"Oh, yes," she replied, "there were several here just now, but they have gone.... There is no peace among us," and a few moments after, "We fear."
I had little difficulty in guessing the object of her terror though she dared not put it into words, but to convince myself, and partly, I fear, from an unmannerly enjoyment of her confusion, I feigned ignorance and asked again:
"But what do you fear?"
She hesitated a moment, half paralysed with fear at the thought of uttering the dread name, then recovered her composure and with sly malice replied:
"We fear Heaven."
Heaven, that was the Tiger without doubt! The following week I learnt with tragic force how natural were her fears, for she fell a victim, by no means the first, to the terrible enemy.
The incident remains engraved on my memory both for the melancholy interest attaching to it, and also because it was the first time I had come into actual contact with the taboo which forbids certain names to be uttered or requires the employment of a special language when prohibited subjects are to be referred to.
Explanations have often been attempted of the belief commonly held by savages in the incarnation of Spirits in forms other than that of a human being. The most natural theory is probably the most obvious. Since the world began all peoples have noticed that man is one of the most perishable of the objects about them. Is it likely, they ask, that the Spirits would choose so destructible a home for their earthly habitation? Surely they would select a place with greater chances of permanence, a stone, for example, or a tree? Hence the worship of these objects, not for any intrinsic value, but because they are housing Spirits.
Among the Bahnar, a Moï group, certain flints of immense age are objects of the greatest veneration. Frequently one of these stones is raised on high on a pedestal of bamboos and the more curious they are in appearance, the more reverence is bestowed upon them. The conception of the incarnation of a deity in an animal must be traced back to the same idea. Primitive man naturally attributed to animals, which sometimes preyed upon him, powers superior to his own. He was far from thinking himself the lord of creation and ascribed that superiority to the presence of a Spirit incarnated in the animal and directing its actions. The Egyptians worshipped the crocodile under various names, such as "Lord of the Waters," and "The Devourer." If such a belief prevailed among an advanced people such as these, it is hardly surprising that the barbarous races of Indo-China should fall into the same error.