200 PRIMITIVE PATERNITY 



resembles that used to identify the new Dalai Lama 

 and consists in placing before the child various articles 

 belonging to deceased members of the family who are 

 still absent, in order to see which of them he will 

 appear to claim. 1 In the French Soudan the Mossi 

 and Gourounsi are convinced that the souls of the 

 dead go to certain villages actual earthly villages 

 where they seem to live in the same condition as 

 before death. After awhile they become Kinkirse 

 (pi. of Kinkiriga, an indefinable being, material, some- 

 what evil-disposed and of variable power) and in- 

 habit the bush that surrounds the villages, hiding in 

 the thickets. Such thickets are therefore respected, 

 from fear that their suppression would entail sterility 

 on the part of the women. For these Kinkirse are 

 potential human beings. When a birth takes place it 

 is one of them that returns to life ; and the newborn 

 child is always considered a Kinkiriga? The Malinkes 

 say that when a married man dies, if any of his wives 

 be pregnant the soul of the deceased husband passes 

 into the child in the womb and remains there until 

 a name has been given to the child. The name given 

 is always that of the deceased husband. If the child 

 prove to be a daughter the feminine form of the name 

 is taken. 3 On the Gold Coast parents who have lost 

 several children sometimes cast into the bush the 

 body of the infant who last died. They believe the 

 next-born to be the same child returned ; and if it have 

 any congenital deformity or defect, that is attributed 



1 Winwoode Reade, 539 ; Kingsley, Trav. 493 ; W. A. Studies^ 

 145. Another form of divination is mentioned as used by the 

 Bulloms and Timmanees, Winterbottom, i. 227, 



2 E. Ruelle, LAnthrop. xv. 687. 



8 Father Brun, Anthropos. ii. 727. 



