LEOPARD MEN" HUTTON. 539 



win Valley, notes that they transform themselves into tigers by mak- 

 ing water and then rolling naked on the earth they have wetted. 



A nearer approach to the Naga belief appears to exist in Malay, 

 but here again actual metamorphosis seems to be essential to that 

 form of lycanthropy. Mr. O'May, writing in Folklore in 1910 (Vol. 

 XXI, p. 371) says that in Burma and Sumatra a quite ordinary 

 man may turn into a tiger in the evening without any fuss, and he 

 goes on to describe a Malay game of turning into a civet cat, in 

 which a boy is actually hypnotized and caused to behave like a civet 

 cat, becoming (as the Naga were-leopard does) much exhausted 

 when the trance is over. So, too, Skeat mentions the case of one 

 Haji 'Abdallah caught naked in a tiger trap in Korinchi State in 

 Sumatra (Malay Magic, p. 160-163), while Messrs Skeat and Blag- 

 den note that the were-tigers of the Malay Peninsula (most unlike 

 the Nagas, here) can not be shot in their metamorphosed condition 

 (Pagan Eaces of the Malay Peninsula, p. 227). 



Skeat also records the inverse of the Naga case, in the process 

 by which a possession of the human body by a tiger spirit is invoked 

 to cast out another and less powerful possessing spirit (Malay 

 Magic, p. 436), and similarly (p. 455) the induction of a monkey 

 spirit into a girl who, while thus possessed, is capable of the most 

 remarkable climbing feats. 



In all these cases, however, the practice differs from that of the 

 Nagas in that either metamorphosis takes place, or it is the animal 

 spirit which possesses the human body, not the other way round. 

 For with the Naga were-leopard the soul is merely projected into 

 the body of the animal, while no metamorphosis of the human body 

 takes place nor is any sort of hypnotism employed — unless, indeed, 

 it be self-hypnotism, and involuntary at that. 



Sir James Frazer (G. B., Vol. XI, p. 196) gives instances from 

 Asia of the location of the external soul in animals for the purposes 

 of ensuring its safety or for enhancing the power of the magician. 

 Neither of these two motives appears to influence the Naga were- 

 wolf in any way. It is recognized on all hands that the practice 

 is a dangerous one, and it is said to be rapidly decreasing owing 

 to the increased number of guns in the district, which make it still 

 more dangerous than it was. Lycanthropy is not practiced by 

 wizards, as were-tigers are, as far as I know, invariably ordinary 

 men who do not claim to supernatural powers of any sort. The 

 nearest parallels seem to come from Africa, and Sir James Frazer 

 mentions several beliefs from Nigeria which resemble the Naga 

 belief pretty closely. One other point may be added. In some cases 

 lycanthropy among Nagas seems to be hereditary, or perhaps rather 

 one should say that a tendency towards it may be inherited, as in 



