Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 26, 1915.djvu/154

 144 Myths of Origin and

Mountains. — Sometimes it will be found that the land of the dead is situated on a mountain.

The Napoe Toradja of central Celebes place their land of the dead upon Tineba, a range of mountains east of the place which they now inhabit : -* the people of Beloe in Timor also place their land of the dead on mountains,'-^ and the same is recorded of the Dusun of British North Borneo.-^ When the land of the dead is situated on a mountain, it will generally be found that there is an acompanying myth of origin from a mountain. Kruijt says of the To-napoe : — " The conjecture that thej^ have migrated from the east to their present position is confirmed by their traditions." -^ Again, in Beloe, the land of the dead for the people of Fialarang is Mt. Lekaan, and it is out of this mountain that the first ancestress came^^: the Dusun of British North Borneo state that their ancestor went to Mt. Kinibalu to live when he saw that they were comfort- ably settled.^^ These examples again show the relationship between the land of the dead and the place of origin. It will be noticed that the origin myths differ in character. The To-napoe tradition is similar to the class already con- sidered ; that of the folk of Beloe is an origin myth pure and simple, and it will be referred to again later; while the ancestor of the Dusun lives in the place which is the land of the dead. The belief that the dead go to a mountain after death is not without a corresponding practice. The Karen believe themselves to have originated from a mountain called Thaw-thi-kwo.^" They usually cremate

^* Kruijt, AniDiisme, p. 373.

^^Gryzen, " Mededeelingen omtrent Eeloe of ^Midden-Timor," Verh. Bat. Gen., liv. , p. 26 et seq.

p. 220.
 * Ling Roth, The Natives of Sarawak and British North Borneo, 1896,


 * ' Kruijt, op. (it., p. 373. -*Gryzen, op. cit., p. 46.

'■^^Ling Roth, op. cit., p. 220.

'"Rev. David Gilmour, "Karen Folk-lore: The legend of Ta\v-me-pa," jfournal of Burma Research Society, No. I., pt. i., 1911, p. 79.