SUPERSTITION AND MAGIC IN CAMBODIA. 525 



tation from without not to be matclied by legislation or training, nor 

 even by churcli influence. To make the household sweet, whole- 

 some, dignified, a place of growth, is certainly a profession requiring 

 not merely the best training, but a specific training adapted to these 

 ends. 



SUPEESTITION" AND MAGIC IN CAMBODIA. 



By M. ADIlfeMARD LECLi:EE. 



THE Cambodians are superstitious, and believe in ghosts, familiar 

 spirits appearing as Jack-o'-lanterns, were-wolves, benevolent 

 and malevolent genii, and demoniac possessions. They believe, too, 

 in witches and diviners, evil-minded persons, who take advantage 

 of what they know to make ill or damage whom they will, or 

 drive a good trade in love philters and antidotes. The people are 

 afraid of these uncanny persons, and yet they sometimes resort to 

 them. 



The ghosts are very much like our own ghosts, and when dis- 

 pleased with their still living friends annoy them wath noises and 

 mysterious breakings, but are seldom seen. Much in their behavior, 

 however, depends upon the kind of persons they were in life. Some 

 of the more evilly disposed kind enter the bodies of people and render 

 them ill, when a tJimup, or ghost-disperser, is sought who knows the 

 special prayers and exorcisms that will drive them back to their 

 tombs. It is said that most ghosts will cease to return when the last 

 part of the flesh of their bodies has been decomposed, but some 

 persons assert that riddance of them is not assured till the last par- 

 ticles of their bones have disappeared. 



The Jack-o'-lantern spirits are much more mischievous than the 

 others because, I am assured by one of the literati, they are ghosts 

 of women who have died pregnant, and are affected by the disap- 

 pointment of the child at not having been given the privilege of a 

 worldly existence. Both kinds of ghosts are liable to bring with 

 them fever, cholera, dysentery, and other diseases, and, penetrating 

 the bodies of persons on whom they desire to be avenged, leave 

 their ills there. They often resist the efforts of the exorcists for 

 several days, and do not seem to comprehend the special prayers that 

 are directed against them, and some refuse to go away till they have 

 brought on the death of the person whom they have possessed. 

 They sometimes also amuse themselves by misleading travelers. 

 They change the blazes on the trees and break branches of the bushes 

 in the forest paths, so that the wanderer can not tell which is the 

 route he had marked in the same way, or they will call him aside and 



