TRANSFORMATION 173 



Cameroon do not kill certain birds, believing that they 

 are dead persons. 1 In Madagascar we are told the 

 same of the Sakalava and the Betsileo. A Betsileo 

 noble becomes a crocodile ; the souls of common 

 people lodge in certain eels named lona* Some 

 unspecified tribes hold the kingfisher and the death's 

 head sphinx to be men who have changed into these 

 forms after death. A great number of Malagasy are 

 said to take these creatures for ancestors, and to hold 

 them in consequent respect. 3 



The Ansairee, or Nasaree, of Tarsus in Asia Minor, 

 though outwardly conforming to Islam, practise a 

 religion combining many heterogeneous elements. 

 They call their supreme god Ali. The Kalazians, one of 

 their sects, are moon-worshippers, that is to say, they 

 believe that Ali dwells in the moon, which is conse- 

 quently the object of numerous rites. A few years 

 ago the chief of this sect was Sheikh Hassan, one of 

 the richest men at Tarsus. They believe that at his 

 death he will become a star. Other men less holy or 

 fortunate will go through various transformations. 

 With this people, says Mr. Theodore Bent, " metem- 

 psychosis partakes strongly of the ridiculous : bad men 

 put on * low envelopes,' or kamees, in the next world ; 

 Mussulmans become jackals, and Jewish Rabbis apes ; 

 a man may be punished by becoming a woman, but a 

 good woman may be rewarded in the next life by 

 becoming a man." * 



In the East Indies when a woman dies in child- 



i Hutter, 297. 



* van Gennep, Tabou, 271, 283, 291, 322, 323. 



3 Ferrand, Contes Pop. Malg. 139, translating Dahle. 



* B. A. Rep. (1890), 544. 



