Effigies used to divert the attention of demons in Nias and various parts of Asia.
In the island of Nias people fear that the spirits of murdered infants may come and cause women with child to miscarry. To divert the unwelcome attention of these sprites from a pregnant woman an elaborate mechanism has been contrived. A potent idol called Fangola is set up beside her bed to guard her slumbers during the hours of darkness from [pg 103] the evil things that might harm her; another idol, connected with the first by a chain of palm-leaves, is erected in the large room of the house; and lastly a small banana-tree is planted in front of the second idol. The notion is that the sprites, scared away by the watchful Fangola from the sleeping woman, will scramble along the chain of palm-leaves to the other idol, and then, beholding the banana-tree, will mistake it for the woman they were looking for, and so pounce upon it instead of her.[286] In Bhutan, when the Lamas make noisy music to drive away the demon who is causing disease, little models of animals are fashioned of flour and butter and the evil spirit is implored to enter these models, which are then burnt.[287] So in Tibet, when a man is very ill and all other remedies have failed, his friends will sometimes, as a last resort, offer an image of him with some of his clothes to the Lord of Death, beseeching that august personage to accept the image and spare the man.[288] A Burmese mode of curing a sick man is to bury a small effigy of him in a tiny coffin, after which he ought certainly to recover.[289] In Siam, when a person is dangerously ill, the magician models a small image of him in clay and carrying it away to a solitary place recites charms over it which compel the malady to pass from the sick man into the image. The sorcerer then buries the image, and the sufferer is made whole.[290] So, too, in Cambodia the doctor fashions a rude effigy of his patient in clay and deposits it in some lonely spot, where the ghost or demon takes it instead of the man.[291] The same ideas and the same practices prevail much further to the north among the tribes on the lower course of the River Amoor. When a Goldi or a Gilyak shaman has cast out the devil that caused disease, an abode has to be provided for the homeless devil, and this is done by making [pg 104] a wooden idol in human form of which the ejected demon takes possession.[292]
Effigies used to divert ghostly and other evil influence from people in China.
The Chinese of Amoy make great use of cheap effigies as means of diverting ghostly and other evil influence from people. These effigies are kept in stock and sold in the shops which purvey counterfeit paper money and other spurious wares for the use of simple-minded ghosts and gods, who accept them in all good faith instead of the genuine articles. Nothing could well be cruder than the puppets that are employed to relieve sufferers from the many ills which flesh is heir to. They are composed of two bamboo splinters fastened together crosswise with a piece of paper pasted on one side to represent a human body. Two other shreds of paper, supposed to stand for boots, distinguish the effigy of a man from the effigy of a woman. Armed with one of these “substitutes for a person,” as they are called, you may set fortune at defiance. If a member of your family, for example, is ailing, or has suffered any evil whatever, or even is merely threatened by misfortune, all that you have to do is to send for one of these puppets, pass it all over his body while you recite an appropriate spell, and then burn the puppet. The maleficent influence is thus elicited from the person of the sufferer and destroyed once for all. If your child has tumbled into one of those open sewers which yawn for the unwary in the streets, you need only fish him out, pass the puppet over his filthy little body, and say: “This contact (of the substitute) with the front of the body brings purity and prosperity, and the contact with the back gives power to eat till an old, old, old age; the contact with the left side establishes well-being for years and years, and the contact with the right side bestows longevity; happy fate, come! ill fate, be transferred to the substitute!” So saying you burn the substitute, by choice near the unsavoury spot where the accident happened; and if you are a careful man you will fetch a pail of water and wash the ashes away. Moreover, the child's head should be shaven quite clean; but if the sufferer was an adult, it is enough to lay bare with the razor [pg 105] a small patch on his scalp to let out the evil influence.[293] In Corea effigies are employed on much the same principle for the purpose of prolonging life. On the fourteenth and the fifteenth day of the first month all men and women born under the Jen or “Man” star make certain straw images dressed in clothes and containing a number of the copper cash which form the currency of the country. Strictly speaking, there should be as many cash in the image as the person whom it represents has lived years; but the rule is not strictly observed. These images are placed on the path outside the house, and the poor people seize them and tear them up in order to get the cash which they contain. The destruction of the image is supposed to save the person represented from death for ten years. Accordingly the ceremony need only be performed once in ten years, though some people from excess of caution appear to observe it annually.[294]
Effigies used as substitutes to save the lives of people among the Abchases of the Caucasus and the Ewe negroes of West Africa.
