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OCTOBER, 1898.]
SPIRIT BASIS OF BELIEF AND CUSTOM.
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upon the spirit that has entered the sick person's body, to leave the body and eat the offerings. If the spirit does not leave the sufferer, the priest threatens that he will ask the gods to banish the spirit to hell.66 In China, if a man is sick with devils, the exorcist makes a paper image of a man called Tai Sun. In front of the paper image an altar is made, and on the altar are laid eggs, pork, fruits, cakes, and paper-money. Candles and incense sticks are lighted. The spirit goes into the Tai Sun, who is carried into the street, and burned or put in a boat to drift to sea.67 When a house is haunted, the Chinese call a Taoist priest. The priest wears a red robe, blue stockings, and a black cap, and bolds in his hand a sword made of the wood of peach or date tree which has been struck with lightning. A strap of red cloth is twisted round the hilt, and on the blade is a mystic scroll written in ink. He lays the sword over the altar with burning tapers and incense sticks. He prepares a mystic scroll, burns it, and gathers the ashes in a cup of water. He holds the sword in his right, and the cup in his left hand. Then he walks several paces, and calls on the gods to give him power to turn out evil spirits. He shouts :-" Leave this house like lightning." He takes a branch of willow, dips it in the cup, and sprinkles the fonr corners of the house. He takes up the sword and the cup, fills the cup with water, and splashes the water on the east walls. He calls aloud :-"Kill the green spirits, or let them be driven away." He does this at each of the four corners and in the middle. The attendants beat gongs and drums with an appalling din, and the priest shouts - "Evil spirit, retire, vanish." Then he goes to the door, and makes cuts with his sword through the air. 68
In a case recorded by the late Sir William Maxwell from Perak in the Malay Peninsula, the patient was a girl in child-bed, who after the birth of her child became delirious. A Malay exorcist, Che Johan, was called in and seated near the patient on a tiger's skin. He was naked to the waist, had a couple of cords bound across his back and breast, had strings tied round his waist, and held bunches of leaves in his hands. Close to Che Johan sat a woman who beat a one-end drum and chanted shrilly to the tiger-spirit or hanter bhán, to which class Che Johan's familiar belonged. As the woman chanted, Che Johan sat rigid, then smelling the bunches of leaves he began to nod, struck the bunches together, and fell forward burying his face in the leaves, sniffing like a wild animal on all fours, growling, roaring, worrying. He again sat up and struck his chest and shoulders with the leaves. He was now possessed by the tiger-spirit. He spoke in a feigned voice and was addressed as Bujang Gelap or Dragon spirit. He scattered rice round him, growled, muttered and danced, went to tho patient's bed. ride and hissed, "Heijin, O spirit." He sprinkled the girl and her couch with rice and a fluid. He was again convulsed and crept under his mat and lay quiet for fifteen minutes. He then sat up and yawned, and still speaking in a feigned voice said: "A dunt langsuyar, & white woman is in the girl." He again sprinkled grain, pat some in the girl's month, danced, and beat himself with leaves. At last he was tired, and gave up. Then an old man, whose familiar was a water-spirit, tried, and did no good. A revolving mosque was made, and as the demons would not yield to force, the attempt was made to tempt them out of the girl. Offerings of the fat, the sweet, the sour, and the pungent were made. A hen was put in the mosque, and the two exorcists, with wavings, music and chants, joined in moving the spirits from the child to the mosque. Each exorcist with bandful of leaves dipped in the liquor called tepong tawar guided the spirits to the mosque. The mosque escorted by the exorcists was carried to the river and started down the stream with charms and chants. This was done again next night, and a day later the girl died.
The Papuans believe in evil spirits and ghosts. Evil spirits in a coast man are driven out by an inland man into a hole in the earth.7 In Madagascar, when a person is sick, the people fall a diviner. Pieces of white wood, painted black and red, are laid on the roof of
* Gray's China, Vol. I. p. 101.
T Op. cit. Vol. IL p. 20.
Op. cit. Vol. II. p. 20. * Maxwell in Straits Journal, December 1889, p. 232.
• Ingle's Australian Cousine, p. 82.
