at home, and seeing his body lying there
motionless, he battered the door in and said, “I will lodge here. The man
is dead. Take the body and burn it.” His servants obeyed his orders, the
monks being powerless to interfere. That very night the soul came back,
only to find its body reduced to ashes. Every night it could be heard
crying, “Where shall I settle?” Those who knew him then opened their
windows, saying, “Here I am.” So the soul came in and united itself with
their body, and the result was that they became much cleverer than
before.(167) Similarly the Greeks told how the soul of Hermotimus of
Clazomenae used to quit his body and roam far and wide, bringing back
intelligence of what he had seen on his rambles to his friends at home;
until one day, when his spirit was abroad, his enemies contrived to seize
his deserted body and committed it to the flames.(168) It is said that
during the last seven years of his life Sultan Bayazid ate nothing that
had life and blood in it. One day, being seized with a great longing for
sheep’s trotters, he struggled long in this glorious contest with his
soul, until at last, a savoury dish of trotters being set before him, he
said unto his soul, “My soul, the trotters are before thee; if thou
wishest to enjoy them, leave the body and feed on them.” Hardly had he
uttered these words when a living creature was seen to issue from his
mouth and drink of the juice in the dish, after which it endeavoured to
return whence it came. But the austere sultan, determined to mortify his
carnal appetite, prevented it with his hand from entering his mouth, and
when it fell to the ground commanded that it should be beaten. The pages
kicked it to death, and after this murder of his soul the sultan remained
in gloomy seclusion, taking no part or interest in the affairs of
government.(169)
(M34) The departure of the soul is not always voluntary. It may be
extracted from the body against its will by ghosts, demons, or sorcerers.
Hence, when a funeral is passing the house, the Karens of Burma tie their
children with a special kind of string to a particular part of the house,
lest the souls of the children should leave their bodies and go into the
corpse which is passing. The children are kept tied in this way until the
corpse is out of sight.(170) And after the corpse has been laid in the
grave, but before the earth has been shovelled in, the mourners and
friends range themselves round the grave, each with a bamboo split
lengthwise in one hand and a little stick in the other; each man thrusts
his bamboo into the grave, and drawing the stick along the groove of the
bamboo points out to his soul that in this way it may easily climb up out
of the tomb. While the earth is being shovelled in, the bamboos are kept
out of the way, lest the souls should be in them, and so should be
inadvertently buried with the earth as it is being thrown into the grave;
and when the people leave the spot they carry away the bamboos, begging
their souls to come with them.(171) Further, on returning from the grave
each Karen provides himself with three little hooks made of branches of
trees, and calling his spirit to follow him, at short intervals, as he
returns, he makes a motion as if hooking it, and then thrusts the hook
into the ground. This is done to prevent the soul of the living from
staying behind with the soul of the dead.(172) On the return of a Burmese
or Shan family from a burial, old men tie up the wrists of each member of
the family with string, to prevent his or her “butterfly” or soul from
escaping; and this string remains till it is worn out and falls off.(173)
When a mother dies leaving a young baby, the Burmese think that the
“butterfly” or soul of the baby follows that of the mother, and that if it
is not recovered the child must die. So a wise woman is called in to get
back the baby’s soul. She places a mirror near the corpse, and on the
mirror a piece of feathery cotton down. Holding a cloth in her open hands
at the foot of the mirror, she with wild words entreats the mother not to
take with her the “butterfly” or soul of her child, but to send it back.
As the gossamer down slips from the face of the mirror she catches it in
the cloth and tenderly places it on the baby’s breast. The same ceremony
is sometimes observed when one of two children that have played together
dies, and is thought to be luring away the soul of its playmate to the
spirit-land. It is sometimes performed also for a bereaved husband or
wife.(174) The Bahnars of eastern Cochin-China think that when a man is
sick of a fever his soul has gone away with the ghosts to the tombs. At
sunset a sorcerer attempts to lure the soul back by offering it
sugar-cane, bananas, and other fruits, while he sings an incantation
inviting the wanderer to return from among the dead to the land of the
living. He pretends to catch the truant soul in a piece of cotton, which
he then lays on the patient’s head.(175) When the Karo-Bataks of Sumatra
have buried somebody and are filling in the grave, a sorceress runs about
beating the air with a stick. This she does in order to drive away the
souls of the survivors, for if one of these souls happened to slip into
the grave and to be covered up with earth, its owner would die.(176) Among
some of the Dyak tribes of south-eastern Borneo, as soon as the coffin is
carried to the place of burial, the house in which the death occurred is
sprinkled with water, and the father of the family calls out the names of
all his children and the other members of his household. For they think
that the ghost loves to decoy away the souls of his kinsfolk, but that his
designs upon them can be defeated by calling out their names, which has
the effect of bringing back the souls to their owners. The same ceremony
is repeated on the return from the burial.(177) It is a rule with the
Kwakiutl Indians of British Columbia that a corpse must not be coffined in
the house, or the souls of the other inmates would enter the coffin, and
they, too, would die. The body is taken out either through the roof or
through a hole made in one of the walls, and is then coffined outside the
house.(178) In the East Indian island of Keisar it is deemed imprudent to
go near a grave at night, lest the ghosts should catch and keep the soul
of the passer-by.(179) The Kei Islanders believe that the spirits of their
forefathers, angry at not receiving food, make people sick by detaining
their souls. So they lay offerings of food on the grave and beg their
ancestors to allow the soul of the sick to return, or to drive it home
speedily if it should be lingering by the way.(180)
(M35) In Bolang Mongondo, a district in the west of Celebes, all sickness
is ascribed to the ancestral spirits who have carried off the patient’s
soul. The object therefore is to bring back the soul of the sufferer and
restore it to him. An eye-witness has thus described the attempted cure of
a sick boy. The priestesses, who acted as physicians, made a doll of cloth
and fastened it to the point of a spear, which an old woman held upright.
Round this doll the priestesses danced, uttering charms, and chirruping as
when one calls a dog. Then the old woman lowered the point of the spear a
little, so that the priestesses could reach the doll. By this time the
soul of the sick boy was supposed to be in the doll, having been brought
into it by the incantations. So the priestesses approached it cautiously
on tiptoe and caught the soul in the many-coloured cloths which they had
been waving in the air. Then they laid the soul on the boy’s head, that
is, they wrapped his head in the cloth in which the soul was supposed to
be, and stood still for some moments with great gravity, holding their
hands on the patient’s head. Suddenly there was a jerk, the priestesses
whispered and shook their heads, and the cloth was taken off—the soul had
escaped. The priestesses gave chase to it, running round and round the
house, clucking and gesticulating as if they were driving hens into a
poultry-yard. At last they recaptured the soul at the foot of the stair
and restored it to its owner as before.(181) Much in the same way an
Australian medicine-man will sometimes bring the lost soul of a sick man
into a puppet and restore it to the patient by pressing the puppet to his
breast.(182) In Uea, one of the Loyalty Islands, the souls of the dead
seem to have been credited with the power of stealing the souls of the
living. For when a man was sick the soul-doctor would go with a large
troop of men and women to the graveyard. Here the men played on flutes and
the women whistled softly to lure the soul home. After this had gone on
for some time they formed in procession and moved homewards, the flutes
playing and the women whistling all the way, while they led back the
wandering soul and drove it gently along with open palms. On entering the
patient’s dwelling they commanded the soul in a loud voice to enter his
body.(183) In Madagascar when a man was sick or lunatic in consequence of
the loss of his soul, his friends despatched a wizard in haste to fetch
him a soul from the graveyard. The emissary repaired by night to the spot,
and having made a hole in the wooden house which served as a tomb, begged
the spirit of the patient’s father to bestow a soul on his son or
daughter, who had none. So saying he applied a bonnet to the hole, then
folded it up and rushed back to the house of the sufferer, saying he had a
soul for him. With that he clapped the bonnet on the head of the invalid,
who at once said he felt much better and had recovered the soul which he
had lost.(184)
(M36) When a Dyak or Malay of some of the western tribes or districts of
Borneo is taken ill, with vomiting and profuse sweating as the only
symptoms, he thinks that one of his deceased kinsfolk or ancestors is at
the bottom of it. To discover which of them is the culprit, a wise man or
woman pulls a lock of hair on the crown of the sufferer’s head, calling
out the names of all his dead relations. The name at which the lock gives
forth a sound is the name of the guilty party. If the patient’s hair is
too short to be tugged with effect, he knocks his forehead seven times
against the forehead of a kinsman who has long hair. The hair of the
latter is then tugged instead of that of the patient and answers to the
test quite as well. When the blame has thus been satisfactorily laid at
the door of the ghost who is responsible for the sickness, the physician,
who, as in other countries, is often an old woman, remonstrates with him
on his ill behaviour. “Go back,” says she, “to your grave; what do you
come here for? The soul of the sick man does not choose to be called by
you, and will remain yet a long time in its body.” Then she puts some
ashes from the hearth in a winnowing fan and moulds out of them a small
figure or image in human likeness. Seven times she moves the basket with
the little ashen figure up and down before the patient, taking care not to
obliterate the figure, while at the same time she says, “Sickness, settle
in the head, belly, hands, etc.; then quickly pass into the corresponding
part of the image,” whereupon the patient spits on the ashen image and
pushes it from him with his left hand. Next the beldame lights a candle
and goes to the grave of the person whose ghost is doing all the mischief.
