258 A i^ATUMALIST IN CELEBES ch. x 



last stage of consumption. In the evening there was a 

 great feast, and later the gongs and kolintangs were heard, 

 and the people began a shameless dance. 



' The following day the sacrificial feast came to an end. 

 Nine pigs were slaughtered with much ceremony, and a piece 

 of the heart of each of them was placed by the priests upon 

 the altar, that the gods might bless the giver of the feast 

 with long life, sound health, and many children. There- 

 upon each of the waUans received one pig, and the chief 

 walian two, and the evening was spent by all in the 

 grossest forms of debauchery. 



' The following morning the woman was dead.' 

 The central idea in the above is that the priest acts as 

 the mouthpiece of the god Lembej. He works himself up 

 in a condition of hypnotism by monotonous songs, the 

 powerful perfume of incenses, and the regular swaying of 

 his limbs. When he is in that state it is supposed that 

 his own spirit has fled, and is replaced by the spirit of the 

 god. When the god leaves him he falls to the ground like 

 a dead man, and the other priests have to coax back his 

 own soul by whistHng for it, as one would for a dog. It is 

 quite possible that during a considerable part of the cere- 

 mony the walian is really in a state of unconsciousness, 

 and that he is afterwards quite ignorant of what he has 

 been saying or doing as the medium of the god. He is in 

 a mesmeric sleep, and performs in that state, and without 

 knowing it, a series of antics, similar to those he has seen 

 performed by other priests on like occasions, and utters the 

 same incoherent and unintelligible sentences that have been 

 handed down from generation to generation. 



Amongst illiterate races language probably changes 

 very much more rapidly than it does amongst the literate 

 ones, and it is quite possible that within a few generations 

 a language may become so altered as to be quite unintelli- 



