Note 219.2 — Chapter VII · DEATH AND BIRTH AS TRANSFORMATION.

Traces of the notion that a child is neither more nor less than the reappearance of an ancestor are found almost all over the world. It seems to be a general opinion among the Negroes of the western coasts of Africa that the ghostly self of a dead man enters the body of a newborn babe belonging to the same family. In Guinea, and among the Wanika, the resemblance, physical or mental, borne by a child to its father is attributed to this cause. The Yorubas inquire of their family god which of the deceased ancestors has returned, in order to name the child accordingly; and they greet its birth with the words “Thou art come!” as if addressing some one who has returned.219.2 On the Gold Coast, parents who have lost several children sometimes cast into the bush the body of the infant who has last died. They believe the next born to be the same child returned; and if it have any congenital deformity or defect, that is attributed to injuries received from wild beasts or other evil influences in the jungle.219.3 Caution, however, is required in dealing with some of these cases, for the subtlety of savage metaphysics is marvellous. An acute observer points out that among the Tshi-speaking peoples of the Gold Coast and the Ewe-speaking tribes of the Slave Coast, a distinction is drawn between the ghostly self that continues the man’s existence after death in the spirit-world, and his kra or ñoli, which is capable of being born again in a new human body. In the eastern Ewe districts and in Dahome the soul is, by either an inconsistency or a subtlety, believed to remain in the land of the dead and to animate some new child of the family at one and the same time; but it never animates an embryo in a strange family.220.1 Not very different seems to be the opinion of the Khonds of Orissa. Anthropologists have often quoted Macpherson’s description of the divination for determining a child’s name. The priest drops grains of rice into a cup of water, naming with each grain a deceased ancestor. From the movements of the seed in the fluid, and from observations made on the infant’s person, he pronounces which of the progenitors has reappeared in it; and the babe is usually named accordingly. Khond psychology endows every one with four souls. Out of such a company there is no difficulty in arranging that one of them shall be attached to some tribe and perpetually born again into it. This, in fact, is what is believed to happen.220.2