e tree, and death. Rivalry for
the boon of immortality between men and animals that cast their skins,
such as serpents and lizards.]

The Bahnars of eastern Cochinchina say that in the beginning when people
died they used to be buried at the foot of a tree called Long Blo, and
that after a time they always rose from the dead, not as infants but as
full-grown men and women. So the earth was peopled very fast, and all
the inhabitants formed but one great town under the presidency of our
first parents. In time men multiplied to such an extent that a certain
lizard could not take his walks abroad without somebody treading on his
tail. This vexed him, and the wily creature gave an insidious hint to
the gravediggers. "Why bury the dead at the foot of the Long Blo tree?"
said he; "bury them at the foot of Long Khung, and they will not come to
life again. Let them die outright and be done with it." The hint was
taken, and from that day the dead have not come to life again.[94] In
this story there are several points to be noticed. In the first place
the tree Long Blo would seem to have been a tree of life, since all the
dead who were buried at its foot came to life again. In the second place
the lizard is here, as in so many African tales, the instrument of
bringing death among men. Why was that so? We may conjecture that the
reason is that the lizard like the serpent casts its skin periodically,
from which primitive man might infer, as he infers with regard to
serpents, that the creature renews its youth and lives for ever. Thus
all the myths which relate how a lizard or a serpent became the
maleficent agent of human mortality may perhaps be referred to an old
idea of a certain jealousy and rivalry between men and all creatures
which cast their skin, notably serpents and lizards; we may suppose that
in all such cases a story was told of a contest between man and his
animal rivals for the possession of immortality, a contest in which,
whether by mistake or by guile, the victory always remained with the
animals, who thus became immortal, while mankind was doomed to
mortality.

[Sidenote: Chingpaw story of the origin of death. Australian story of
the tree, the bat, and death. Fijian story of the origin of death.]

The Chingpaws of Upper Burma say that death originated in a practical
joke played by an old man who pretended to be dead in the ancient days
when nobody really died. But the Lord of the Sun, who held the threads
of al