Note 31.1 — RITUAL AND BELIEF

Shape-shifting, as it is called, may even take place by means of death and a new birth without loss of identity. Miss Kingsley tells us that in West Africa “the new babies as they arrive in the family are shown a selection of small articles belonging to deceased members whose souls are still absent: the thing the child catches hold of identifies him. ‘Why, he’s Uncle John; see! he knows his own pipe’; or ‘That’s Cousin Emma; see! she knows her market calabash,’ and so on.”31.1 This belief and corresponding practices are found over a large part of the world. Nor is it necessary that the deceased should be born again in human form, or even of the same sex. A group of tribes in Central Australia have elaborated the doctrine of re-birth to an unusual degree. Two of the tribes, the Warramunga and Urabunna, definitely hold, if we may trust our authorities, that the sex changes with each successive birth.32.1 A Mongolian tale relates that a certain Khotogait prince, having been beheaded for conspiracy against the Chinese Emperor, twice reappeared as a child of the Empress, and was identified by the cicatrice on his neck. Both children were destroyed, and he was then born as a hairless bay mare, whose hide is still preserved.32.2 In the same way, fish, fruit, worms, stones, any object indeed, may, if it can once (no matter how) enter the body of a woman, be born again and become human. As developed by animism, the doctrine of a new birth has become what we know as that of the Transmigration of Souls, which has played a part in more religions and more philosophies than one.32.3