208 Religion &e. among the Karens. | [No. 4, 
At evening, the stomach of the hog is roasted, and all taste of it, in 
the manner described above. 
Next morning at dawn, they take the posts of the table, and throw- 
ing them away endwise, as they would throw a javelin, into the earth 
without the village, they say: ‘ Now it is done, it is finished. Go 
thy way, return to thy place.” 
After it is light, they cook the head of the hog, and eat it with any 
meat that may be left. On that day the people do not go away from 
the house. 
Witcures and WIzARDs. 
Next in order to the spirits of the departed dead, in Karen mytho- 
logy are their witches and wizards; but witches, among the Karens, 
are not persons who have made a compact with Satan, as European 
believers in witchcraft suppose, but persons possessed with a demon 
which they call Na, and the Red Karens Ne. The name does not 
correspond to the Burmese Nat, as some have thought, which denotes 
an entirely different being, but is equivalent to the Burmese Sung. 
According to one myth, the Na is an animal that God commanded 
man to eat at the beginning, with other animals, but neglecting to do 
so, it became invisible and now eats him. 
According to another legend, it is a human stomach ; those possessed 
of Nas having stomachs, while others are destitute of that organ. 
One story represents a woman, who had incontinently married a man 
possessed of a Na, as saying: “I saw his stomach under his finger 
nail, but thought it was an insect.” 
One man, with a Na, was observed when asleep to be without a 
head, and to eat and breathe from the top of his neck. These are 
headless demons in the Hindoo mythology. 
A person possessed of a Na is said to devour people, but it is the 
La, or vital principle that it devours, not the body. When it eats the 
eyes of another, the eyes remain, but they are blind; the matter is 
left, but the life has gone. 
Sometimes the stomach is represented as going about devouring 
men, but more often the act is attributed to the person. One possess- 
ed by a Na sees men as beasts, and their eyes as fruit. 
In one story, a young man had married a woman with a Na, and 
