When he has done so and arranged its contents on a
new mat, they take the votary of Aesculapius and hold him up by the
heels with his head in a hole in the floor. In this position they
wash his head, and "any water remaining from the ablution is taken
and poured upon the sick man's head." No doubt the lost soul is in
the water.
3. The Soul as a Shadow and a Reflection
BUT the spiritual dangers I have enumerated are not the only ones
which beset the savage. Often he regards his shadow or reflection as
his soul, or at all events as a vital part of himself, and as such
it is necessarily a source of danger to him. For if it is trampled
upon, struck, or stabbed, he will feel the injury as if it were done
to his person; and if it is detached from him entirely (as he
believes that it may be) he will die. In the island of Wetar there
are magicians who can make a man ill by stabbing his shadow with a
pike or hacking it with a sword. After Sankara had destroyed the
Buddhists in India, it is said that he journeyed to Nepaul, where he
had some difference of opinion with the Grand Lama.
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