Note 1 — RELIGION

Deities and Spirits. The nearest equivalent to gods is an order of beings called Potso,1 who live in a world like ours, of the earthy floor of which our sky is the underside. The world of the Potsos in turn has a sky which supports yet another Potso world, and so on for an unknown number of layers. The only Potsos who affect us are those in the world immediately above our sky. They resemble men in appearance and have hosts of attendants who are sometimes regarded as their servants and sometimes as their relations. It is believed that just as the Lhotas have their Potsos, so the Semas, Aos and other tribes have theirs. The language of Potsos is different from that of men. Some members of the Tsoboi clan are said to claim to know it. Potsos are believed to visit earth from time to time and hold converse with the village seer (ratsen), coming in pairs with a train of attendants and bringing articles symbolical of the fortune the village is going to enjoy during the year. They send a servant ahead who appears to the ratsen in a dream and tells him that his masters will come on such and such a day. From the time when the warning is received till the Potsos come nothing must be killed in the ratsen’s house, and between these dates he must not go outside the village land, or indulge in sexual intercourse, or eat the flesh of anything killed after he received the warning, though he may eat meat dried before. For their visit he makes ready “pita madhu” (etha soko) and some small fish and rice, and has plantain leaves brought up from the fields for use as cups. On the night when the Potsos are expected all in the village must go to bed early and shut their doors. The ratsen himself sleeps in a room separate from the rest of his family. The Potsos then come and speak to him in a voice which no one else can hear, and show him symbolical articles from which the future can be foretold. In the morning the marks of the spear butts of the Potsos and their servants can be seen outside the ratsen’s door. They are easily distinguishable, it is said, from the ordinary marks of spear butts, for they are much smaller and deeper. This belief seems to show that the Potsos are regarded as coming in material form. The objects brought by the Potsos are generally believed to be taken back by them, but Niroyo village claim that some of their rice is from seed rice given to a ratsen by a Potso. A typical instance of this curious belief that these beings from another world sometimes visit the earth is the supposed visit of Potsos to the ratsen ’Nchemo of Illimyo in April 1919. ’Nchemo reported that two Potsos came with fourteen attendants and brought with them reeds, meaning sunny weather, part of a railway carriage (!), meaning elephants would give trouble, two loads of dark blue thread, meaning that someone would die “apotia,” and a broom, meaning that wind would damage the crops. The day after a village is visited by Potsos is kept as an emung both by the village to which they came and by its neighbours. Formerly if any village was visited in this way all Lhota villages, however distant, kept one day’s emung when they heard the news. Apart from special ceremonies performed to appease or gain the favour of the Rangsis, Sityingo and such-like godlings, it is to the Potsos that prayers are offered in sacrifices. Just as in England huge circular depressions in the hills are often called Devil’s Punchbowls, so the Lhota tends to assign big or curious things to the Potsos. For instance, the polished stone celts which are sometimes found in the fields are regarded as thunderbolts and are called “Potso’s axes” (Potsophü). The long flat seed-case, too, of a certain tree is called “Potso’s weaving-sword” (Potsotsitam).2