in one part of New Ireland the soul is called tanua, a word of which the primary meaning is said to be “shadow.” It is regarded as a principle which gives life to the body and continues to exist after death, being then called tabaran, the ghost of the dead. Peekel[1] says explicitly that animals and plants have no souls. The tanua of this region therefore corresponds with the soul of the Kai, and the only point of resemblance with soul-substance is its identification with the shadow. While the open religious cult of this region thus shows no evidence of the idea of soul-substance, there is much in common between this concept and the belief of the secret organization of New Ireland and New Britain called the Ingiet.[2] Members of this society can, if they wish, undergo a special initiation which allows them to take part in a rite called e magit. Magit is a term for something within a person which can be projected or ejected from the body so that it assumes, it may be the form of an animal, it may be that of another human being. When, as is usually the case, a member of the Ingiet projects his magit in order to do harm to another person, the magit becomes the vehicle by means of which the man carries out a process corresponding to the malignant magic of other peoples.
These beliefs in the existence within a person of a principle which can take the form of an animal, and in that form act upon and injure another person, brings us very near to the more personal form of the Indonesian concept of soul-substance. It may be noted that while in New Britain and New Ireland the power of projecting the magit is closely connected with certain stone images, the concept of soul-substance in Indonesia is, according to Perry, closely associated with the cultural and ceremonial use of stone.[3] I might point out that it is quite in accordance with my own
- ↑ Religion u. Zauberei auf d. mittleren Neui-Mecklenburg. Munster (1910), p. 14.
- ↑ See W. H. R. Rivers, The History of Melanesian Society, vol. ii. (1914), p. 515.
- ↑ Op. cit. p. 153.
