
RELIGION 195 
in the hero’s fortunes and personality which the Ting- 
gian reserve for their romances. 
Explanatory Myths. A third type of traditions 
comprises myths proper, that is, stories of origin, ex- 
planation, and supernatural experience. In these are 
recounted the origin of the earth, of the sun and moon, 
of fire, the history of the flood, the cause of death, the 
reasons for the shapes and habits of animals and birds, 
the origin of peculiar stones, and similar matters. Many 
of these tales are explanatory nature myths such as are 
typical of primitive peoples. They draw little line 
between the spiritual and the human, the human and 
the animal, the animate and the inanimate. They do 
not to any great extent personify the elements and 
forees of nature in the manner of the mythology of the 
Greeks, Egyptians, Babylonians, or Hindus. In fact, 
like nearly all origin myths of truly primitive nations, 
they have little connection with ritual, and practically 
none with the worship of personalized deities. The 
Tinggian tales of this type are brief and rather bald and 
usually consist of a single episode not brought into re- 
lation with any others of the same type. For instance, 
a flood comes and Fire takes refuge in bamboo, stones, 
and iron. This is the reason it can still be extracted 
from these substances. Again, the spirit Kaboniyan 
enters the body of a woman to teach her how to cure 
illness and how to farm. From here the people derive 
their knowledge of these arts. At a significant moment 
a dog kills a cock and Kaboniyan informs her that this 
means that death has entered the world. Another tale 
accounts for the monkey, who was once a man given to 
leaning on his planting stick instead of working con- 
tinuously. The stick grew into a tail and he went off 
as the animal. Other narratives relate the experience 
of human beings with spirits and demons, usually with 
