Page images
PDF
EPUB

savage mind only fairly represents their intimate connexioir in the Possession-theory itself.

In the Australian-Tasmanian district, disease and death are ascribed to more or less defined spiritual influences; descriptions of a demon working a sorcerer's wicked will by coming slyly behind his victim and hitting him with his club on the back of his neck, and of a dead man's ghost angered by having his name uttered, and creeping up into the utterer's body to consume his liver, are indeed peculiarly graphic details of savage animism. The theory of disease-spirits is well stated in its extreme form among the Mintira, a low race of the Malay peninsula. Their "hantu" or spirits have among their functions that of causing ailments; thus the "hantu kalumbahan" causes small-pox; the "hantu kamang" brings on inflammation and swellings in the hands and feet; when a person is wounded, the "hantu pari" fastens on the wound and sucks, and this is the cause of the blood flowing. And so on, as the describer says, "To enumerate the remainder of the hantus would be merely to convert the name of every species of disease known to the Mintira into a proper one. If any new disease appeared, it would be ascribed to a hantu bearing the same name. It will help us to an idea of the distinct personality which the disease-demon has in the minds of the lower races, to notice the Orang Laut of this district placing thorns and brush in the paths leading to a part where small-pox had broken out, to keep the demons off; just as the Khonds of Orissa try with thorns, and ditches, and stinking oil poured on the ground, to barricade the paths to their hamlets against the goddess of small-pox, Jugah Pennu.3 Among the Dayaks of Borneo, "to have been

[ocr errors]

1 Oldfield in 'Tr. Eth. Soc.' vol. iii. p. 235; see Grey, Australia,' vol. ii. p. 337. Bonwick, 'Tasmanians,' pp. 183, 195.

2 Journ. Ind. Archip.' vol. i. p. 307.

3 Bastian, Psychologie,' p. 204; Mensch, vol. ii. p. 73, see p. 125 (Battas); Macpherson, 'India,' p. 370. See also Mason, Karens,' 1. c. p.

smitten by a spirit" is to be ill; sickness may be caused by invisible spirits inflicting invisible wounds with invisible spears, or entering men's bodies and driving out their souls, or lodging in their hearts and making them raving mad. In the Indian Archipelago, the personal semi-human nature of the disease-spirits is clearly acknowleged by appeasing them with feasts and dances and offerings of food set out for them away in the woods, to induce them to quit their victims, or by sending tiny proas to sea with offerings, that spirits which have taken up their abode in sick men's bowels may embark and not come back. The animistie theory of disease is strongly marked in Polynesia, where every sickness is ascribed to spiritual action of deities, brought on by the offerings of enemies, or by the victim's violation of the laws of tapu. Thus in New Zealand each ailment is caused by a spirit, particularly an infant or undeveloped human spirit, which sent into the patient's body gnaws and feeds inside; and the exorcist, finding the path by which such a disease-spirit came from below to feed on the vitals of a sick relative, will persuade it by a charm to get upon a flax-stalk and set off home. We hear, too, of an idea of the parts of the body-forehead, breast, stomach, feet, etc.-being apportioned each to a deity who inflicts aches and pains and ailments there. So in the Samoan group, when a man was near death, people were anxious to part on good terms with him, feeling assured that if he died with angry feelings towards any one, he would certainly return and bring calamity on that person or some one closely allied to him. This was considered a frequent source of disease and death, the spirit of a departed member of the family returning and taking up his abode in the head, chest, or stomach of a living man, and so causing sickness and

1 'Journ. Ind. Archip.' vol. iii. p. 110, vol. iv. p. 194; St. John, 'Far East,' vol. i. pp. 71, 87; Beeckman in Pinkerton, vol. ix. p. 133; Meiners, vol. i. p. 278. See also Doolittle, 'Chinese,' vol. i. p. 159.

[ocr errors]

2 Shortland, Trads. of N. Z.' pp. 97, 114, 125; Taylor, 'New Zealand,' pp. 48, 137.

death. If a man died suddenly, it was thought that he was eaten by the spirit that took him; and though the soul of one thus devoured would go to the common spirit-land of the departed, yet it would have no power of speech there, and if questioned could but beat its breast. It completes this account to notice that the disease-inflicting souls of the departed were the same which possessed the living under more favourable circumstances, coming to talk through a certain member of the family, prophesying future events, and giving directions as to family affairs.1 Farther east, in the Georgian and Society Islands, evil demons are sent to scratch and tear people into convulsions and hysterics, to torment poor wretches as with barbed hooks, or to twist and knot inside them till they die writhing in agony. But madmen are to be treated with great respect, as entered by a god, and idiots owe the kindness with which they are appeased and coaxed to the belief in their superhuman inspiration. Here, and elsewhere in the lower culture, the old real belief has survived which has passed into a jest of civilized men in the famous phrase of the "inspired idiot."

