Page:Folklore1919.djvu/417

Rh by another, for the food will contain the soul-substance of him who casts the shadow. Soul-substance is also identified with breath; thus, in Nias, it is believed that a being who dwells in the sky has a storehouse of breath with which he vitalizes each newly born human being, the breath again returning to the sky-being at death.

Among some tribes of Indonesia it is believed that after death the soul-substance becomes the ghost, but this is the exception. The more usual belief is that the soul-substance goes to the sky to form part of a store from which newly born human beings receive their supply. There appears to be a belief that one who receives the soul-substance of another resembles him in nature and is regarded as his incarnation.

The foregoing is far from exhausting the properties ascribed to soul-substance by Indonesian belief, but it will suffice to give its leading characteristics. I should like to call attention especially to its intimate connection with life and health. In its more impersonal form, it would seem to be a kind of vital principle or essence. In its other manifestations, and especially in those where it has a more personal nature, it is not so clearly connected with vitality.

According to Kruijt the concept of soul-substance underlies many beliefs and customs of the Indonesian. In its impersonal form it seems to provide the principle upon which sympathetic magic depends, being apparently combined with the belief that action on part of the soul-substance is equivalent to action on the whole. The hair, nails or secretions of a person act as vehicles of the magic influence through the soul-substance they contain. Similarly, spitting is prominent in the treatment of disease because the spittle is the vehicle of the soul-substance of the leech. The bond of blood-brotherhood depends on the union of soul-substance consequent on the mingling of blood. The belief that a man acquires the characters of an animal whose