SIHANAKA SUPERSTITION. 291 



where it had lived in the flesh. This perpetual fleeing 

 before death, of course, prevents the population from becom- 

 ing settled in its habits, and produces a most unsubstantial 

 style of house-building. The same notion is also found 

 among the Bara.*" 



Something of the same superstition prevails in other tribes. 

 Thus the Sihanaka do not pull down the house or go away 

 from the village, as do the Sakalava, but they leave it, and 

 allow it to fall to pieces of itself. Such deserted dwellings 

 they call trano fdlalca, " broken houses." t 



These same people, when taking a corpse to the grave, 

 nave an earthen dish filled with burning cowdung carried on 

 a man's head, and this is placed at the headstone. They say 

 that the reason of this is that the dead person may be able 

 to get fire should he chance to be cold. 



"When the corpse has been placed in the grave a man 

 knocks at the door of the tomb, or on the stone covering it, 

 should there be no door, and calls out, ' thou, Such an one, 

 whoever it is that has bewitched you, let him not hide, let 

 him not be concealed, but break him upon the rock, that the 

 children may see it, that the women may see it ; ' and all 

 there also join in the adjuration." t 



Among this same tribe, should any one happen to be 

 seriously ill, he is taken secretly out of the village and con- 

 veyed to some out-of-the-way place, where no one is allowed 

 to see him except those who nurse him. § 



It is said that among the southern Tanala the people are 

 accustomed, when any of their relatives are ill and become 

 insensible, to take and place them in a part of the forest 

 where they throw their dead ; and should the unfortunate 

 creatures so cast away revive and return to the village, they 

 stone them and kill them outright. 



Among these same Tanala, they call sudden death fbla- 

 mdnta (" broken-unripe "), and " such deaths are ascribed to 

 witchcraft. The diviner is fetched, and he consults the 

 oracle ; and wrapping up some grains of black sand, places 

 them on the head of the corpse, saying, ' He who is caught 



* Antananarivo Annual, No. ii. p. 46k + Ihid. No. iii. p. 66. 



* Ibid. p. 65. § Ibid. p. 63. 



