THE SOUL
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his house and requests him to produce his box. When he has done so and arranged its contents on a new mat, they take him 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,”[1]
Other examples of the recall and recovery of souls will be found referred to beneath.[2]
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
- ↑ J. B. McCullagh in The Church Missionaiy Gleaner, xiv. No. 164 (August 1887), p. 91. The same account is copied from the “North Star” (Sitka, Alaska, December 1888), in Journal of American Folk-lore, ii. 74 sq. Mr. McCullagh’s account (which is closely followed in the text) of the latter part of the custom is not quite clear. It would seem that failing to find the soul in the head-doctor’s box it occurs to them that he may have swallowed it, as the other doctors were at first supposed to have done. With a view of testing this hypothesis they hold him up by the heels to empty out the soul; and as the water with which his head is washed may possibly contain the missing soul, it is poured on the patient’s head to restore the soul to him. We have already seen that the recovered soul is often conveyed into the sick person’s head.
- ↑ Riedel, De Topantunuasu of oorspronkelijke volksstammen van Central Selebes (overgedrukt uit de Bijdragen tot de Taal-Land-en Volkenkunde van Nederlandsch-Indië, 5e volgr. i.), p. 17; Neumann, “Het Pane en Bila-stroom-gebied,” in Tijdschrift van het Nederlandsch Aardrijkskundig Genootschap, ii. de Serie, dl. iii., Afdeeling: meer uitgebreide artikelen, No. 2 (1886), p. 300 sq. Priklonski, “Die Jakuten,” in Bastian’s Allerlei aus Volks- und Menschenkunde, ii. 218 sq.; Bastian, Die Volker des östlichen Asien, ii. 388, iii. 236; id., Völkerstämme am Brahmaputra, p. 23; id., “Hügelstamme Assam’s,” in Verhandlungen d. Berln. Gesell. f. Anthropol. Ethnol. und Urgeschichte, 1881, p. 156; Shway Yoe, The Burman, i. 283 sq., ii. 101 sq.; Sproat, Scenes and Studies of Savage Life, p. 214; Doolittle, Social Life of the Chinese, p. 110 sq. (ed. Paxton Hood); T. Williams, Fiji and the Fijians, i. 242; E. B. Cross, “On the Karens,” in Journal of the American Oriental Society, iv. 309 sq.; A. W. Howitt, “On some Australian Beliefs,” in Journ. Anthrop. Instit. xiii. 187 sq.; id., “On Australian Medicine Men,” in Journ. Anthrop. Inst. xvi. 41 ; E. P. Houghton, “On the Land Dayaks of Upper Sarawak,” in Memoirs of the Anthropological Society of London, iii. 196 sq.; L. Dahle, “Sikidy and Vintana,” in Antanatiarivo Annual and Madagascar Annual, xi. (1887) p. 320 sq.; C. Leemius, De Lapponibus Finmarchiae eorumque lingua, vita et religione pristina commentatio (Copenhagen, 1767), p. 416 sq. Some time ago my friend Professor W. Robertson Smith suggested to me that the practice of hunting souls, which is denounced in Ezekiel xiii. 17 sqq. must have been akin to those described in the text.
