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A MONOGRAPH OF THE PHEASANTS 



The Til-til-tapa is the bird which is believed to bring the souls to male children. 

 Among other intricate rites, the mother must eat of this pheasant before the child is 

 born, and thus allow the soul to enter its body while yet not perfectly formed. It is 

 possible that the bird in this ritual may refer both to the Argus and the peacock 

 pheasant. 



Wizards and magicians of the Sakais know the Argus Pheasant as a demon, not a 

 flesh-and-blood affair, as is their notion of the vampire, but the ktiang is akin to the 



ape-demon in that it can pass through walls 

 and trees and bushes. It is the demon of 

 madness, and as such one to be exorcised. 

 The wizards of these people use bamboo tubes, 

 or tuaiig-ttiang, which are struck upon the 

 ground during the performance. These are 

 highly ornamented with crude designs, the 

 meaning of some of which is very plain, while 

 others have evolved into symbolism, unrecog- 

 nizable except as translated by the natives. 

 These tubes are used as charms against various 

 dangers and ailments, supposed or real. Some 

 of these are scorpions and centipedes, mice and 

 squirrels, ants, skin diseases, millipedes, when 

 the natives are searching for fruit, the collapsing 

 of houses, spiders, poisonous fish and drought. 

 The Argus patterns are usually fairly realistic. 

 A tuang-tuang of interest in the present 

 connection was a charm invoking the aid of 

 the Argus Pheasant against millipedes and 

 scorpions. The theory was that, as the Argus 

 feeds upon these creatures, its help, emphasized 

 by the crude designs and patterns, was to be 

 summoned by striking the bamboo against the 

 ground. The explanation of the design is that 

 the centre is occupied by a figure of the Argus 

 itself, with the wings and two long tail-feathers 

 covered with the eyes or ocelli. The ornithology 

 of the native is here at fault, as the eye-spots 

 are really confined to the feathers of the wings. 

 To the left of the pheasant is a long millipede, reddish yellow in the original design, 

 with its head pointed in the opposite direction from the Argus. The dots on each side 

 represent the traces which this creature is supposed to leave on the skin of the person 

 attacked. To the right of the Argus are two blue scorpions, with their heads pointed 

 toward one another. The upper is a female, the lower a male. This is indicated by the 

 two curved designs, one above and one beloAv these scorpions, which represent the 

 swelling of the skin after the bite of one of these animals. The female is supposed to 

 be much the more poisonous of the two sexes, and to produce a double row of 



Argus Charm orTuang-tuang against 

 Millipedes and 5corpions.(afi-erSkeaf-}. 



