1805.] Reliyion <(r. among the Karens. 203 



GrHOSTS. 

 The unburied dead. 



The Greeks and Romans believed that those who were deprived of 

 funeral rites, wandered about, and were not allowed to enter Hades ; 

 so it is no marvel to find this now to be the popular faith in Europe ; 

 but it is not a little remarkable to find precisely the same rites preva- 

 lent among the Karens. 



The Las of those who have been deprived of funeral rites, the Ka- 

 rens suppose, wander about on earth, and occasionally show themselves 

 to men as ghosts. 



The following story illustrates the character of these ghosts : — 



" It is related that a man was travelling and lost his way. When 

 night overtook him, he made a fire at the foot of a large tree, and 

 then ascending it, he built himself a little booth among its branches 

 in which to spend the night. Before he got to sleep, he heard the 

 ghosts calling to each other, and, thinking they were the voices of 

 men, he replied to them. 



"So soon as the ghosts heard him, one came upon him, and wrestled 

 with him, and was repeatedly on the point of throwing him down, but 

 he had a comb in his hair which in the struggle fell down into the 

 fire below, and the stick-lac in the comb burnt with a very strong 

 smell. This smell made the ghost cough and sneeze, cough and 

 sneeze, till he could endure it no longer, when it ran away, and left 

 him. Had it not been for the smell of the stick-lac, the man would 

 have lost his life, and by this incident we know that ghosts, are afraid 

 of the smell of stick-lac." 



The sight of a ghost may be obtained by the possession of a skull, 

 or part of one. 



" Formerly," say the Karens, " there was a Burman killed by light- 

 ning, and a Burman picked up a bit of his skull, and bringing it 

 home put it in the ashes in the fireplace. In the night it became 

 a man, came out of the ashes, and walked about the house, making a 

 noise like the treading of a man, and the wife and children of the man 

 were greatly afraid. In the morning it entered the ashes again, and 

 became a bit of skull bone as before." 



Some persons, we are told, breed ghosts. " If a person goes and 

 takes the skull of a corpse, it becomes a ghost, and the possessor can 

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