CHAPTER VII.

THE IN-DWELLING SPIRITS AND SOULS OF MEN.

IN the first volume of this series we found that the Tshi-speaking peoples believe that every man has dwelling in him a spirit termed a kra, which enters him at birth and quits him at death, and is entirely distinct from the soul, which, at the death of the body, proceeds to the Land of the Dead, and there continues the life formerly led by the man in the world. In the second volume, we found that the Ewe speaking peoples have a similar belief, the indwelling spirit being by them termed a luwo. The Gã-speaking tribes, situated geographically between the Tshi and Ewe tribes, have modified this belief, and they assign to each individual two indwelling spirits, called kla, one male and one female, the former being of a bad and the latter of a good disposition. Each kla, like the kra and the luwo, is a guardian-spirit, but-and this is a new departure-they give good or bad advice, and prompt good or bad actions, according to their respective dispositions. The Yorubas also have modified what appears to be the original theory of one in-dwelling and guardian-spirit, and they hold that each man has three spiritual inmates, the first of whom, Olori, dwells in the head, the second, Ipin ijeun, in the stomach, and the third, Ipori, in the great toe.

Olori (Oni-ori, owner, or lord, of the head) sometimes called Ori (head, faculty, talent), seems to be the spirit which answers to the kra or luwo. He is the protector, guardian, and guide. Offerings are made to him, chiefly fowls, as with the kra and luwo, and some of the blood, mixed with palm-oil, is rubbed upon the forehead. Olori brings good-fortune, whence the proverb, "Olori causes the owner of the head to prosper, and not the crab on the bank of the river." The symbol of Olori is half a calabash studded over with cowries.

Ipin ijeun, or ipin ojehun (ipin, share, portion; ijeun, act of eating, from je ohun, to eat; hence "he who shares in the food"), is perhaps considered the most important of the three indwelling spirits, but as he shares in all that the man eats, he has no special sacrifice offered to him. A proverb says, "There is no orisha like the stomach; it receives food every day." In some respects hunger (ebi) seems to be personified, and to be considered the agent of Ipin ijeun; for he is said to communicate to the man, by pinching his stomach, the desire of his principal for food. Curiously enough, Ipin ijeun is connected with fire-worship. There is among the Yorubas no god of fire, answering to the Ewe god Dso, but fire (ina) was probably once personified, for it is still spoken of as Abanigbele, "the Inmate." It is not clear by what process fire-worship came to be blended with that of the indwelling spirit of the stomach; but the natives explain the connection between the two by saying that fire is necessary for the preparation of food, and food is necessary to Ipin ijeun, therefore he takes fire under his protection, and takes care that it is not extinguished. A proverbial saying runs, "Ipin ijeun does not allow fire to depart from the earth." When fire could only be produced by the tedious process of rubbing together two sticks, it was no doubt important to keep one or two embers of a fire always smouldering.

Ipori, the great toe, is the least important of the three guardian spirits, and sacrifice is rarely offered to him, except when a man is about to set out on a journey; in which case he anoints the great toe with a mixture of fowl's blood and palm-oil. Waterfowl are apparently "unclean" for this purpose, for a proverb says, "A waterfowl is not fit for the worship of Ipori."

The ghost-man, or soul, the "vehicle of individual personal existence," is called iwin, or olcan, but the latter also means "heart." Another word is ojiji, or oji, which has the meanings of ghost, shade, or shadow. After the death of the body, the ghost-man goes to Ipo-oku, "the Land of the Dead" (Ipo, place; oku, dead), which is beneath the earth, and where each man does that which he has been accustomed to do, and holds the same social position as he did in the world. To enable the ghost to reach this land it is essential that he should have the prescribed funeral rites performed over him. Should they be omitted, the ghost wanders about the world, cold, hungry, and homeless, and he runs the risk of being seized by some of the evil spirits which roam about the earth in great numbers, and cast by them into Orun-apadi, "the unseen world of potsherds," an uncomfortable place like a pottery furnace, heaped up with charcoal and the débris of broken earthen pots. Funeral rites cannot, of course, be performed at the moment that breath leaves the body, but as an earnest of their intention to perform them, and to prevent the evil spirits from seizing the ghost, the relations at once offer a sacrifice to propitiate them; and when the corpse is buried, a fowl, called Adire-iranna,[1] "the fowl that buys the road," that is, "that opens a right of way," is sacrificed.

A comparison of the beliefs held by uncivilised peoples concerning the dead, seems to show that when in a very low state of culture, the ghost, no doubt from the association of ideas, is held to remain in the vicinity of the grave in which the body was interred; and that the notion of a distinct and separate place of abode for the dead, or Deadland, is only formed when a higher degree of culture is attained. The first belief often lingers on alongside the second, as in England, where the churchyard is considered to be the most likely place in which to see a ghost; and a similar survival among the Yorubas, or a trace of the former belief, is found in the word iboji, "a grave," which means, literally, "place of the ghost" (ibi, place; oji, ghost).

