[802] Strehlow, II, p. 56.
[803] Mathews attributes a similar theory of conception to the Tjingilli (alias Chingalee) (Proc. Roy. Geogr. Trans. and Soc. Queensland, XXII (1907), pp. 75-76).
[804] It sometimes happens that the ancestor who is believed to have thrown the namatuna shows himself to the woman in the form of an animal or a man; this is one more proof of the affinity of the ancestral soul for a material form.
[805] Schulze, loc. cit., p. 237.
[806] This results from the fact that the ratapa can incarnate itself only in the body of a woman belonging to the same matrimonial class as the mother of the mythical ancestor. So we cannot understand how Strehlow could say (I, p. 42, Anmerkung) that, except in one case, the myths do not attribute determined matrimonial classes to the Alcheringa ancestors. His own theory of conception proves the contrary (cf. II, pp. 53 ff.).
[807] Strehlow, II, p. 58.
[808] The difference between the two versions becomes still smaller and is reduced to almost nothing, if we observe that, when Spencer and Gillen tell us that the ancestral soul is incarnated in the woman, the expressions they use are not to be taken literally. It is not the whole soul which comes to fertilize the mother, but only an emanation from this soul. In fact, according to their own statement, a soul equal or even superior in power to the one that is incarnated continues to live in the nanja tree or rock (see Nat. Tr., p. 514); we shall have occasion to come back to this point again (cf. below, p. 275).
[809] II, pp. 76, 81. According to Spencer and Gillen, the churinga is not the soul of the ancestor, but the object in which his soul resides. At bottom, these two mythological interpretations are identical, and it is easy to see how one has been able to pass into the other: the body is the place where the soul resides.
[810] Strehlow, I, p. 4.
[811] Strehlow, I, pp. 53 f. In these stories, the ancestor begins by introducing himself into the body of the woman and causing there the troubles characteristic of pregnancy. Then he goes out, and only then does he leave his namatuna.