METEMPSYCHOSIS. The theory of the transmigration of souls is usually associated with the ancient Egyptians, who are said to have practised embalming to prevent or delay rein carnation; with the teaching of Pythagoras and the Buddha (q.v.) ; and was also held by a sect of early Christian heretics spoken of by Jeremy Collier as "Metempsychi." The idea, how ever, much older than any of these creeds, exists throughout the world. Where the passage of the soul, or the vital essence, into some particular form is associated, as by the Garos of Assam, with ideas of retribution for the sins or accidents of this life, the influence of Buddhism or Hinduism has probably been at work.
The primitive idea, independent of moral teaching, is bound up with the conception of an objective soul, and often with ideas as to a plurality of souls in a single individual, one of which is separable and able to go in and out through the mouth or nostrils.
Thus the Poso-Alfures of Celebes believe in three souls, the inosa or vital principle, the angga, or intellectual, and the tanoana or divine element which leaves during sleep, and which is of the same nature in many plants and animals. This separable soul is clearly a conception based on the phenomena of dreams taken to be actual experiences undergone during sleep, and postulating some sort of embodiment able to roam while the body sleeps. This soul must be small enough to leave by the mouth, and it appears as a manikin in India and in Celebes, as a snake, a weasel or a mouse, in Germany, or as an insect in further India. Thus the soul is commonly spoken of as "flying" in Greek, and represented as a butterfly, as, indeed, all over Europe, from Ireland to Lithuania, in China, Assam, Burma, Japan, and the Pacific. So, too, the soul appears as a bird—in Europe the dove is the commonest and poles bearing pigeons were erected over Lombard graves; but the soul also appears in the form of ducks, ravens, owls or hawks, and as a hawk again it appears in Egypt and in Assam.
This belief in a separable soul with an insect or other form must obviously influence beliefs in the eschatology of the soul.
We find accordingly that the soul is believed to pass into an insect on the decease of the body. Thus the Angami Naga credits the soul with a number of subsequent existences in insect form, while the Chang holds that the souls of those who can sing become cicadas, but the souls of others dung beetles. Thus the Bakongs of Borneo believe that their dead are reincarnated in the bear cats which frequent their raised coffins; wood-boring wasps and hornets take up their abode in the wooden soul figures put up by some tribes of Assam, and we find Nagas and Lusheis regarding wasps and hornets (among other insects) as souls.
If the soul can leave an individual during sleep and re-enter him, it should be able to enter and be reborn in another individual. In Germany, a dying man's heart passes into his brother, whose courage is doubled ; in the Garo hills the soul, after a sojourn in the abode of the dead, returns for another incarnation. The range of this conception of reincarnation is indicated by the frequency of tabu on giving children names already borne by living members of the family. (See NAMES.) The notion is that identity of name implies identity of personality and that one of the two bearers would die. Hence the Lhotas, for instance, never give the child the name of a living relative. A belief in reincarna tion within the family would naturally be strengthened by the recurrence of marked family resemblances. In any case a belief in the reincarnation of human souls is indicated by such rites as those of the Akikuyu women of East Africa, who, in order to have children, worship at a ficus tree inhabited by the souls of the dead, or of the Konyak Nagas of Assam, who perform ceremonies over phallic cists containing skulls of deceased persons, in order to secure a birth of corresponding sex to that of the skull.