Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 29, 1918.djvu/183

Rh Indonesia for which more or less close parallels are found widespread throughout the world. As the aim of this book is to set forth the Indonesian evidence impartially and to extract the story it reveals, the wider issues have been deliberately suppressed for the present." In the face of this he assumes that everywhere in Indonesia the use of so universal and ready a material as stone was unknown to the primitive inhabitants, and that it was introduced from elsewhere by a mysterious band of immigrants (not necessarily in every case the same band), who added to their favours by becoming missionaries bringing the new cult of the sun. In most of the islands hereditary chiefs are now found: hereditary chieftainship, therefore, was introduced by the stone-using immigrants. Where stone seats are used, it is the chiefs who sit upon them: therefore such seats must have been due to their ancestors. The inference is the same whether the stones were set up for seats, or are no more than occasionally used as resting-places by wayfarers, or for coffins, or even if only ghosts sit on them. The same mysterious immigrants brought the cult of the dead. They are responsible for all sacred stones, whether small or large, and for the awe of, and observances at, natural rocks. Stories of petrifaction, so common all over the world, are referred to the same people. Traditions relating to beings from the sky are assumed to mean "the stone-using immigrants." Sometimes these beings are the supreme gods of the people who tell of them, as in the case of Lumawig, the Supreme Being of the Bontoc Igorot. No matter; Mr. Perry knows better. They were commonplace human "stone-using immigrants," subsequently elevated to that dizzy eminence. Some of these peoples have a tradition that they have descended from the incestuous union of a mythical pair. It is due to the naughty influence of the "stone-using immigrants," because they "practised incestuous marriages." Phallic magic and phallic symbols are not uncommon in some islands. The explanation is easy: the stone-using immigrants brought a phallic cult with them to Indonesia. Dead warriors or chiefs go to a different land of the dead from common people: of course; they are the descendants of "the stone-using immigrants."