Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 3, 1892.djvu/226

218 man must have a bad vìntana"). Even immorality (e.g., an unmarried woman becoming pregnant) was excused by the remark, "Vìntany hiàny angàha izàny" ("Perhaps that is her vìntana"), meaning that there was no helping it.

Now what does this all mean? Vìntana seems like the fatum of the Greeks and Romans, an invisible power that made itself felt always and everywhere. The following views seem to be implied in the Malagasy ideas of it.

1. Earth is not governed by itself, but by heaven. Not only is the succession of day and night settled by the most glorious heavenly bodies, the sun and the moon, but the fitness or unfitness of times and seasons for various things to be done, as well as the destiny of man himself, depends upon the heavenly bodies.

2. As far as mankind is concerned, the stars forming the constellations of the Zodiac are all-important. Their influence is manifested in two respects: they decide the destiny of a man, and also the fitness or otherwise of times and seasons.

3. The destiny of a man (his vìntana) depends on what day he was born (partly also on what time of the day), or, rather, on what constellation of the Zodiac governed the day of his birth. It was therefore incumbent upon the mpanìntana (those who dealt with the vìntana), or the mpanàndro (day-makers or declarers), who were also diviners, to inquire about the day or time of the day of a child's birth in order to make out its vìntana, i.e., under what constellation it had been born, and what influence this would have on its destiny.

4. As the names of the constellations of the Zodiac also became the names of the months, and of the days of the month (at least in the interior provinces), it is not clear what influence was attributed to the moon; but that it was not considered to be without some influence appears from the following facts:—(a) Although the days of the months had seemingly borrowed their names from the