On the grave she throws the figure of ashes, calling out, “Ghost, plague
the sick man no longer, and stay in your grave, that he may see you no
more.” On her return she asks the anxious relations in the house, “Has his
soul come back?” and they must answer quickly, “Yes, the soul of the sick
man has come back.” Then she stands beside the patient, blows out the
candle which had lighted the returning soul on its way, and strews
yellow-coloured rice on the head of the convalescent, saying, “Cluck,
soul! cluck, soul! cluck, soul!” Last of all she fastens on his right
wrist a bracelet or ring which he must wear for three days.(185) In this
case we see that the saving of the soul is combined with a vicarious
sacrifice to the ghost, who receives a puppet on which to work his will
instead of on the poor soul. In San Cristoval, one of the Melanesian
islands, the vicarious sacrifice takes the form of a pig or a fish. A
malignant ghost of the name of Tapia is supposed to have seized on the
sick man’s soul and tied it up to a banyan-tree. Accordingly a man who has
influence with Tapia takes a pig or fish to the holy place where the ghost
resides and offers it to him, saying, “This is for you to eat in place of
that man; eat this, don’t kill him.” This satisfies the ghost; the soul is
loosed from the tree and carried back to the sufferer, who naturally
recovers.(186) A regular part of the stock-in-trade of a Dyak medicine-man
is a crystal into which he gazes to detect the hiding-place of a lost soul
or to identify the demon who is causing the sickness.(187) In one of the
New Hebrides a ghost will sometimes impound the souls of trespassers
within a magic fence in his garden, and will only consent to pull up the
fence and let the souls out on receiving an unqualified apology and a
satisfactory assurance that no personal disrespect was intended.(188) In
Motlav, another Melanesian island, it is enough to call out the sick man’s
name in the sacred place where he rashly intruded, and then, when the cry
of the kingfisher or some other bird is heard, to shout “Come back” to the
soul of the sick man and run back with it to the house.(189)
(M37) It is a comparatively easy matter to save a soul which is merely
tied up to a tree or detained as a vagrant in a pound; but it is a far
harder task to fetch it up from the nether world, if it once gets down
there. When a Buryat shaman is called in to attend a patient, the first
thing he does is to ascertain where exactly the soul of the invalid is;
for it may have strayed, or been stolen, or be languishing in the prison
of the gloomy Erlik, lord of the world below. If it is anywhere in the
neighbourhood, the shaman soon catches and replaces it in the patient’s
body. If it is far away, he searches the wide world till he finds it,
ransacking the deep woods, the lonely steppes, and the bottom of the sea,
not to be thrown off the scent even though the cunning soul runs to the
sheep-walks in the hope that its footprints will be lost among the tracks
of the sheep. But when the whole world has been searched in vain for the
errant soul, the shaman knows that there is nothing for it but to go down
to hell and seek the lost one among the spirits in prison. At the stern
call of duty he does not flinch, though he knows that the journey is
toilsome, and that the travelling expenses, which are naturally defrayed
by the patient, are very heavy. Sometimes the lord of the infernal regions
will only agree to release the soul on condition of receiving another in
its stead, and that one the soul of the sick man’s dearest friend. If the
patient consents to the substitution, the shaman turns himself into a
hawk, pounces upon the soul of the friend as it soars from his slumbering
body in the form of a lark, and hands over the fluttering, struggling
thing to the grim warden of the dead, who thereupon sets the soul of the
sick man at liberty. So the sick man recovers and his friend dies.(190)
(M38) When a shaman declares that the soul of a sick Thompson Indian has
been carried off by the dead, the good physician, who is the shaman
himself, puts on a conical mask and sets off in pursuit. He now acts as if
on a journey, jumping rivers and such like obstacles, searching, talking,
and sometimes engaging in a tussle for the possession of the soul. His
first step is to repair to the old trail by which the souls of heathen
Thompsons went to the spirit-land; for nowadays the souls of Christian
Thompsons travel by a new road. If he fails to find the tracks of the lost
soul there, he searches all the graveyards, one after the other, and
almost always discovers it in one of them. Sometimes he succeeds in
heading off the departing soul by taking a short cut to the other world. A
shaman can only stay a short time there. So as soon as he lays hands on
the soul he is after, he bolts with it. The other souls give chase, but he
stamps with his foot, on which he wears a rattle made of deer’s hoofs. At
the rattle of the hoofs the ghosts retreat and he hurries on. A bolder
shaman will sometimes ask the ghosts for the soul, and if they refuse to
give it, he will wrest it from them. They attack him, but he clubs them
and brings away the soul by force. When he comes back to the world, he
takes off his mask and shews his club all bloody. Then the people know he
had a desperate struggle. If he foresees that the harrowing of hell is
likely to prove a tough job, he increases the number of wooden pins in his
mask. The rescued soul is placed by him on the patient’s head and so
returned to his body.(191) Among the Twana Indians of Washington State the
descent of the medicine-men into the nether world to rescue lost souls is
represented in pantomime before the eyes of the spectators, who include
women and children as well as men. The surface of the ground is often
broken to facilitate the descent of the rescue party. When the adventurous
band is supposed to have reached the bottom, they journey along, cross at
least one stream, and travel till they come to the abode of the spirits.
These they surprise, and after a desperate struggle, sustained with great
ardour and a prodigious noise, they succeed in rescuing the poor souls,
and so, wrapping them up in cloth, they make the best of their way back to
the upper world and restore the recovered souls to their owners, who have
been seen to cry heartily for joy at receiving them back.(192)
(M39) Often the abduction of a man’s soul is set down to demons. The
Annamites believe that when a man meets a demon and speaks to him, the
demon inhales the man’s breath and soul.(193) The souls of the Bahnars of
eastern Cochin-China are apt to be carried off by evil spirits, and the
modes of recovering them are various. If a man suffers from a colic, the
sorcerer may say that in planting sugar-cane, maize or what-not, he has
pierced the stomach of a certain god who lives like a mole in the ground,
and that the injured deity has punished him by abstracting his soul and
burying it under a plant. Hence the cure for the colic is to pull up the
plant and water the hole with millet wine and the blood of a fowl, a goat,
or a pig. Again, if a child falls ill in the forest or the fields, it is
because some devil has made off with its soul. To retrieve this spiritual
loss the sorcerer constructs an apparatus which comprises an egg-shell in
an egg-holder, a little waxen image of the sick child, and a small bamboo
full of millet wine. This apparatus he sets up at a cross-road, praying
the devil to drink the wine and surrender the stolen soul by depositing it
in the egg-shell. Then he returns to the house, and putting a little
cotton to the child’s head restores the soul to its owner. Sometimes the
sorcerer lays a trap for the thievish demon, the bait consisting of the
liver of a pig or a fowl and the blood-smeared handle of a little mattock.
At nightfall he sets the trap at a cross-road and lies in wait hard by.
While the devil is licking the blood and munching the liver, the artful
sorcerer pounces out on him, and after a severe struggle wrests the soul
from his clutches, returning to the village victorious, but breathless and
bleeding from his terrific encounter with the enemy of souls.(194) Fits
and convulsions are generally set down by the Chinese to the agency of
certain mischievous spirits who love to draw men’s souls out of their
bodies. At Amoy the spirits who serve babies and children in this way
rejoice in the high-sounding titles of “celestial agencies bestriding
galloping horses” and “literary graduates residing halfway up in the sky.”
When an infant is writhing in convulsions, the frightened mother hastens
to the roof of the house, and, waving about a bamboo pole to which one of
the child’s garments is attached, cries out several times, “My child
So-and-so, come back, return home!” Meantime, another inmate of the house
bangs away at a gong in the hope of attracting the attention of the
strayed soul, which is supposed to recognise the familiar garment and to
slip into it. The garment containing the soul is then placed on or beside
the child, and if the child does not die recovery is sure to follow sooner
or later.(195) Similarly we saw that some Indians catch a man’s lost soul
in his boots and restore it to his body by putting his feet into
them.(196)
(M40) If Galelareese mariners are sailing past certain rocks or come to a
river where they never were before, they must wash their faces, for
otherwise the spirits of the rocks or the river would snatch away their
souls.(197) When a Dyak is about to leave a forest through which he has
been walking alone, he never forgets to ask the demons to give him back
his soul, for it may be that some forest-devil has carried it off. For the
abduction of a soul may take place without its owner being aware of his
loss, and it may happen either while he is awake or asleep.(198) The
Papuans of Geelvink Bay in New Guinea are apt to think that the mists
which sometimes hang about the tops of tall trees in their tropical
forests envelop a spirit or god called Narbrooi, who draws away the breath
or soul of those whom he loves, thus causing them to languish and die.
Accordingly, when a man lies sick, a friend or relation will go to one of
these mist-capped trees and endeavour to recover the lost soul. At the
foot of the tree he makes a peculiar sound to attract the attention of the
spirit, and lights a cigar. In its curling smoke his fancy discerns the
fair and youthful form of Narbrooi himself, who, decked with flowers,
appears and informs the anxious enquirer whether the soul of his sick
friend is with him or not. If it is, the man asks, “Has he done any
wrong?” “Oh no!” the spirit answers, “I love him, and therefore I have
taken him to myself.” So the man lays down an offering at the foot of the
tree, and goes home with the soul of the sufferer in a straw bag. Arrived
at the house, he empties the bag with its precious contents over the sick
man’s head, rubs his arms and hands with ginger-root, which he had first
chewed small, and then ties a bandage round one of the patient’s wrists.
If the bandage bursts, it is a sign that Narbrooi has repented of his
bargain, and is drawing away the sufferer once more to himself.(199)
(M41) In the Moluccas when a man is unwell it is thought that some devil
has carried away his soul to the tree, mountain, or hill where he (the
devil) resides. A sorcerer having pointed out the devil’s abode, the
friends of the patient carry thither cooked rice, fruit, fish, raw eggs, a
hen, a chicken, a silken robe, gold, armlets, and so forth. Having set out
the food in order they pray, saying: “We come to offer to you, O devil,
this offering of food, clothes, gold, and so on; take it and release the
soul of the patient for whom we pray. Let it return to his body, and he
who now is sick shall be made whole.” Then they eat a little and let the
hen loose as a ransom for the soul of the patient; also they put down the
raw eggs; but the silken robe, the gold, and the armlets they take home
with them. As soon as they are come to the house they place a flat bowl
containing the offerings which have been brought back at the sick man’s
head, and say to him: “Now is your soul released, and you shall fare well
and live to grey hairs on the earth.”(200) A more modern account from the
same region describes how the friend of the patient, after depositing his
offerings on the spot where the missing soul is supposed to be, calls out
thrice the name of the sick person, adding, “Come with me, come with me.”
