esia it is found in New Ireland, New Britain, Bougainville, the Shortland Islands, Eddystone Island, and San Cristoval, while the word for soul in Mota means shadow in Polynesia.
It is of great interest that in the two places of New Guinea and Melanesia which provide the clearest evidence of the duplicity of the soul, Kiriwina and San Cristoval, not only is there agreement in the identification of the soul with the shadow, but in both places the entity which is or becomes the ghost is identified with the reflection from water. In both places it is the entity which corresponds the more closely with the soul-substance of Indonesia which is identified, as sometimes in Indonesia, with the shadow, while the entity which corresponds with the ghost of Indonesia is identified with the reflexion from water. On the other hand, there is a very important difference between the two beliefs in that in the Trobriands it is the baloma, identified with the reflexion, which goes to a distant home of the dead, while in San Cristoval it is the aunga, identified with the shadow, which passes to the distant Rodomana.
The identification of the shadow with the soul becomes especially instructive when we trace out the vicissitudes which the Indonesian word for shadow has suffered in Melanesia. Among the Bahasa people and in Seran the shadow is nini, ninino, ninu, kaniniu; in Buru nunin; in north-east Celebes olinu.[1] Among the Barriai of New Britain the shadow is anunu, and it may be that the nio of the other end of the north coast of New Britain, which is used both for soul and shadow, is another form of the Indonesian word. In the Shortland Islands the word occurs more purely as nunu, used for both shadow and soul, and the relation to Indonesia is made clear by the accompanying use of the frequent Indonesian term for ghost, nitu, in these islands. Nununa occurs in San Cristoval
- ↑ G. Friederica, Wissenschaft. Ergebnisse. iii. Untersuchungen uber eine Melanesiche Wanderstrasse. Berlin (1913), p. 66. In some parts of Indonesia the banyan tree is called nunu.
