pieces fitted closely together, forming a tube in the original shape of the bamboo.  A notch at one end included the edges of both pieces, showing that they were a pair.  The messenger said that if the reply were favourable one of the pieces was to be returned and the other kept.  I need hardly say the messenger received no written reply, and both pieces of bamboo were retained.” (MS. Note by Sir Arthur Phayre.)

NOTE 9.—­Compare Mr. Hodgson’s account of the sub-Himalayan Bodos and Dhimals:  “All diseases are ascribed to supernatural agency.  The sick man is supposed to be possessed by one of the deities, who racks him with pain as a punishment for impiety or neglect of the god in question.  Hence not the mediciner, but the exorcist, is summoned to the sick man’s aid.” (J.A.S.B. XVIII. 728.)

NOTE 10.—­Mr. Hodgson again:  “Libations of fermented liquor always accompany sacrifice—­because, to confess the whole truth, sacrifice and feast are commutable words, and feasts need to be crowned with copious potations.” (Ibid.)

NOTE 11.—­And again:  “The god in question is asked what sacrifice he requires? a buffalo, a hog, a fowl, or a duck, to spare the sufferer; ... anxious as I am fully to illustrate the topic, I will not try the patience of my readers by describing all that vast variety of black victims and white, of red victims and blue, which each particular deity is alleged to prefer.” (Ibid. and p. 732.)

NOTE 12.—­The same system of devil-dancing is prevalent among the tribes on the Lu-kiang, as described by the R.C.  Missionaries.  The conjurors are there called Mumos. (Ann. de la Prop. de la Foi, XXXVI. 323, and XXXVII. 312-313.)

“Marco’s account of the exorcism of evil spirits in cases of obstinate illness exactly resembles what is done in similar cases by the Burmese, except that I never saw animals sacrificed on such occasions.” (Sir A. Phayre.)

Mouhot says of the wild people of Cambodia called Stiens:  “When any one is ill they say that the Evil Spirit torments him; and to deliver him they set up about the patient a dreadful din which does not cease night or day, until some one among the bystanders falls down as if in a syncope, crying out, ‘I have him,—­he is in me,—­he is strangling me!’ Then they question the person who has thus become possessed.  They ask him what remedies will save the patient; what remedies does the Evil Spirit require that he may give up his prey?  Sometimes it is an ox or a pig; but too often it is a human victim.” (J.R.G.S. XXXII. 147.)

See also the account of the Samoyede Tadibei or Devil-dancer in Klaproth’s Magasin Asiatique (II. 83).