J 8 



THE DEMONS 



their demoniac powers on them. In the first place they must paj 

 their court to Wissamonny, or to some powerful god, and obtain 

 from him permission to exercise their demoniac powers. They then 

 hover about in the air, and cease to touch the ground; for walking 

 on the ground is strictly prohibited by Wissamonny and the gods; 

 nevertheless, whenever a man says that he has seen the apparition 

 of a demon, he always describes him as having appeared to him 

 walking on the ground like a man. 



It also appears in the various accounts given of the birth of de- 

 mons, especially in the genealogical accounts recited or chanted at 

 the commencement of demon ceremonies, that a demon has the 

 power at any moment (a power which he often exercises) of entering 

 the womb of a woman, where he remains during the necessary period, 

 assuming in their order the various conditions of a foetus conceived 

 in the ordinary way. After the woman's delivery, the child (that 

 is the demon) resumes the exercise of his demon peculiarities, as 

 before. Some demons appear to have been born hundreds of times 

 in this fashion. 



If we can believe that there is any particle of truth at all in the 

 existence and in the genealogies of these demons, that little, we 

 think, must be this — that in the very remotest periods, when the 

 Singhalese were peculiarly ignorant and superstitious, and when the 

 principle of Hero-worship was carried to a height proportioned only 

 to the ignorance of the worshipper, there may have lived particular 

 members of the community, who distinguished themselves by ex- 

 treme ferocity and cruelty of conduct, joined to considerable power, 

 which they exercised either as kings, chiefs, or mere lawless free- 

 booters; and that these individuals after death, and perhaps when 

 living, were worshipped as supernatural beings possessed of irre- 

 sistible powers of injuring men. We are the more confirmed in this 

 opinion by the fact, that the dewo or gods belonging to Capuism 

 appear to have been no more than creatures of this kind. The 

 mythology and the apotheosis of the Greeks, of the Romans and of 

 most other early nations of the world were, in a manner J only coun- 

 terparts of this. 



