Note 173 — The Eleventh Book.

The Souls of the Blessed are supposed by some of the Mohammedans to animate green Birds in the Groves of Paradise. Was this opinion invented to conciliate the Pagan Arabs, who believed, that of the Blood near the dead person’s brain was formed a Bird named Hamah, which once in a hundred years visited the sepulchre?

To this there is an allusion in the Moallakat. “Then I knew with certainty, that, in so fierce a contest with them, many a heavy blow would make the Perched Birds of the Brain fly quickly from every Skull.”

Poem of Antara.

In the Bahar-Danush, Parrots are called the green-vested resemblers of Heaven’s dwellers. The following passages in the same work may perhaps allude to the same superstition, or perhaps are merely metaphorical, in the usual stile of its true Oriental bombast. “The Bird of Understanding fled from the nest of my brain.” “My joints and members seemed as if they would separate from each other, and the Bird of Life would quit the nest of my Body.” “The Bird of my Soul became a captive in the net of her glossy ringlets.”

I remember in a European Magazine two similar lines by the Author of the Lives of the Admirals.

The Grave of Francisco Jorge, the Maronite Martyr, was visited by two strange Birds of unusual size. No one knew whence they came. They emblemed, says Vasconcellos, the purity and the indefatigable activity of his soul.

The inhabitants of Otaheite have assigned a less respectable part of the Body, as the Seat of the Soul.

The disembowelling of the body there, is always performed in great secrecy, and with much religious superstition. The bowels are, by these people, considered as the immediate organs of sensation, where the first impressions are received, and by which all the operations of the mind are carried on: it is therefore natural to conclude, that they may esteem, and venerate the intestines, as bearing the greatest affinity to the immortal part. I have frequently held conversations on this subject, with a view to convince them, that all intellectual operations were carried on in the head; at which they would generally smile, and intimate, that they had frequently seen men recover whose skulls had been fractured, and whose heads had otherways been much injured; but that, in all cases in which the intestines had been wounded, the persons on a certainty died. Other arguments they would also advance in favour of their belief; such as the effect of fear, and other passions, which caused great agitation and uneasiness, and would sometimes produce sickness at the stomach, which they attributed intirely to the action of the bowels.

Vancouver.