Fig. 1085.—Religious story. Sicasica.
The second series, Fig. 1085, which was found at Paucartambo, was written in an analogous system on old Dutch paper. The designs are red and blue.
In an article by Terrien de Lacouperie (f) is the following condensed account, part of which relates to Fig. 1086, and may be compared with the priestly inventions above mentioned:
Fig. 1086.—Mo-so MS. Desgodins.
Père Desgodins was able, in 1867, to make a copy of eleven pages from a manuscript written in hieroglyphics, and belonging to a tom-ba or tong-ba, a medicine man among the Mo-sos. These hieroglyphics are not, properly speaking, a writing, still less the current writing of the tribe. The sorcerers or tong-bas alone use it when invited by the people to recite these so-called prayers, accompanied with ceremonies and sacrifices, and also to put some spells on somebody, a specialty of their own. They alone know how to read them and understand their meaning; they alone are acquainted with the value of these signs, combined with the numbers of the dice and other implements of divination which they use in their witchcraft. Therefore, these hieroglyphics are nothing else than signs more or less symbolical and arbitrary, known to a small number of initiated who transmit their knowledge to their eldest son and successor in their profession of sorcerers. Such is the exact value of the Mo-so manuscripts; they are not a current and common writing; they are hardly a sacred writing in the limits indicated above.
However, they are extremely important for the general theory of writing, inasmuch as they do not pretend to show in that peculiar hieroglyphical writing any survival of former times. According to these views, it was apparently made up for the purpose by the tom-bas or medicine men. This would explain, perhaps, the anomalous mixture of imperfect and bad imitations of ancient seal characters of China, pictorial figures of animals and men, bodies and their parts, with several Tibetan and Indian characters and Buddhist emblems.
It is not uninteresting to remark here that a kind of meetway or toomsah, i. e., priest, has been pointed out among the Kakhyens of Upper Burma. The description is thus quoted:
“A formal avenue always exists as the entrance to a Kakhyen village. * * * On each side of the broad grassy pathway are a number of bamboo posts, 4 feet high or thereabouts, and every 10 paces or so, taller ones, with strings stretching across the path, supporting small stars of split rattan and other emblems. There are also certain hieroglyphics which may constitute a kind of embryo picture-writing but are understood by none but the meetway or priest.”