her in, she wept and screamed and struggled. The prefect stopped them.
"Is it necessary for you to sacrifice a human being? "
"Yes, it will please the dragon and he will give good crops."
" How do you know ? "
" Oh, we are great friends with him and know his mind."
" Then I think it would please him much more if one of you were sacrificed"; and with that he signalled to one of his attendants, and had one of the mudangs bound and thrown into the water. The dragon showed no signs of revealing himself, so the second mudang followed the first. Still the spirit gave no sign, and the third mudang went to prove the theory. That was the end of the matter. The prefect memorialised the throne against the whole tribe of mudangs, and from that time to this they have been considered the lowest of the low.
The mudangs are not the only people who have influence with the spirits. The pansu is even more conversant with their tricks and better able to overcome their evil propensities. We have noted that the mudang is a sort of medium, and moves the spirits through her friendship with them, but the pansu is an exorcist rather than a medium. He is the enemy of the spirits, and is able to drive them rather than coax them. The profession of the mudang is much older than that of pansu, the latter being the product of the past few centuries, while the former have existed from the remotest antiquity.
As we have said, the word pansu means "decider of destiny," and we judge truly from this name that the chief office of this blind fakir is to tell fortunes. He is frequently called upon, however, to exorcise evil spirits. He is looked upon as little superior to the mudang, though his sex protects him from many aspersions that are cast upon the character of the mudang. There are a few female pansus, but they have nothing to do with the spirits, and they are as low in the scale as the mudang. The office of pansu in Korea, like that of masseur in Japan, is confined to the ranks of the blind, and the prevalence of scrofulous diseases
