178 PRIMITIVE PATERNITY 



expired not long afterwards. The white siamang is 

 also one of the forms taken by the soul of a deceased 

 chieftain among the Sakai. Other Jakun hold that 

 phosphorescent jelly-fishes in the sea are wandering 

 souls of men awaiting the impending birth of a child 

 in order to try and enter its body. Moreover among 

 the Eastern Semang not merely human beings have 

 souls but also the lower animals. Fish-souls come 

 from grasses, bird-souls from fruits which are eaten by 

 the mother-bird. Each kind of animal has its corre- 

 sponding soul-plant. The tigress-milk-fungus contains 

 the soul of an unborn tiger-cub ; the tiger eats the 

 fungus and thus the soul is conveyed. Souls of beasts 

 noxious to men are conveyed by poisonous, and those 

 of harmless beasts by non-poisonous fungi. Phos- 

 phorescent fungi convey souls of night-beasts. In a 

 Mantra saga the hero having died and been buried 

 reappears as a skink, or grass-lizard. The hero's 

 brother throws his jungle-knife at it and cuts off its 

 tail, whereupon the dead man comes to life again, 

 leaves his grave and returns to his own house. 1 

 Pakhangba, the ancestor of one of the clans of 

 Meitheis of the state of Manipur, still sometimes 

 appears to men, but always, like a Zulu, in the form of 

 a snake. 2 



Among the traditions preserved in the Nihongi or 

 Chronicles of Japan is one concerning the prince 

 Yamato-dake, of whom it is said that when he died 

 and was buried, taking the shape of a white bird he 

 came forth from the misasagi or tumulus and flew 



1 Skeat and Blagden, ii. 194, 221, 223, 227, 305, 351 note, 365, 

 290, 190, 23, 216, 336. 



2 Hodson, 100. 