Then he returns, making a motion with a cloth as if he had caught the soul
in it. He must not look to right or left or speak a word to any one he
meets, but must go straight to the patient’s house. At the door he stands,
and calling out the sick person’s name, asks whether he is returned. Being
answered from within that he is returned, he enters and lays the cloth in
which he has caught the soul on the patient’s throat, saying, “Now you are
returned to the house.” Sometimes a substitute is provided; a doll,
dressed up in gay clothing and tinsel, is offered to the demon in exchange
for the patient’s soul, with these words, “Give us back the ugly one which
you have taken away and receive this pretty one instead.”(201)
(M42) Among the Alfoors or Toradjas of Poso, in Central Celebes, a wooden
puppet is offered to the demon as a substitute for the soul which he has
abstracted, and the patient must touch the puppet in order to identify
himself with it. The effigy is then hung on a bamboo pole, which is
planted at the place of sacrifice outside of the house. Here too are
deposited offerings of rice, an egg, a little wood (which is afterwards
kindled), a sherd of a broken cooking-pot, and so forth. A long rattan
extends from the place of sacrifice to the sufferer, who grasps one end of
it firmly, for along it his lost soul will return when the devil has
kindly released it. All being ready, the priestess informs the demon that
he has come to the wrong place, and that there are no doubt much better
quarters where he could reside. Then the father of the patient, standing
beside the offerings, takes up his parable as follows: “O demon, we forgot
to sacrifice to you. You have visited us with this sickness; will you now
go away from us to some other place? We have made ready provisions for you
on the journey. See, here is a cooking-pot, here are rice, fire, and a
fowl. O demon, go away from us.” With that the priestess strews rice
towards the bamboo-pole to lure back the wandering soul; and the fowl
promised to the devil is thrown in the same direction, but is instantly
jerked back again by a string which, in a spirit of intelligent economy,
has been previously attached to its leg. The demon is now supposed to
accept the puppet, which hangs from the pole, and to release the soul,
which, sliding down the pole and along the rattan, returns to its proper
owner. And lest the evil spirit should repent of the barter which has just
been effected, all communication with him is broken off by cutting down
the pole.(202) Similarly the Mongols make up a horse of birch-bark and a
doll, and invite the demon to take the doll instead of the patient and to
ride away on the horse.(203) A Yakut shaman, rigged out in his
professional costume, with his drum in his hand, will boldly descend into
the lower world and haggle with the demon who has carried off a sick man’s
soul. Not uncommonly the demon proves amenable to reason, and in
consideration of the narrow circumstances of the patient’s family will
accept a more moderate ransom than he at first demanded. For instance, he
may be brought to put up with the skin of an Arctic hare or Arctic fox
instead of a foal or a steer. The bargain being struck, the shaman hurries
back to the sufferer’s bedside, from which to the merely carnal eye he has
never stirred, and informs the anxious relatives of the success of his
mission. They in turn gladly hasten to provide the ransom.(204)
(M43) Demons are especially feared by persons who have just entered a new
house. Hence at a house-warming among the Alfoors of Minahassa in Celebes
the priest performs a ceremony for the purpose of restoring their souls to
the inmates. He hangs up a bag at the place of sacrifice and then goes
through a list of the gods. There are so many of them that this takes him
the whole night through without stopping. In the morning he offers the
gods an egg and some rice. By this time the souls of the household are
supposed to be gathered in the bag. So the priest takes the bag, and
holding it on the head of the master of the house, says, “Here you have
your soul; go (soul) to-morrow away again.” He then does the same, saying
the same words, to the housewife and all the other members of the
family.(205) Amongst the same Alfoors one way of recovering a sick man’s
soul is to let down a bowl by a belt out of a window and fish for the soul
till it is caught in the bowl and hauled up.(206) And among the same
people, when a priest is bringing back a sick man’s soul which he has
caught in a cloth, he is preceded by a girl holding the large leaf of a
certain palm over his head as an umbrella to keep him and the soul from
getting wet, in case it should rain; and he is followed by a man
brandishing a sword to deter other souls from any attempt at rescuing the
captured spirit.(207)
(M44) In Nias, when a man dreams that a pig is fastened under a
neighbour’s house, it is a sign that some one in that house will die. They
think that the sun-god is drawing away the shadows or souls of that
household from this world of shadows to his own bright world of radiant
light, and a ceremony must needs be performed to win back these passing
souls to earth. Accordingly, while it is still night, the priest begins to
drum and pray, and he continues his orisons till about nine o’clock next
morning. Then he takes his stand at an opening in the roof through which
he can behold the sun, and spreading out a cloth waits till the beams of
the morning sun fall full upon it. In the sunbeams he thinks the wandering
souls have come back again; so he wraps the cloth up tightly, and quitting
the opening in the roof, hastens with his precious charge to the expectant
household. Before each member of it he stops, and dipping his fingers into
the cloth takes out his or her soul and restores it to the owner by
touching the person on the forehead.(208) The Thompson Indians of British
Columbia think that the setting sun draws the souls of men away towards
it; hence they will never sleep with their heads to the sunset.(209) The
Samoans tell how two young wizards, passing a house where a chief lay very
sick, saw a company of gods from the mountain sitting in the doorway. They
were handing from one to another the soul of the dying chief. It was wrapt
in a leaf, and had been passed from the gods inside the house to those
sitting in the doorway. One of the gods handed the soul to one of the
wizards, taking him for a god in the dark, for it was night. Then all the
gods rose up and went away; but the wizard kept the chief’s soul. In the
morning some women went with a present of fine mats to fetch a famous
physician. The wizards were sitting on the shore as the women passed, and
they said to the women, “Give us the mats and we will heal him.” So they
went to the chief’s house. He was very ill, his jaw hung down, and his end
seemed near. But the wizards undid the leaf and let the soul into him
again, and forthwith he brightened up and lived.(210)
(M45) The Battas or Bataks of Sumatra believe that the soul of a living
man may transmigrate into the body of an animal. Hence, for example, the
doctor is sometimes desired to extract the patient’s soul from the body of
a fowl, in which it has been hidden away by an evil spirit.(211)
(M46) Sometimes the lost soul is brought back in a visible shape. In
Melanesia a woman, knowing that a neighbour was at the point of death,
heard a rustling in her house, as of a moth fluttering, just at the moment
when a noise of weeping and lamentation told her that the soul was flown.
She caught the fluttering thing between her hands and ran with it, crying
out that she had caught the soul. But though she opened her hands above
the mouth of the corpse, it did not revive.(212) In Lepers’ Island, one of
the New Hebrides, for ten days after a birth the father is careful not to
exert himself or the baby would suffer for it. If during this time he goes
away to any distance, he will bring back with him on his return a little
stone representing the infant’s soul. Arrived at home he cries, “Come
hither,” and puts down the stone in the house. Then he waits till the
child sneezes, at which he cries, “Here it is”; for now he knows that the
little soul has not been lost after all.(213) The Salish or Flathead
Indians of Oregon believe that a man’s soul may be separated for a time
from his body without causing death and without the man being aware of his
loss. It is necessary, however, that the lost soul should be soon found
and restored to its owner or he will die. The name of the man who has lost
his soul is revealed in a dream to the medicine-man, who hastens to inform
the sufferer of his loss. Generally a number of men have sustained a like
loss at the same time; all their names are revealed to the medicine-man,
and all employ him to recover their souls. The whole night long these
soulless men go about the village from lodge to lodge, dancing and
singing. Towards daybreak they go into a separate lodge, which is closed
up so as to be totally dark. A small hole is then made in the roof,
through which the medicine-man, with a bunch of feathers, brushes in the
souls, in the shape of bits of bone and the like, which he receives on a
piece of matting. A fire is next kindled, by the light of which the
medicine-man sorts out the souls. First he puts aside the souls of dead
people, of which there are usually several; for if he were to give the
soul of a dead person to a living man, the man would die instantly. Next
he picks out the souls of all the persons present, and making them all to
sit down before him, he takes the soul of each, in the shape of a splinter
of bone, wood, or shell, and placing it on the owner’s head, pats it with
many prayers and contortions till it descends into the heart and so
resumes its proper place.(214) In Amboyna the sorcerer, to recover a soul
detained by demons, plucks a branch from a tree, and waving it to and fro
as if to catch something, calls out the sick man’s name. Returning he
strikes the patient over the head and body with the branch, into which the
lost soul is supposed to have passed, and from which it returns to the
patient.(215) In the Babar Islands offerings for evil spirits are laid at
the root of a great tree (_wokiorai_), from which a leaf is plucked and
pressed on the patient’s forehead and breast; the lost soul, which is in
the leaf, is thus restored to its owner.(216) In some other islands of the
same seas, when a man returns ill and speechless from the forest, it is
inferred that the evil spirits which dwell in the great trees have caught
and kept his soul. Offerings of food are therefore left under a tree and
the soul is brought home in a piece of wax.(217) Amongst the Dyaks of
Sarawak the priest conjures the lost soul into a cup, where it is seen by
the uninitiated as a lock of hair, but by the initiated as a miniature
human being. This the priest pokes back into the patient’s body through an
invisible hole in his skull.(218) In Nias the sick man’s soul is restored
to him in the shape of a firefly, visible only to the sorcerer, who
catches it in a cloth and places it on the forehead of the patient.(219)
Amongst the Indians of Santiago Tepehuacan, if a child has fallen from the
arms of its bearer and an illness has resulted from the fall, the parents
will take the child’s shirt, stretch it out on the spot where the little
one fell, and say, “Come, come, come back to the infant.” Then they bring
back a little of the earth wrapped up in the shirt, and put the shirt on
the child. They say that in this manner the spirit is replaced in the
child’s body and that he will recover.(220) With this we may compare an
Irish custom reported by Camden. When any one happens to fall, he springs
up again, and turning round thrice to the right, digs the earth with a
sword or knife, and takes up a turf, because they say the earth restores
his shade to him. But if he falls sick within two or three days
thereafter, a woman skilled in these matters is sent to the spot, and
there says: “I call thee, So-and-so, from the East and West, from the
South and North, from the groves, woods, rivers, marshes, fairies white,
red, and black,” and so forth. After uttering certain short prayers, she
returns home to the sick person, and whispering in his ear another prayer,
along with a _Pater Noster_, puts some burning coals into a cup of clean
water, and so decides whether the distemper has been inflicted by the
fairies.(221) Here, though Camden is not very explicit, and he probably
did not quite understand the custom he describes, it seems plain that the
shade or soul of a man who has fallen is conceived as adhering to the
ground where he fell. Accordingly he seeks to regain possession of it by
digging up the earth; but if he fails to recover it, he sends a wise woman
to the spot to win back his soul from the fairies who are detaining it.
(M47) The ancient Egyptians held that a dead man is not in a state to
enter on the life hereafter until his soul has been found and restored to
his mummified body. The vital spark had been commonly devoured by the
malignant god Sit, who concealed his true form in the likeness of a horned
beast, such as an ox or a gazelle. So the priests went in quest of the
missing spirit, slaughtered the animal which had devoured it, and cutting
open the carcase found the soul still undigested in its stomach.