American ethnography carries on the record of rude races ascribing disease to the action of evil spirits. Thus the Dacotas believe that the spirits punish them for misconduct, especially for neglecting to make feasts for the dead; these spirits have the power to send the spirit of something, as of a bear, deer, turtle, fish, tree, stone, worm, or deceased person, which entering the patient causes disease; the medicine-man's cure consists in reciting charms over him, singing "He-le-li-lah, etc.," to the accompaniment of a gourd-rattle with beads inside, ceremonially shooting a symbolic bark representation of the intruding creature, sucking over the seat of pain to get the spirit out, and

1 Turner, 'Polynesia,' p. 236.

2 Ellis, 'Polyn. Res.' vol. i. pp. 363, 395, etc., vol. ii. pp. 193, 274; Cook, 3rd Voy.' vol. iii. p. 131. Details of the superhuman character ascribed to weak or deranged persons among other races, in Schoolcraft, part iv. p. 49; Martius, vol. i. p. 633; Meiners, vol. i. p. 323; Waitz, vol. ii. p. 181.

firing guns at it as it is supposed to be escaping.1 Such processes were in full vogue in the West Indies in the time of Columbus, when Friar Roman Pane put on record his quaint account of the native sorcerer pulling the disease off the patient's legs (as one pulls off a pair of trousers), going out of doors to blow it away, and bidding it begone to the mountain or the sea; the performance concluding with the regular sucking-cure and the pretended extraction of some stone or bit of flesh, or such thing, which the patient is assured that his patron-spirit or deity (cemi) put into him to cause the disease, in punishment for neglect to build him a temple or honour him with prayer or offerings of goods. Patagonians considered sickness as caused by a spirit entering the patient's body; "they believe every sick person to be possessed of an evil demon; hence their physicians always carry a drum with figures of devils painted on it, which they strike at the beds of sick persons to drive out from the body the evil demon which causes the disorder." In Africa, according to the philosophy of the Basutos and the Zulus, the causes of disease are the ghosts of the dead, come to draw the living to themselves, or to compel them to sacrifice meat-offerings. They are recognized by the diviners, or by the patient himself, who sees in dreams the departed spirit come to torment him. Congo tribes in like manner consider the souls of the dead, passed into the ranks of powerful spirits, to cause disease and death among mankind. Thus, in both these districts, medicine becomes an almost entirely religious matter of propitiatory sacrifice and prayer addressed to the disease-inflicting manes. The

"3

1 Schoolcraft, 'Indian Tribes,' part i. p. 250, part ii. pp. 179, 199, part iii. p. 498; M. Eastman, 'Dahcotah,' p. xxiii. 34, 41, 72. See also Gregg, 'Commerce of Prairies,' vol. ii. p. 297 (Comanches); Morgan, 'Iroquois,' p. 163; Sproat, p. 174 (Ahts); Egede, 'Greenland,' p. 186; Cranz, p. 269.

2 Roman Pane, xix. in 'Life of Colon '; in Pinkerton, vol. xii. p. 87. 3 D'Orbigny, 'L'Homme Américain,' vol. ii. pp. 73, 168; Musters, 'Patagonians,' p. 180. See also J. G. Müller, pp. 207, 231 (Caribs); Spix and Martius, 'Brasilien,' vol. i. p. 70; Martius, 'Ethnog. Amer.' vol. i. P、 646 (Macusis).

VOL. II.

K

Barolongs give a kind of worship to deranged persons, as under the direct influence of a deity; while in East Africa the explanation of madness and idiocy is simple and typical-" he has fiends." Negroes of West Africa, on the supposition that an attack of illness has been caused by some spiritual being, can ascertain to their satisfaction what manner of spirit has done it, and why. The patient may have neglected his "wong" or fetish-spirit, who has therefore made him ill; or it may be his own "kla" or personal guardian-spirit, who on being summoned explains that he has not been treated respectfully enough, etc.; or it may be a "sisa" or ghost of some dead man, who has taken this means of making known that he wants perhaps a gold ornament that was left behind when he died. Of course, the means of cure will then be to satisfy the demands of the spirit. Another aspect of the negro doctrine of disease-spirits is displayed in the following description from Guinea, by the Rev. J. L. Wilson, the missionary :-" Demoniacal possessions are common, and the feats performed by those who are supposed to be under such influence are certainly not unlike those described in the New Testament. Frantic gestures, convulsions, foaming at the mouth, feats of supernatural strength, furious ravings, bodily lacerations, gnashing of teeth, and other things of a similar character, may be witnessed in most of the cases which are supposed to be under diabolical influence." The remark several times made by travellers is no doubt true, that the spiritualistic theory of disease has tended strongly to prevent progress in the medical art among the lower races. Thus among the Bodo and Dhimal of North-East India, who ascribe all diseases to a deity tormenting the patient for some impiety or neglect, the exorcists divine the offended

1 Casalis, 'Basutos,' p. 247; Callaway, 'Rel. of Amazulu,' p. 147, etc.; Magyar, 'Süd-Afrika,' p. 21, etc.; Burton, 'Central Afr.' vol. ii. pp. 320, 354; Steere in 'Journ. Anthrop. Inst.' vol. i. 1871, p. cxlvii.

2 Steinhauser, Religion des Negers,' in 'Magaz. der Evang. Missions und Bibel-Gesellschaften,' Basel, 1856, No. 2, p. 139.

3 J. L. Wilson, W. Afr.' pp. 217, 388.

« PreviousContinue »