Note 148.1 — RITUAL AND BELIEF

An example of the intermingling of religion and magic in a different way may also be taken from the same people. “Physical phenomena (as heavy storms), when taking place about the time that a person dies, or is being buried, are regarded as caused by the deceased person; hence when a storm threatens to break during the funeral festivities of a man, the people present will call the beloved child of the deceased, and, giving him a lighted ember from the hearth with a vine twined round it, they will ask him to stop the rain. The lad steps forward and waves the vine-encircled ember towards the horizon where the storm is rising, and says: ‘Father, let us have fine weather during your funeral ceremonies.’ The son, after this rite, must not drink water (he may drink sugar-cane wine), nor put his feet in water for one day. Should he not observe this custom, the rain will at once fall.”148.1 The boy’s father, having died, has become a mongoli, that is to say, an ancestral spirit of indefinite powers, who watches over the perpetuation of his family, haunts the forest or the river, inspires mediums to deliver oracles, and visits the village at times in the material form of a crocodile or a hippopotamus to receive offerings of sugar-cane wine and food. His favourite son has influence with him to change his purposes, and exercises that influence by prayer. But to make the prayer effectual in staying the storm, he must use a widely diffused charm against rain—the waving of a brand and abstinence from water.