Afterwards the son of the deceased embraced the mummy or the image of his
father in order to restore his soul to him. Formerly it was customary to
place the skin of the slain beast on the dead man for the purpose of
recruiting his strength with that of the animal.(222)
(M48) Again, souls may be extracted from their bodies or detained on their
wanderings not only by ghosts and demons but also by men, especially by
sorcerers. In Fiji, if a criminal refused to confess, the chief sent for a
scarf with which “to catch away the soul of the rogue.” At the sight or
even at the mention of the scarf the culprit generally made a clean
breast. For if he did not, the scarf would be waved over his head till his
soul was caught in it, when it would be carefully folded up and nailed to
the end of a chief’s canoe; and for want of his soul the criminal would
pine and die.(223) The sorcerers of Danger Island used to set snares for
souls. The snares were made of stout cinet, about fifteen to thirty feet
long, with loops on either side of different sizes, to suit the different
sizes of souls; for fat souls there were large loops, for thin souls there
were small ones. When a man was sick against whom the sorcerers had a
grudge, they set up these soul-snares near his house and watched for the
flight of his soul. If in the shape of a bird or an insect it was caught
in the snare the man would infallibly die.(224) When a Polynesian mother
desired that the child in her womb should grow up to be a great warrior or
a great thief, she repaired to the temple of the war-god Oro or of the
thief-god Hiro. There the priest obligingly caught the spirit of the god
in a snare made of coco-nut fibre, and then infused it into the woman.
When the child was born, the mother took it to the temple and dedicated it
to the god with whose divine spirit the infant was already possessed.(225)
The Algonquin Indians also used nets to catch souls, but only as a measure
of defence. They feared lest passing souls, which had just quitted the
bodies of dying people, should enter their huts and carry off the souls of
the inmates to deadland. So they spread nets about their houses to catch
and entangle these ghostly intruders in the meshes.(226)
(M49) Among the Sereres of Senegambia, when a man wishes to revenge
himself on his enemy he goes to the _Fitaure_ (chief and priest in one),
and prevails on him by presents to conjure the soul of his enemy into a
large jar of red earthenware, which is then deposited under a consecrated
tree. The man whose soul is shut up in the jar soon dies.(227) Among the
Baoules of the Ivory Coast it happened once that a chief’s soul was
extracted by the magic of an enemy, who succeeded in shutting it up in a
box. To recover it, two men held a garment of the sick man, while a witch
performed certain enchantments. After a time she declared that the soul
was now in the garment, which was accordingly rolled up and hastily
wrapped about the invalid for the purpose of restoring his spirit to
him.(228) Some of the Congo negroes think that enchanters can get
possession of human souls, and enclosing them in tusks of ivory, sell them
to the white man, who makes them work for him in his country under the
sea. It is believed that very many of the coast labourers are men thus
obtained; so when these people go to trade they often look anxiously about
for their dead relations. The man whose soul is thus sold into slavery
will die “in due course, if not at the time.”(229) In some parts of West
Africa, indeed, wizards are continually setting traps to catch souls that
wander from their bodies in sleep; and when they have caught one, they tie
it up over the fire, and as it shrivels in the heat the owner sickens.
This is done, not out of any grudge towards the sufferer, but purely as a
matter of business. The wizard does not care whose soul he has captured,
and will readily restore it to its owner if only he is paid for doing so.
Some sorcerers keep regular asylums for strayed souls, and anybody who has
lost or mislaid his own soul can always have another one from the asylum
on payment of the usual fee. No blame whatever attaches to men who keep
these private asylums or set traps for passing souls; it is their
profession, and in the exercise of it they are actuated by no harsh or
unkindly feelings. But there are also wretches who from pure spite or for
the sake of lucre set and bait traps with the deliberate purpose of
catching the soul of a particular man; and in the bottom of the pot,
hidden by the bait, are knives and sharp hooks which tear and rend the
poor soul, either killing it outright or mauling it so as to impair the
health of its owner when it succeeds in escaping and returning to him.
Miss Kingsley knew a Kruman who became very anxious about his soul,
because for several nights he had smelt in his dreams the savoury smell of
smoked crawfish seasoned with red pepper. Clearly some ill-wisher had set
a trap baited with this dainty for his dream-soul, intending to do him
grievous bodily, or rather spiritual, harm; and for the next few nights
great pains were taken to keep his soul from straying abroad in his sleep.
In the sweltering heat of the tropical night he lay sweating and snorting
under a blanket, his nose and mouth tied up with a handkerchief to prevent
the escape of his precious soul.(230)
(M50) When Dyaks of the Upper Melawie are about to go out head-hunting
they take the precaution of securing the souls of their enemies before
they attempt to kill their bodies, calculating apparently that mere bodily
death will soon follow the spiritual death, or capture, of the soul. With
this intention they clear a small space in the underwood of the forest,
and set up in the clearing one of those miniature houses in which it is
customary to deposit the ashes of the dead. Food is placed in the little
house, which, though raised on four posts, is connected with the ground by
a tiny inverted ladder of the sort up which spirits are believed to swarm.
When these preparations have been completed, the leader of the expedition
comes and sits down a little way from the miniature house, and addressing
the spirits of kinsmen who had the misfortune to be beheaded by their
enemies, he says, “O ghosts of So-and-so, come speedily back to our
village. We have rice in abundance. Our trees all bear ripe fruit. Our
baskets are full to the brim. O ghosts, come swiftly back and forget not
to bring your new friends and acquaintances with you.” But by the new
friends and acquaintances of the ghosts he means the souls of the enemies
against whom he is about to lead the expedition. Meantime the other
warriors have hidden themselves close by behind trees and bushes, and are
listening with all their ears. When the cry of an animal is heard in the
forest, or a humming sound seems to issue from the little house, it is a
sign that the ghosts of their friends have come, bringing with them the
souls of their enemies, which are accordingly at their mercy. At that the
lurking warriors leap forth from their ambush, and with brandished blades
hew and slash at the souls of their foemen swarming unseen in the air.
Taken completely by surprise, the panic-stricken souls flee in all
directions, and are fain to hide under every leaf and stone on the ground.
But even here their retreat is cut off. For now the leader of the
expedition is hard at work, grubbing up with his hands every stone and
leaf to right and left, and thrusting them with feverish haste into the
basket, which he at once ties up securely. He now flatters himself that he
has the souls of the enemy safe in his possession; and when in the course
of the expedition the heads of the foe are severed from their bodies, he
will pack them into the same basket in which their souls are already
languishing in captivity.(231)
(M51) In Hawaii there were sorcerers who caught souls of living people,
shut them up in calabashes, and gave them to people to eat. By squeezing a
captured soul in their hands they discovered the place where people had
been secretly buried.(232) Amongst the Canadian Indians, when a wizard
wished to kill a man, he sent out his familiar spirits, who brought him
the victim’s soul in the shape of a stone or the like. The wizard struck
the soul with a sword or an axe till it bled profusely, and as it bled the
man to whom it belonged fell ill and died.(233) In Amboyna if a doctor is
convinced that a patient’s soul has been carried away by a demon beyond
recovery, he seeks to supply its place with a soul abstracted from another
man. For this purpose he goes by night to a house and asks, “Who’s there?”
If an inmate is incautious enough to answer, the doctor takes up from
before the door a clod of earth, into which the soul of the person who
replied is thought to have passed. This clod the doctor lays under the
sick man’s pillow, and performs certain ceremonies by which the stolen
soul is conveyed into the patient’s body. Then as he goes home the doctor
fires two shots to frighten the soul from returning to its proper
owner.(234) A Karen wizard will catch the wandering soul of a sleeper and
transfer it to the body of a dead man. The latter, therefore, comes to
life as the former dies. But the friends of the sleeper in turn engage a
wizard to steal the soul of another sleeper, who dies as the first sleeper
comes to life. In this way an indefinite succession of deaths and
resurrections is supposed to take place.(235)
(M52) Nowhere perhaps is the art of abducting human souls more carefully
cultivated or carried to higher perfection than in the Malay Peninsula.
Here the methods by which the wizard works his will are various, and so
too are his motives. Sometimes he desires to destroy an enemy, sometimes
to win the love of a cold or bashful beauty. Some of the charms operate
entirely without contact; in others, the receptacle into which the soul is
to be lured has formed part of, or at least touched, the person of the
victim. Thus, to take an instance of the latter sort of charm, the
following are the directions given for securing the soul of one whom you
wish to render distraught. Take soil from the middle of his footprint;
wrap it up in pieces of red, black, and yellow cloth, taking care to keep
the yellow outside; and hang it from the centre of your mosquito curtain
with parti-coloured thread. It will then become your victim’s soul. To
complete the transubstantiation, however, it is needful to switch the
packet with a birch composed of seven leaf-ribs from a “green” coco-nut.
Do this seven times at sunset, at midnight, and at sunrise, saying, “It is
not earth that I switch, but the heart of So-and-so.” Then bury it in the
middle of a path where your victim is sure to step over it, and he will
unquestionably become distraught.(236) Another way is to scrape the wood
of the floor where your intended victim has been sitting, mix the
scrapings with earth from his or her footprint, and knead the whole with
wax from a deserted bees’ comb into a likeness of him or her. Then
fumigate the figure with incense and beckon to the soul every night for
three nights successively by waving a cloth, while you recite the
appropriate spell.(237) In the following cases the charm takes effect
without any contact whatever, whether direct or indirect, with the victim.
When the moon, just risen, looks red above the eastern horizon, go out,
and standing in the moonlight, with the big toe of your right foot on the
big toe of your left, make a speaking-trumpet of your right hand and
recite through it the following words:
“_OM. I loose my shaft, I loose it and the moon clouds over,_
_I loose it, and the sun is extinguished._
_I loose it, and the stars burn dim._
_But it is not the sun, moon, and stars that I shoot at,_
_It is the stalk of the heart of that child of the congregation,
So-and-so._
_Cluck! cluck! soul of So-and-so, come and walk with me,_
_Come and sit with me,_
_Come and sleep and share my pillow._
_Cluck! cluck! soul._”
Repeat this thrice and after every repetition blow through your hollow
fist.(238) Or you may catch the soul in your turban, thus. Go out on the
night of the full moon and the two succeeding nights; sit down on an
ant-hill facing the moon, burn incense, and recite the following
incantation:
“_I bring you a betel leaf to chew,_
_Dab the lime on to it, Prince Ferocious,_
_For Somebody, Prince Distraction’s daughter, to chew._
_Somebody at sunrise be distraught for love of me,_
_Somebody at sunset be distraught for love of me._
_As you remember your parents, remember me;_
_As you remember your house and house-ladder, remember me._
_When thunder rumbles, remember me;_
_When wind whistles, remember me;_
_When the heavens rain, remember me;_
_When cocks crow, remember me;_
_When the dial-bird tells its tales, remember me;_
_When you look up at the sun, remember me;_
_When you look up at the moon, remember me,_
_For in that self-same moon I am there._
_Cluck! cluck! soul of Somebody come hither to me._
_I do not mean to let you have my soul,_
_Let your soul come hither to mine._”
Now wave the end of your turban towards the moon seven times each night.
