174 PRIMITIVE PATERNITY 



birth on the islands of Ambon and Uliase thorns or 

 pins are stuck between the joints of the fingers and 

 toes, in the knees shoulders and elbows, eggs of hens 

 or ducks are laid under the chin and the armpits, 

 and a portion of her hair is brought outwards and 

 nailed fast between the coffin and its lid. The object 

 of this is to prevent her from getting out of the coffin 

 and flying away in the form of a bird. Even if she 

 should succeed in this, it is believed she could not 

 forsake the eggs. Were these precautions not taken 

 she would be able to plague men and pregnant 

 women. On the Tanembar or Timorlao Islands the 

 matmate or ancestral spirits are worshipped. They 

 take the form of various animals opossums birds 

 hogs turtles dugongs snakes crocodiles and sharks. 

 In the Babar Archipelago small offerings are thrown to a 

 snake seen lurking about a house, because it is believed 

 that a woman who has died in childbirth has made 

 use of it as a means to enter the village. 1 In certain 

 districts of the south-east of Borneo a Dyak who dies 

 by accident, as by drowning, is not buried, but carried 

 into the forest and simply laid down there. It is 

 believed that his soul enters a tree a fish or some 

 other brute. Accordingly certain kinds of fish are not 

 eaten, and certain kinds of wood are not used, because 

 they willingly harbour souls. On the other hand, the 

 soul of a man over whom all proper funeral rites have 

 been performed enters the Town of Souls. But it cannot 

 abide there for ever. After a life seven times as long as 

 on the earth it dies and returns to this world, where it 



enters a mushroom a fruit or a leaf, in the hope that it 

 1 Riedel, 81, 281, 338. Similar beliefs in other East Indian 

 islands, Kruyt, 181, 187, &c. 