The dead often return to earth, and are born again in the families to which they belonged in their former life. In fact, one might say that they always return, since every mother sends for a babalawo to tell her

what ancestral ghost has animated her new-born child, and the babalawo always tells her which it is. As the births at least equal in number the deaths, and the process of being re-born is supposed to have gone on "from the beginning," logically there ought to be few, if any, departed souls in Deadland; but the natives do not critically examine such questions as this, and they imagine Deadland to be thickly populated, and at the same time every now-born child, or almost every one, to be a re-born ghost. As was mentioned in the volume on the Ewe-speaking peoples,[1] this belief in metempsychosis is probably a result of a confusion between the ñoli, or disembodied luko (in Tshi, the sisa), and the soul or ghostman, and we may here endeavour to sketch in the origin and probable development of these vaxious beliefs.

There can be little reasonable doubt but that the notion that man possesses a soul, an entity that continues his personality after death, arose from dreams, after the manner shown by Mr. Herbert Spencer in his "Principles of Sociology." [2] A man dreams that he is going through various adventures, but, as the evidence of his companions shows him that he has not really left their company, he comes to the conclusion that he has a second individuality, something that is himself and yet is detachable, something that can go out of him, and does so go out when he is asleep. Among the lower races all over the world, dreams are believed to be the adventures of

the spiritual man while detached from the bodily man during sleep. Then, as he dreams of men whom he knows to be dead and buried, and naturally dreams of them as he was accustomed to see them, he concludes that this second individuality can and does exist, entirely independently of the body, after death, and preserves the appearance and characteristics of the bodily-man. At this stage of belief the spiritual-man, or life-phantom, and the soul, or ghost-man, are one and the same. Then, seemingly, in some cases, this second individuality becomes divided into two separate entities-one, a life-phantom, which enters the body at birth, goes out and indulges in adventures during the sleep of the body, and quits it at death; the other, a soul, or death-phantom, which, after death, continues the life. and personality of the former bodily-man.

It is possible that this conception of two different entities was brought about, partly at least, by the desire to explain the reproduction by heredity of physical characteristics. Children generally resemble their parents, and frequently reproduce their mannerisms most remarkably. As soon as the savage begins to speculate at all, he begins to think of this phenomenon, which cannot fail to arrest his attention. He can, and no doubt often does, come to the conclusion that the dead are reborn again in their descendants; he invents the doctrine of metempsychosis; but in some cases, and the negro tribes of the Gold and Slave Coasts seem to be examples, he appears to feel that this explanation is unsatisfactory. And for this reason. He still dreams of persons who are dead, whence he believes that they exist after death; and he must often dream of dead friends or relations whose characteristics have been reproduced in their children, or, since they had a common ancestor, in some collateral member of the same family. He cannot, then, in these cases, conclude that the dead have returned to earth in the persons of their descendants; for the evidence of his dreams proves to him that they still exist as ghost-men, and are in every respect as they were when alive in the world. On the other hand, the evidence of his eyes shows him that their physical peculiarities are reborn in children now living. He therefore divides the second individuality into two -from, so to say, the kra-soul, which was one entity, he makes two, the kra and the soul, the former of which inhabits the body during life, and after death enters a new human body in the same family; while the latter remains dormant, as it were, during life, but after death continues the existence of the man as an individual. The reproduction of features, mannerisms, &c., is thus accounted for by the kra, while the theory of the soul satisfactorily accounts for what the uncivilised man believes to be the incontestable evidence of his dreams.[1]

If this view be correct it will probably be found that several other races have divided the originally conceived entity into two. The genius natalis of the

Romans resembled the kra in that it was a gnardian-spirit which entered man at birth, but, unlike the kra, it perished at his death. It was certainly quite separate and distinct from the soul, or ghost-man, which went to Hades. We say advisedly that the genius natalis dwelt in the man from birth, because to practise abstinence was "to defraud one's genius," and to eat, drink, and be merry was "to indulge one's genius," [1] thus showing that the genius was bound up with the man just as is the kra. As with the kra, the birthday was particularly set apart for the worship of the genius. Subsequently, the Romans, under the influence of dualism, just as the Gã-tribes have done, divided the genius into two-one of a good disposition and one of a bad.