Go home and put it under your pillow, and if you want to wear it in the
daytime, burn incense and say, “It is not a turban that I carry in my
girdle, but the soul of Somebody.”(239)
(M53) Perhaps the magical ceremonies just described may help to explain a
curious rite, of immemorial antiquity, which was performed on a very
solemn occasion at Athens. On the eve of the sailing of the fleet for
Syracuse, when all hearts beat high with hope, and visions of empire
dazzled all eyes, consternation suddenly fell on the people one May
morning when they rose and found that most of the images of Hermes in the
city had been mysteriously mutilated in the night. The impious
perpetrators of the sacrilege were unknown, but whoever they were, the
priests and priestesses solemnly cursed them according to the ancient
ritual, standing with their faces to the west and shaking red cloths up
and down.(240) Perhaps in these cloths they were catching the souls of
those at whom their curses were levelled, just as we have seen that Fijian
chiefs used to catch the souls of criminals in scarves and nail them to
canoes.(241)
(M54) The Indians of the Nass River, in British Columbia, are impressed
with a belief that a physician may swallow his patient’s soul by mistake.
A doctor who is believed to have done so is made by the other members of
the faculty to stand over the patient, while one of them thrusts his
fingers down the doctor’s throat, another kneads him in the stomach with
his knuckles, and a third slaps him on the back. If the soul is not in him
after all, and if the same process has been repeated upon all the medical
men without success, it is concluded that the soul must be in the
head-doctor’s box. A party of doctors, therefore, waits upon him at his
house and requests him to produce his box. When he has done so and
arranged its contents on a new mat, they take the votary of Aesculapius
and hold him up by the heels with his head in a hole in the floor. In this
position they wash his head, and “any water remaining from the ablution is
taken and poured upon the sick man’s head.”(242) Among the Kwakiutl
Indians of British Columbia it is forbidden to pass behind the back of a
shaman while he is eating, lest the shaman should inadvertently swallow
the soul of the passer-by. When that happens, both the shaman and the
person whose soul he has swallowed fall down in a swoon. Blood flows from
the shaman’s mouth, because the soul is too large for him and is tearing
his inside. Then the clan of the person whose soul is doing this mischief
must assemble and sing the song of the shaman. In time the suffering
sorcerer vomits out the soul, which he exhibits in the shape of a small
bloody ball in the open palms of his hands. He restores it to its owner,
who is lying prostrate on a mat, by throwing it at him and then blowing on
his head. The man whose soul was swallowed has very naturally to pay for
the damage he did to the shaman as well as for his own cure.(243)
§ 3. The Soul as a Shadow and a Reflection.
(M55) But the spiritual dangers I have enumerated are not the only ones
which beset the savage. Often he regards his shadow or reflection as his
soul, or at all events as a vital part of himself, and as such it is
necessarily a source of danger to him. For if it is trampled upon, struck,
or stabbed, he will feel the injury as if it were done to his person; and
if it is detached from him entirely (as he believes that it may be) he
will die. In the island of Wetar there are magicians who can make a man
ill by stabbing his shadow with a pike or hacking it with a sword.(244)
After Sankara had destroyed the Buddhists in India, it is said that he
journeyed to Nepaul, where he had some difference of opinion with the
Grand Lama. To prove his supernatural powers, he soared into the air. But
as he mounted up, the Grand Lama, perceiving his shadow swaying and
wavering on the ground, struck his knife into it and down fell Sankara and
broke his neck.(245) In the Babar Islands the demons get power over a
man’s soul by holding fast his shadow, or by striking and wounding
it.(246) Among the Tolindoos of central Celebes to tread on a man’s shadow
is an offence, because it is supposed to make the owner sick;(247) and for
the same reason the Toboongkoos of that region forbid their children to
play with their shadows.(248) The Ottawa Indians thought they could kill a
man by making certain figures on his shadow.(249) The Baganda of central
Africa regarded a man’s shadow as his ghost; hence they used to kill or
injure their enemies by stabbing or treading on their shadows.(250) Among
the Bavili of West Africa it used to be considered a crime to trample on
or even to cross the shadow of another, especially if the shadow were that
of a married woman.(251) Some Caffres are very unwilling to let anybody
stand on their shadow, believing that they can be influenced for evil
through it.(252) They think that “a sick man’s shadow dwindles in
intensity when he is about to die; for it has such an intimate relation to
the man that it suffers with him.”(253) The Ja-Luo tribes of Kavirondo, to
the east of Lake Victoria Nyanza, tell of the ancestor of all men, Apodtho
by name, who descended to earth from above, bringing with him cattle,
fowls, and seeds. When he was old, the Ja-Luo plotted to kill him, but for
a long time they did not dare to attack him. At last, hearing that he was
sick, they thought their chance had come, and sent a girl to see how he
was. She took a small horn, used for cupping blood, in her hand, and while
she talked with him she placed the cupping-horn on his shadow. To her
surprise it drew blood. So she returned and told her friends that, if they
wished to kill Apodtho, they must not touch his body, but spear his
shadow. They did so, and he died and turned into a rock, which has ever
since possessed the property of sharpening spears unusually well.(254) In
a Chinese book we read of a sage who examined human shadows by lamplight
in order to discover the fate of their owners. “A man’s shadow,” he said,
“ought to be deep, for, if so, he will attain honourable positions, and a
great age. Shadows are averse to being reflected in water, or in wells, or
in washing-basins. It was on such grounds that the ancients avoided
shadows, and that in old days _Khü-seu_, _twan-hu_, and other
shadow-treading vermin caused injury by hitting the shadows of men. In
recent times there have been men versed in the art of cauterizing the
shadows of their patients.” Another sapient Chinese writer observes: “I
have heard that, if the shadow of a bird is hit with a piece of wood that
was struck by thunder, the bird falls to the ground immediately. I never
tried it, but on account of the matter stated above I consider the thing
certain.”(255) The natives of Nias tremble at the sight of a rainbow,
because they think it is a net spread by a powerful spirit to catch their
shadows.(256)
(M56) In the Banks Islands, Melanesia, there are certain stones of a
remarkably long shape which go by the name of _tamate gangan_ or “eating
ghosts,” because certain powerful and dangerous ghosts are believed to
lodge in them. If a man’s shadow falls on one of these stones, the ghost
will draw his soul out from him, so that he will die. Such stones,
therefore, are set in a house to guard it; and a messenger sent to a house
by the absent owner will call out the name of the sender, lest the
watchful ghost in the stone should fancy that he came with evil intent and
should do him a mischief.(257) In Florida, one of the Solomon Islands,
there are places sacred to ghosts, some in the village, some in the
gardens, and some in the bush. No man would pass one of these places when
the sun was so low as to cast his shadow into it, for then the ghost would
draw it from him.(258) The Indian tribes of the Lower Fraser River believe
that man has four souls, of which the shadow is one, though not the
principal, and that sickness is caused by the absence of one of the souls.
