As the faculty of conversing with the gods is so very generally confined to the priests, other people being excluded from communion with the spirit-world, it is an easy step to the conclusion that the gods have themselves selected their representatives among mankind. In conformity with notions of this sort, many peoples believe that the gods confer divine powers upon certain men and that the only way in which a person can become a priest is through being chosen by the gods.

The shamans of the Aleuts said that it was not they who called up the spirits, but that, on the contrary, the spirits themselves chose their attendants.1 Among the Thlinkets an aspirant to shamanhood has to remain in solitude till one of the spirits sends to him a riverotter, from the tongue of which he obtains the secrets required.2 The Eskimo Angakoks, also, were supposed to be endowed by the god with supernatural power when dwelling alone in solitary places. After having been invoked for some time, Tornarsuk, or the highest god, appeared and provided the novice with a Tornak, i. e. a helping or guardian spirit. The gift of a seer or prophet is among the Ojebway Indians believed to be given by the Thunder-god, and then only at long intervals and to a chosen few. Among the Waraus in Guiana the incipient Piai-man, or medicine-man, is reduced to a state of unconsciousness by swallowing a dose of tobaccojuice: »His spirit is supposed to leave the body, and to visit and receive power from the yauhahu, or hebo, as the Waraus call the dreaded beings under whose influence he is believed to remain ever after.» 5 The Kafir priests

1

3

Веніаминовъ, Записки объ островахъ Уналашкинскаго Отдѣла, і. 125.

3

Rink, Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo, p. 58.

+ Hoffman, 'The Mide'wiwin,' in Smithsonian Reports, vii. 157.

2

1

claim to derive their wonderful powers from the spirits. Many shamans of the Siberian peoples are, they say, chosen by the spirits for their vocation; as a rule, nobody can make himself a shaman of his own accord, but the devil must call him." With reference to the Yakuts, it is stated that shamanism seizes involuntarily upon the chosen individual, he begins to dream and tries to hurt himself, after which he declares that the spirits have commanded him to become a shaman. The supernatural power of the Lappish shamans is thought to be conferred upon them by the gods. In India the Bhills have a class of oracles called Barwás, »who are supposed, through the influence of the hill-gods.

5

4

to be endowed with the hereditary gift of inspiration.» 6 Again, speaking of the inhabitants of the Barito River basin in Borneo, Dr. Schwaner points out that »>the Bilians (priests) are chosen by certain Sangsangs (gods) desiring to partake of earthly enjoyments, or wishing in general to be in contact with men for various reasons and to pass into their bodies when occasion offers.» 7 Among the Australian tribes we find ideas of a similar kind. In Victoria the office of doctor or priest is alleged to be obtained by the individual visiting, while in a trance of two or three days' duration, the world of spirits, and there receiving the necessary initiation. 8 >>The

1

Maclean, Kafir Laws and Customs, p. 82. Shooter, Kafirs of Natal, p. 167.

ii. 83.

2 Шашковъ, 'Шаманство,' in Записки Геогр. Общ.

3 Gmelin, Reise durch Sibirien, iv. 109.

4 Bastian, Der Mensch in der Geschichte, ii. 132.

5

Genetz, 'Matkamuistelmia Venäjän Lapista,' in Suomen Kuvalehti, vi. 340.

6 Malcolm, 'Essay on the Bhills,' in Trans. Roy. As. Soc. i. 77. 7 Schwaner, Borneo, i. 185.

8 Stranbridge, Tribes in the Central Part of Victoria,' in Trans. Ethn. Soc. N. S. i. 300.

Wotjobaluk,» says Howitt, »believed that a man became. a bangal (wizard) by meeting with a supernatural being, called by them Ngatje, who

opens the man's side and inserts therein such things as quartz crystals, by which he obtains his powers.» The Woiworung and Murring also considered that the spirits gave the wizards their powers. Some of the Warramunga doctors, as well as those of the Binbinga and Mara tribes, are in the same way appointed by the spirits.

1

2

So, too, the power of curing illness, frequently attributed to priests, is in many cases thought to be derived from the gods. Ellis writes of the Tahitians that the priests pretended to have received from the gods the knowledge of the healing art.3 In Hawaii also, according to a tradition, the knowledge of medicine. was originally imparted by the gods. The Dyak doctors receive from the gods the stones which they make use of in their cures. 5 Among the Australian Dieyeries the doctors are supposed to have received power from the devil to heal the sick, and according to the belief of the Pomo, a Californian tribe, it is by being moved by the spirits >>that the elect are assured of their divine mission to undertake the healing of men.» 7

Very generally the gods communicate the necessary secrets to the priests in dreams. Bonwick says that in

1 Howitt, 'Australian Medicine Men,' in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xvi. 48.

2

Spencer and Gillen, Northern Tribes of Central Australia, pp.

