Page:Primitive Culture Vol 1.djvu/116

98 enter into patients and possess them or afflict them with disease. Among the less cultured races, the connexion of this idea with sneezing is best shown among the Zulus, a people firmly persuaded that kindly or angry spirits of the dead hover about them, do them good or harm, stand visibly before them in dreams, enter into them, and cause diseases in them. The following particulars are abridged from the native statements taken down by Dr. Callaway: — When a Zulu sneezes, he will say, 'I am now blessed. The Idhlozi (ancestral spirit) is with me; it has come to me. Let me hasten and praise it, for it is it which causes me to sneeze!' So he praises the manes of his family, asking for cattle, and wives, and blessings. Sneezing is a sign that a sick person will be restored to health; he returns thanks after sneezing, saying, 'Ye people of ours, I have gained that prosperity which I wanted. Continue to look on me with favour!' Sneezing reminds a man that he should name the Itongo (ancestral spirit) of his people without delay, because it is the Itongo which causes him to sneeze, that he may perceive by sneezing that the Itongo is with him. If a man is ill and does not sneeze, those who come to him ask whether he has sneezed or not; if he has not sneezed, they murmur, saying, 'The disease is great!' If a child sneezes, they say to it, 'Grow!' it is a sign of health. So then, it is said, sneezing among black men gives a man strength to remember that the Itongo has entered into him and abides with him. The Zulu diviners or sorcerers are very apt to sneeze, which they regard as an indication of the presence of the spirits, whom they adore by saying, 'Makosi!' (i.e. lords or masters). It is a suggestive example of the transition of such customs as these from one religion to another, that the Amakosa, who used to call on their divine ancestor Utixo when they sneezed, since their conversion to Christianity say, 'Preserver, look upon me!' or, 'Creator of heaven and earth!' Elsewhere in Africa, similar ideas