JUJU.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 6090, 29 January 1898, Page 2

JUJU.

[By Basil Thomson.] (PMMall GantU). With our reviving interest in our West African colonies we have heard a great deal about " juju," and so loose has been the use of the word in the newspapers that it would sorely puzzle most of us to give a definition of its meaning. The King of Benin was. making juju for the manes of his Royal father at the moment which Consnl-General PhUlips chose for his visit, and as juju in this case meant theorucifixion of some scores of slaves, the visit was declined, with the result we know. But the Consul-General was bent upon the visit, because the King had put juju on all the trade in his dominions, an embargo which meant ruin for the traders on the coast. Juju forbade any men of Benin to cross the water; juju prevented their King from setting foot in his capital until he was crowned, or ever leaving it afterwards. The mutilated body of a girl slaughtered in the path was a juju to stop the advance of our troops ; bronze heads, curiously chased and surmounted by carved elephant tusks, were the juju to which men were sacrificed ; an empty gin-bottle offered at a grave was the same. And when Major Leonard, THBEATENED WITH DEATH for having insulted the local juju by his presence, popped a soda-water cork, and the natives fled to the forest at the sight of the bubbling Schweppe, he waa spared because his juju was more tremendous than any they could display. So juju means many things, from a crucified nigger to a soda-water bottle, from a bit of carved ivory to an embargo on trade. So difficult is it to define it in a word that the last writer on Benin sums up the case by saying, "Nothing that can be called religion exists." Never was a greater mistake made. If there were no religion there would be no juju, for what the Decalogue is to Christianity juju is to to the polytheists of the West Coast. To the English reader the word is as puzzling as the "tabu" of the Pacific Islanders, with which it shares so much. When the Natives reproved Captain Cook's officers for blundering into sacred enclosures, they said " tabu ! " (holy) and added the- new word " taboo " to the English language, with a meaning curiously distorted from the original. An Englishman is "tabooed" because he transgresses the proprieties ; a Polynesian is "tabu" because, from hie rank or office his person is sacred. Just at the Beni can ban a piece of ground by laying a human sacrifice across the approach to it, so a Polynesian can dedicate a plantation by HANGING UP A SACEIPICIAL EMBLEM on the fence whichsurrounds it. Sacrifices to the unseen powers, the persons and belongings of the priests and the chiefs (who are the earthly representatives of the deified ancestors) are juju to the negroes and tabu to the Polynesian. But for one aspect of the juju the Polynesians have another word — " Mana." The •spiritual essence of a man which exercises an influence upon those around him, independent of his volition, is his mana. The hereditary priesthood of the Maoris bad it in virtue of their office, the highest chiefs in virtue of their divine descent. Because they are tabu they have mana, and though the low-born probably have mana too, it is so weak in comparison with that of their superiors that it is not worth speaking of. Tour mana may be exercised consciously or unconsciously. I remember a Fijian telling me that the Duke of Welliugton must have won Waterloo because his mana was stronger than Napoleon's. Its unconscious exercise has a blighting influence on persons of weak mana who run their heads against it. A person recovering from smallpox has the mana strong upon him. When the Fijians were DYING LIKE PLIES from the visitation of the measles in 1874, it was the white man's mana that was killing them. A plebeian who arrays himself in a chief's garment runs a terrible risk, for the chief's mana, as likely as not, will send him into a decline. When the Fijians read that Queen Victoria leaned on the arm of an Indian servant they did not envy the lot of that Babu, remembering the risk they ran when they laid their own necks inadvertently upon the pillows of their chiefs. A few years ag?>, when, the Government was concerned with the decrease of the native population, I received the following letter from a Fijian, "I wish, sir, to a make a few leniarks. There appears to me to be only one reason for the decrease of us, the natives. It is you white chiefs who live among us. Ifc is thus : — You ' blight us. Tou are blighting us, the natives, and we are withering away. It is not possible for a low-born man to live with his superiors, to wesir the same clothes, or to use the same mat or the same pillow. In a few days his neck or belly will swell up and he will die, for the mana of his chief has blighted him. It is thus with you white chiefs towards us. If we live long together with you we will be COMPLETELY SWEPT AWAY. You are great and we are insignificant. A plant cannot thrive under the shadow of a great ivi tree, for the great ivi overshadows it, and the grass or plant underneath withors. It is thus with you chiefs of the grpat lands who live among us. 'Let us move gently, for we are iv the glare of the noonday' (native proverb). Let us cleave to religion." Appended was a pen-and-ink sketch of a hatchet-faO9d European in clerical dress exhaling poisonous radiations, before which a sicklylooking Fijian was in full flight. The writer had hit the nail upon the head, for the mana of the Europeans, in the form of whooping-cough, measles and dysentery, was, indeed, the cause of the decrease of population. In this instance mana was another name for bacillus. It is this belief in the fateful mana of foreigners that has led to so many apparently unprovoked attacks upon navigators by islanders who know no other way of enforcing quarantine, and which may have had some part iv PROMPTING THE BENIN MASSACRE. But if travellers once succeed in producing a belief in the danger of provoking their mana to extremities, it would, be a better protection than a whole battery of Maxim guns. There was a man once who recruited Kanakas in a flame-painted dressing-gown, and performed conjuring tricks on the open beach. He could go unarmed where no other European dared venture. In New Guinea I remember trying to convince a croAvd of excited Papuans of the superiority of our |iaaaa

by blazing at cockatoos with a 12-bore. They could do the same trick themselves with a. stone, and they liked the noise. But when one of our party took a bottle of strong ammonia from his pocket, put it to his nose, uncorked it, and induced their chief to take a sniff, the mana that could lay their chief writhing on the Band became a by-word throughout that coast. So with Major Leonard's soda-water bottle, and so with any traveller in juju lands who may have the foresight to fill his pockets with the old schoolboy's tricks — squibs, serpents'eggs, and a gahranic battery. Robert Houdin, the conjuror, was a bigger man among the Arabs than Sir H. Kitchener. The war rocketß did more to win Benin than the<7-pounders.