or dangerous enough to claim it. When the Stiêns of Kambodia asked pardon of the beast they killed, and offered sacrifice in expiation, they expressly did so through fear lest the creature's disembodied soul should come and torment them.[1] Yet, strange to say, even the worship of the animal as divine does not prevent the propitiatory ceremony from passing into utter mockery. Thus Charlevoix describes North American Indians who, when they had killed a bear, would set up its head painted with many colours, and offer it homage and praise while they performed the painful duty of feasting on its body.[2] So among the Ainos, the indigenes of Yesso, the bear is a great divinity. It is true they slay him when they can, but while they are cutting him up they salute him with obeisances and fair speeches, and set up his head outside the house to preserve them from misfortune.[3] In Siberia, the Yakuts worship the bear in common with the spirits of the forest, bowing toward his favourite haunts with appropriate phrases of prose and verse, in praise of the bravery and generosity of their 'beloved uncle.' Their kindred the Ostyaks swear in the Russian courts of law on a bear's head, for the bear, they say, is all-knowing, and will slay them if they lie. This idea actually serves the people as a philosophical, though one would say rather superfluous, explanation of a whole class of accidents: when a hunter is killed by a bear, it is considered that he must at some time have forsworn himself, and now has met his doom. Yet these Ostyaks, when they have overcome and slain their deity, will stuff its skin with hay, kick it, spit on it, insult and mock it till they have satiated their hatred and revenge, and are ready to set it up in a yurt as an object of worship.[4]
Whether an animal be worshipped as the receptacle or