Hence no one will let his shadow fall on a sick shaman, lest the latter
should purloin it to replace his own lost soul.(259) At a funeral in
China, when the lid is about to be placed on the coffin, most of the
bystanders, with the exception of the nearest kin, retire a few steps or
even retreat to another room, for a person’s health is believed to be
endangered by allowing his shadow to be enclosed in a coffin. And when the
coffin is about to be lowered into the grave most of the spectators recoil
to a little distance lest their shadows should fall into the grave and
harm should thus be done to their persons. The geomancer and his
assistants stand on the side of the grave which is turned away from the
sun; and the grave-diggers and coffin-bearers attach their shadows firmly
to their persons by tying a strip of cloth tightly round their
waists.(260) In the Nicobar Islands burial usually takes place at sundown,
before midnight, or at early dawn. In no case can an interment be carried
out at noon or within an hour of it, lest the shadows of the bearers who
lower the body into the earth, or of the mourners taking their last look
at the shrouded figure, should fall into the grave; for that would cause
them to be sick or die. And when the dead has been laid in his last home,
but before the earth is shovelled in upon him, the leaves of a certain
jungle tree are waved over the grave, and a lighted torch is brandished
inside it, to disperse any souls of the sorrowing bystanders that may be
lingering with their departed friend in his narrow bed. Then the signal is
given, and the earth or sand is rapidly shovelled in by a party of young
men who have been standing in readiness to perform the duty.(261) When the
Malays are building a house, and the central post is being set up, the
greatest precautions are taken to prevent the shadow of any of the workers
from falling either on the post or on the hole dug to receive it; for
otherwise they think that sickness and trouble will be sure to
follow.(262) When members of some Victorian tribes were performing magical
ceremonies for the purpose of bringing disease and misfortune on their
enemies, they took care not to let their shadows fall on the object by
which the evil influence was supposed to be wafted to the foe.(263) In
Darfur people think that they can do an enemy to death by burying a
certain root in the earth on the spot where the shadow of his head happens
to fall. The man whose shadow is thus tampered with loses consciousness at
once and will die if the proper antidote be not administered. In like
manner they can paralyse any limb, as a hand or leg, by planting a
particular root in the earth in the shadow of the limb they desire to
maim.(264) Nor is it human beings alone who are thus liable to be injured
by means of their shadows. Animals are to some extent in the same
predicament. A small snail, which frequents the neighbourhood of the
limestone hills in Perak, is believed to suck the blood of cattle through
their shadows; hence the beasts grow lean and sometimes die from loss of
blood.(265) The ancients supposed that in Arabia, if a hyæna trod on a
man’s shadow, it deprived him of the power of speech and motion; and that
if a dog, standing on a roof in the moonlight, cast a shadow on the ground
and a hyæna trod on it, the dog would fall down as if dragged with a
rope.(266) Clearly in these cases the shadow, if not equivalent to the
soul, is at least regarded as a living part of the man or the animal, so
that injury done to the shadow is felt by the person or animal as if it
were done to his body. Even the shadows of trees are supposed by the
Caffres to be sensitive. Hence when a Caffre doctor seeks to pluck the
leaves of a tree for medicinal purposes, he “takes care to run up quickly,
and to avoid touching the shadow lest it should inform the tree of the
danger, and so give the tree time to withdraw the medicinal properties
from its extremities into the safety of the inaccessible trunk. The shadow
of the tree is said to feel the touch of the man’s feet.”(267)
(M57) Conversely, if the shadow is a vital part of a man or an animal, it
may under certain circumstances be as hazardous to be touched by it as it
would be to come into contact with the person or animal. Thus in the
North-West Provinces of India people believe that if the shadow of the
goat-sucker bird falls on an ox or a cow, but especially on a cow buffalo,
the beast will soon die. The remedy is for some one to kill the bird, rub
his hands or a stick in the blood, and then wave the stick over the
animal. There are certain men who are noted for their powers in this
respect all over the district.(268) The Kaitish of central Australia hold
that if the shadow of a brown hawk falls on the breast of a woman who is
suckling a child, the breast will swell up and burst. Hence if a woman
sees one of these birds in these circumstances, she runs away in
fear.(269) In the Central Provinces of India a pregnant woman avoids the
shadow of a man, believing that if it fell on her, the child would take
after him in features, though not in character.(270) In Shoa any obstinate
disorder, for which no remedy is known, such as insanity, epilepsy,
delirium, hysteria, and St. Vitus’s dance, is traced either to possession
by a demon or to the shadow of an enemy which has fallen on the
sufferer.(271) The Bushman is most careful not to let his shadow fall on
the dead game, as he thinks this would bring bad luck.(272) Amongst the
Caffres to overshadow the king by standing in his presence was an offence
worthy of instant death.(273) And it is a Caffre superstition that if the
shadow of a man who is protected by a certain charm falls on the shadow of
a man who is not so protected, the unprotected person will fall down,
overcome by the power of the charm which is transmitted through the
shadow.(274) In the Punjaub some people believe that if the shadow of a
pregnant woman fell on a snake, it would blind the creature
instantly.(275)
(M58) Hence the savage makes it a rule to shun the shadow of certain
persons whom for various reasons he regards as sources of dangerous
influence. Amongst the dangerous classes he commonly ranks mourners and
women in general, but especially his mother-in-law. The Shuswap Indians of
British Columbia think that the shadow of a mourner falling upon a person
would make him sick.(276) Amongst the Kurnai tribe of Victoria novices at
initiation were cautioned not to let a woman’s shadow fall across them, as
this would make them thin, lazy, and stupid.(277) An Australian native is
said to have once nearly died of fright because the shadow of his
mother-in-law fell on his legs as he lay asleep under a tree.(278) The awe
and dread with which the untutored savage contemplates his mother-in-law
are amongst the most familiar facts of anthropology. In the Yuin tribes of
New South Wales the rule which forbade a man to hold any communication
with his wife’s mother was very strict. He might not look at her or even
in her direction. It was a ground of divorce if his shadow happened to
fall on his mother-in-law: in that case he had to leave his wife, and she
returned to her parents.(279) In the Hunter River tribes of New South
Wales it was formerly death for a man to speak to his mother-in-law;
however, in later times the wretch who had committed this heinous crime
was suffered to live, but he was severely reprimanded and banished for a
time from the camp.(280) In the Kulin tribe it was thought that if a woman
looked at or spoke to her son-in-law or even his brother, her hair would
turn white. The same result, it was supposed, would follow if she ate of
game which had been presented to her husband by her son-in-law; but she
could obviate this ill consequence by blackening her face, and especially
her mouth, with charcoal, for then her hair would not turn white.(281)
Similarly in the Kurnai tribe of Victoria a woman is not permitted to see
her daughter’s husband in camp or elsewhere. When he is present, she keeps
her head covered with an opossum rug. The camp of the mother-in-law faces
in a different direction to that of her son-in-law. A screen of high
bushes is erected between both huts, so that no one can see over from
either. When the mother-in-law goes for firewood, she crouches down as she
goes out or in, with her head covered.(282) In Uganda a man may not see
his mother-in-law nor speak to her face to face. Should they meet by
accident, she must turn aside and cover her head with her clothes; or if
her garments are too scanty for that, she may squat on her haunches and
hide her face in her hands. If he wishes to hold any communication with
her, it must be done through a third person, or through a wall or closed
door. Were he to break these rules, he would certainly be seized with a
shaking of the hands and general debility.(283) Among some tribes of
eastern Africa which formerly acknowledged the suzerainty of the sultan of
Zanzibar, before a young couple had children they might meet neither their
father-in-law nor their mother-in-law. To avoid them they must take a long
roundabout. But if they could not do that, they must throw themselves on
the ground and hide their faces till the father-in-law or mother-in-law
had passed by.(284) Among the Basutos a man may never meet his wife’s
mother, nor speak to her, nor see her. If his wife is ill and her mother
comes to nurse her, he must flee the house so long as she is in it;
sentinels are posted to warn him of her departure.(285) In New Britain the
native imagination fails to conceive the extent and nature of the
calamities which would result from a man’s accidentally speaking to his
wife’s mother; suicide of one or both would probably be the only course
open to them. The most solemn form of oath a New Briton can take is, “Sir,
if I am not telling the truth, I hope I may shake hands with my
mother-in-law.”(286) At Vanua Lava in the Banks Islands, a man would not
so much as follow his mother-in-law along the beach until the rising tide
had washed out her footprints in the sand.(287) To avoid meeting his
mother-in-law face to face a very desperate Apache Indian, one of the
bravest of the brave, has been seen to clamber along the brink of a
precipice at the risk of his life, hanging on to rocks from which had he
fallen he would have been dashed to pieces or at least have broken several
of his limbs.(288) Still more curious and difficult to explain is the rule
which forbids certain African kings, after the coronation ceremonies have
been completed, ever to see their own mothers again. This restriction was
imposed on the kings of Benin and Uganda. Yet the queen-mothers lived in
regal state with a court and lands of their own. In Uganda it was thought
that if the king were to see his mother again, some evil and probably
death would surely befall him.(289)
(M59) Where the shadow is regarded as so intimately bound up with the life
of the man that its loss entails debility or death, it is natural to
expect that its diminution should be regarded with solicitude and
apprehension, as betokening a corresponding decrease in the vital energy
of its owner. An elegant Greek rhetorician has compared the man who lives
only for fame to one who should set all his heart on his shadow, puffed up
and boastful when it lengthened, sad and dejected when it shortened,
wasting and pining away when it dwindled to nothing. The spirits of such
an one, he goes on, would necessarily be volatile, since they must rise or
fall with every passing hour of the day. In the morning, when the level
sun, just risen above the eastern horizon, stretched out his shadow to
enormous length, rivalling the shadows cast by the cypresses and the
towers on the city wall, how blithe and exultant would he be, fancying
that in stature he had become a match for the fabled giants of old; with
what a lofty port he would then strut and shew himself in the streets and
the market-place and wherever men congregated, that he might be seen and
admired of all. But as the day wore on, his countenance would change and
he would slink back crestfallen to his house. At noon, when his once
towering shadow had shrunk to his feet, he would shut himself up and
refuse to stir abroad, ashamed to look his fellow-townsmen in the face;
but in the afternoon his drooping spirits would revive, and as the day
declined his joy and pride would swell again with the length of the
evening shadows.(290) The rhetorician who thus sought to expose the vanity
of fame as an object of human ambition by likening it to an ever-changing
shadow, little dreamed that in real life there were men who set almost as
much store by their shadows as the fool whom he had conjured up in his
imagination to point a moral. So hard is it for the straining wings of
fancy to outstrip the folly of mankind. In Amboyna and Uliase, two islands
near the equator, where necessarily there is little or no shadow cast at
noon, the people make it a rule not to go out of the house at mid-day,
because they fancy that by doing so a man may lose the shadow of his
soul.(291) The Mangaians tell of a mighty warrior, Tukaitawa, whose
strength waxed and waned with the length of his shadow. In the morning,
when his shadow fell longest, his strength was greatest; but as the shadow
shortened towards noon his strength ebbed with it, till exactly at noon it
reached its lowest point; then, as the shadow stretched out in the
afternoon, his strength returned. A certain hero discovered the secret of
Tukaitawa’s strength and slew him at noon.(292) The savage Besisis of the
Malay Peninsula fear to bury their dead at noon, because they fancy that
the shortness of their shadows at that hour would sympathetically shorten
their own lives.(293) The Baganda of central Africa used to judge of a
man’s health by the length of his shadow. They said, “So-and-so is going
to die, his shadow is very small”; or, “He is in good health, his shadow
is large.”(294) Similarly the Caffres of South Africa think that a man’s
shadow grows very small or vanishes at death. When her husband is away at
the wars, a woman hangs up his sleeping-mat; if the shadow grows less, she
says her husband is killed; if it remains unchanged, she says he is
unscathed.(295) It is possible that even in lands outside the tropics the
observation of the diminished shadow at noon may have contributed, even if
it did not give rise, to the superstitious dread with which that hour has
been viewed by many peoples, as by the Greeks, ancient and modern, the
Bretons, the Russians, the Roumanians of Transylvania, and the Indians of
Santiago Tepehuacan.(296) In this observation, too, we may perhaps detect
the reason why noon was chosen by the Greeks as the hour for sacrificing
to the shadowless dead.(297) The loss of the shadow, real or apparent, has
often been regarded as a cause or precursor of death. Whoever entered the
sanctuary of Zeus on Mount Lycaeus in Arcadia was believed to lose his
shadow and to die within the year.(298) In Lower Austria on the evening of
St. Sylvester’s day—the last day of the year—the company seated round the
table mark whose shadow is not cast on the wall, and believe that the
seemingly shadowless person will die next year. Similar presages are drawn
in Germany both on St. Sylvester’s day and on Christmas Eve.(299) The
Galelareese fancy that if a child resembles his father, they will not both
live long; for the child has taken away his father’s likeness or shadow,
and consequently the father must soon die.(300) Similarly among some
tribes of the Lower Congo, “if the child is like its mother, father, or
uncle, they think it has the spirit of the person it resembles, and that
that person will soon die. Hence a parent will resent it if you say that
the baby is like him or her.”(301)
(M60) Nowhere, perhaps, does the equivalence of the shadow to the life or
soul come out more clearly than in some customs practised to this day in
south-eastern Europe. In modern Greece, when the foundation of a new
building is being laid, it is the custom to kill a cock, a ram, or a lamb,
and to let its blood flow on the foundation-stone, under which the animal
is afterwards buried. The object of the sacrifice is to give strength and
stability to the building. But sometimes, instead of killing an animal,
the builder entices a man to the foundation-stone, secretly measures his
body, or a part of it, or his shadow, and buries the measure under the
foundation-stone; or he lays the foundation-stone upon the man’s shadow.
