Page:Folklore1919.djvu/428

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62
The Concept of “Soul-Substance”

a pig has been killed in certain ceremonies its nin mauwan enters an image to await the coming of an ancestral ghost. It will be noted how close a parallel this presents with the belief of Florida that a pig has a tarunga but does not become a tindalo.

I will conclude my survey of Melanesian beliefs by referring to Fiji where there is evidence of the twofold nature of the soul. T. Williams[1] tells us that some Fijians believe that man has two “spirits.” One, the dark spirit, or shadow, goes to Hades, while the other, or light spirit, identified with the reflected image, stays near the place where a man dies. This belief resembles that of the Trobriands and San Cristoval, and, if the information is to be trusted, it suggests that the dark spirit corresponds with the aunga of San Cristoval, and the light spirit with the shadow which enters a stone or stone image on the tomb.

With the exception of San Cristoval and Fiji we have no definite evidence in Melanesia of the belief in two souls comparable with those of Indonesia and New Guinea. In most parts of Melanesia the soul which leaves the body temporarily in sleep becomes the ghost, though here and there, as in Eddystone Island, we have evidence of a duality in the fate of the soul which may be a survival of a belief in its twofold nature.

Several of the properties attributed to the soul in Melanesia, such as its wanderings during sleep and its occasional embodiment in animal form, belong in Indonesia to the concept of soul-substance. Moreover, it will have been noted how frequently the survey just concluded has brought out the identification of the soul with the shadow. In New Guinea this occurs in Tami and Kiriwina. In Melan-

  1. Fiji and the Fijians. London (1856), vol. i. p. 241. It must be noted that Fison failed to confirm this information, and gives linguistic reasons to show that it is wrong. See J. G. Frazer, Taboo and the Perils of the Soul, London (1911), p. 92, n. 3.