16 



ANNUAL ADDRESS. 



The Burmese, for example, imagine, wlieii a person falls ill, 

 either that his Icyp-hya (i.e., his soul in the form of a butterfly) 

 has been scared by an evil spirit out of his body, or that after 

 being so scared, it has hurried back with such precipitancy as 

 to disorganise liis constitution.* The 'Mongols explain bodily 

 sickness in various ways, but the popular explanation among 

 them seems to be that the soul has gone out of the body and is 

 unable or unwilHng to return to it. " To secure the return of 

 the soul it is therefore necessary on the one hand to make its 

 body as attractive as possible, and on the other hand to show it 

 the way home. To make the body attractive all the sick man's 

 best clothes and most valued possessions are placed beside him, 

 he is washed, incensed, and made as comfortable as possible, and 

 all his friends march thrice round the hut, calling out the sick 

 man's name and coaxing his soul to return. To help the soul 

 to find its way Imck a coloured cord is stretched from the 

 patient's head to the door of the hut. The priest in his robes 

 reads a list of the horrors of hell and the dangers incurred by 

 souls which wilfully absent themselves from their bodies. 

 Then turning to the assembled friends and the patient he 

 asks, ' Is it come ? ' All answer, ' Yes,' and bowing to the 

 returning soul throws seed over the sick man. The cord which 

 guided the soul back is then rolled up and placed round the 

 patient's neck, who must wear it for seven days without taking 

 it off. None may frighten or hurt him, lest his soul, not yet 

 familiar with its body, should again take fiight."f 



And as with physical so it was also with mental disease. That, 

 too, was attributed to a severance between spirit and body. Thus it 

 is recorded that the negroes of North Guinea habitually ascribed 

 imbecility or lunacy to the premature flight of the soul from its 

 bodily tenement.t Nor is the evidence less strong or striking as 

 to the savage mode of looking upon death. Thus the Malays 

 believe that the soul of a dying man escapes through his 



* Shway Yeo, The Burynan, His Life and Notions, vol. ii, p. 101. 



t Frazer, (Jolden Bough, vol. i, ch. 2, p. 128. His description is based 

 upon Bastian, Die Secle und Ihre Erscheinung-wesen im der Ethnographic, 

 p. 30. 



X J. L. Wilson, ^yest Africa, p. 220. 



