172 PRIMITIVE PATERNITY 



their dead. The common people are left to be eaten 

 by hyenas and, it is believed, there is an end of them. 

 But medicine-men, chiefs and persons of wealth are 

 buried, and their souls become snakes which haunt 

 their children's kraals and are regarded as sacred. 1 

 On the Slave Coast the Yoruba think the souls of the 

 dead are sometimes born again in animals, most 

 commonly the hyena or the solitary yellow monkey 

 called oloyo, or (though more rarely) in plants. 2 The 

 Brames of Senegal believe that the soul of the dead 

 passes into the body of an animal not used for food. 

 At the funeral the body is exposed to fire until the 

 epidermis is easily rubbed off. This is done to 

 facilitate passage into the body of the animal chosen 

 by the deceased. 3 Among the Ewhe the noli, or in- 

 dwelling spirit of a man, often enters the body of one 

 of the lower animals, sometimes friendly, sometimes 

 hostile, to mankind. In the neighbourhood of Whydah 

 the friendly noli frequently takes up its abode in the 

 body of an iguana, " whence these reptiles are allowed 

 to run about the house, and are regarded almost as 

 tutelary deities, the death of one being considered a 

 calamity." 4 Similar beliefs are reported from the 

 Gold Coast and the Niger. 5 The Banyang in Northern 



J Hollis, 304, 307; Marker, 192, 202. According to the latter 

 the clan of the El Kiboron bury all their married men and believe 

 that their bones change into snakes. See also Johnston, Uganda, ii. 

 832. 



2 Ellis, Yoruba, 133, 134. Compare the Djagga belief that their 

 ancestors inhabit the bodies of colobus monkeys (/. A. I. xxi. 377). 



3 Leprince, JJAnthrop. xvi. 61, 62. 4 Ellis, Ewe, 164. 



* C. H. Harper, J. A. I. xxxvi. 184, 186. Here it seems that 

 the form of the sacred (totem) animal is or was usually believed to 

 betaken. J. Parkinson, Ibid. 314, 319; Leonard, 142, 185, 188, 

 217. 



