### NAGAYA, APOSTOLIC PREFECTURE OF
In the ecclesiastical reorganization of Vizagapatam, Hyderabad, Poona, Indore, Jabalpur, Ranchi, Calcutta and Cuttack. It is entrusted to the missionaries of Annecy and has 91,070 sq. km. of surface area and about 15 million inhabitants, of whom only 35,000 are Catholics, 25,000 Protestants, 350,000 Muslims and the rest Hindus. Ecclesiastically the diocese is divided into 4 districts or rural vicariates: there are 21 parishes, 1 primary station, 15 secondary stations, 6 churches, 35 chapels. The clergy consists of 26 secular Indian priests and 25 of the Congregation of Missionaries of St Francis of Annecy, 13 of whom are Indians with 6 scholastics and 13 lay brothers. There is a major seminary and a preparatory school. About 200 nuns and 85 male teachers and 171 female teachers who teach in 24 elementary schools, 10 middle schools, 7 high schools, 3 vocational schools, 1 normal school. There are 13 dispensaries; 13 orphanages, 3 asylums and a leper colony. The diocese owns 2 printing houses, which publish the Salesian, a monthly magazine, and the Apostolic School Bulletin, annual, each with a circulation of 350 copies. Numerous are the sodalities, pious associations and Catholic Action groups.
### NAGRAN, MARTYRS OF: V. AREA.
### NAGUALISM
It is a belief, based on the conception of individual totemism, widespread in Mexico and Central America. The term derives from *nagual*, a word used by the indigenous people of Honduras and Guatemala to denote the protective genius. According to Seler, the Mexican *nauali* (= witch, sorcerer), in turn deriving from a word meaning “hidden,” “unknown,” would be related to II.
According to this belief, every individual throughout life would have an animal as master and protector. Those who practiced the secret cult could then, at will, assume the spirit of such an animal. The power to transform themselves into the form of the spirit of the protective soul would have been taught to the initiates, the first time, by a woman of great power, capable of assuming at will “four forms.”
In the esoteric cult of *nagualism*, men and women danced completely naked: this led the missionary fathers to suspect that these ritual festivities ended in orgies.
The number three was sacred in *nagualism*. A metaphorical language was used by the initiates. Curious examples of it were collected in the 16th century by Fr. Giacinto de la Serna: the rabbit was the representation of air and wind; the earth was invoked as Tonan, our mother, and as “the flower that contains all flowers” because from her prolific womb all things come forth; the earth was also indicated as “the mouth that eats all mouths” inasmuch as it swallows in death all those who eat.