The Abchases of the Caucasus believe that sickness is sometimes caused by Mother Earth. So in order to appease her and redeem the life of the sick man, an innocent maiden will make a puppet in human form, richly clad, and bury it in the earth, saying, “Instead of the sick man, play and delight yourself with this.”[295] The Ewe negroes of Togoland, in West Africa, think that the spirits of all living people come from heaven, where they live in the intervals between their incarnations. Life in Amedzowe, as they call that heavenly region, which lies a little to the east of the town of Ho, is very like life on earth. There are fields there and wildernesses and forests. Also there are all kinds of food, such as yams and maize and likewise stock-yams, not to speak of cotton; in fact, all these things came from heaven just as men themselves did. Moreover, everybody has his spiritual mother in heaven and his spiritual aunt, also his spiritual uncle, his spiritual grandfather, and [pg 106] so on, just as on earth. Now the spirits in heaven are apt to resent it when one of their number quits them to go and be born as a child on earth; and sometimes they will pursue the truant and carry him back to the celestial country, and that is what we call death. Little children are most commonly fetched away by their mother in heaven; for she wearies for them and comes and lays an invisible hand on the child, and it sickens and dies. If you hear a child whimpering of nights, you may be sure that its mother from heaven has laid her hand on it and is drawing it away to herself. If the child grows very sick and its earthly mother fears that it will die, she will mould two figures of clay, a man and a woman, and offer them in exchange to the heavenly mother, saying, “O thou bearer and mother of children! instead of the child that has gone away from thee we bring thee here in exchange these clay men. Take them and withdraw thy hand from the child in this visible world.” Grown-up people also, when they fall sick, will sometimes make images of clay and offer them as substitutes to the messengers who have come from heaven to fetch them away. These images are deposited with other offerings, such as cowry-shells and a musket, by the roadside; and if the messengers accept them instead of the sick man, he recovers.[296] During an epidemic of small-pox the Ewe negroes will sometimes clear a space outside of the town, where they erect a number of low mounds and cover them with as many little clay figures as there are people in the place. Pots of food and water are also set out for the refreshment of the spirit of small-pox who, it is hoped, will take the clay figures and spare the living folk; and to make assurance doubly sure the road into the town is barricaded against him.[297]
Effigies used as substitutes to save the lives of people among the Nishga Indians.
Among the Nishga Indians of British Columbia when [pg 107] a medicine-man dreams a dream which portends death to somebody, he informs the person whose life is threatened, and together they concert measures to avert the evil omen. The man whose life is at stake has a small wooden figure called a shigigiadsqu made as like himself as the skill of the wood-carver will allow, and this he hangs round his neck by a string so that the figure lies exactly over his heart. In this position he wears it long enough to allow the heat of his body to be imparted to it, generally for about four days. On the fourth day the medicine-man comes to the house, arrayed in his bearskin and other insignia of office and bringing with him a wisp of teased bark and a toy canoe made of cedar-bark. Thus equipped, he sings a doleful ditty, the death-song of the tribe. Then he washes the man over the region of the heart with the wisp of bark dipped in water, places the wisp, together with the wooden image, in the canoe, and after again singing the death-chant, commits image, wisp, and canoe to the flames, where they are all consumed. The death-chant is now changed to a song of joy, and the man who was lately in fear of his life joins in. He may well be gay, for has he not given death the slip by devoting to destruction, not merely a wisp saturated with the dangerous defilement of his body, but also a substitute made in his own likeness and impregnated with his very heart's warmth?[298]
Hence the woollen effigies hung out at the Compitalia in Rome were probably offered as substitutes for living persons to the Mother or Grandmother of Ghosts.
With these examples before us we may fairly conclude that the woollen effigies, which at the festival of the Compitalia might be seen hanging at the doors of all the houses in ancient Rome, were not substitutes for human victims who had formerly been sacrificed at this season, but rather vicarious offerings presented to the Mother or Grandmother of Ghosts, in the hope that on her rounds through the city she would accept or mistake the effigies for the inmates of the house and so spare the living for another year. It is possible that the puppets made of rushes, which in the month of May the pontiffs and Vestal Virgins annually threw into the Tiber from the old Sublician bridge at Rome,[299] [pg 108] had originally the same significance; that is, they may have been designed to purge the city from demoniac influence by diverting the attention of the demons from human beings to the puppets and then toppling the whole uncanny crew, neck and crop, into the river, which would soon sweep them far out to sea. In precisely the same way the natives of Old Calabar used periodically to rid their town of the devils which infested it by luring the unwary demons into a number of lamentable scarecrows, which they afterwards flung into the river.[300] This interpretation of the Roman custom is supported to some extent by the evidence of Plutarch, who speaks of the ceremony as “the greatest of purifications.”[301] However, other explanations of the rite have been proposed: indeed these puppets of rushes have been a standing puzzle to Roman antiquaries in ancient and modern times.