Similar conceptions of two entities, the kra, or life-phantom, and the soul, or death-phantom, among the Navajo and Algonquin Indians of North America, the Karens of Burma, and the Fijians, were mentioned in the last volume,[2] but whether these people believe in metempsychosis is uncertain; and to them we may now add the Greenlanders,[3] and the ancient Egyptians, whose ka appears to closely resemble the kra.[4] A correspondent informs me that the Irish peasants of County Mayo also believe in an entity like the kra. They call it the "spirit," consider it to be perfectly distinct from the soul, and liable to be stolen by the fairies during the sleep of its possessor, who, on awakening, is ignorant of his loss, but

gradually fades away and dies. It is also liable to be seized by the fairies, at the moment of death of the person whose body it bas tenanted.

The Yorubas, it seems probable, have arrived at the doctrine of inetempsychosis after having passed through a phase of belief similar to that now held by the Tshi and Ewe tribes. The belief in one indwelling spirit has been changed into a belief in three indwelling spirits, and this multiplication has caused confusion. These indwelling spirits do not, at the death of the body, enter a new-born human child in the same family, so that the phenomena of heredity cannot be explained as being due to their agency; and the Yorubas have reverted to the theory of metempsychosis to account for them. The belief in the spirits called abiku is very probably a corruption of the former kra-a belief, for if a sisa, or disembodied kra, enters a human body it causes sickness and death, just as the abiku does.

The souls of the dead are sometimes reborn in animals, and occasionally, though but rarely, in plants. In the ideas of the natives, animals, though they differ in shape from a man, possess passions and moral qualities identical with those of the human being. Animals also possess souls which, like the souls of men, go to Deadland. Hence, as men and animals have so many characteristics in common, it does not require any great stretch of iniagination for the native to fancy that the soul may be re-born in an animal. When a plant is concerned the difference is greater; but if, as we hold, the Yoruba tribes passed through a phase of belief similar to that held by the Tshi tribes at the present day, they at one time believed that trees, shrubs, &c., and, in fact, all things not made by human hands, were animated by kras, which may account for the extension of the doctrine of metempsychosis to objects so unlike man.

The animal in which human souls are most commonly re-born is the hyena, whose half-human laugh may perhaps account for the belief. Human souls are also reborn in different kinds of monkeys, but chiefly in the solitary yellow monkey, called oloyo; and in these cases the human appearance and characteristics of monkeys no doubt furnishes the key to the belief.

As has been said, the re-birth of a human soul in a plant is rarely spoken of, and usually we can discover the reason for the supposed transmigration, as in the following tale:

"There were two boys, brothers, who knew and sang the popular songs of the country so well, that they were in great demand for festive occasions.

"One day they were asked to go to a festival at a neighbouring village, and their mother gave them permission.

"They went to the village, where the people were assembled to play, and they sang their songs and beat their drums so well that the people rewarded them highly. They gave to each boy a thousand cowries, and plenty to eat and drink. Then they dismissed them next morning to return home.

"On the way back the elder boy, covetous of the thousand cowries that had been given to the younger, led him off the path into the forest, and murdered him. Then he took the thousand cowries, added them to those which he already had, and returned home.

"When he came back alone, his mother asked him where was his brother. 'I left him behind on the road,' said the boy.

"The day passed, and night began to fall, and still the younger brother had not returned home. Then his mother and her neighbours went to look for the child, but they could not find him. They searched for him for many days, but found him not. They concluded that someone had carried him off to sell him.

"Some months afterwards the mother went into the forest to look for leaves for medicine, and she came to the place where the child had been murdered. The body of the boy had already decayed, and from his bones had sprung up an olu.[1] The olu was very fine and large, and when the mother saw it she cried, I Oh! what a fine olu.' She was stooping down to pick it, when the olu began singing~--

"When the mother heard the olu sing this she ran home, called her husband, and the two returned to the forest. When the man saw the fine olu, he stretched out his hand to gather it, and the olu sang again-

The father went to the king of the country, and told him all that had happened. The king himself came to see the olu. He stooped to pick the olu, and the olu, sang-

Then the king sent and ordered the elder brother to be brought before him. And when the boy beard what the olu had sung he confessed. The king said, 'As you took your brother and slew him, so will we now take you and slay you. Then shall the child come back to life.'

"So the elder brother was killed and the younger came back to life, as the king had said."

Here the connection between the obu and the dead

child is obvious. It sprang from his bones, and was nourished by his decaying body, so that it might well be imagined that the soul of the child, which stayed with the remains instead of proceeding to Deadland, because no funeral rites had been performed, passed into the fungus.

As we have said, the soul, or ghost-man, after the death of the body, proceeds to Deadland, and food, drink, cowries, and property of various kinds are placed in the grave with the corpse, to equip the ghost for his new sphere; while, before the grave is filled up, a goat is sacrificed to the deceased, and wishes offered for his safe journey, such as "May you arrive in peace," "May you not stray from the right path," &c.

