Page:Myth, Ritual, and Religion (Volume 1).djvu/195

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his food on earth. Over the evil spirits he has no authority. Puluga made the first man—we are not told how—and forbade him to eat various kinds of fruit at certain seasons. Pigs originally had neither eyes nor noses, and were therefore readily caught, as in Cockayne. The origin of the first woman is dubious, but it is asserted that the first man "found her swimming about." Puluga gave the pair language; their children multiplied immensely and separated, each party being provided by Puluga with a different dialect. Animals mostly came from men; some men became crabs, others iguanas, others cachalots. After a deluge, caused either by the wrath of Puluga or by the bursting of a toad which had "drunk up all the water,"[1] men tried to kill Puluga. He answered them, however, that he "was as hard as wood." After this Puluga ceased to be visible. The least experienced student will have little difficulty in separating the native from the borrowed elements in Andaman mythology, which is only worth mentioning as an example of native ideas in a setting of European teaching or European blunders.

Leaving the Andaman islanders, but still studying races in the lowest degree of civilisation, we come to the Bushmen of South Africa. This very curious and interesting people, far inferior in material equipment to the Hottentots, is sometimes regarded as a branch of that race.[2] The Hottentots calls themselves "Khoi-khoi," the Bushmen they style "Sa." The poor Sa

  1. Cf. chap. i.
  2. See "Divine Myths of the Lower Races."