(M55) 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.(244) 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. To prove his supernatural powers, he soared into the air. But as he mounted up, the Grand Lama, perceiving his shadow swaying and wavering on the ground, struck his knife into it and down fell Sankara and broke his neck.(245) In the Babar Islands the demons get power over a man’s soul by holding fast his shadow, or by striking and wounding it.(246) Among the Tolindoos of central Celebes to tread on a man’s shadow is an offence, because it is supposed to make the owner sick;(247) and for the same reason the Toboongkoos of that region forbid their children to play with their shadows.(248) The Ottawa Indians thought they could kill a man by making certain figures on his shadow.(249) The Baganda of central Africa regarded a man’s shadow as his ghost; hence they used to kill or injure their enemies by stabbing or treading on their shadows.(250) Among the Bavili of West Africa it used to be considered a crime to trample on or even to cross the shadow of another, especially if the shadow were that of a married woman.(251) Some Caffres are very unwilling to let anybody stand on their shadow, believing that they can be influenced for evil through it.(252) They think that “a sick man’s shadow dwindles in intensity when he is about to die; for it has such an intimate relation to the man that it suffers with him.”(253) The Ja-Luo tribes of Kavirondo, to the east of Lake Victoria Nyanza, tell of the ancestor of all men, Apodtho by name, who descended to earth from above, bringing with him cattle, fowls, and seeds. When he was old, the Ja-Luo plotted to kill him, but for a long time they did not dare to attack him. At last, hearing that he was sick, they thought their chance had come, and sent a girl to see how he was. She took a small horn, used for cupping blood, in her hand, and while she talked with him she placed the cupping-horn on his shadow. To her surprise it drew blood. So she returned and told her friends that, if they wished to kill Apodtho, they must not touch his body, but spear his shadow. They did so, and he died and turned into a rock, which has ever since possessed the property of sharpening spears unusually well.(254) In a Chinese book we read of a sage who examined human shadows by lamplight