648 



world, or supernatural beings, that the idea that living men 

 should be the object of a superstitious and annihilating fear 

 seems to us nearly incredible. This was, at least, my own 

 attitude of mind towards the facts I found in Mailu. Yet it 

 seems absolutely beyond doubt that the Mailu and, as far as I 

 know, ail the Western Papuo-Melanesians, are exclusively 

 afraid of evil magicians, as constituting the one and only 

 dreadful danger threatening them out of the darkness of the 

 night. 



The Bard'u (the exact counterpart of the Vdda of the 

 Central District) is to the natives a living man, endowed with 

 the knowledge and powers of making himself invisible, and 

 of working evil magic with the help of the night and of his 

 own invisibility. 



The Bai'd'u, as he prowls about at night, invisible, able 

 to kill his victim and desirous of doing so, is always thought 

 of as some individual man from a neighbouring village, in 

 body, not in spirit, nor as his double. When the ^<7m'?/ leaves 

 his abode to go on his nefarious errand, his place in his house 

 is empty — he goes away bodily. C^'^) The Bard'u smears him- 

 self all over with some magical herbs, and mutters some spells 

 and becomes invisible. Some people say, however, that he is 

 only invisible from his front aspect and that he can be seen 

 from behind, and this is the reason why people see often 



(77) I have dealt on the subject of the Bard'u' s bodily wander- 

 ings, because ifiere are several statements about New Guinea 

 sorcery, showing that there is a kind of emanation, or ''sending," 

 projected from the sorcerer and attacking the victim. Thus, Prof. 

 Seligman describes the '"sending," emanating from witches, as it 

 exists in the belief of the natives at Bartle Bay and inland from 

 there (^op. cit., pp. 640-643). It is very important to call atten- 

 tion to such differences in belief as exist between that recorded 

 by Prof. Seligman and that found in Mailu. Prof. Seligman's 

 statement is extremely detailed and concrete, and seems 

 to me to be as Avell established as anything we know about the 

 Papuasian natives. What I am about to say, consequently, does 

 not refer to that statement. I have found a remarkable tendency 

 among the white observers to introduce into native ideas 

 "spiritual agencies," "emanations," etc. Thus, some white men, 

 who knew Mailu perfectly well, informed me that Bard'u is an evil 

 power, projected by the sorcerer. Bard'u is, indeed, the name for 

 the sorcerer's evil power, but this never wanders about without 

 its receptacle, and there is nothing of an "emanation" in the 

 native belief. Again, in Port Moresby, one of my friends, a resi- 

 dent of long standing in Papua, and a high authority on the 

 natives, maintained in an argument with me, that Vdda was a 

 "sending" from a sorcerer. A careful subsequent inquiry carried 

 out under the patronage of Ahuia, finally convinced both my 

 friend and myself that Vdda was no "sending" in any se3ise of 

 the word, that it was the sorcerer in his own person, and that 

 when he went out to kill a man, he had to leave his own abode and 

 actually make the journey. 



