Page:Primitive Culture Vol 1.djvu/493

 soul, common to plants and to the higher organisms possessing an animal soul in addition, was familiar to medieval philosophy, and is not yet forgotten by naturalists. But in the lower ranges of culture, at least within one wide district of the world, the souls of plants are much more fully identified with the souls of animals. The Society Islanders seem to have attributed 'varua,' i.e. surviving soul or spirit, not to men only but to animals and plants. The Dayaks of Borneo not only consider men and animals to have a spirit or living principle, whose departure from the body causes sickness and eventually death, but they also give to the rice its 'samangat padi,' or 'spirit of the paddy,' and they hold feasts to retain this soul securely, lest the crop should decay. The Karens say that plants as well as men and animals have their 'là' ('kelah'), and the spirit of sickly rice is here also called back like a human spirit considered to have left the body. Their formulas for the purpose have even been written down, and this is part of one:—O come, rice kelah, come. Come to the field. Come to the rice. . . . Come from the West. Come from the East. From the throat of the bird, from the maw of the ape, from the throat of the elephant. . . From all granaries come. O rice kelah, come to the rice.' There is reason to think that the doctrine of the spirits of plants lay deep in the intellectual history of South-East Asia, but was in great measure superseded under Buddhist influence. The Buddhist books show that in the early days of their religion, it was matter of controversy whether trees. had souls, and therefore whether they might lawfully be injured. Orthodox Buddhism decided against the treesouls, and consequently against the scruple to harm them, declaring trees to have no mind or sentient principle,