When some Chins on a visit to
Rangoon were attacked by cholera, they went about with drawn swords
to scare away the demon, and they spent the day hiding under bushes
so that he might not be able to find them.
3. The Periodic Expulsion of Evils
THE EXPULSION of evils, from being occasional, tends to become
periodic. It comes to be thought desirable to have a general
riddance of evil spirits at fixed times, usually once a year, in
order that the people may make a fresh start in life, freed from all
the malignant influences which have been long accumulating about
them. Some of the Australian blacks annually expelled the ghosts of
the dead from their territory. The ceremony was witnessed by the
Rev. W. Ridley on the banks of the River Barwan. "A chorus of
twenty, old and young, were singing and beating time with
boomerangs. . . . Suddenly, from under a sheet of bark darted a man
with his body whitened by pipeclay, his head and face coloured with
lines of red and yellow, and a tuft of feathers fixed by means of a
stick two feet above the crown of his head.
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