i8o PRIMITIVE PATERNITY 



But it does not remain there for ever. Again it dies 

 and enters a third world, and so on three times more, 

 until it diminishes in size and is changed into ever 

 smaller beings, into a bird, a midge, and finally dust. 

 Sometimes, however, it is born again into our world 

 and undergoes an endless series of transformations. 

 This is the lot especially of women. 1 In a Chukchi 

 tale the black bear is a wife who was forsaken by her 

 husband for another woman. " The mountain sheep 

 is also a woman forsaken by her husband. She threw 

 herself from a steep rock and was dashed against the 

 stones, thus becoming a sheep. Her braided hair was 

 turned into horns." 2 



In China the belief that the dead change into 

 animals, though never taken up seriously into Chinese 

 philosophy, is current. Dr. De Groot has collected a 

 number of stories expressive of this belief, in which 

 we find men changing into asses cows birds of various 

 kinds fish and even insects. Often only the soul is 

 spoken of as manifested in such a shape. But other 

 stories appear to present the bodies as undergoing 

 metamorphosis. Thus a writer in the third century 

 A.D. lays it down that persons who are drowned in the 

 sea change into wei, probably a kind of sturgeon : a 

 superstition current no doubt in his day and in that 

 changeless country still entertained. 3 Similarly " it is 

 generally believed by Hindus that a person who dies 

 from snake-bite is born a snake in the next life." An 

 Indian gentleman relates that after an uncle of his 



1 Sternberg, Arch. Religionsw. viii. 470. 



2 Bogoras, Jesup Exped. vii. 329. 



3 De Groot, iv. 157, 207, 208, 225, 227, 230, 231, 234, 238, 

 245- 



