Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 21, 1910.djvu/190

162 the herb Baharas is thus described by the author of the Spanish Mandeville. "Neither can it be found, unlesse you first cast upon it" a certain liquid, "poured downe all at once upon it, which beeing done, it discovereth it selfe presently to the viewe of those that seeke it, who die at the very instant, unlesse they have a peece of the roote of the same herbe gathered before, bound to theyr arme, having which, they remaine secure, & may gather it without any perrill or danger."

Now Mr. Crawley's Inoculation seems to me an unfortunate and perhaps misleading description of these kinds of practices. Inoculation necessitates a mild attack of the disease. But, as a matter of fact, I have not come across any example in which there seems any ground for supposing the motive suggested by Mr. Crawley to be really present. The object is not to "avoid the dangers of taboo by boldly courting them," but to avoid the dangers entirely. There is no desire to court them even as a precautionary measure. For example, when the Nandi warrior washes the blood off his spear and drinks it, his object is to get rid of the dead man altogether; an inoculation theory would seem to demand as his object the voluntary submission to an unpleasant interview with the ghost instead of a necessary and dangerous one. The efficacy of these practices lies, I believe, in that feeling, that victory goes to the aggressor in magical conflict, with which we have been dealing. The fact that you deliberately unite yourself to the evil power gives you the whip hand. The wild dogs of the jungle are considered by the Malays to be the "ghost" dogs of the Spectral Huntsman. They are regarded as most dangerous to meet, for, according to a Malay informant, "if they bark at us, we shall assuredly die where we stand and shall not be able to return home; if, however, we see them and bark at them before they