SOUL. According to the Greeks, the psyche was the life, the perceptive principle. The pneuma was the spiritual nature. The leyp-bya of the Bur mese is the psyche of the Greeks. In Burmese everyday philosophy, the life of man resides in the leyp-bya or butterfly spirit, and dies when it dis appears. Man, at the point of death, opens the mouth, and the butterfly escapes from the body, but only to die at the same time. The leyp-bya is the cause of dreams. It is not necessary for the butterfly to remain constantly in the. body ; when the man is asleep, it leaves the body, and roams about far and wide, but only to known places, lest it lose its way, and, unable to return, both would die. Or it may be gulped rtp by a beloo, evil spirit, or kept in durance by a ta-seht, or by a sohn, wizard.
Burmese unwillingly wake a sleeping man, as his leyp-bya may be at a distance. An assistant commissioner rides up to a small townlet, and calls for the headman, but he is asleep. Well, then, wake him ; ' but old Mah flatly refuses ; on which the Englishman gallops off, raving at the dreadful impertinence of the people, and Mah Gyee tells all her neighbours how the young Englishman actually wished to imperil her hnsband's life.
The Greenlander believes that after death the soul travels to Torngarsuk, where reigns perpetual summer and sunshine, and no night ; where there is good water, endless seals, birds, and reindeer.
The soul of the Arabs was the tayf or al tayf al khafi, a mysterious or invisible spirit, the ether.
From the passage in the Koran, xlix. 43, the Sufi hold that the soul can leave its body and visit different scenes while the body lies entranced. This, they say, happens to a certain extent every time a man sleeps. Jalal-ucl-Din says— , 'When deepest slumber doth the sense enfold, Into the regions of the Infinite Men's spirits wander free and uncontrolled.' Soul or spirit, according to the Hindu philo sophers, is eternal, separate from, but may be bound up with, the body.
Soul and animal life are believed by the Jains to be the same, and to be one in gods, men, and brutes.
The Stiens of Cambodia believe that animals also have souls which wander about after their death ; thus, when they have killed –one, fearing lest its soul should come and torment them, they ask pardon for the evil they have done to it, and offer sacrifices proportioned to the strength and size of the animal. See Spirit-Worship.
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