It would certainly appear as if the dead were cognizant of and able to influence the affairs of the living, for it is usual for offerings and prayers to be made to them from time to time; and sometimes the skull of the deceased is exhumed and placed in a small temple, where offerings are made to it. Before taking the field for war, too, offerings are made at the graves of warriors of renown, and their assistance in the coming campaign is supplicated. Yet a proverb says, "As grass cannot grow in the sky, so the dead cannot look out of the grave into the street," from which it might be inferred that the dead are not cognizant of what is taking place in the world, or at all events do not know what is occurring till it is made known to them through the medium of sacrifice, and several folk-lore tales point to this conclusion as well. The following is an example:

A woman, an inhabitant of an inland town, who was going to the sea-shore to make salt by boiling sea-water, a common industry, and who expected to be away from home for some time, gave, on the eve of her departure, and in the presence of witnesses, a necklace of valuable beads to a neighbour, to be kept for her during her absence. The neighbour, a woman with two boys, accepted the trust, and, for safe custody, made a hole in the mud wall of her house, into which she put the necklace, and then closed the aperture with fresh mud, which she smoothed down to conform with the wall. Unfortunately the woman died before the owner of the necklace returned, and the secret of its hiding-place died with her, so that when the owner at last came back and claimed her property, it could not be found.

The woman made a great commotion about the loss. She would not believe the two children when they declared that they had not seen or even heard of the necklace, and she took them before the chief, and charged them with theft. The chief heard the case. The fact of the necklace having been entrusted to the deceased woman was proved; the boys declared that they knew nothing of it, but the chief held that they were responsible. If they had not stolen it they knew where it was. They must restore it or pay the value. Such was the chief's decision, and in order to compel the elder boy to make restitution, he caused the younger to be "put in log," and threatened to sell him if the missing property were not recovered within a certain time.

In this dilemma the elder boy, knowing that human agency could avail him nought, souoght assistance from the gods. He went to the head priest of the babalawos at the town of Ife, unfolded his tale, and begged for aid. The priest consulted the god Ifa, and Ifa replied that in order to know what his mother had done with the necklace, the boy must go to Deadland and ask her. The child said he was ready to go, but how was he to get there? Then the oracle instructed him as follows:--

The babalawo instructed the boy that, upon making the necessary, payment, the door-keeper of Deadland would allow him to enter, and he warned him not to touch any of the dead, or else he would not be able to return to earth. Supposing all went well, and he returned again to the grove of Ifa, from which he would set forth, he must again sprinkle his eyes with the water of purification, to restore their natural properties to them, and then offer a living sacrifice to Ifa in gratitude for his assistance.

The boy followed out his instructions to the letter, and arrived safely in Deadland, where he saw his mother seated near a spring, around which many other dead people were walking slowly or sitting down. He approached his mother and called to her, whereupon she rose and came to him, saying, "What brings thee here my son? Why hast thou come to the land of the dead?" The boy replied, "The chief has put my brother in log, and will sell him as a slave if the necklace which was given thee to keep is not restored to our neighbour. Ifa the Great, the Unveiler of Futurity, the Governor of Lots, has permitted me to come here to ask thee where it is. Say, where is it?" His mother told him that it was hidden in the wall, explaining to him how to find the exact spot, and the boy was so overjoyed that, forgetting the warning of the priest, he tried to embrace her; but she stepped back hastily and avoided him, saying, "Touch me not my son, or the road to the world will be closed to thee for ever. Go home and effect thy brother's deliverance, and make frequent offerings to me, for I need them much." Then she turned away and went and sat down again by the spring.

The boy came back to the world, and found himself in the grove of Ifa, where he sprinkled his eyes as directed, and offered sacrifices. Then he went to the chief and told him what had occurred; so the necklace was found and his brother released. The two boys were not neglectful of their mother's last request. Everyfifth day they placed fresh offerings on her grave, and kept it always plentifully supplied with fresh water.

In this story the dead mother evidently did not know what was going on in the world above, for she had to ask her son why he came, yet she was able to reap the advantage of the offerings made on her grave.

Ordinarily, people do not have to undertake the dangerous journey to Deadland in order to consult the dead. When the members of a family wish to know how a departed relative is faring below, they apply to a priest, who takes a young child, bathes his face in water of purification, which, it may be remarked, is prepared with edible snails aud shea-butter, offers a sacrifice in a new earthen vessel, digs a hole in the earth in a sacred grove in the middle of the night, and bids the child look into it. Through the magical properties of the lustral water, the child, on looking down into the hole, is able to see into Deadland, and so can tell the priest all that is going on there. When the priest has obtained the information he requires, he again bathes the child's eyes with the water of purification, which causes him instantly to lose all recollection of what he has seen and heard. The priest thus remains the sole possessor of the information, and be is able to tell the family that employed him what he pleases.