TRANSFORMATION 205 



recorded in the monuments as the folk-belief of 

 modern Europe differs from the creed of Christian 

 theologians concerning the soul. The current Egyp- 

 tian belief, if correctly reported by Herodotus, was 

 in his time that at death of the body " the soul enters 

 into another creature which chances then to be coming 

 to the birth, and when it has gone the round of all the 

 creatures of land and sea and of the air, it enters 

 again into a human body as it comes to the birth, 

 and that it makes this round in a period of three 

 thousand years." 1 This belief excited the historian's 

 scorn. It is very different from the official Osirian 

 doctrine, and has evidently been elaborated from that 

 exhibited in the story of the Two Brothers. We 

 have already seen that a belief equally wide of the 

 official doctrine certainly existed with regard to the 

 gods, according to which they were born, like Lug, of 

 themselves. It is safe to think that what was pre- 

 dicated of the gods, was in earlier ages by all classes, 

 and probably by the backward classes down to the 

 very end of Egyptian paganism, held concerning 

 human beings, though it may have been held con- 

 currently with other solutions of the problem. 



We may therefore proceed with our investigation of 

 the belief in the reappearance of a deceased ancestor 

 in the person of a child without concerning ourselves 

 with the subtle divisions of the soul, which we have 

 previously met and shall again meet with in the course 

 of the inquiry. Turning next to the aboriginal tribes 

 of India, we find among the Khonds of Orissa the same 

 belief. Anthropologists have often quoted Macpher- 

 son's description of the divination for determining 

 1 Herod, ii. 123. I quote Macaulay's translation. 