It is believed that the man will die within the year.(302) In the island
of Lesbos it is deemed enough if the builder merely casts a stone at the
shadow of a passer-by; the man whose shadow is thus struck will die, but
the building will be solid.(303) A Bulgarian mason measures the shadow of
a man with a string, places the string in a box, and then builds the box
into the wall of the edifice. Within forty days thereafter the man whose
shadow was measured will be dead and his soul will be in the box beside
the string; but often it will come forth and appear in its former shape to
persons who were born on a Saturday. If a Bulgarian builder cannot obtain
a human shadow for this purpose, he will content himself with measuring
the shadow of the first animal that comes that way.(304) The Roumanians of
Transylvania think that he whose shadow is thus immured will die within
forty days; so persons passing by a building which is in course of
erection may hear a warning cry, “Beware lest they take thy shadow!” Not
long ago there were still shadow-traders whose business it was to provide
architects with the shadows necessary for securing their walls.(305) In
these cases the measure of the shadow is looked on as equivalent to the
shadow itself, and to bury it is to bury the life or soul of the man, who,
deprived of it, must die. Thus the custom is a substitute for the old
practice of immuring a living person in the walls, or crushing him under
the foundation-stone of a new building, in order to give strength and
durability to the structure, or more definitely in order that the angry
ghost may haunt the place and guard it against the intrusion of enemies.
Thus when a new gate was made or an old gate was repaired in the walls of
Bangkok, it used to be customary to crush three men to death under an
enormous beam in a pit at the gateway. Before they were led to their doom,
they were regaled at a splendid banquet; the whole court came to salute
them; and the king himself charged them straitly to guard well the gate
that was to be committed to their care, and to warn him if enemies or
rebels came to assault the city. The next moment the ropes were cut and
the beam descended on them. The Siamese believed that these unfortunates
were transformed into the genii which they called _phi_.(306) It is said
that when the massive teak posts of the gateways of Mandalay were set up,
a man was bound and placed under each post and crushed to death. The
Burmese believe that men who die a violent death turn into _nats_ or
demons and haunt the spot where they were killed, doing a mischief to such
as attempt to molest the place. Thus their spirits become guardians of the
gates.(307) This theory would explain why such sacrifices appear to be
offered most commonly at thoroughfares, such as gates and bridges, where
ghostly warders may be deemed especially serviceable in keeping; watch on
the multitudes that go to and fro.(308) In Bima, a district of the East
Indian island of Sambawa, the custom is marked by some peculiar features,
which deserve to be mentioned. When a new flag-pole is set up at the
sultan’s palace a woman is crushed to death under it; but she must be
pregnant. If the destined victim should be brought to bed before her
execution, she goes free. The notion may be that the ghost of such a woman
would be more than usually fierce and vigilant. Again, when the wooden
doors are set up at the palace, it is customary to bury a child under each
of the door-posts. For these purposes officers are sent to scour the
country for a pregnant woman or little children, as the case may be, and
if they come back empty-handed they must give up their own wives or
children to serve as victims. When the gates are set up, the children are
killed, their bodies stript of flesh, and their bones laid in the holes in
which the door-posts are erected. Then the flesh is boiled with horse’s
flesh and served up to the officers. Any officer who refuses to eat of it
is at once cut down.(309) The intention of this last practice is perhaps
to secure the fidelity of the officers by compelling them to enter into a
covenant of the most solemn and binding nature with the ghosts of the
murdered children who are to guard the gates.
(M61) The practice of burying the measure of a man’s shadow, as a
substitute for the man himself, under the foundation-stone of a building
may perhaps throw light on the singular deity whom the people of Kisser,
an East Indian island, choose to guard their houses and villages. The god
in question is nothing more or less than the measuring-tape which was used
to measure the foundations of the house or of the village temple. After it
has served this useful purpose, the tape is wound about a stick shaped
like a paddle, and is then deposited in the thatch of the roof of the
house, where food is offered to it on all special occasions. The deified
measuring-tape of the whole village is that which was used to measure the
foundations of the first house or of the village temple. The handle of the
paddle-like stick on which it is wound is carved into the figure of a
person squatting in the usual posture; and the whole is kept in a rough
wooden box along with one or two figures to act as its guards.(310) It is
possible, though perhaps hardly probable, that these tapes may be thought
to contain the souls of men whose shadows they measured at the foundation
ceremony.
(M62) As some peoples believe a man’s soul to be in his shadow, so other
(or the same) peoples believe it to be in his reflection in water or a
mirror. Thus “the Andamanese do not regard their shadows but their
reflections (in any mirror) as their souls.”(311) According to one
account, some of the Fijians thought that man has two souls, a light one
and a dark one; the dark one goes to Hades, the light one is his
reflection in water or a mirror.(312) When the Motumotu of New Guinea
first saw their likenesses in a looking-glass they thought that their
reflections were their souls.(313) In New Caledonia the old men are of
opinion that a person’s reflection in water or a mirror is his soul; but
the younger men, taught by the Catholic priests, maintain that it is a
reflection and nothing more, just like the reflection of palm-trees in the
water.(314) The reflection-soul, being external to the man, is exposed to
much the same dangers as the shadow-soul. Among the Galelareese,
half-grown lads and girls may not look at themselves in a mirror; for they
say that the mirror takes away their bloom and leaves them ugly.(315) And
as the shadow may be stabbed, so may the reflection. Hence an Aztec mode
of keeping sorcerers from the house was to leave a vessel of water with a
knife in it behind the door. When a sorcerer entered he was so much
alarmed at seeing his reflection in the water transfixed by a knife that
he turned and fled.(316) In Corrèze, a district of the Auvergne, a cow’s
milk had dried up through the maleficent spells of a neighbouring witch,
so a sorcerer was called in to help. He made the woman whose cow was
bewitched sit in front of a pail of water with a knife in her hand till
she thought she saw the image of the witch in the water, whereupon he made
her stab the image with the knife. They say that if the knife strikes the
image fair in the eye, the person whose likeness it is will suffer a
corresponding injury in his or her eye. This procedure, we are informed,
has been successful in restoring milk to the udders of a cow when even
holy water had been tried in vain.(317) The Zulus will not look into a
dark pool because they think there is a beast in it which will take away
their reflections, so that they die.(318) The Basutos say that crocodiles
have the power of thus killing a man by dragging his reflection under
water. When one of them dies suddenly and from no apparent cause, his
relatives will allege that a crocodile must have taken his shadow some
time when he crossed a stream.(319) In Saddle Island, Melanesia, there is
a pool “into which if any one looks he dies; the malignant spirit takes
hold upon his life by means of his reflection on the water.”(320)
(M63) We can now understand why it was a maxim both in ancient India and
ancient Greece not to look at one’s reflection in water, and why the
Greeks regarded it as an omen of death if a man dreamed of seeing himself
so reflected.(321) They feared that the water-spirits would drag the
person’s reflection or soul under water, leaving him soulless to perish.
This was probably the origin of the classical story of the beautiful
Narcissus, who languished and died through seeing his reflection in the
water. The explanation that he died for love of his own fair image was
probably devised later, after the old meaning of the story was forgotten.
The same ancient belief lingers, in a faded form, in the English
superstition that whoever sees a water fairy must pine and die.
“_Alas, the moon should ever beam_
_To show what man should never see!—_
_I saw a maiden on a stream,_
_And fair was she!_
_I staid to watch, a little space,_
_Her parted lips if she would sing;_
_The waters closed above her face_
_With many a ring._
_I know my life will fade away,_
_I know that I must vainly pine,_
_For I am made of mortal clay,_
_But she’s divine!_”
(M64) Further, we can now explain the widespread custom of covering up
mirrors or turning them to the wall after a death has taken place in the
house. It is feared that the soul, projected out of the person in the
shape of his reflection in the mirror, may be carried off by the ghost of
the departed, which is commonly supposed to linger about the house till
the burial. The custom is thus exactly parallel to the Aru custom of not
sleeping in a house after a death for fear that the soul, projected out of
the body in a dream, may meet the ghost and be carried off by it.(322) In
Oldenburg it is thought that if a person sees his image in a mirror after
a death he will die himself. So all the mirrors in the house are covered
up with white cloth.(323) In some parts of Germany and Belgium after a
death not only the mirrors but everything that shines or glitters
(windows, clocks, etc.) is covered up,(324) doubtless because they might
reflect a person’s image. The same custom of covering up mirrors or
turning them to the wall after a death prevails in England, Scotland,
Madagascar,(325) and among the Karaits, a Jewish sect in the Crimea.(326)
The Suni Mohammedans of Bombay cover with a cloth the mirror in the room
of a dying man and do not remove it until the corpse is carried out for
burial. They also cover the looking-glasses in their bedrooms before
retiring to rest at night.(327) The reason why sick people should not see
themselves in a mirror, and why the mirror in a sick-room is therefore
covered up,(328) is also plain; in time of sickness, when the soul might
take flight so easily, it is particularly dangerous to project it out of
the body by means of the reflection in a mirror. The rule is therefore
precisely parallel to the rule observed by some peoples of not allowing
sick people to sleep;(329) for in sleep the soul is projected out of the
body, and there is always a risk that it may not return. “In the opinion
of the Raskolniks a mirror is an accursed thing, invented by the
devil,”(330) perhaps on account of the mirror’s supposed power of drawing
out the soul in the reflection and so facilitating its capture.
