OCCASIONAL NOTES. 169 
the spirit-money, saying, “I call the laggard spirits ; he who 
comes fastest will eat most. May ten become a hundred ; may 
a hundred become a thousand; a thousand, ten thousand ; ten 
thousand, a hundred thousand; a hundred thousand, a million ; 
a million, a countless multitude.’ Thisis, it need hard lly be 
explained, a desire to obtain the multiplication of his offering. 
The notion is of course borrowed from the Chinese with their 
regular sacrifices of Din. A development of this, found in 
all parts of the loa among uncivilised nations, is the exor- 
cism of evil spirits which are “supposed to enter into people and 
cause nesses. The method of driving these out in Annam 
differs little from the process described by dozens of writers on 
nations in other parts of the earth. The sorcerer is called 
Tuart-Puap, and he must on no account eat the flesh of buf- 
faloes or dogs. 
An analogous superstition is the ceremony of making 
offerings once every vear to the former holders of the soil. 
No country farmer would think of letting the first three 
months of the year pass without making offerings of a general 
kind to the old aboriginal cultivators. Sometimes, however, 
this is not enough. He loses his dogs and pigs and chickens, 
his rice gets drowned with too much water or dies of drought ; 
he falls sick himself and sees visions of capering, bloodthirsty 
Savages. 
Then he knows what is the matter, and goes straight off 
to a paper-goods manufacturer and orders a facsimile of his 
house to be built m paper. . This isa most elaborate affair, 
reproducing not only a general model of the house, but of 
everything in it— furniture, people, dogs, cats, and pigs, and 
even the lizards inthe thatch. All the human beings, how- 
ever, are represented twice over, so that the ghost to “whom 
this model is to be given up may not have an exact model of 
the owner, or of his 1 wite or children. These houses are very 
dear, costing sometimes as much as £6, which is a large sum 
for a peasant farmer. If it is the commune that is making the 
offering, a mnodel is made of the village shrine, the Dinu. 
On the determined day, offerings of the usual kind are 
made, and the wizard, the THar-Puap, falls to a trance, and 
is possessed by the deceased owner of the land. He blackens 
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