481, 487, 488.

3

Ellis, Polynesian Researches, iii. 36 sq.

* Id., Narrative of a Tour through Hawaii, pp. 384 sq.

Tromp, 'De Rambai en Sebroeang Dajaks,' in Tijdschrift voor

Indische taal-, land- en volkenkunde, xxv. 113.

6

Gason, 'The Dieyerie Tribe,' in Woods, The Native Tribes of South Australia, p. 283. Curr, The Australian Race, ii. 73. Taplin, South Australian Aborigines, p. 78.

7

Powers, 'Tribes of California,' in Survey of the Rocky Mountain Region, iii. 152.

4

most cases the magic power of certain Australian seers fell upon them in dreams by spirit agency. This is stated by Gason of the Dieyerie doctors, who are supposed to receive in a dream the power from the devil, 2 and by Howitt of the Kurnai wizards, of whom he says that, when they were asleep, »either the ancestral ghosts visited the sleeper and communicated to him protective chants, or they took him in spirit with them and completed his education elsewhere.» 3 Among the Sea Dyaks, the regular Manangs, or medicine-men, »are those who have been called to that vocation in dreams, and to whom the spirits have revealed themselves.» The priestly office of the Khonds »may be assumed by any one who chooses to assert a call to the service of a god the mandate being communicated in a dream or vision.» 5 With reference to the shamans of the Tunguses it is stated in a paper in the Sibirski Vestnik that the wouldbe shaman declares a departed shaman has appeared to him in a dream commanding him to take his office." The Golds, a tribe in North Eastern Asia, consider it a condition for those aspiring to shamanhood, to have seen the god in a dream. The sleeper is told by the god that he must make himself a shaman and that the spirits will protect him.7

Besides dreams, there are various other means by which the gods are believed to choose their favourites

209.

v. 58.

1

2

Bonwick, The Australian Natives,' in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xvi.

Gason, 'Of the Tribes Dieyerie,' etc., i., xxiv. 175.

3 Howitt, 'Australian Medicine Men,' ib., xvi. 48.

5

7

Ling Roth, 'Natives of Borneo,' ib., xxi. 115.

Macpherson, 'Report upon the Khonds,' in The Calcutta Review,

• "Тунгусы, in Сибирскій Вѣстникъ, хіх. 39 sq. Шимкевичъ, "Шаманство у Гольдовъ, in Записки Приамурск. Отд. Геогр. Общ. ії, 1. р. 8.

for the priestly vocation. Sometimes they intimate their wishes in a more or less peculiar way. By the Moxo in Brazil and certain tribes in Paraguai it was deemed necessary that the aspirants for the priestly office should have been attacked and wounded by a jaguar, which animal was the visible object of their worship: >>they considered him, therefore, as setting his mark upon those whom he chose to be his priests.»> 1

Regarding the

Itonama Indians, on the other hand, who also worshipped the jaguar, we read: >>When a man, after a long

journey, had not been attacked by any animal of this family, he was appointed a 'comocois', or priest, because he was considered to be favoured by God.» 2 Mr. Bourkie mentions a medicine-woman of the Apache whose claims to pre-eminence among her people seemed to have had no better foundation than her escape from a stroke of lightning and from the bite of a mountain lion. 3

It is in general of no rare occurrence that men who have been struck by lightning are looked upon as chosen by the gods and are therefore admitted to priestly honours. This, according to Mikhailofski, is the case among the Buryats. If anybody is killed by lightning, it is held to betoken the will of the gods, who have thereby conferred a certain distinction upon the family of the dead man; he is considered as a shaman, and his nearest relative enjoys the right to shamanhood. * In ancient Peru we meet with a kindred idea regarding thunder. Father Molina makes mention of a class of

Southey, History of Brazil, iii. 202. Coreal, Voyages aux

Indes Occidentales, i. 241; ii. 361.

2 Hutchinson, 'On the Chaco and other Indians of South America,' in Trans. Ethn. Soc. N. S. iii. 323.

3

Bourkie, 'The Medicine-Men of the Apache,' in Smithsonian Reports, ix. 456.

4 Михайловскій, 'Шаманство,' in Извѣстія Общ. Любителей Естествознанія, etc., lxxv. 74.