(M65) As with shadows and reflections, so with portraits; they are often
believed to contain the soul of the person portrayed. People who hold this
belief are naturally loth to have their likenesses taken; for if the
portrait is the soul, or at least a vital part of the person portrayed,
whoever possesses the portrait will be able to exercise a fatal influence
over the original of it. Thus the Esquimaux of Bering Strait believe that
persons dealing in witchcraft have the power of stealing a person’s _inua_
or shade, so that without it he will pine away and die. Once at a village
on the lower Yukon River an explorer had set up his camera to get a
picture of the people as they were moving about among their houses. While
he was focusing the instrument, the headman of the village came up and
insisted on peeping under the cloth. Being allowed to do so, he gazed
intently for a minute at the moving figures on the ground glass, then
suddenly withdrew his head and bawled at the top of his voice to the
people, “He has all of your shades in this box.” A panic ensued among the
group, and in an instant they disappeared helter-skelter into their
houses.(331) The Dacotas hold that every man has several _wanagi_ or
“apparitions,” of which after death one remains at the grave, while
another goes to the place of the departed. For many years no Yankton
Dacota would consent to have his picture taken lest one of his
“apparitions” should remain after death in the picture instead of going to
the spirit-land.(332) An Indian whose portrait the Prince of Wied wished
to get, refused to let himself be drawn, because he believed it would
cause his death.(333) The Mandan Indians also thought that they would soon
die if their portraits were in the hands of another; they wished at least
to have the artist’s picture as a kind of hostage.(334) The Tepehuanes of
Mexico stood in mortal terror of the camera, and five days’ persuasion was
necessary to induce them to pose for it. When at last they consented, they
looked like criminals about to be executed. They believed that by
photographing people the artist could carry off their souls and devour
them at his leisure moments. They said that when the pictures reached his
country they would die or some other evil would befall them.(335) The
Canelos Indians of Ecuador think that their soul is carried away in their
picture. Two of them, who had been photographed, were so alarmed that they
came back next day on purpose to ask if it were really true that their
souls had been taken away.(336) Similar notions are entertained by the
Aymara Indians of Peru and Bolivia.(337) The Araucanians of Chili are
unwilling to have their portraits drawn, for they fancy that he who has
their portraits in his possession could, by means of magic, injure or
destroy themselves.(338)
(M66) The Yaos, a tribe of British Central Africa in the neighbourhood of
Lake Nyassa, believe that every human being has a _lisoka_, a soul, shade,
or spirit, which they appear to associate with the shadow or picture of
the person. Some of them have been known to refuse to enter a room where
pictures were hung on the walls, “because of the _masoka_, souls, in
them.” The camera was at first an object of dread to them, and when it was
turned on a group of natives they scattered in all directions with shrieks
of terror. They said that the European was about to take away their
shadows and that they would die; the transference of the shadow or
portrait (for the Yao word for the two is the same, to wit _chiwilili_) to
the photographic plate would involve the disease or death of the shadeless
body. A Yao chief, after much difficulty, allowed himself to be
photographed on condition that the picture should be shewn to none of his
subjects, but sent out of the country as soon as possible. He feared lest
some ill-wisher might use it to bewitch him. Some time afterwards he fell
ill, and his attendants attributed the illness to some accident which had
befallen the photographic plate in England.(339) The Ngoni of the same
region entertain a similar belief, and formerly exhibited a similar dread
of sitting to a photographer, lest by so doing they should yield up their
shades or spirits to him and they should die.(340) When Joseph Thomson
attempted to photograph some of the Wa-teita in eastern Africa, they
imagined that he was a magician trying to obtain possession of their
souls, and that if he got their likenesses they themselves would be
entirely at his mercy.(341) When Dr. Catat and some companions were
exploring the Bara country on the west coast of Madagascar, the people
suddenly became hostile. The day before the travellers, not without
difficulty, had photographed the royal family, and now found themselves
accused of taking the souls of the natives for the purpose of selling them
when they returned to France. Denial was vain; in compliance with the
custom of the country they were obliged to catch the souls, which were
then put into a basket and ordered by Dr. Catat to return to their
respective owners.(342)
(M67) Some villagers in Sikhim betrayed a lively horror and hid away
whenever the lens of a camera, or “the evil eye of the box” as they called
it, was turned on them. They thought it took away their souls with their
pictures, and so put it in the power of the owner of the pictures to cast
spells on them, and they alleged that a photograph of the scenery blighted
the landscape.(343) Until the reign of the late King of Siam no Siamese
coins were ever stamped with the image of the king, “for at that time
there was a strong prejudice against the making of portraits in any
medium. Europeans who travel into the jungle have, even at the present
time, only to point a camera at a crowd to procure its instant dispersion.
When a copy of the face of a person is made and taken away from him, a
portion of his life goes with the picture. Unless the sovereign had been
blessed with the years of a Methusaleh he could scarcely have permitted
his life to be distributed in small pieces together with the coins of the
realm.”(344) Similarly, in Corea, “the effigy of the king is not struck on
the coins; only a few Chinese characters are put on them. They would deem
it an insult to the king to put his sacred face on objects which pass into
the most vulgar hands and often roll on the ground in the dust or the mud.
When the French ships arrived for the first time in Corea, the mandarin
who was sent on board to communicate with them was dreadfully shocked to
see the levity with which these western barbarians treated the face of
their sovereign, reproduced on the coins, and the recklessness with which
they put it in the hands of the first comer, without troubling themselves
in the least whether or not he would shew it due respect.”(345) In
Minahassa, a district of Celebes, many chiefs are reluctant to be
photographed, believing that if that were done they would soon die. For
they imagine that, were the photograph lost by its owner and found by
somebody else, whatever injury the finder chose to do to the portrait
would equally affect the person whom it represented.(346) Mortal terror
was depicted on the faces of the Battas upon whom von Brenner turned the
lens of his camera; they thought he wished to carry off their shadows or
spirits in a little box.(347) When Dr. Nieuwenhuis attempted to photograph
the Kayans or Bahaus of central Borneo, they were much alarmed, fearing
that their souls would follow their photographs into the far country and
that their deserted bodies would fall sick. Further, they imagined that
possessing their likenesses the explorer would be able by magic art to
work on the originals at a distance.(348)
(M68) Beliefs of the same sort still linger in various parts of Europe.
Not very many years ago some old women in the Greek island of Carpathus
were very angry at having their likenesses drawn, thinking that in
consequence they would pine and die.(349) It is a German superstition that
if you have your portrait painted, you will die.(350) Some people in
Russia object to having their silhouettes taken, fearing that if this is
done they will die before the year is out.(351) In Albania Miss Durham
sketched an old man who boasted of being a hundred and ten years old. When
every one recognised the likeness, a look of great anxiety came over the
patriarch’s face, and most earnestly he besought the artist never to
destroy the sketch, for he was certain that the moment the sketch was torn
he would drop down dead.(352) An artist in England once vainly attempted
to sketch a gypsy girl. “I won’t have her drawed out,” said the girl’s
aunt. “I told her I’d make her scrawl the earth before me, if ever she let
herself be drawed out again.” “Why, what harm can there be?” “I know
there’s a fiz (a charm) in it. There was my youngest, that the gorja
drawed out on Newmarket Heath, she never held her head up after, but
wasted away, and died, and she’s buried in March churchyard.”(353) There
are persons in the West of Scotland “who refuse to have their likenesses
taken lest it prove unlucky; and give as instances the cases of several of
their friends who never had a day’s health after being photographed.”(354)
CHAPTER III. TABOOED ACTS.
§ 1. Taboos on Intercourse with Strangers.
(M69) So much for the primitive conceptions of the soul and the dangers to
which it is exposed. These conceptions are not limited to one people or
country; with variations of detail they are found all over the world, and
survive, as we have seen, in modern Europe. Beliefs so deep-seated and so
widespread must necessarily have contributed to shape the mould in which
the early kingship was cast. For if every person was at such pains to save
his own soul from the perils which threatened it on so many sides, how
much more carefully must _he_ have been guarded upon whose life hung the
welfare and even the existence of the whole people, and whom therefore it
was the common interest of all to preserve? Therefore we should expect to
find the king’s life protected by a system of precautions or safeguards
still more numerous and minute than those which in primitive society every
man adopts for the safety of his own soul. Now in point of fact the life
of the early kings is regulated, as we have seen and shall see more fully
presently, by a very exact code of rules. May we not then conjecture that
these rules are in fact the very safeguards which we should expect to find
adopted for the protection of the king’s life? An examination of the rules
themselves confirms this conjecture. For from this it appears that some of
the rules observed by the kings are identical with those observed by
private persons out of regard for the safety of their souls; and even of
those which seem peculiar to the king, many, if not all, are most readily
explained on the hypothesis that they are nothing but safeguards or
lifeguards of the king. I will now enumerate some of these royal rules or
taboos, offering on each of them such comments and explanations as may
serve to set the original intention of the rule in its proper light.
(M70) As the object of the royal taboos is to isolate the king from all
sources of danger, their general effect is to compel him to live in a
state of seclusion, more or less complete, according to the number and
stringency of the rules he observes. Now of all sources of danger none are
more dreaded by the savage than magic and witchcraft, and he suspects all
strangers of practising these black arts. To guard against the baneful
influence exerted voluntarily or involuntarily by strangers is therefore
an elementary dictate of savage prudence. Hence before strangers are
allowed to enter a district, or at least before they are permitted to
mingle freely with the inhabitants, certain ceremonies are often performed
by the natives of the country for the purpose of disarming the strangers
of their magical powers, of counteracting the baneful influence which is
believed to emanate from them, or of disinfecting, so to speak, the
tainted atmosphere by which they are supposed to be surrounded. Thus, when
the ambassadors sent by Justin II., Emperor of the East, to conclude a
peace with the Turks had reached their destination, they were received by
shamans, who subjected them to a ceremonial purification for the purpose
of exorcising all harmful influence. Having deposited the goods brought by
the ambassadors in an open place, these wizards carried burning branches
of incense round them, while they rang a bell and beat on a tambourine,
snorting and falling into a state of frenzy in their efforts to dispel the
powers of evil. Afterwards they purified the ambassadors themselves by
leading them through the flames.(355) In the island of Nanumea (South
Pacific) strangers from ships or from other islands were not allowed to
communicate with the people until they all, or a few as representatives of
the rest, had been taken to each of the four temples in the island, and
prayers offered that the god would avert any disease or treachery which
these strangers might have brought with them. Meat offerings were also
laid upon the altars, accompanied by songs and dances in honour of the
god. While these ceremonies were going on, all the people except the
priests and their attendants kept out of sight.(356) On returning from an
attempted ascent of the great African mountain Kilimanjaro, which is
believed by the neighbouring tribes to be tenanted by dangerous demons,
Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/41832